What About That Tax Deal?

One of my correspondents -- a fellow traveler in libertarian circles probably trying to get me to stop crowing about my election prediction -- wrote "So what do you think of the current 'tax deal'?"

I think the answer to that depends on whether you focus on the intent or the impact and whether your point of view is economic or political.  It also depends on whether your comparison is between before the deal (BD) and after the deal (AD) or between The Deal (TD) and No Deal (ND), and, perhaps most of all, on whether your view is short term or long.

And the Last Winner Is... Tim Bishop (D) NY-01

The last congressional race of the 2010 midterm election was decided Wednesday, December 8, when Republican Randy Altschuler conceded victory to incumbent Democrat Tim Bishop in the NY-01 congressional district comprised of the eastern half of Long Island.

Republicans will control the 112th House of Representatives with a 242-193 majority, a net change of 63 seats from the now lamest-of-ducks 111th.  It will be the largest Republican majority since the 80th Congress (246-189) elected in the first post-World-War-II midterm of 1946.  The highest Republican majority since then, achieved in George W. Bush's post 9/11 re-election of 2004, was 231-203 with one seat vacant.  It will be the fifth largest Republican majority since the House went to 435 seats almost a century ago in 1913.

In a less exultatory tone, on the day before the election, Monday, November 1, I predicted here that the final split would be 243-192 and the final swing 64 seats.

Now, with Altschuler's concession, I am forced to admit the one-seat error of my ways.

Employment Growth and Party Control of Legislatures

Sherry noticed that employment growth data in the Albuquerque Journal correlated with her recollection of red-blue party maps in recent elections.  When she googled "state lagislature control by party" she found that correlated, too.  So we wrote a letter to the editor.  Usually, they ignore mine and publish hers, so this time we both our names on it.

According to the regional map of employment growth in the Business Outlook of December 6, 2010, the only states of the Southwest region that had positive employment growth from September 2009 to September 2010 are Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Those are also the only states in the region where the state legislature is controlled by Republicans.  Don't believe it?  Check Wikipedia's maps at  State Legislature (United States).

New Mexicans can join their more prosperous neighbors in 2012 by dumping a bunch of Democrats from the Senate and few more from the House to get a state legislature that will encourage growth and economic development through smaller, better government rather than discourage it through more regulation, larger taxation, and more subsidization of favored industries.

And Then There Was One...

The last county with votes in CA-11 certified its results today, and incumbent Democrat Jerry McNerney defeated David Harmer by just 1.1%.  The liberal local New York paper's current count of the House is 242-192, for a swing of 63.

Only the NY-01 race remains undecided.  Incumbent Democrat Timothy Bishop leads his Republican challenger Randy Altschuler by 214 or 215 votes -- depending on whether you accept the Bishop camp's numbers or Altschuler's -- but a recount seems likely.

By the way, NY-01 contains Port Jefferson, my daughter-in-law Laura's home until she went off to college in Washington, DC, as well as some little burgs known as The Hamptons where some well-to-do folks from The City have summer homes and choose to vote -- in at least one case for a second time -- to balance the more conservative locals.

Of course, I want Altschuler to win for the extra margin in the House, but if he does, the Republican gain in the House will be 64, exactly in line with my last prediction here.

New Mexico's Economic Freedom Think Tank

Week in and week out, Paul Gessing and the Rio Grande Foundation do incredibly important work.  Paul's blog at ErrorsOfEnchantment chronicles the fallacies that dominate establishment thinking on political economy in New Mexico and the nation as a whole.  Check out the link in his Thanksgiving message for a great example.  It details the failure of early socialism in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Paul's efforts will help us relearn the truth of that first Thanksgiving -- that the way to raise people out of poverty and even stave off starvation is to institute property rights and a free market -- and to help us remember to pass that truth on to our children and grandchildren.

The Quantitative Easing and the Ben Bernank

Thanks to one of my correspondents, I'm able to share with you this Economics 201 Money and Banking bit of fun.  It would rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-out-loud fun if there weren't quite so much truth in it.

And yes, I know that it's Bernanke.  Watch the video.

And Another Two Bite the Dust...

Two incumbent Democrats conceded their close races Tuesday to Republican challengers: Solomon Ortiz to Blake Farenthold in TX-27 and Daniel Maffei to Ann Marie Buerkle in NY-25.

Maffei had the option to ask for a hand recount, but decided to forego it.  Of the other three races I mentioned in my last post, one went Democrat and the the other two remain in doubt.

Election Results vs. Predictions

I have held off counting coup on the Democrats in the House of Representatives since a number of races still hang in the balance.

I have not found any single source tracking all those races other than the liberal local New York paper's (LLNYP) House race map.  It changes occasionally, which indicates that it is still being updated.

Their partial count shows that Democrats have been declared winners in 190 races and Republicans in 240, with five races remaining to be determined.  Republicans lead in four of those five, with the average lead being about 500-600 votes, though in one case it is only 27 votes.  Those races, and their status as this is posted are here:

	Dem	Rep	R - D
CA-11	McNerney	Harner	-628
CA-20	Costa	Vidak	27
NY-01	Bishop	Altschuler	383
NY-25	Maffei	Buerkle	659
TX-27	Ortiz	Farenthold	799

If these races were all to go the way they now lean, Republicans would hold a 244 to 191 seat majority, for a swing of 66 seats.

Dillinger's Law

The Deficit Reduction Commission's draft report is summarized here.  It was released last week, to the nearly complete surprise of the chattering class.  Googling "deficit reduction commission" turns up twenty links before one that points to the commission's site.  Since Google sorts links by the number of people who have clicked through them, this shows that most people don't care to get facts from original sources.

The commission has had this epiphany: if you have to move toward a balanced budget -- and that's what deficit reduction is, after all --  you have to reduce the tax breaks and bene's for the middle class.  There are simply way too few high-income earners from which to raise a few percent of the nation's total economic production.  People who make more than $1M per year  have only about $500B in total income, so confiscating all of that we aren't already taking in taxes would only raise about a third of an Obama deficit.

Sherry says the Deficit Reduction Commission is just recognizing Dillinger's Law, named for the bank robber who, when asked why he robbed banks, replied "Because that's where the money is."

[And yes, I know it wasn't Dillinger, or Willie Sutton either.  It's just Common Knowledge -- search down for "Common Knowledge and read on from there].

Who Am I to Blow Against the Wind?

A friend with long experience in politics once told me, "Don't waste your breath trying to convince those who won't listen."

A guy came to my house last week working for a company we hire to wash our windows.  He spoke very good English with a heavy Spanish accent.  It turned out he was from Cuba.  I asked how he got here.  "On two tractor tires lashed to a couple of sheets of plywood with my buddy for 12 days.  No food and water after the first few," he told me.

What's Wrong with the CBO Stimulus Analysis?

One of my correspondents writes

Many liberals are circulating this around FB...any thoughts? I know you're a numbers guy!

Gallup's Final GCB at +15%

Gallup's final generic congressional ballot survey shows Republicans at 55% and Democrats at 40%.  This predicts a national two-party congressional vote of Rep 58%, Dem 42%.  According to one set of 1000 Monte Carlo simulations taking into account the heavy Democrat incumbent advantage, this negative 16% D result implies that the next House could split 243 R to 192 D, a net Democrat loss of 64 seats, and a larger Republican majority and a smaller Democrat minority than any since 1946.

About this, Gallup says

Philosophical Keys

The philosophy of economic liberty is that an economic system where individuals are free to make their own choices and reap the rewards of their efforts and penalties of their decisions is both more productive for all and morally superior to one that makes the collective decision to enforce greater equality of economic result.

This philosophical judgment at the core of all their beliefs is what separates the two great parties of America. 

Vulnerable Seats by Poll Closing Time

David Keating of the Club for Growth has compiled a very large list of vulnerable Congressional seats -- almost all Democrat.  "What I need," I thought, "is a list of poll closing times so I can add them to this list and sort by that."

The Doubt of the Obamites

Here is Margery Eagan, a self-identified 2008 Obamite, expressing doubt that our progressivist President knows the way out of the ditch he blames the Republicans for putting us in.

