The Arc of History

History really is a funny thing, isn't it?

I've been studying history all my life, but I have only recently (well, comparatively speaking) come to realize certain things about it.

I always realized those things, I guess, but in a compartmentalized sort of way. It is only recently that I have seen how subtly intricate is the link that binds them.

And I can say that it does help to connect the dots. It puts things in context.

See, I have always believed that history really does repeat itself. It doesn't do so precisely — well, not usually — but, at least in hindsight, it is possible to see the repetition.

Every presidential election year seems to inspire articles from people that demonstrate the similarities between that year and some year that preceded it — which, in turn, provides some kind of predictive advantage.

See, all this happened in the year XXXX. That means it will happen again this year. That is the logic of such people, and it is flawed.

For some reason, the 2012 campaign seems to have inspired more than its share of such historical speculation, which seems rather odd because we've never had a non–white incumbent seeking re–election before. From that standpoint, it seems to me that we're really in uncharted waters here. Whatever Obama has done or not done as president, it seems he is always being judged in a racial context — by both his supporters and his foes.

But it isn't just the racial element that makes this campaign different. The fact is that no two elections are the same. There might be similar factors, but there are always differences. Different times, different candidates, different issues.

For awhile, when Barack Obama was frequently being compared to FDR, I heard his supporters arguing that his bid for a second term would be a lot like Roosevelt's campaign for a second term in 1936.

They continued to make the case for that scenario even when Obama's approval ratings slipped well below the level most political scientists consider viable for electoral success.

There has been no real way to compare pre–election job approval numbers for Obama and FDR because such surveys were not being conducted in 1936.

However ...

FDR overcame bad poll numbers, too, I have heard Obama's supporters argue, which is true — but it is also misleading. Polling really was embryonic in those days, and pollsters only sampled people with access to telephones or cars.

Millions of Americans could afford neither and, therefore, were not polled — but they showed up to vote on Election Day.

More recently, I've heard the 1936 analogy used to explain why Obama, in spite of a jobless rate that historically means sure defeat for an incumbent, will win. With an unemployment rate that is currently 8.3%, Obama faces the kind of obstacle that only one president in modern times has been able to overcome.

That president was FDR in 1936, but it is important to remember that, when Roosevelt was elected in 1932, roughly one–quarter of working–age Americans had no jobs. The unemployment rate was still in double digits when Roosevelt won his second term — but it was dramatically lower than it had been when he took office four years earlier.

The unemployment rate under Obama has been worse — at times, dramatically so — on every day of his presidency than it was the day he took the oath of office.

The comparison to Roosevelt simply isn't plausible.

I've also heard the 2012 campaign compared to the 1948 campaign, in which an unpopular president, Harry Truman, defied the polls and won an upset over Republican Tom Dewey.

But polling wasn't much more sophisticated in 1948 than it was in 1932. Pollsters saw a significant lead for Dewey in October and stopped polling under the assumption that the election was a done deal.

Thus, they missed the surge in Truman's direction late in the campaign.

I've been intrigued by how both Obama's campaign and Mitt Romney's campaign have drawn inspiration from successful campaigns run by the opposition in modern times.

Obama, for example, undoubtedly would like for 2012 to resemble 1984, when Ronald Reagan was re–elected by a landslide in spite of a jobless rate that exceeded 7.0%, but I have heard no economists who believe there is a chance that something like that could happen this year.

If that outcome isn't likely, Democrats probably would settle for a narrow victory like the one George W. Bush enjoyed eight years ago.

And that does seem like the playbook they're following.

Bush achieved his victory with a series of negative ads that raised doubts about John Kerry's greatest strength, his service during the Vietnam War. Obama already has spent millions of dollars on negative advertisements intended to raise doubts about Romney's greatest strength at a time of economic distress, his success in the business world — but with little movement in the polls to show for it.

(That scenario, I expect, has additional significance for Obama — an incumbent running for re–election against a bland, wealthy candidate from Massachusetts.)

