[Posted by Karl]

The bloggy thing to do this morning would be to link the results of the new Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll of FL, OH and PA, toss in today’s media focus on VA from ABC News and others, then do some analysis of the strategies the campigns might be to pursue some given set of swing states.  Indeed, I have done posts in that vein before (albeit with some nuance I won’t get into here).  But today I feel more contrarian and nitpicky.

First, these polls and media stories merely confirm what we would have surmised a year ago: FL and OH are going to be close, PA remains a tough get for the GOP, and VA has been trending Democratic but not a sure thing for Obama in light of the 2009 and 2010 elections there.

Second, as Nate Silver notes, state polling is still noisy at theis point in the campaign.

Third, as political scientist Andrew Gelman notes, the past several decades have seen a steady decline in the variation of statewide vote swings.  Come November, the swing in the swing states will likely mirror the swing nationally.  Electionate makes a similar point, although I have some disagreement with the underlying reasoning:

There’s a growing chorus arguing that Obama has an electoral college advantage. The underlying assumption is that the race is close nationally and yet Obama seems poised to secure well over 300 electoral votes. In my view, that argument is misguided for a simple reason: the race isn’t close nationally, and the electoral college consequently reflects an Obama advantage.

Electionate’s claim that the race isn’t close nationally is based in large part on the argument that Rasmussen and Gallup are skewing perceptions of the race.  I will not rehash the claims against Rasmussen; some of them are quite reasonable, others less so.  Gallup defends its polling here and here.  Rather, I will note that Electionate’s plot excluding Gallup and Rasmussen tends to show a slowly tightening race, which is what you see with Gallup and Ras in the mix.  Eyeballing the plot suggests Obama currently has an edge of a bit over 4% — but today’s RCP average gives Obama an edge of 3.6%.  That’s not much a difference, particularly when considering that head-to-head polls at this point in the election cycle explain less than 50% of eventual results. [Note: Electionate does not name RCP as an offender on this score.]

However, this is another reason to focus more on Obama’s job approval number than any Electoral College map at the moment.  The current RCP averages are 48.3% approve, 47.4% disapprove.  If you exclude Gallup and Ras, 47.8% approve and 47.3% disapprove.  Again, judiciously including Gallup and Ras has no significant effect on the numbers; if anything, they boost Obama’s approval number.  For the zombies focused on the 2004 campaign analogy, note that while Bush had declining job approval eight years ago, he went into the election with a 49.8% job approval by the RCP average.

None of this will keep we political junkies from obsessing over polls and maps.  It’s fun to do that.  Just keep in mind that at this point in the campaign, they probably do not tell you what you really want to know.

–Karl

[Posted by Karl]

Given the number of stories I expect to see making these errors, I almost hate to single out the WaPo’s Chris Cillizza. But here he is, predicting that Pres. Obama will go even more negative in his reelect campaign — almost advising that he do so — based on Pres. Bush’s 2004 reelect campaign:

Why? Because Bush whose popularity was sliding amid rising questions about the war in Iraq — among other things — knew that there was no path to victory against Kerry by spending any substantial time touting his accomplishments during his first four years in office.

Partisans on both sides were already lined up either for or against Bush and no amount of positive (or negative) advertising would move them off of how they intended to vote. Undecided voters didn’t like Bush so positive ads amounted to a waste of time. The only way to win was to make Kerry even less palatable.

Obama is in a somewhat similar — albeit it slightly stronger — position that Bush found himself at this time in 2004. The struggling economy has dragged down the current incumbent’s numbers and two of his main legislative achievements — health care and the economic stimulus — are not popular with the American public. (They are popular with the Democratic base, however, which is why Obama is touting some of those accomplishments in web ads — a means of communication that helps gin up energy in the base.)

Mind you, Jay Cost has looked in depth at the 2004 campaign and found essentially the opposite result:

The election that year was a referendum on Bush: people who disapproved of him voted overwhelmingly for Kerry; people who approved of him voted overwhelmingly for Bush. In fact, the Bush approvers/Kerry voters were more numerous than the Bush disapprovers/Bush voters.

As Jay noted: “If anything, Kerry did a better job at peeling away voters from the “other” side than Bush did.”