Tea Partiers Focus on Spending and the Constitution

Thursday, the Washington Post backed off the criticism of the Tea Party as racist buffoons a bit by reporting a study on the signs of the Freedomworks' sponsored 9/12/2010 march on the Capitol. 

Susana es una Tejana. Y Ya Esta Bien!

Democrats in New Mexico find themselves facing their worst political nightmare.  Susana Martinez is a savvy, energetic, likeable Republican who happens to be a Hispanic.  She leads Bill Richardson's handpicked candidate by nearly ten points in the race to replace the peripatetic ex-Congressman-Ambassador-Secretary as Governor of New Mexico.

Greece as a Model (Part IV)

It seems clear today to a substantial majority of the electorate that we must cut government spending if we want to restore our once vibrant economy.

A growing part of that problem is that state and local public employees -- and union members -- often retire at age 50 from jobs that aren't disabling or even debilitating.  In allowing them to do so, we create a stifling burden on the rest of society.  Those people are productive resources shifted into idle that the productive remainder must carry whether through taxation or borrowing.

Nate Silver's Election Forcasts

Last night I gave you my current forecast of the 2011 House based on a model I'm following, and using the generic Congressional ballot poll results reported on RealClearPolitics.

The numerical technology used in that model is similar to that used by Nate Silver of what once was FiveThirtyEight.com.  Since the liberal local New York Paper (LLNYP) now owns Silver's website, you can find his forecasts here.  His predictions are very detailed, and are reported as probabilities, e.g., he reports that Pearce has a 70% chance of winning NM-2.  Local knowledge tells us to discount the polls Silver's forecast relies on here, a bias he calls house effect and adjusts for when he has previous knowledge of it.

How Bad Is It Likely to Be for Democrats (Part V)

[Part IV, titled "Yes, Virginia...," is here.]
[This post corrects my earlier misinterpretation of the model results in paragraph four below.]

Gallup's likely-voter results in their Generic Congressional Ballot poll for last week were released today.  They are R-D =+17% for a light turnout and R-D=+12% for heavy, virtually identical to their previous week's results of +18% and +13% respectively.  Given how volatile their registered-voter results have been through the summer, that small change is in itself remarkable.

The numbers are, of course, most incredible for the size of the Republican lead.  The RealClearPolitics average for the GCB is a huge R-D=+8.2%.

The Six Most Dangerous Words

We are all guilty of this from time to time.  We are frustrated with the behavior of some large fraction of our fellow citizens.  They aren't behaving rationally, or aren't reacting to the incentives that seem obvious to us.  We are sure we see a better way, and we exclaim "There ought to be a law...," requiring this or that or another thing.

There they are, the six most dangerous words in the English language.

Sixth Sense (Part II)

Sherry says "Obama says 'I pay dead people.'"

[Sixth Sense (Part I) is here.]

It's Your Planning of the Economy, Stupid!

This is too surprising for words.  John Dingell?  Trailing?  In Michigan? In a D+13 District?

The Democrats keep saying "It's the economy, Stupid." Yet it is their claim to be able to plan every single aspect of the economy.  That claim is their problem: if you stand on government planning, your political fortunes will sink with its failures.

Advocates of increasing economic freedom can hope to hang this failure of economic planning around the progressivists' necks for a couple of decades.

I See Dead Policies

Yesterday, driving near a hospital Sherry and I saw a car driven by a man in medical scrubs with  the vanity plate ICDDPPL.  I think the reference is to the tagline of M. Night Shyamalan's directorial and Joel Haley Osment's acting breakouts in Sixth Sense: "I see dead people."  I didn't start laughing until it hit me that he was probably a pathologist who did autopsies.

Likely Voter Screening

Last night I got a bit flippant about likely voter screening, motivating one correspondent to point me to an extended analysis of the subject done during the 2004 Kerry-Bush presidential election on mysterypollster.com. I found it educational, and you may, too.

Yes, Virginia,...

If I seem to you to be too focused on the polls, I apologize, but I'm going to keep it up for the next four weeks.

Reasoning from principles don't mean much in the last few weeks before election day, as you must surely know if you've watched or listened to any campaign spots lately.  A friend says to any candidate in earshot "If you're explaining you're probably losing."

Today's news is the Gallup organization's release of its first polls with their likely voter screen applied.  You've probably already seen it, but if not, take a look here.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he's coming early if this holds till November 2.

Friday I showed you Frank Newport's early warning of this very, er... extremely, er..., well,... huge difference between their registered-voter polls and their then-upcoming likely-voter poll.

As for the details of their turnout-based model, I can't say much about it at this point, but my guess is it's based on asking something like "How likely are you to vote this November 2: not very likely, pretty likely, likely, certain, absolutely certain, or 'You betcha!'?"  After which they collect the votes of those who say "certain" or better for the low turnout model and everyone who says "pretty likely" or better for the high turnout model.

If you're in need of a reminder as to why an economic libertarian should be so dedicated to the Republican cause in this election, perhaps you'll find it here.

Any enemy of progressivism is my friend.

How Bad Is It Likely to Be for the Democrats (Part III)

Here, I brought you Sean Trende's analysis that relative turnout of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents (RD&I) had shifted dramatically in the Virginia and New Jersey governors elections last year, and in the Massachusetts Senatorial election early this year from that in the Presidential election of 2008.  You will recall that Trende applied those shifts to explain the troubles the Democrats face in Senate races across the country, and predict, for example, the very popular Joe Manchin's deep trouble in the West Virginia special election to replace Robert "King of Pork" Byrd.

So one problem in understanding the polls this year is to remember that the usual weighting of RD&I segments in them is wrong.  But that problem is compounded when the poll includes all adults, or all registered voters.  Who will vote?  That's the question on which Trende's analysis focuses.  A polling organization that reports the opinions of likely voters must decide how to adjust its raw results by excluding those not likely to vote.  It may do so before the calls are made, by examining voter registration records to find out who has voted most often, or it can do so after the raw results are in by sifting out those not likely to vote on the basis of answers each respondent gave.  Polling organizations call the latter screening, and each uses its own proprietary model to do it.  My mental model in comparing registered-voter to likely-voter results is to shift the registered-voter results toward Republicans by 5%.

The Gallup organization's history is to report their Generic Congressional Ballot (GCB) question for registered voters until early October, after which they begin to apply their likely-voter screen and switch to reporting results from likely voters.  Here, Frank Newport of Gallup lets a very big cat out of a very deep bag.  When Gallup has applied their likely-voter screen internally to recent results, he says, the shift has been greater than 10%!  That's consistent with the findings of other polls showing something like a 20% gap in Republican vs. Democrat enthusiasm to vote.  It will make a huge difference in their GCB results when they start reporting likely voters next week.

Since Gallup and other registered-voter polls comprise about half of the total sample in the RealClearPolitics GCB average -- now +4% for the Republicans -- this means that average may need to be shifted toward the Republicans by about 5% to get the full likely-voter effect.

Even that assumes that the likely-voter screens of the rest of the polling organizations can be believed.  And here is Jay Cost dumping all over CNN/Time for reporting what appears to be a biased sample in the California Senate race.  This certainly seems to indicate that a dose of skepticism of polls performed for and released by liberal media outlets is in order from this point forward.

[9/16/10] Voters to NRSC Candidates: Listen Up!

Republican primary voters had a solid message for the Establishment-backed candidates like Mike Castle and Bob Bennett and Lisa Murkowski this primary season.  Like a good parent to an errant child they said "Listen up!  Pay attention.  You need to show me that you get it."

When the National Republican Senatorial Committee's candidates stood still and looked the adult supervision in the eye, listened carefully, and showed that they understood the error of their ways, they were allowed to stay in the room.  But recalcitrance of any sort was not tolerated.  Mild cases were given time out or were sent to their rooms.  Obstreperous ones were punished severely; some were completely disinherited.

Republican primary election voters have tried to turn this party on a dime.  The whiplash will be giving the elected class headaches for a couple of months.

But buried here is one number to be committed to memory: "40 percent of likely voters call themselves tea party supporters,"  and the tea party message is clear:

Don't raise taxes.  Stop borrowing so much.  Cut spending.  A lot.  Got it?  Leave us private sector adults in peace, cause we've got work to do.  Now get started cleaning up this mess you made here.