Romney would like for 2012 to be more like 1992, when an incumbent president was defeated by another governor. The economy is worse now than it was 20 years ago, but there was a very popular independent candidate in that race, a factor that — so far, at least — has not materialized this year (and we're running out of time for it).

(Frankly, I have always wondered if Ross Perot's campaign really made that much of a difference in the ultimate outcome. Exit polls at the time indicated that, if Perot had not re–entered the race that fall, 40% of his supporters would have voted for President Bush, 40% would have voted for Bill Clinton and 20% would not have voted at all.)

Mostly, though, Romney and his people seem to draw inspiration from 1980, when Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. There was a third candidate in that race, too, but he didn't draw nearly the support that Perot did and had no real influence on the outcome.

That scenario may be possible, although there are still a few noteworthy differences.

For one, Carter was beset by both economic adversity and a hostage situation. The anniversary of the takeover of the American embassy in Iran happened to fall on Election Day, which may well have pushed some fence–sitters into Reagan's column at the last minute.

Obama has plenty of economic issues working against him, but he seems to be on reasonably stable ground with voters on his foreign policies. Something could happen to make voters question the wisdom of those policies, but, right now, Obama is highly unlikely to face the same kind of double whammy that Carter did.

And there is another factor about 1980 that must be considered. Many people romanticize that time and confuse the Reagan of the campaign trail with the Reagan he became in office.

I am really not certain how that kind of variable might be applied to this year's campaign, if at all.

In 1980, the popular impression of Reagan was that he was a crazy old man who would start a nuclear war with the Soviets, and the Carter campaign used that relentlessly.

The record shows that, in eight years as president, Reagan never fired a single nuclear weapon at anyone. True, he was a hawk on military matters, and he favored a strong defense, but he launched no nuclear wars.

Nevertheless, there was a nugget or two of truth in the charge that he would be a reckless commander in chief. Reagan did have something of a history of being defiant when challenged. He could be angry at times, as he was when he protested at the debate in New Hampshire that he was "paying for this microphone."

Republican primary voters responded to that kind of show of strength. It contrasted with Carter's apparent timidity. But Democrats and independents had to be won over. At a time of tension with the Soviet Union, Reagan frightened many voters.

How well did Reagan succeed in neutralizing those fears? Well, his aw, shucks approach to his one and only debate with Carter — and his "There you go again" response to the president's insistence on repeating his negative charges — reassured voters that Reagan was not the loose cannon they had been told he was.

The popular image of Reagan today is of an amiable, kindly man whose presidency produced a booming economic recovery, which was what most Americans wanted in 1980 — along with the release of the hostages.

But there probably will be no similar foreign crisis this year — unless it is of an economic nature.

However, I have heard talk from some people that an October surprise is already planned — in Iran. Oh, the irony!

History does not repeat itself, Mark Twain supposedly said, but it does rhyme.

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Registered Voters and Likely Voters

There is an important distinction between polls of registered voters and likely voters.

I have to make this point to people in every election cycle, but it seems particularly relevant this time.

It's easy to be a registered voter. Registration drives are so numerous that, in many places, you can register to vote at your local shopping center or campus. (I recall overhearing a snippet of a conversation between some of my students about voting. One student expressed what appeared to be genuine surprise that she was not automatically registered to vote on her 18th birthday.)

It wasn't that simple when I was a child. Most people know, I guess, of the many barriers that were erected by state and local folks (notoriously in the South but elsewhere, too) to prevent minorities from registering, but it wasn't quite as simple then as it is now.

Even those who did not have to pass literacy tests or jump through any of those other hoops had to go to a specific office during office hours to register. That was what I had to do when I registered to vote for the first time.

Anyway, it took a special effort to get registered to vote in those days. You couldn't just walk up to a card table while you were browsing video games or T–shirts. As a result, I presume that being a registered voter carried a little more weight with pollsters then than it does now.

Gradually, pollsters have been inclined to differentiate between garden–variety registered voters and voters who are truly likely to vote — and the definition of a likely voter may well change as the practice of polling evolves.