Cillizza’s sloppy thinking is most evident in his final paragraph quoted above.  I doubt he missed the day in writing class about paragraph structure and how topic sentences are supposed to be supported by and flow from the topic sentence.  Here, we are told Obama is in a slightly stronger position than Bush, but the rest of the paragraph actually suggests why Obama is in a weak position. [My theory is that Cillizza believes this because Bush's approval was trending downward in May 2004, while Obama's has generally trended upward since Autumn 2011.  However, I would note Bush's downward trend broke over the summer of 2004 -- and it's entirely possible the converse could happen here, based on the natural rhythms of a presidential election year and the state of the economy. The main point here is that Cillizza could not be bothered to support his assertion with data or argument.]

Cillizza spells out his bedrock premise near the end of his piece:

Remember: Campaigns run negative ads because they work.

However, political scientists like John Sides will tell you that we haven’t remotely arrived at a place where research suggests that negative ads “work.”  This is not to say that negative ads never work; it is merely to say that at best, Cillizza can only claim that campaigns run negative ads because they believe negative ads work.  Sides calls the idea that negative ads work a “zombie,” because it refuses to die, despite the general lack of data supporting it.

Conservatives will be inclined to attribute the sloppy thinking of such stories entirely to political bias by journalists who would prefer Obama’s reelection.  However, without excluding bias as a factor, the problem runs deeper than that.

The 2012 election will be mostly a referendum on the incumbent and the economy, as such elections almost always are.  Yet coverage of the campaign to date has overwhelmingly focused on the horse race, tactics, strategy, money and advertising, absolutely dwarfing coverage of policy, the candidates’ public records and even their personal issues.  The same was true of the 2008 general election coverage, despite a financial panic and two war theaters.  Indeed, two of the world’s easiest predictions are: (1) after the 2012 elections, journalists will hold conferences where they decry the fact that they disserved the public with too much horse race coverage; (2) they will do it again in 2016.

The establishment media’s enormous bias toward horse race coverage is fundamentally self-serving.  If campaign strategists and pollsters are the puppet-masters who determine election outcomes, then the reporters who relay their plans to the unwashed masses have status.  But if people think that the event of the moment may not matter all that much, fewer people read the Washington Post.  And even zombies gotta eat.

–Karl

Following up on Karl’s excellent post from yesterday, we have this from Michael Mukasey:

While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president, consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission accomplished by SEAL Team 6:

“I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . .”

Mukasey constrasts this “me me me” attitude with that of George W. Bush:

The man from whom President Obama has sought incessantly to distance himself, George W. Bush, also had occasion during his presidency to announce to the nation a triumph of intelligence: the capture of Saddam Hussein. He called that success “a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq.” He attributed it to “the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks.”

He did mention himself at the end: “Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.”

This video, with the smug look on Obama’s face as he discusses how he went after Bin Laden, makes the point well.

I’ll tell you when it isn’t. When the races don’t fit the narrative:

Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim.

The victim’s friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car. Attackers came after her, pulling her hair, punching her head and causing a bloody scratch to the surface of her eye. She called 911. A recording told her all lines were busy. She called again. Busy. On her third try, she got through and, hysterical, could scream only their location.

. . . .

Forster and Rostami, both white, suffered a beating at the hands of a crowd of black teenagers.

If you reversed the races, would this be national news? Would we be hearing from Al Sharpton?

As it happens, it is being publicized by an opinion columnist. Who says: “Forster and Rostami’s story has not, until today, appeared in this paper.”

Thanks to dana.

If you’re looking for something uplifting (though sad), check out Baby Avery’s Bucket List. She was born with SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) and given only months to live. As described at the Daily Mail:

Her father Mike had chronicled his daughter’s life in a blog, writing in her voice about all the things she wanted to do before she died, including wearing a big bow and going to a tea party.

. . . .

The initial bucket list included several childhood milestones, such as going swimming, going on a road trip, sit on daddy’s shoulders, have a birthday party, and stay up past my bedtime watching TV with mommy and daddy.

If you go to the blog, you’ll see it became something of a sensation, and her “bucket list” grew and grew.

There will be no more additions to the list. She died two days ago. But the parents’ love of their daughter and of life shines through. Worth a visit.