We'll be back in a couple of years to check on you. 

[9/15/10] Republicans to Lose in Delaware Now?

Mike Castle, Spendican Congressman from Delaware, was defeated yesterday for the Republican Party nomination for Joe Biden's Senate seat by Tea-Party-supported candidate Christine O'Donnell.  Republican establishment figures nationwide, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee whose endorsement has turned out to be the kiss of death this year, have been counting Castle as a win in the primary for so long that they are quite enraged.

Karl Rove was all but sputtering as he attacked O'Donnell's "lack of qualifications" and "ethical problems" on Fox News last night.  To Sean Hannity's credit, though somewhat taken aback, he managed a stout defense of O'Donnell as a "good candidate."

Polls have shown her a much weaker candidate in the general election than Castle -- polls that all had him the certain primary victor till the last few days -- so there is reason for concern.  But Delaware isn't Massachusetts, having elected and reelected a Republican -- if only the RINO Castle -- as its single Representative to Congress for many years.

And you may recall that Massachusetts now has a Republican butt in the seat formerly occupied by that copious equine rear end, Ted Kennedy.

In case of panic attack, repeat to yourself "There are no safe seats for Democrats this year."

[9/15/10] Progressivism as Socialism

American progressivism, like European social democracy, is a branch of socialism.  Tracing Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom, one should see that socialism is at the root of corporatism, which led to Mussolini's fascism, and at the root of German national socialism, which led to the unqualified evil of Hitler.

Some of you may think that I have the history wrong and that American progressivism is not root and branch of  socialism.  Here is a Hillsdale College professor of history Ronald J. Pestritto to tell you otherwise and to confirm that I have it right.  Please read his quotations from Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt carefully.  You might want to remember that John McCain admires and emulates Teddy while you do.

In August 2009, writing on the federal intervention into private sector health care as Redistribution Redux  I wrote that we must fight domestic progressivism as we fought international communism.  Some of you may think that too harsh.  If so, reread Pestritto's last paragraph where he quotes from our modern day progressives:

Today, a congressman such as Pete Stark can simply boast that the federal government "can do most anything in this country." And Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi won't even consider the constitutionality of a government takeover of health care a "serious question." Given this state of affairs, it does not seem unreasonable to reflect on the origins of the disdain for the Constitution in the Progressive Era.

The words of the Constitution and Amendments still mean what they meant when they were ratified by the States, and those words do not permit the overarching power that we have tolerated at the Federal level since the mid 1930's.

We must take up this fight and restore the principle of a Federal government limited to the powers granted to it by our written Constitution or we will be a nation of serfs and vassals like the European nations.

[9/6/10] Where Do We Go From Here?

Regarding predictions that Republicans will retake the House and perhaps the Senate, a correspondent writes

How will the Republicans blow it?  If the Republicans do manage to capture both the House and Senate, but not at the level of a veto-proof Congress, Obama will triangulate and return successfully to the White House in 2012, with a Congress perhaps on or just over the edge of Democrat control. The Republican party by then will have torn itself intellectually apart among de facto socialists (e.g., McCain), religious folk [...], and the few rational economic conservatives and libertarians (i.e., Randists).

You need to temper your pessimism a bit.  Since libertarians are not a majority, the winner-take-all election process ensures that their impulses can only be realized through the Republican Party, and then only incrementally.  It is an imperfect vessel into which to pour such hopes, but there is no other!  The religious right may still have some remaining toxicity with independents, but it is unlikely to play any role in the near term.  The main threat is from the Spendicans -- what you call the "de facto Socialists."

So just what would the path forward from a Republican wave victory look like?

A Boehner speakership will not be so stupid as to announce that the presidency is irrelevant, and follow the Gingrich road again.  The right strategy for it to adopt -- given a Senate majority, but no 60 vote super-majority -- is to make the President propose, and then dispose of his proposals, focusing on reducing spending in every case.  The fact that the Constitution requires that all appropriations bills originate in the House will give them some leverage even if they don't hold the Senate.

Neither can the Republican Senate leadership -- whether in the majority or not -- be so stupid as to ignore the primary losses of sitting Senators Robert Bennet and Lisa Murkowski, two of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's close associates.  Nor are they so dense as to ignore the Tea Party primary defeats of Trey Grayson (TN), McConnell's chosen successor to Jim Bunning, or of the Republican National Senatorial Committee's early endorsees, Jane Norton (CO), and Sue Lowden (NV).  Nor will they be able to ignore that Club for Growth candidates forced Arlen Specter (PA) -- another McConnell associate -- and Charlie Crist (FL) to jump the party ship, which lead to the former's defeat in the Democrat primary and will probably lead to the defeat of the latter in November.  This is such a repudiation of the NRSC, it should abandon its Spendican bias or cease operations focused on primaries.

After November 2, the Spendicans of both Houses of Congress will recognize that any leadership role they might have will be owed to the Tea Party and its antipathy for spending, a very precarious position going forward to the primaries of 2012.  That should reduce any tendency they might have toward occasional dalliances with Obama and congressional Democrats.

Finally, Obama is no Clinton.  The White House that writes the stuff he reads from the teleprompter is staffed from bottom to top with progressive ideologues raised from pups on Illinois politics.  There is no compromise they can tolerate, so they will continue trying to energize their left wing base, and will further offend the center of the electorate in the process.   Triangulation would require them to recognize two more sides to issues than they are capable of seeing.

And as for Obama's chances in 2012, if the 2010 election is the historical repudiation of progressive policies it is shaping up to be, I see no way he can be reelected.  Now that their leftist tendencies are out of the closet and progressivism is a dirty word, it will be a long time till the next blue-state progressive-Democrat presidency.

Too bad for the Democrats that they can't run southern governor Trojan horses again, but that well is completely fouled and filled with the decayed reputations of Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.

[9/4/10] A Nightmare on Capitol Street

What Freddy Krueger stalks Democrats' dreams this year?  It seems likely that their nightmare is a Republican wave election that will make their 2008 tsunami look like a ripple in a goldfish bowl.

Sean Trende has recently written that Dem prospects for the House are bad and getting worse:

Right now, the idea of gains in excess of 60 seats for the GOP is unthinkable to many. Gains of that magnitude haven't happened in over 80 years. But unthinkability is not evidence. What actual evidence we have reminds us that no political party has hit the trifecta of a lousy economy, an opposition at its nadir (in terms of [previous] seat loss), and an overly ambitious Presidential agenda in over 80 years.

Eighty years ago, the Republicans under Herbert Hoover were dealt a crushing defeat, when they went from a slim 218 seat majority -- though Democrats controlled the House owing to Republican deaths -- to a tiny minority of 117 seats, losing 101 seats.  Sherry points out to me that this was followed by five consecutive elections of Democrat presidents.   Furthermore, only go-along-to-get-along almost-Democrat national-defense Republicans -- Eisenhower and Nixon -- were elected until Reagan 50 years later.

But what about this year and what about the Senate?  For our answer, we have that very insightful analysis by Trende.  He begins by comparing exit polls from the 2009 Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races to those from the 2008 Presidential election, and concludes this:

In Virginia, the Republicans' share of the electorate increased by 12% from 2008 to 2009; in New Jersey it was 10%. In Virginia, Democrats were at about 84% of their 2009 level; in New Jersey it was 93%.

In both states, the Democrats' share of the Republican vote dropped by about 50% (50% in Virginia, 56% in New Jersey), and their share of the Independent vote dropped about 66%. The Democrats' share of the Democratic vote was pretty stable; up 1% in Virginia and up 2% in New Jersey.

How valid is an analysis based on such turnout shifts?  When he applied these shifts to last winter's Massachusetts senatorial contest, he concluded that Scott Brown had a real shot.  You may recall that after that incredible result, on January 18, in a piece titled "Yes, Democats, the Sky IS Indeed Falling," I wrote this:

It's truly amazing that, in just one year, the Democrats have so angered the electorate that not even Ted Kennedy's seat is safe for them.  It's hard to imagine what could prevent November's elections from being a total debacle for their party.

The critical shifts are the turnout changes -- up for Reps and down for Dems -- and the shift in Independents from Dem to Rep.