But, right now, most polling organizations define likely voters as those who have an established history of participating in elections. Obviously, that de–emphasizes the youngest voters, even if participation is minimally defined (say, for instance, voting in at least the last two election cycles).

Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, has said that Gallup's designation of likely voter depends on several factors — demographics mostly ("[e]verything else being equal, certain types of people are more likely to vote than others"), although he acknowledges the existence of factors that are "idiosyncratic and can reflect one of a hundred characteristics that come into play in any given election."

(Some organizations define likely voters as those who have some kind of record of participating in midterm elections — so if 2012 is going to be the first election in which you will be old enough to vote, such organizations would not consider you a likely voter, no matter how determined you may be.)

There is some logic in differentiating between those who are merely registered to vote and those who are likely to participate.

As I mentioned earlier, it's pretty easy these days to get your name on the voter registration list — even if it doesn't happen automatically. But actually showing up at the polls and voting is another thing entirely.

Just as it is easy to register to vote, it is also easy to answer a pollster's question about which candidate you support. But it is those who show up who get to make the decisions.

More and more, as Election Day draws closer, pollsters will be emphasizing those voters who are likely to show up — as opposed to those won't make the commitment in time or personal resources to the act of voting.

For Barack Obama, that might not be such a bad thing.

Voters who tend to be regarded as registered but not likely to participate include the young, minorities and low–income people — all groups that propelled Obama to the White House in 2008. Obama's support remains high among blacks, but Molly Ball of The Atlantic has wondered if Obama has problems with young voters (those between 18 and 24).

Obama "remains dramatically better liked by young voters than [Mitt] Romney," Ball writes, but "less than half" support his bid for a second term. Emphasizing only approval and not likelihood of participation could be of benefit to the incumbent — but not if one is familiar with young voters's voting history.

Anyway, most of the polls that you will see at this juncture in the general election campaign are surveys of registered voters. There will be more polls of likely voters the closer we get to the election.

There are a few polls of likely voters out there but not many. Rasmussen released a poll today that was a survey of likely voters — and it shows the race as, for all intents and purposes, a dead heat.

That means little — if anything — about 6½ months before the votes are counted. Besides, most of the polls these days are of registered voters, and those surveys show Obama leading, typically by about four or five points.

Some media outlets have tried to make sense of all the conflicting signals coming from the April surveys, and you can take encouragement from whichever poll supports your position today, but I suggest keeping an eye on the polls of likely voters as we get closer to Election Day.

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Those Prescient Polls

Public opinion polls aren't perfect. They never have been.

They are, as the saying goes, works in progress. Polling organizations are constantly tinkering, making adjustments in how they do their work.

When I was in college, I studied opinion polling, and one of the things we studied was the methodology being used by the earliest pollsters. In the dark days of the Depression, they did their polling based on automobile registration and residential telephone service records. At that time, many people owned neither — and thus were ignored by the pollsters.

But their votes weren't ignored on Election Day, and — contrary to the polls' forecasts — President Herbert Hoover was defeated in his bid for re–election.

Pollsters have been learning from their experiences in the last 80 years, which is why it is news today if they are way off the mark.

From time to time in my life, I have heard supporters of underdog candidates refer to Harry Truman's "upset" victory over Tom Dewey in 1948. It is the most notorious example of polls being wrong so it is the holy grail of the apparently doomed. I have observed that the greater the underdog, the more likely it is that Truman's triumph will be mentioned.

The truth is, though, that polls are right more often than they are wrong. That's something else I have noticed over the years. The margin is seldom on the nose, but the winner is usually the one who was picked by the polls.

It's an evolving science. Until actual votes are counted, nothing is certain, but polls provide a glimpse into what the electorate is thinking.

And sometimes those polls can be positively prescient.

About this time four years ago, as Julian Borger wrote in The Guardian, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were shaping up to be the front runners in a Democratic field that included the party's most recent vice presidential nominee.