From the Foundry blog at Heritage.org:

Parents, be forewarned: there’s a terrible danger out there. Delicious, sweet, spreadable chocolate is available for purchase in your supermarkets, but it’s NOT healthy for your kids! Who would have thought?!? But ignorance is bliss — very bliss — and in the case of Uninformed Moms vs. Nutella, it was worth $3.5 million in a class action lawsuit settlement.

This latest example of the U.S. legal system run wild comes to us from California where two mothers filed suit against Ferrero USA, Inc., the maker of Nutella — a spreadable, chocolate-flavored hazelnut product. ABC News reports that one of the plaintiffs — Athena Hohenberg of San Diego — sued the company because she was confused into thinking that Nutella is a health food, and she was “was shocked to learn” that Nutella “was the next best thing to a candy bar.”

The root of their claim is that the company is guilty of false advertising. The TV ad for Nutella highlights how the product is made from “simple, quality ingredients like hazelnuts, skim milk and a hint of coco.”

According to one of the plaintiffs, “I thought it was at least as nutritious as peanut butter if not more and that’s the impression I got from the advertisement. I thought it had health benefits and it clearly doesn’t.”

Now, the company is settling for $3.5 million — or anywhere from $4 to $20 per person in the class.

The ability of people to file frivolous lawsuits is one of the country’s biggest problems. Stories like this make for a good laugh but the underlying issue is not funny at all.

[Posted by Karl]

It would take a lot of effort to turn the killing of Osama bin Laden into a political liability.  But Team Obama is working on it:

Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as ‘ammunition’ for his re-election campaign.

The SEALs spoke out to MailOnline after the Obama campaign released an ad entitled ‘One Chance’.

In it President Bill Clinton is featured saying that Mr Obama took ‘the harder and the more honourable path’ in ordering that bin Laden be killed. The words ‘Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?’ are then displayed.

***

A serving SEAL Team member said: ‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.

‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’

Chris Kyle, a former SEAL sniper with 160 confirmed and another 95 unconfirmed kills to his credit, said: ‘The operation itself was great and the nation felt immense pride. It was great that we did it.

‘But bin Laden was just a figurehead. The war on terror continues. Taking him out didn’t really change anything as far as the war on terror is concerned and using it as a political attack is a cheap shot.

‘In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.’

But wait, there’s more… from BuzzFeed’s Michael Hastings:

Most active duty SEALs were reluctant to go on the record venting or praising their boss, but one of the most interesting responses I received from an operator was to direct me to Leif Babin, a SEAL who left active duty last year.

Babin, who runs the consulting firm Echelon Front, wrote a little noticed op-ed in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal four months ago. The headline: OBAMA EXPLOITS THE NAVY SEALS. Babin took aim at “the president and his advisors, writing: “It is infuriating to see political gain put above the safety and security of our brave warriors and our long-term strategic goals.”

***

[As] the stagey outrage over the politicization of foreign policy from Mitt Romney and his Republican allies gained momentum over this past weekend, White House officials started to have their doubts. Was spiking the football, again, and again, and again, in a public such a good idea? Was it necessary? Was the campaign in Chicago, White House officials wondered, going too far?

This sentiment is likely why former chair of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen fired a warning shot about it on national television.  But does Team Obama, which rolled out an attack ad against Romney and had Obama comment on the subject in a presser really harbor doubts about this tactic?  As the WSJ noted in an op-ed titled “Obama’s Ron Burgundy Campaign:

It’s easy to imagine Robert Gibbs, David Plouffe and the boys yucking it up as they put that one together, just like Ron Burgundy and his news team in the Will Ferrell satire. Stay classy, Chicago.

But the better Anchorman comparison might be: “For the last time, anything you put on that prompter, Burgundy will read!”  And that trait — along with an unhealthy dose of arrogance — was the basis for his comeuppance.

–Karl

So the editors of the Los Angeles Times decided a few days ago to publish inflammatory photos of American soldiers with dead Afghan suicide bombers, despite the military’s deep concern that publishing the photos would put our soldiers at risk.

The fear among some officials is that the latest trophy photos will be used as an excuse for further unrest in Afghanistan, similar to what happened when previous photographs were made public.

The paper published an article explaining its decision, which linked to an online chat with the paper’s new editor:

“We considered this very carefully,” Maharaj said. “At the end of the day, our job is to publish information that our readers need to make informed decisions.”