When analyzing this election by examining polls, it is critical to remember that pollsters don't just sample and report.  They tinker with the data by weighting the responses of the Reps and Dems differently, based on some assumption about the composition of the electorate in the actual election. 

Effectively, they sample Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents in one poll, and then sample Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in another, and then reassemble their two polls into one weighted to give them the electorate they expect.  One effect of this is to raise their sampling error by about 40% ( actually sqrt(~2) - 1, for those who care).  But the most significant effect is to make their result critically dependent on their assumption of the composition of the electorate in the actual election.  In other words, the turnout question is key.  That's what makes Trende's trends so critical.

Now his shifts illuminate Dem prospects in the Senate.

...the exact same methodology used to forecast Massachusetts in late December was applied to the various competitive Senate races. The composition of the electorate was altered in each state so that the electorates would be 11 percent more Republican, 5 percent more Independent and 11 percent less Democratic than they were in the 2008 presidential race. Additionally, the Democratic candidates' share of the Republican vote was decreased by 47 percent (which usually worked out to only a couple of points), and by a third among Independents. The share of the Democratic vote was increased by one and a half percent.

The results suggest that Republicans would pick up 12 Senate seats, before accounting for any candidate effects.

Trende lists the states with competitive races grouped by incumbency: Dem, Rep, or Open.  His results ordered by predicted Democrat vote are here:

Stt     RepPred DemPred DemRCP  Incumb
AR      67.2%   32.8%   30.8%   Dem
LA      66.2%   33.8%   36.0%   Rep
KY      64.5%   35.5%   42.0%   Rep
WV      63.5%   36.5%   51.0%   Open
IN      59.3%   40.7%   50.0%   Open
MO      58.5%   41.5%   40.0%   Rep
CO      58.1%   41.9%   43.3%   Dem
FL      58.1%   41.9%           Rep
NC      57.8%   42.2%   38.0%   Rep
IA      57.7%   42.3%   36.0%   Rep
ND      57.2%   42.8%   25.0%   Open
OH      56.4%   43.6%   39.0%   Rep
NH      55.8%   44.2%   39.0%   Rep
NV      54.2%   45.8%   47.5%   Dem
PA      54.2%   45.8%   40.0%   Open
OR      53.5%   46.5%   52.0%   Dem
WA      52.9%   47.1%   47.8%   Dem
WI      52.9%   47.1%   45.3%   Dem
CT      50.4%   49.6%   49.0%   Open
CA      50.2%   49.8%   43.8%   Dem
IL      49.0%   51.0%   39.0%   Open
DE      48.4%   51.6%   35.0%   Open
NY      46.9%   53.1%   51.3%   Dem

Three points need to be made here.  First, note that Trende's predictions for the Dem vote are similar to the RCP averages.  The RCP averages aren't corrected to two-party percentages, but the point remains.

Second, if we decide that the battleground states are those where his predicted Rep vote is 45% to 55%, then those states are all Dem or Open seats: NV, PA, OR, WA, WI, CT, CA, IL, DE, and NY, a truly remarkable list.

Third, there are lots of individual candidate effects, on which Charlie Cook, Stuart Rothenberg, and Larry Sabato are famous for focusing.  Trende discusses those at some length.  For example, West Virginia has the fourth highest predicted Republican percentage. What in the world is the commentariate doing saying that Manchin is a shoo-in winner there?  Here's Trende again: "Manchin is a popular, socially conservative Democrat who fits the state well. Still, the West Virginia numbers should make the Manchin campaign nervous, as they are clearly fighting a steep headwind."  Trende wrote and published that before the WV Rasmussen poll showed Manchin up only 6 points on the not quite Previously Unknown Republican* John Raese.  Trende's analysis leads me to believe that Manchin is walking his last mile, but that remains to be seen.

There are certainly individual candidate effects, but this Freddy Krueger nightmare is stalking someone, and it's not the Republicans!

[9/2/10] Dems: Be Careful What You Wish For!

Democrats are addicted to bashing George W. Bush, a sport I draw pleasure from myself now and then, though for entirely different reasons.  Republicans like to reply that W's not on the ballot!

Now, from one of my correspondents comes a link to this Public Policy Polling result with evidence that both should rethink those strategies.

It appears that today, in Ohio at least, W would whip Obama heads up!

[8/31/10] Another One Bites the Dust!

After a day of counting 15,700 absentee ballots in which she picked up only 199 votes of the 1668 she needed, Spendican-from-birth, National-Republican-Senatorial-Committee-supported Senator Lisa Murkowski conceded tonight to West Point graduate, Desert Storm
veteran, Tea-Party-supported Joe Miller.

Another one gone,
And another one gone!
Another one bites the dust!

[8/31/10] The Unseen Is Seen More and More

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) wrote a monumental analysis of government interference in economic matters, which he titled "That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen."   His thesis, simply stated, was that every beneficial effect of government spending was balanced or even outweighed by negative effects, the former concentrated and easy to see, the latter diffuse and difficult to see.

Henry Hazlitt expanded and popularized Bastiat's brief essay in his "Economics in One Lesson," which has been snapped up this summer by voracious readers, elevating it to top-rated status on Amazon.com.  Hazlitt's lesson?  Just this: a proper economic analysis of a government spending proposal must consider its effect on all people for all time.

So it shouldn't be surprising that this seen/unseen meme has really taken off.  Yet, I was struck when I encountered it explicitly in two separate economic articles recently.

Here, John Tamny argues that the government denies intelligence and talent to the free market by paying more for it, and thus denies the benefit of it society by putting it to work interfering with free choice.

And here, James K. Glassman argues that the government extends a recession by competing for resources in the market.  More than that, he argues that the key 1933 idea of John Maynard Keynes, that the government can stimulate private economic activity by spending, is being disproven and discredited by current experiment and is declining precipitously in the eyes of the electorate.

That doesn't even begin to count articles that incorporate the seen/unseen notion only implicitly.  For example, here, Robert Barro argues that the government denies labor to the market by paying it to wait longer between jobs.

More and more people are realizing that in economics, what you don't see can harm you far more that what you do.

[8/29/10] Charlie Crist Believes... Nothing at All.

Today on CNN, Charlie Crist took another bite of the demon reptile Indecision's apple.  He said, yes, he'd have voted against the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Health Care Bill, but, no, he wouldn't vote to repeal it, proving that he really doesn't know his own mind.  And if he doesn't, how are the voters of Florida to know it?

Unlike W. C. Fields, Charlie Crist doesn't even believe he'll have another drink.

[8/29/10] The Middle Never Holds

Many people think the moderates should run the country.  They wish for a stable balance of power between the left and the right, with the wise middle leading us forward toward in an era of political peace.  In this golden age, negative politics will be a thing of the past, as wise old middle-of-the-road pundits do "fact check" analyses of every campaign statement, allow only those judged truthful and unoffensive to their wonderful sense and sensibility, and allow only those politicians to serve who bow to their great god of moderation.

But all you get from such moderate politicians is self serving, self aggrandizing, power-seeking, finger-in-the-wind adaptability .  Like this.  Charlie Crist doesn't know what he thinks, beyond thinking that he'd like to be elected again.

There's no substitute for the open cry and clamor of the clash of ideas, with the people forced to choose between tyranny and freedom, the left and the right, the darkness and light.

You must not hide in your home waiting for someone else to make the decision for or against more central planning and less individual economic liberty, because you won't be able to hide from the consequences of their decision.

Now is the time to gird yourself up and go out into the darkness.  Put on your buckskin and your feathers, go down to the harbor, and throw the left's stupid economic ideas into the bay.

[8/28/10] Hero of the Revolution

I seldom exclaim in joy more than once while reading any one article, especially an interview, but this one had me fist-pumping "Yes!" and raising my arms with a triumphal "AB-so-LUTE-ly RIGHT!" with virtually every statement by the interviewee, Senator James Warren DeMint of South Carolina.  It's a great read.  Don't miss it.

In the last years of the George W. Bush administration, DeMint and Tom Coburn were almost alone in the Senate fighting for the Club for Growth's pro-growth agenda of lower taxes, less regulation, and free trade.

Today, help seems to be on the way.