Borger's article didn't go so far as to predict that Obama would win not only the nomination but the election as well. It did, however, observe that polls at that time were suggesting Clinton would win the nomination "with ease" — which, of course, did not happen.

Consequently, anything the polls tell you must be taken with at least a grain of salt.

On the other hand, the findings of a poll — any poll — cannot be taken lightly.

Polls today are telling us that:

• Obama would have the advantage against any potential Republican challenger, and his widest margins, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, are against the women who are mentioned most frequently.
  
  Perhaps that is an indicator that Americans are not yet ready to elect a woman president. Or perhaps it means the right woman for the job simply hasn't come along.


• Republicans are less satisfied with their choices for the nomination than they were four years ago.

That sounds good — at least by default — for the Democrats.

But there's another interesting point in Borger's article.

Well, it wasn't really his point — it was a point that was made by unnamed Democratic strategists — but it may have a great deal of relevance to 2012.

In the 2006 midterms, you may recall, Democrats took narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress after being in the minority for more than a decade. Borger quoted a Democratic strategist as saying that winning one chamber would have been the ideal way to set up the party for the coming presidential election.

---

" 'One third is ideal,' one said. The wife of another top party fixer was heard saying her husband would rather the Democrats just won the House, in the interests of winning the big prize, the White House, in 2008."

---

To bolster the argument, Borger quoted David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation: "Had the Democrats won only the House, they could have positioned themselves as the insurgents of Washington, running against the sclerotic, corrupt Republicans in the Senate and the White House. But now they have the Senate and the House, they are 50–50 partners in governing."

Of course, the Democrats went on to win the 2008 election, anyway. But the same logic could apply to the Republicans of 2012.

Time will tell.

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Coming Home?

In the late 1970s, movies about the experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath were abundant — on both TV ("Friendly Fire") and the big screen ("Heroes," "The Deer Hunter," "Apocalypse Now").

And there was a movie called "Coming Home" — which was nominated for eight Oscars and won three — that examined the trauma of the war on the home front.

To a degree, I suppose, you could say that about the others, too — although much of the trauma that was examined in the others (and the even more introspective films that followed in the 1980s) was the trauma of battle (a subject that has been examined in the context of every war in which America has been involved) and not so much the trauma that was experienced by those who didn't actually serve in Vietnam but, nevertheless, had to live with its consequences.

Anyway, there is no truly relevant link between that movie and what I want to write about today, except for the film's title, which popped into my mind as I read articles suggesting that the ever–volatile American electorate was experiencing a new seismic shift away from the Republicans, who heretofore had been regarded as heavy favorites in next month's midterms.

(Well, perhaps there is an analogy to be made between a film about a war and the state of modern political conflict in America — but I'll leave that to others.)

Now, personally, I am deeply skeptical of any suggestion by anyone that the momentum is shifting — at least permanently.

Voters may be having second thoughts. This is something I have heard about since taking political science courses in college, where I became acquainted with what is called the "left at the altar" syndrome.

But that has been more frequently observed in presidential politics. Most recently, I recall hearing distraught Republicans insisting, right up to Election Day, that the tide was turning in 2008 — which, of course, it was not.

Some voters may have hesitated in the final weeks and asked themselves if they really wanted to change parties in the presidency, but few, if any, appear to have changed their votes as a result. The political pendulum continued to lurch leftward.

There have been relatively few moments in the history of mankind — let alone the comparably brief history of this nation — that had the power to move great numbers of people to the opposite side on even a temporary basis. Permanent shifts are more uncommon.

Yet it seems that every man who has won a presidential election has believed that he has been given a mandate to govern in a certain way, that his election was transformational.

Seldom, if ever, has he been willing to entertain the notion that the voters simply rejected the other guy — or, in his absence, as was the case in 2008, his party.

I suppose those who seek the presidency and those who invest much of themselves in electing these individuals don't want to think that anything that demands that much personal sacrifice can be lost in a seemingly casual manner. Perhaps that undermines them and their motivations.