Apparently danger to the troops was not a good enough reason not to publish inflammatory material.

What about danger to the editors themselves? Well, you see, that’s different.

Back when there was a controversy over cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, the paper pointedly refused to publish the cartoons that were at the center of the controversy. If the paper ever published those cartoons, I am unaware of it. Indeed, when a cartoonist drew a satirical cartoon that mocked the refusal of newspapers like the Los Angeles Times to publish the Muhammad cartoons — a cartoon that didn’t even depict Muhammad at all! — the editors pulled that cartoon as well.

So apparently, danger to the troops is not a good reason to withhold “information that [their] readers need to make informed decisions” . . . but danger to their own lives? Why, that is an excellent reason.

Indeed, the paper is willing to withhold critical information from its readers even when there is no danger to anyone. Remember the Rashid Khalidi tape, showing Obama paying tribute to a radical advocate for Palestinian rights? An article described some anti-Israel sentiments expressed at the dinner Obama attended:

“During the dinner a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.”

One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”

The paper refused to release that tape, saying they had promised their source they wouldn’t. Not only that, they also refused to release a transcript (which they had not promised not to do), or view the tape to tell readers whether Bill Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn appeared at the dinner — or whether the tape showed Obama’s reaction to the extreme statements above.

So don’t give us a line about how you release all important information, Mr. Maharaj. You release information that serves your agenda, whether it puts our troops at risk or not. But you keep quiet if the information would hurt Obama . . . or if it posed a risk to your editors’ precious little hides.

Thanks to dana.

Everybody at the water cooler at the L.A. Times knows that so-called “wedge issues” are bad things — and that, as such, they have traditionally been used only by Republicans. Today, they are shocked to find Obama using similar tactics, in what hard-hitting editors apparently believe to be the first known instance of Democrats using “wedge issues” in the history of American politics:

Wedge issues may boost Obama’s prospects

Obama and Democrats appear to be using immigration and contraception to try to pry away voters from the other camp, similar to wedge issues that past Republican presidential candidates have employed.

Illegal immigration, affirmative action, gun control and same-sex marriage have all been used by Republicans as wedge issues at the state and national levels, with varied degrees of success. Now it’s Democrats and Obama — sympathizing with women paying more for dry cleaning, playing consoler in chief to a woman impugned by radio’s Rush Limbaugh — who are pushing people’s buttons.

The article explains that the issues in question are “immigration and contraception” and defines wedge issues as issues “grounded more in emotionalism than economics” that are “typically used to pry voters away from a party or a candidate they might otherwise be inclined to support.”

It’s nice that they’re noticing Democrats using wedge issues.

It’s laughable that they never noticed this before.

Does anyone here remember 2006, when Michael J. Fox had a commercial that touted stem cell research in a close Senate race in Missouri? The Democrat, Claire McCaskill, won the race. Although some argued that stem-cell research is not a true wedge issue and that it did not help McCaskill, there was plenty of research suggesting it worked. And in 2004 and 2006 Democrats pursued the issue with fervor, showing their belief it was an effective wedge issue. Fox also stumped in Iowa, Ohio, and Virginia — all states with close races — using the issue to motivate voters. Just as Republicans have been accused of placing gay marriage initiatives on the ballot to drive voter turnout, Democrats put stem-cell research issues on state ballots in California in 2004, and Missouri in 2006.

Stem-cell research is hardly the only Democrat wedge issue. Democrats have used a “personhood amendment” as a wedge issue in Nevada. They have used clean energy as a wedge issue. In fact, in 2010 the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a memo with a host of wedge issues the party planned to exploit, including minimum wage, Social Security, the grand debate over Obama’s birth certificate, and numerous others.

I always get a little annoyed whenever someone suggests that one party or another is uniquely susceptible to using a certain evil tactic. If you really believe that, you might double-check to see if partisanship is clouding your perceptions.

In this case, it most certainly is. Nowhere is this as blatantly obvious as at the end of article, which contains a nice little apologia for Obama’s use of wedge issues. It is a campaign plug for Obama so blatant that it had me scrolling back to the top of the article to see if I was actually reading an editorial or a “news analysis.” No such luck:

Wedge politics may seem a long way from the uplift of Obama’s 2008 hope-and-change campaign or, going back further, the message of healing and reconciliation that launched the young Illinois state senator’s political ascent with a galvanizing speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

But Obama has often been underestimated, or misconstrued, by supporters and critics alike. Though he has ideals and principles, and the eloquence to give them flight, he understands one thing: To get things done, you have to win.