Pat Toomey -- the Club for Growth's soft-spoken president from the moment he was defeated by a hair in his 2004 primary against Snarlin' Arlen Specter until he decided to run against him again this year -- seems likely to defeat lefty Joe Sestak and to replace the reliably traitorous Specter.

Rand Paul -- the son Ron Paul named for Ayn Rand -- is headed to victory in the Kentucky seat last held by Jim Bunning, who Mitch McConnell hounded into retirement.  McConnell's goal was to bring in the malleable Trey Grayson, but now, McConnell will have to contend with the ultimate maverick.

The exciting and glorious Marco Rubio will very likely knock Charlie Crist out of politics to take Florida's seat.

Mike Lee is virtually guaranteed the Utah seat almost every political observer thought of as Spendican Bob Bennett's personal property until the Utah Republican convention this year dispossessed him.

Ken Buck knocked another Republican National Senatorial Committee favorite for a loop in Colorado, and seems likely to defeat the appointed Democrat.

Sharron Angle has Harry Reid pinned down in Nevada spending his money on his own race, alternately trailing and leading him by a point or two in the polls.  Assessing the turnout to weight the partisan responses is driving the pollsters loopy, but Republicans are turning out in far greater percentages in contested races than Dems, so Sharron Angle even now seems likely to unseat Reid, especially given the weight of Nevada's 14% unemployment.

Ron Johnson in Wisconsin alternately nips at Russ Feingold's heels or shows him his own.  Again turnout will tell all.

And now the evil Spendican-from-birth Lisa Murkowski has to battle the upstart Joe Miller -- whose we-need-to-stand-stand-on-our-own-two-feet campaign message rivals DeMint's own -- through a follow-the-absentee-ballot-box chase in Alaska.

It can't get much better for Jim DeMint than if all those folks win and bring a little revolution to the Republican caucus. As the fate of Specter, Bennett, and Murkowski rises in the memories of the Spendican class of 2006 through the last two years of their terms, constituents' hisses and booes echo in their ears whenever they try they go home to town halls to tout their ill-gotten gains of other people's money.

It can't get better for DeMint, of course, unless the Republicans take the Senate....

[8/27/10] Alaska Senate Race Update

Joe Miller's lead over incumbent Spendican Senator Lisa Murkowski narrowed to 1668 votes as the final election day precincts were counted.  None of the 9500 absentee ballots so far returned have been counted, and that process won't start till next Tuesday, August 31.  There were 16,000 absentee ballots sent out, but no one knows how many were mailed in on time.

If all those absentee ballots were returned, Miller would need 45% of them to hang on.  If all the absentee ballots were in, then Miller would only need a hair more than 41% to win. It is not likely for Murkowski to get 55 to 59% of those ballots when she only got 49% of the election day ballots, even though some of those ballots were mailed in earlier than Miller's surge.

The data for my calculations come from this Los Angeles Times story.  It also says  "Murkowski, meanwhile, sought help from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which dispatched its general counsel to guide the state through the process of counting absentee ballots."  If you ever sent money to that rogue organization you should regret it now.  You will regret it forever if Murkowski pulls this out.

Remember that the establishment favors Murkowski, and they will count the ballots.  There is great danger of fraud.

[8/25/10] Two More Establishment Republicans Bite the Dust

Yesterday's Republican primary for Governor in Florida produced yet another surprise outsider victory.  Republican elected officials had lined up behind Florida State Attorney General Bill McCollum, but businessman Rick Scott took him out with totally unconventional campaign.  Scott has plenty of baggage in the 1997 $1.7B settlement of medicare fraud by Columbia HCA, the hospital holding company he founded.  However, he was never charged with any wrong-doing, and he was ousted by the Columbia/HCA board before the settlement, because he wanted to fight it.

Even more stunning is the present vote count in Alaska where the incumbent Spendican Senator Lisa Murkowski, daughter of Alaska's legendary pork-barreler Frank Murkowski, trails Sarah-Palin-and- Tea-Party-Express endorsed previously unknown Fairbanks attorney Joe Miller.  "Previously unknown" is a phrase we are hearing a lot this year.  16,000 absentee ballots are as yet uncounted, but Miller's lead is about 3000 votes with 98% of the rest of the vote counted.

Murkowski seems likely to join Specter and Bennet as RINO Senators benched by the Republican electorate.  An endorsement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and K Street lobbyist PAC contributions are just the ticket this year... to an early retirement party.

Still,John McCain sails on.

Amusingly, Republicans won the total primary turnout battle in Florida yesterday, 60%-40%.  It turned out thus, even  though there was a heated campaign for the Dem Senatorial nod.

Golly, I wonder what that means for November.

[8/23/10] There's a Storm a-Comin'

There's a storm a-comin'.  A battle for the heart of... the country?  No, I think that one is almost over.  The Democrat party acted out its darkest fantasies for the nation, and the nation recoiled in horror.  There'll be nightmares for a couple of decades, but all that remains of that battle is to clean house on November 2, 2010 and again on November 6, 2012.

The battle that is just barely joined is for the heart of the Republican party: Spendicans vs. the rest.  Bridge-to-nowhere senior appropriators sleep in their crypts, dreaming of other peoples' money, awaiting their peculiar sunset awakening.  Arrayed against them are the Club for Growth, Freedomworks, and Tea Party Express/Patriot rabble.

Read all about it here.  Read about the influence-peddling-lobbyist-village-idiot Trent/Bob Lott/Dole promising to "co-opt" "any more Jim DeMints" the public elects.  Aided and abetted by George W. "Silver Spoon" Bush, they spent the Party's brand into oblivion.

Now, help is on the way, saddled up and riding hard.

Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Mike Lee, and Sharron Angle, riding to join Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn.  And more... a whole House Majority more.

They're coming to the crypt, fire in their eyes and garlic 'round their necks, with torches, pitchforks, and wooden stakes in their hands.  Hostile takeover, indeed.

Now, where's my horse?

[8/5/10] How Bad Is It Likely to Be for the Democrats? (Part II)

Sean Trende, a numerate political observer at RealClearPolitics, has spotted something in the primary results from Tuesday.  Trende's trend is that Republicans are turning out in far greater numbers for primaries than Democrats.  In fact, the ratios of Rep to Dem primary voters in various states have almost never been higher over the last six general elections.  In Michigan for example, just over half as many people voted in the Dem primary as in the Rep.  This even though there were contested races in both primaries.  This in Michigan!  Michigan!

The eagerness of the center and the right of the electorate to grab the reins and bellow "Whooaa!" can not be underestimated.  The full effect of that will not be apparent till the wee small hours of November 3, but it will unquestionably be shock to progressives. 

Moderate Dems from relatively conservative districts will be the big losers.  By mid-November, they are so gonna regret having gone along with their party's progressive agenda .  They are starting to regret having won control of both the House and Senate. 

And boy, do they miss Slick Willy.

[8/5/10] How Bad Is It Likely to Be for the Democrats?

The tide is running against the Democrats.  Michael Barone's take on it is that this election will resemble 1966, when the  Republicans won back 57 seats they had lost in the 1964 Johnson landslide.

My own calculations based on some current political science research using the Generic Congressional Ballot polls support that, and show that the Democrats will lose 52-55 seats in the November returning the House to the the halcyon Republican days of 2002-2004 when the Democrats held only 202 to 206 seats. Whether Republicans will mend their spending ways of those days remains to be seen, but appropriations bills must begin in the House.

Take my word for it, Dem prospects are very dim.  Without a cataclysmic event, there is almost no chance that they will hold the House of Representatives.  Virtually all of their gains in 2006 and 2008 are likely to be swept away.

How then should we who love economic liberty act?  The only possible course is to redouble our efforts to defeat every supporter of a government-controlled economy, i.e., every Democrat, but we should pick your targets a little differently.

Republican candidates for the House of Representatives who might have had little chance to win, now could win on the tide.  If you are contributing in New Mexico, Jon Barela is that candidate.  Steve Pearce is likely to be able to do with a little less help.  Republican gubernatorial candidates around the country, including Susana Martinez in New Mexico now have their chances enhanced.  Senatorial races are more case-by-case but even there Republican candidate chances are enhanced.  Who would have thought that Russell Feingold would be trailing an unknown Republican in Wisconsin.