The true believers, it seems to me, want to believe the voters have made the same kind of commitment that they have, and they simply won't believe it is possible to lose their support until it happens.

At this stage of a losing campaign, self–doubt starts to creep in. And then those on the losing side will seek the reasons why the political equivalent of a "perfect storm" occurred. Sometimes they start wondering before the storm strikes.

Most of the time, the evidence was all around them all along. They didn't see it — or they didn't want to see it.

In recent months, I have heard bewildered Democrats asking themselves what could possibly have gone wrong. How could the once hugely popular Barack Obama and his party have fallen so far from grace?

I've heard some people suggest that Obama was guilty of overreaching, of trying to do too much at once. And there may be an element of that in the voters' criticism. I believe that perception has fueled — at least, in part — the resistance embodied in the Tea Party movement.

Others have said that, when they went to the polls two years ago, they simply wanted the next president, whoever that turned out to be, to right the economy and start bringing unemployment down. The Democrats' general avoidance of the issue has alarmed them, frightened them, angered them.

For these and other reasons, the American voters appear to be poised to hand one or both chambers of Congress over to the Republicans. That's pretty bewildering for some folks. I've heard Democrats ask, "How can they vote for the party that drove the economy into a ditch in the first place?"

That seems perplexing on the surface, but the answer really is simple and, in its own way, logical.

In a two–party system, when voters are angry or frustrated or scared, their only recourse is to vote against the party in power. In 2010, many voters are angry and/or frustrated and/or scared, and many may rationalize that the Republicans have learned from four years of being in the minority after a dozen years of being in the majority.

Lately, both parties have taken encouragement from Gallup's latest generic congressional ballot.

• Democrats eager to believe that the voters are "coming home" after considering their alternatives embrace Gallup's finding that, among registered voters, the race is neck and neck.


• But Republicans enjoy a large advantage among likely voters, the ones whose voting histories indicate that they are likely to participate in the midterm elections. Not everyone does. And it has been observed frequently that the very groups that propelled Obama to the presidency and Democrats to their congressional margins two years ago — minorities, the young — do not have voting histories that make them likely voters.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

The enthusiasm factor makes all the difference sometimes. In 1994, there were many House — and even Senate — races that were decided by narrow margins.

But, in a democracy, a one–vote margin is as good as a million. There may be recounts, but, eventually, a winner will be declared.

In 1992, the Democrats won nearly identical congressional majorities to the ones Democrats enjoyed after the 2008 election. And, when the dust settled in 1994, the Republicans had seized both houses of Congress.

Much of what contributed to the Democrats' decline stemmed from two things — their failure to adequately address the economic problems that lingered after Bill Clinton took office and their ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of health care reform.

I, for one, have always found it to be ironic that Obama chose to center his presidency around the issue of health care reform — as if he was defying history to repeat itself. And you should never do that.

(It reminds me of an old Bill Cosby line from an album I listened to when I was a kid.

("Never say that things can't get any worse," Cosby told his listeners. "Because that's when the gremlins say, 'Worse!' ")

Don't challenge history. History always wins that one.

Yes, Obama did mention health care on the 2008 campaign trail — but it wasn't the initial focus of his candidacy (ending the war in Iraq was) and it wasn't the focus of his campaign after the American economy imploded. I recall it mostly being mentioned in an afterthought kind of way.

But, for whatever reason, Obama spent his political capital in pursuit of the passage of a contentious health care reform bill instead of seeking a truly bipartisan effort to stop the bleeding of jobs from the national economy.

Perhaps it was the arrogance of power that made Obama believe he could follow his own path in the presidency — and, in spite of themselves, the voters would see the wisdom of his ways.

Are the voters "coming home" in 2010? I don't think so.

But, if the Republicans do capture Congress this year, that triumph should come with a disclaimer — Political power evaporates quickly.

And Obama needs to study up on Bill Clinton's strategy for dealing with a Republican Congress in 1995. He was re–elected two years later.