Sometimes, to get the right policies put in place, even good-guy Democrats might have to resort to tactics so evil they were once the exclusive province of the Republicans. It’s not that they want to do these things; it’s that their ideals and principles require it, for the good of the nation — and, dare I say it? the known universe.

So sayeth the über-objective journalists at the Los Angeles Times.

[Posted by Karl]

Yesterday, I wrote about the claims from Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein that the GOP is ideologically extreme and scornful of compromise, noting that the Democrats are similarly afflicted with the problems they identified.  However, we need not simply analyze their claims on the basis of what is wrong with both parties.  We can also look at the affirmative record of the parties.

One of the biggest and most fundamental tasks of the federal government today is developing a budget.  There is consensus on this point.  Obama’s budget director has warned that our exploding public debt is “serious and ultimately unsustainable.”

Republicans have proposed a budget (largely the work of Rep. Paul Ryan) to address the debt bomb, and have taken considerable political flak for it, which will only increase in the general election campaign. 

The Obama administration’s position?

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, speaking on behalf of the Obama White House, to Rep. Paul Ryan: “You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say ‘we have a definitive solution to that long term problem.’  What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

In the House of Representatives, Pres. Obama’s non-solution budget was unanimously defeated, 414-0.  The House Democrats’ budget, which relies on massive tax increases and gutting defense spending, while doing nothing about runaway entitlement spending, nevertheless fares only marginally better in reducing the debt/GDP ratio than Obama’s non-solution.  Neither the Obama budget or the House Dems’ budget comes close to either the Ryan plans or the bipartisan plans floating around the Beltway.

Speaking of which, people like Ornstein and Mann presumably favor some old school, center-left Grand Bargain along the lines of the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations.  Beltway establishmentarians pine for the days in which the GOP signed onto budget deals that hiked taxes in return for future spending cuts that never seem to materialize.

In the House, a version of the Bowles-Simpson plan attracted a grand total of 38 votes, suggesting House Republicans are not the only ones scornful of this Grand Bargain.  In the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad from taking a vote on a version of this plan, even in committee.  Indeed, Senate Democrats, in violation of federal law, have failed to pass any budget for almost three years.

Democrats oppose the Republican budget approach for relying heavily on restraining government spending and avoiding massive tax increases.  However, a study of fiscal consolidations in 21 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development over 37 years concludes that failed attempts to close budget gaps relied 53% on tax increases and 47%, while successful consolidations averaged 85% spending cuts and 15% tax increases.  Moreover, the International Monetary Fund would suggest spending cuts and tax cuts as a “Plan B” for overextended countries.

As for Republicans being ideologically extreme, consider the polling coming out of the GOP presidential primary campaign.  Americans saw the ideology of the GOP candidates — including Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum — as closer to theirs than Barack Obama’s ideology.  Even among so-called independents, only Bachmann scored as more extreme than Obama, who holds the record for the most polarizing first, second and third years in office since Gallup started measuring polarization.  A majority of Americans (and independents) said Barack Obama’s political views are “too liberal,” a greater percentage than believed either of his main Republican challengers — Rick Santorum (38%) or Mitt Romney (33%) — is “too conservative.”  A majority of Americans (and independents) disagreed with Obama on the issues most important to them, while only a plurality disagreed with either Romney or Santorum.

Today’s post is much shorter than yesterday’s, because if you reread Ornstein and Mann, you will find none of this real-world context in their op-ed.  In order for them to condemn Republicans as “the problem,” they ignore the country’s biggest problems, save for a passing reference to our exploding public debt as, er, “fiscal pressures.”  They ignore the Democrats’ gross irresponsibility and dereliction in meeting the basic duties of governance, similarly burying their heads in the sand.  They ignore that the Democrats’ preferred approach to the debt — when forced to consider it — has tended to fail worldwide.  They denounce the GOP as ideologically extreme, public opinion data to the contrary.  No wonder they demand the media switch entirely to a propaganda machine for the Democratic Party.  Their reality-based community is a Potemkin village.

–Karl