The tide will lift down-ballot Republicans, too.  Giving to Republican candidates for State Representative and concentrating on not-too Democrat districts could pay dividends when redistricting starts next year.  I will try to provide a list of those candidates in New Mexico soon.

And we should take heart.  The American people aren't in favor of European social kleptocracy yet.

[7/29/10] Barack Obama Has Awakened a Sleeping Nation

In response to my recent description of the political tsunami that is headed for Democrats this November as a reformation of the Reagan Coalition, one of my correspondents sent along this link to a piece from the Aspen Times back in February of this year.  It expresses a notion that I heartily agree with.  To wit, that the Obamarama's openly Progressive program has shocked a lot of moderate conservatives into political action.

May that tidal wave roll on across the land, sweeping him and Progressives everywhere out of office by 2012.

[7/27/10] Obama Reassembles the Reagan Coalition (Part II)

In the National Journal on Saturday, Ron Brownstein addressed the political effect of the Obama spending spree.  Its easy to get lost in the fog of Brownstein's argument about governmental effectiveness, but he clearly identifies the cause and extent of the anti-Democrat mood as this:

[A]fter the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the stimulus, and health reform, Democrats are facing a backlash against federal spending and reach that stretches beyond working-class whites into the white professional class (especially among men).

Brownstein nods in the direction of the arguments that those sectors of the public are racist, and that, for the moment, they believe the government is ineffective but he wraps it all up in the last paragraph:

[S]o long as most white voters conclude that an activist Washington produces more costs than benefits for their families, Democrats will struggle.

The problem that the middle income voters recognize is that they send the bulk of the income taxes to Washington.  They know that Social Security and Medicare are largely paid for by dedicated payroll taxes.  They also know that after the Democrats pay off their lower income voters with Medicaid and welfare and their upper income voters with growth-killing environmental programs and bailouts to the New York financial centers, there is little benefit left for them.  The ultimate breakwater against the which progressive wave must founder is that there is simply not enough income tax revenue to be had out of the high earners.

Since Brownstein is so on target, it is amusing that early in the piece he mis-identifies those swing voters as "Clinton Democrats."   Including, as that does, all the Democrats who are still with Obama, it misses the point entirely.  The voters who are now swinging away from the Dems, and who swung back to Clinton after the Reagan-Bush years, were traditional Democrat voters for decades until Reagan articulated the problem I just described and persuaded them to vote Republican.

These longtime, then sometime Democrats were the most critical piece of the Reagan Coalition.  They are the Reagan Democrats, and the leftist swing of the Democrat party has reawakened them to reality.

[7/16/10] How the Gulf Oil Well Was Capped

Every town with two local papers has a liberal one.  New York's local liberal paper -- I sometimes refer to it as the NYLLP -- is also known as the New York T___s.      It has its heads up its rears on all issues of economics, and for decades it had far too much influence, as all the national network news was produced in New York by people who read their opinions out of it through their glass belly buttons.   Those audio-visual amplifiers, then spread its opinions to nearly everyone.  That situation has changed quite a lot with the advent of Fox.  But I digress.

If the NYLLP does one thing exceptionally well, it is the factual story.  Yes, you are correct, they do it so rarely, you would hardly know.  But here is one describing the various attempts to cap the flow of oil from the well drilled by the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon that is well worth studying.  Unfortunately, it reads from the bottom up, like an email thread, but you should be able to figure it out.

[7/9/10] Interesting Times...

I tend to leave interesting articles up in the tabs on my browser, planning to send them off to you eventually....  Well, eventually has finally come this week.

Ruth Marcus -- writer for the WaPo and certified, card carrying member of the liberal mainstream media -- argued a few days ago that there are limits to soaking the rich.  Yeah, I know you don't believe me, but, you just can't make this stuff up.

In the Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove reported on an address by Niall Fergusson to a lefty confabulation in Aspen.  The mind blowing paragraphs of Grove's report are these:

Ferguson called for what he called "radical" measures. "I can't emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness." He praised "really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful 'Roadmap' for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system" and "unleash entrepreneurial innovation." Otherwise, Ferguson warned: "Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I'd advise you against it."

This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. "Depressing, but fantastic," Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. "So exciting. Wonderful!"

Brolin's assessment: "Mind-blowing."

If someone's making this up, it's Grove, not me.

Then there's Peggy Noonan's weekly missive to appear in Saturday's WSJ on a home doorstep near you, perhaps.  She has nailed the cause and appeal of the Tea Party phenomenon perfectly, though the words never appear.  She describes " The Town Hall Revolt" as a rebellion against the Democrats by suddenly reunited Republican constituencies joined by deeply offended Independents.  In his preferred policies, to paraphrase Richard Nixon's famous remark, Obama has given his enemies a weapon to use against him.  She closes with this

The Republicans still need to show that they are worthy of the electoral bounty that is likely to come their way. Are they ready to govern, or only to win? Part of being worthy is showing yourself capable of having serious and truly open debate. What, in the post-9/11 world, should be our overarching foreign policy? What is it we're trying to accomplish? How should we try to get it done? What is the way out of our economic disaster? What must we do, how must we do it?

It's hard for those who do politics as a profession not to get lost in the day-to-day, but if they don't start thinking big and encouraging debate, they're going to blow it, too. And they'll find out at a town hall meeting in 2013. Or earlier.

That may remind you of my question of Karl Rove when he was here a couple of months ago, to wit, whether the Spendicans had learned their lesson.  His reply?  First, that he didn't think they had a lesson to learn on that, and second, that he hoped they had learned it!

Three days ago I wrote you of the amazing poll results from Senate and Gubernatorial races across the land.  In those three days more stunning results have come in.  California looks like a lot of fun -- and how long has it been since we could say that?  Meg Whitman is within 1% of Jerry Brown in the Governor race, and Barbara Boxer is up only 3% on Carly Fiorina for what I'm sure she thinks of as her Senate seat.  In Illinois, the Republican Kirk is within 1% of   the Democrats' family-bank-scandal- tainted Giannoulias.  And in South Dakota race for the At Large House seat that was not even among the NPR Sizzling Seventy, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin trails her challenger by 5%.

Meanwhile it looks like WV Gov Manchin (D) will authorize a special election to replace Robert Byrd.  The only poll on the subject shows him with a pretty comfortable lead.  Here's hoping there's a surprise awaiting him.

On these polls, let me say that I believe that without some miracle for the Democrats and disaster for the country -- a terrorist attack for example -- to raise Obama's popularity, it will continue to sink. As it does, more and more Dem incumbents will become at risk.  In that case, I can see all of those close races for Senate and Governor going against the Dems.  The House could then see a swing of 70 to 100 seats, putting the Republicans back in control with as strong a majority as the Dems have now.  We are presently looking at the possibility of the greatest wave election in our lifetime.

Finally, there's this little recriminatory beauty from Dan Balz, the WaPo's quite rational political reporter.  It seems that even he is skeptical that Democrats' luck with the Independents will change between now and the first Tuesday in November.  How sad for them.

[7/5/10] How Easily Fooled Lefty Voters Are

As the Blago trial goes forward in Chicago, there is regret and remorse abroad in Illinois over how he could ever have been elected.  The "liberal, working class" Chicago Sun Times -- not the conservative Chicago Tribune -- writes

If the latest farcical revelations from the Rod Blagojevich trial tell us anything, it's that the people of Illinois -- that would be us -- twice elected a narcissistic goof of a governor who was all show and no substance.

 

The man was an empty suit, albeit a $5,000 custom-made Oxxford empty suit.

Blagojevich and his wife blew $400,000 on clothes alone in the six years he was governor, while he disparaged and largely ignored the actual business of governing.

 

It is a lesson we hope to remember (OK, yeah, we endorsed Gov. Rod twice) as we size up the current race for governor between incumbent Pat Quinn and state Sen. Bill Brady:

Character counts before all else. Real accomplishments count.

And all else, if there is anything else, comes third.

How easily fooled left-leaning voters are!  Other examples from the Top Ten List of Greatest Jerks Ever Elected include those champions of womens' rights, those serial philanderers John Edwards, Bill Clinton, and -- who knew? -- Al Gore!