And I'm getting the feeling that both parties need to be concerned about this Tea Party movement. There may not be many of the so–called Tea Partiers who win this time — but this movement seems to stem mostly from the sense that the folks in office — Republicans and Democrats — just don't listen to the people anymore.

So I would advise the folks in the next Congress to be sensitive to the voters' wishes long after November.

If they aren't, they're apt to discover this Tea Party movement has legs.

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Pollyanna, Please Consult Your Answering Service

Do you recognize the name Robert Shrum?

He's a speech writer and a political consultant. In fact, his greatest claim to fame may well be the memorable speech the late Ted Kennedy delivered at the 1980 Democratic National Convention.

Throughout his career, Shrum has worked for mostly Democrats — I suppose an argument could be made over his first speechwriting job, which was for New York Mayor John Lindsay, who famously switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in the early 1970s.

In his career, he has worked for practically a who's who in Democratic politics — Kennedy, Ed Muskie, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (briefly), Dick Gephardt, Bob Kerrey, Al Gore, John Kerry.

So I guess it goes without saying that he leans toward Democrats, even in times such as these — and even though he has compiled a dismal track record in presidential campaigns.

All things considered, you might want to take his assessment with a grain of salt.

Anyway, Shrum says, "I now think the Democrats will hold the Congress —yes, the House as well as the Senate — and turn back high–profile Republican challengers in California and elsewhere."

As Arte Johnson used to say on Rowan and Martin's Laugh–In, "Very interesting ..."

Shrum contends that the seemingly dormant Democratic base is "stirring" and that, in true Karl Rovian fashion (circa 2004), it will rise from its slumber and save the Democrats in next month's midterms.

On what does he base this reasoning? Well, a few things, actually.

For one, he asserts that recent polls, like Gallup's generic congressional ballot, have been tightening because "African–Americans and Hispanics are re–entering the likely electorate."

Now, let's be clear about a few things. Black voters have long supported Democrats, by wide margins, in good times and bad. So the real question is not whether black voters will support Democrats — they will. The real question is how many will show up to vote without Barack Obama at the top of the ballot — and the best guess that I hear from most observers is "not that many." At least, not enough to make the kind of difference Shrum thinks it can.

It reminds me of something my Democratic friends repeatedly told me in the weeks before the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama's presence on the ballot, they told me, would motivate so many black voters that they would put Southern states that hadn't voted for a Democrat since Carter or Lyndon Johnson solidly into the Democratic column.

And, to be fair, states like Virginia, North Carolina and Florida did vote Democratic — but none of the other Southern states, even the ones with extraordinarily large black populations, voted Democratic. Black voters were clearly enthused in 2008 — but they were outnumbered at the polls.

As Gallup's poll observes, the current enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats is still in the 20–point range. Democrats would need a virtually unanimous turnout from all blacks who are old enough to vote — and many of them aren't even registered.

And, while Hispanics are the fastest–growing demographic group in America today, their participation in elections has been sparse in the past. Perhaps, in House districts that lie along or near the U.S.–Mexican border — where immigration debates have been the most intense and Hispanic populations tend to be larger than they are in many places — Hispanic turnout may be higher than it has been in the past.

But, nationally, even fewer Hispanics (proportionately) are registered to vote than blacks. And, considering the meager Hispanic populations in many states that are north of the border, it's hard to see how they can have that much influence.

To capitalize on those two groups, as Shrum apparently thinks Democrats will, would require a massive national registration drive (and I have neither heard nor seen anything that suggests something like that is in the works) followed by a massive get–out–the–vote effort on Election Day.

Both require more motivation than I have seen from most Democrats this year.

Anyway, this inexplicable surge in black and Hispanic voters in which Shrum places so much faith apparently will be responsible for saving Sen. Barbara Boxer and former Gov. Jerry Brown in California.

But how much of an accomplishment would that be? California voted Republican in presidential politics when Californians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were running, but it's been in the Democratic column for the last 20 years.