And now we have elected the Most Brilliant President Ever!  Here Noemie Emerie nails that canard to the wall.  Addressing the veritable downpour of theories from tearful, formerly-tingling-leg pundits hypothesizing why He seems unable to overcome the obviously surmountable problems the nation now faces, she writes

No one advances the more likely conclusion: That Obama seems so much like their idea of brilliance that they assume it of him without too much evidence; or that their perception of brilliance -- often no more than a verbal facility -- isn't much use in the world.

Verbal facility is great for making excuses, and to some it passes for intelligence and even wisdom.

On the other hand, if you think turning the economy's steering wheel hard left will make it go straight, you'll end up in the ditch.   In that case, no matter how nicely framed your excuses -- oh, sorry, explanations -- it should be clear that your understanding of economic principles is deeply flawed.

We can only hope that's becoming clear to left-leaning Indie voters, who now seem inclined to take the left's car keys away in November.

[6/20/10] November Elections: Anti-Incumbent or Republican Wave?

There are lots of establishment journalists parroting the Democrat theme that 2010 will be a throw-the-bums-out election.  Such an election would turn out the same percentage of incumbents of each party.  This would be bad for Democrats in the House, where every seat is up and the Democrats have a majority, but it might not hand control of that body to the Republicans.  It would be to their advantage in the Senate this year where those standing for re-election were last elected in 2004, and consequently more Republican than Democrat seats are up.

The other possibility is that this is will be a Republican wave election like 1994, where almost no Republicans lost but a high percentage of Democrats did.  In that case, the Republicans might take control in the House and, if not take control of the Senate, than at least weaken Democrat control there substantially.

Stuart Rothenberg is a well-respected, mostly non-partisan observer of Congressional elections.  He epitomizes the Tip O'Neill all-politics-is-local school: his analyses are generally case by case.  In a recent piece, he challenges the Dem story line, though he begins on this light note:

The narrative that this is an anti-incumbent political year is already well-established, and only a fool would fight it. So here goes. While there is some truth to the storyline, the narrative being pounded into your head daily on television and in print is clearly misleading.

After carefully analyzing the primary elections in both parties so far, he concludes

Conservatives certainly are angrier and more mobilized than I've seen them in years, and in many races they are lining up behind conservative candidates who criticize incumbent Republicans for not being conservative or confrontational enough.

And in a few Democratic primaries, more liberal voters and activists have taken on incumbents not identified with the party's left (Specter and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, for example).

But come November, we will have a rather traditional midterm election. Angry voters will turn out to vote against the party in charge. And that's why, ultimately, 2010 will be remembered as a Republican wave election, not an anti-incumbent year.

For me, the Rothenberg take-away message is that while the primaries have been and may continue to be local, the general will be a national election on national issues.

So, if it will be that Republican wave election, how bad will it be for Democrats?  Sean Trende, one of the numbers guys at RealClearPolitics, analyzes that here.  With a focus on last week's NPR poll in districts most likely to change hands and with a wink and a nod to the Gallup registered voter poll showing a 49-44 preference for the Republican on the generic ballot question, he concludes that the most likely result today would be a Democrat loss of from 50 to 60 seats!

The NPR poll results are simply brutal for the Democrats.  Two polling firms -- one Democrat and one Republican --decided which Congressional districts were most likely to change hands.  They came up with 60 seats held by Democrats but only 10 held by Republicans.  They divided the Democrat seats at risk into the thirty at greatest risk and the thirty at somewhat less risk, on the basis of how they had voted in the Obama-McCain contest.  They called them Tier 1 and Tier 2 seats respectively.  They then polled about 450 likely voters in each Dem tier and 300 in the Republican districts.  By the way NM-02, held by Harry Teague and challenged for by the former holder of the seat Steve Pearce, is Tier 1, while NM-01 in which Sherry and I live held by Martin Heinrich and challenged for by Jon Barela is Tier 2.

They found that only a third of the likely voters in the Democrat districts would vote to re-elect the Democrat while 44-49% would vote for the Republican.  Roughly that same Democrat/Republican split held in the Republican districts.

Oh.  And since that poll another one of the Dem districts not classified as at risk, held by Democrat Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, shows her down 12 points to her Republican challenger.

Trende notes that the NPR poll shows that the messages the Dems are hoping to come back with are running the Republicans way in those districts in almost all cases.  Thus the national issues on which this national election hinges are swinging the Republicans way right now.

He concludes

The bottom line is that Democrats are on pace for an ugly November. They're increasingly running out of time to change the dynamic, and it looks about as likely that things will get worse as that they will get better. If the elections were held today, the balance of the evidence suggests they would lose 50-60 seats. If you think the political environment will improve for Democrats, you can adjust your expectations accordingly, but if you think they will get worse, you can do the same.

Remember that Republican hopes began to rise when Scott Brown won Teddy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.  I said then and I continue to believe now that portends few if any safe seats for Democrats this year.

[6/15/10] Harry Reid's Still Toast

Stuart Rothenberg -- an experienced and generally well respected election prognosticator -- writes in his most recent column that Angle's numbers vs. Reid may not have looked all that great toward the end of the primary campaign...

But as readers of this column know, it's Reid's numbers that matter most, not Angle's. And Reid's numbers still look terrible to any dispassionate observer.

Reid has been drawing 38 percent to 43 percent on the ballot test against Angle for months, and he has been in that range in ballot tests against almost any of his possible GOP opponents.

In the June Review-Journal Senate poll, Reid's name identification was 35 percent favorable/52 percent unfavorable ­ about where it has been for months, and roughly where then-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) was six months before he was defeated for re-election.

The chances of Reid improving his own standing are small. He's simply been around too long to do that, especially given his recent position as Senate Majority Leader and his role in advancing the president's agenda in a midterm election year.

After noting that Reid's only choice is to run a barrage of negative ads intended to drive up Angle's negatives, Rothenberg continues:

It will be difficult for Reid to make the election about Angle, whose demeanor doesn't seem scary to voters, than about Obama, the unpopular Congress, the economy and the Democratic agenda. And that's why Harry Reid is still more likely than not to lose.

To Rothenberg, Reid is still toast.

[6/13/10] Conservative Jurisprudence vs. The Constitution

The Reason magazine cover story this month, Conservatives vs. Libertarians, focuses, in mostly layman's language, on the conservative argument against overturning constitutional precedent.  Yes, you read that right.  As enticing as returning to the original meaning of the Constitution and its amendments might be, you see, Conservatives just gotta oppose change.  This is a version of the left's classification of any reversal of precedent they favor as "judicial activism."

I found particularly illuminating the discussion of the gutting of the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th amendment by a previous Supreme Court in the Slaughter-House decisions of 1875, and of Antonin Scalia's support of that interpretation in recent oral argument on the Chicago gun control law.

At issue is the division of powers between the Federal government, the States, and the people imposed by the text of the Constitution and its Amendments.   As you read further, keep in mind that a right is a the negation of some power the group might otherwise exercise over the individual.  The Libertarian vision of the powers created by the Constitution is based on a four-pronged literal reading of that text.  1) The powers of the Federal government are limited to a relatively short list (In Section 8 of Article I creating and authorizing Congress).  2) The people retain all rights, not just those that Congress is expressly prohibited from abridging, except those that conflict with the powers explicitly granted to the Federal government ( Ninth Amendment). 3) The States are prohibited from abridging any privilege or immunity of citizenship (14th Amendment).  4) The States or the people may exercise any power except one expressly granted to the Federal government or denied to the States ( Tenth Amendment).

Thus, the Libertarian vision holds that the Court should extend to unenumerated rights like the right to choose your own shirt each morning, the same protection from State meddling that it extends to enumerated rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom from unlawful search and seizure.  That the Court does not do so is due to the fact that the third item in my list -- the privileges and immunities clause -- is not accepted as basis for argument before any Federal court in the land because... one Supreme Court decided it never would be!  I'm not making this up -- you can't make stuff like this up!  Let me quote from the annotation to the 14th Amendment from the Cornell University Law School's Legal Information Institute. 

Unique among constitutional provisions, the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enjoys the distinction of having been rendered a "practical nullity" by a single decision of the Supreme Court issued within five years after its ratification. In the Slaughter–House Cases, a bare majority of the Court frustrated the aims of the most aggressive sponsors of this clause, to whom was attributed an intention to centralize "in the hands of the Federal Government large powers hitherto exercised by the States" with a view to enabling business to develop unimpeded by state interference.  This expansive alteration of the federal system was to have been achieved by converting the rights of the citizens of each State as of the date of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment into privileges and immunities of United States citizenship and thereafter perpetuating this newly defined status quo through judicial condemnation of any state law challenged as "abridging" any one of the latter privileges.

The LII's tone can not withstand the fact that the 14th Amendment was passed by both Houses of Congress with two thirds majorities and ratified by three quarters of the States in the Union in 1868.  Why then did the Supreme Court of the day find that it just couldn't be the law of the land?  Again the LII weighs in, quoting the decision of that Court:

To have fostered such intentions, the Court declared, would have been "to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights . . . to the Federal Government, . . . to bring within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States," and to "constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of this amendment. . . . [The effect of] so great a departure from the structure and spirit of our institutions . . . is to fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress, in the exercise of powers heretofore universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental character. . . . We are convinced that no such results were intended by the Congress . . . , nor by the legislatures . . . which ratified" this amendment, and that the sole "pervading purpose" of this and the other War Amendments was "the freedom of the slave race."

Constitutional libertarians would find these arguments laughable, were they not still the law of the land.

However, Constitutional conservatives are on the other side of this issue, and accept the Court's decision in Slaughter-House because... well, because of the turmoil it would create in the law if the decision were overturned and the text of the 14th's privileges and immunities were to become the law of the land, one hundred and forty years late.

In order to extend the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment to unenumerated rights, subsequent Supreme Courts have fallen back to the second and third clauses of that same sentence, known respectively as the due process and equal protection clauses.  In doing so, they have largely gutted the previous Court's reason for not meddling in State law; today virtually everything about State law is a federal question anyway.

The Conservatives' problem is that in order to make progress in restoring economic liberties stolen by previous Supreme Court decisions, some precedents have to go.  How then can the conservative doctrine of letting the decision stand remain?

Sherry points out that the left's problem is entirely different: since Roe v. Wade is based entirely on extending protection for an unenumerated right to privacy to prevent State interference, how can the unenumerated right to contract not deserve similar protection?

[6/12/10] Toto Pulls Back the Curtain

I seldom find the WSJ's Daniel Henninger very interesting.  His analyses are often correct, but too often boring.  Thursday however, he grabbed me with just the right metaphor for Obama's progressive/collectivist programs: Obama is the Wizard of Oz!

Only the simplest -- Henninger might say the most credulous -- among us believe in the competence of our government.  A good friend describes private industry as "the world that works" and the government as "the world that doesn't."  Though my friend has labored his entire career in the latter world striving to make it work in spite of itself and though he has fought with such persistence that he quite often succeeds, his description of its flaws never varies.

Obama should take lessons from him.

[6/12/10] Friedrich Hayek's Hot Best Seller

A friend pointed out to me Thursday that Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom was currently #1 in book sales on Amazon.com.  I didn't believe it, so I promptly pulled out my Palm Pre, went to the site, and checked.  It is true!

There is one reason it is so.  Glen Beck had at least one show discussing the book, comparing Stalin and Hitler's socialisms, and telling told people to go to Amazon.com and order Hayek's book.  What a rabble rouser!

It's amazing -- and wonderful -- that so many people have paid attention.

[6/8/10] A Test of Economic Enlightment

No. Really. A Self-test, to be self graded.
Below are eight economic statements. Print out this email and mark
your answers from the following scale:

1. Strongly Agree
2. Somewhat Agree
3. Somewhat Disagree
4. Strongly Disagree
5. Not sure

Note that 1 or 2 is a measure of agreement with the statement, and a
3 or 4 is an indication of disagreement.

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices
of those services.
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
5. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are
being exploited.
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
8. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.

The key and the context are below. You're on
your honor, now. Don't open it till you have finished the test.

[6/8/10] Answers to "A Test of Economic Enlightenment"

If you're peeking, you're only cheating yourself!

Okay.  Here is the key.  Economists, regardless of their political persuasion, generally agree that the statements 1 - 5 are true, while the statements 6 - 8 are false. 

So, for each assessment of 1 or 2 you gave to statements 1 - 5 and for each 3 or 4 to statements 6 - 8, give yourself one point for your economic enlightenment.

Zogby International emailed about 50,000 people sending them a link to a web site and asked their list to take a survey including these questions.  About 15% of those went to the site, and about 10% finished the survey.  Zogby also asked their respondents to give their level of education and to identify their political persuasion by selecting from progressive, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, or libertarian.  Perhaps surprisingly, there was little correlation between economic enlightenment and education level.  However, there was a substantial positive correlation between economic enlightenment and increasing conservatism!

On the average, out of the eight statements, the various political segments took the unenlightened opinion as follows:

Progressive              5.3
Liberal                    4.7
Moderate                3.7
Conservative           1.6
Very Conservative   1.3
Libertarian              1.4

You know where you stand, and now you know how economically enlightened you are.

An article summarizing this study can be found here, and a link to the complete academic paper may be found here.

[6/8/10] Redistribution Redux

On August 8 of last year, I sent out the message below.

We are now engaged in a national debate over what my wife Sherry has styled "health care redistribution."

Redistribution of wealth and income has been the goal of one political movement after another since the dawn of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  How portentously Lincoln's phrase echoes now.

Again and again, those schemes have failed to produce prosperity in other countries.  Consider the failure of redistributionist economic policies in Russia, Cuba, China, even France and Great Britain, where Margaret Thatcher reversed it saying "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."  In none of these countries has an economic leveling ever produced increasing prosperity for any segment of the productivity spectrum.  The nonproductive, by appropriating the goods and services of the productive via the ballot box or revolution, can have a little more for a little while, but the slowing, then halting, then reversal of the general rise in prosperity enabled by economic freedom soon makes those gains seem small and then begins to destroy them.

Think of Cuba.  The lowliest illegal immigrant in this country from El Salvador or Guatemala has a greater prospect of achieving prosperity than the average Cuban in Cuba.  The economic oppression in Cuba means that Cubans drive American cars from the fifties kept running by baling wire, chewing gum, and enterprise.  Their housing stock decays continuously.  And as with all failed communes, the difference in economic potential drives away the productive so fast that emigration must be prevented by force and the populace held hostage to the redistributionist ideal.

No economic policy has ever produced as great an increase in prosperity for the lowest levels of society as economic freedom.  Low taxes, minimal regulation, and free trade are the regime that increases wealth the fastest at every level of income.  More than that, it is the regime that enables the most poor men and women to rise out of poverty and move up the ladder of income.

Victor Davis Hanson here exposes the mission of Barack Obama and the leftists who march arm and arm with him as redistribution of the most fundamental kind.  It is one of the most important pieces ever written about Obama and the revolutionary change he promises.

I encourage you to read it carefully.

I also encourage you to forward this to others.

Many of us spent much of our political life opposing international communism.  We should not now stand by and allow Obama's domestic brand of it to advance without a fight.

I hope you agree that this is a fight worth joining.

[6/5/10] Obama's Choices

Regarding that undersea gusher that can't be stopped, Obama can
choose one of three lines:

1. Government can't fix everything.

Obviously, even though it's true, for a progressive social engineer,
this is a non-starter.

2. Some governments could fix this, but mine can't.

Unacceptable, since it's equivalent to "We are the screw-ups we have
been waiting for."

3. It's somebody else's fault.

This is really the only answer at which a Chicago political hack
could ever arrive. It's why Eric Holder is looking into criminal
charges. Since Bush officials are protected from prosecution by the
same immunity that covers all government officials, even his own
administration, British Petroleum managers must be found responsible,
charged, and prosecuted.

[5/23/10] Corporatism on Display

Now, come's this analysis of the latest high level corporatist* scheme to limit individual choice.  In Congress today, large financial corporations are co-opting the mechanisms of regulation to restrict competition and ensure their own growth.

The existence of government power over commerce and the extent of its meddling in the market is the source of this evil.

________
*Scan the Wikipedia article to be reminded that corporatism lies at the root of fascism.