And Californians haven't sent a Republican to the Senate since 1988. So the fact that Boxer is leading in recent polls shouldn't be a surprise. What has been a surprise is the fact that her race against former Hewlett–Packard CEO Carly Fiorina was ever close enough to be considered a tossup.

If Boxer wins another term, it will not be remarkable that she was triumphant. That was expected all along.

Likewise, Brown — whose eight–year tenure as governor predated the passage of the state's term limits law — had to be the favorite in the governor's race. At least, I always thought he would be the favorite over former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

True, the incumbent governor is a Republican. And, since World War II, Republicans have been more successful in California's gubernatorial races than its Senate campaigns. But Brown is the only Democrat to be elected governor of California twice in the last 40 years.

Perhaps it is that reputation that prompted Shrum to speculate that Brown " has pulled ahead" of Whitman. Or maybe he's seen a poll that I haven't. The results I have seen indicate a still–volatile race. In recent days, a survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California shows a deadlocked race — which is, essentially, what Rasmussen Reports and the most recent Field Poll were saying.

Maybe Shrum is writing about the CNN/Time poll that was released around the same time. It shows both Boxer and Brown leading their Republican opponents by nine percentage points among likely voters.

But that seems like an awfully wide margin in a race that most other polls have found to be much closer. And, whether fairly or not, CNN's poll has been accused in the past of a Democratic bias. So there is reason to be suspicious of its results.

Shrum also is encouraged by his belief that Washington Sen. Patty Murray "strengthened her position" against her Republican challenger, businessman Dino Rossi.

But this is truly a baffling conclusion. I mean, Murray led by nine points in an Elway Poll in early September and a CNN/Time poll in mid–September, but since that time, a SurveyUSA poll shows her lead at two points — and Rasmussen Reports actually shows Rossi in front.

Then Shrum asserts that the Tea Party is "the gift that keeps on giving" — and it may turn out to be precisely that, but Shrum's arguments sound screwy when compared to poll findings.

"The tea–imbibing Republicans are a twofer for Democrats," Shrum writes. "They scare mainstream voters and motivate the Democratic base, too."

While Christine O’Donnell may be "unelectable" in Delaware, as Shrum suggests, his faith in the Tea Partiers to unite Democrats and mainstream voters seems a bit misplaced.

After all,

• he writes that "the ultra–conservative Pat Toomey ... has suddenly hit troubled waters" in Pennsylvania. Really? He's been consistently leading by 5–7 percentage points in recent polls.
  
  But Shrum points to a single exception — the Susquehanna Polling & Research survey from Sept. 23–26 showing Toomey's lead down to three points
  
  "A race that was written off is winnable," he claims — yet he ignores a Rasmussen Reports poll in which Toomey's lead is nearly double digits.
  
  And a Franklin & Marshall College poll showed the same margin in favor of Toomey — albeit with nearly one–third of respondents undecided.


• and Shrum writes that, in Kentucky, "Jack Conway's making his case for [Democrats] to come home. Or perhaps [Tea Partier] Rand Paul is making it for him."
  
  Paul's lead is within the margin of error, he asserts, but the left–leaning Daily Kos/Public Policy Polling survey in mid–September showed Paul leading by seven points and a recent Rasmussen Reports poll found Paul was leading by 11 points.

He gets around the polls that don't conform to his particular world view by telling the readers, "I'm dispensing in every race with the riotously Republican Rasmussen surveys, which are the psephological counterpart to the Laffer Curve on a cocktail napkin."

Problem is, it isn't just Rasmussen that is reporting findings that contradict his conclusion.

Nevertheless, he says, "So I believe the Senate's safe. But what about the House?"

He asserts his unfounded confidence that "[t]he change in the makeup of the electorate can close the gap in the generic vote and let the Democrats inch ahead — but the base has to continue tuning in and then it has to turn out. That depends on President Obama — and on progressive Democrats deciding that right now the stakes in this campaign are more important than the reflex instinct to complain."

Happily — for Shrum — "[t]he Obama of 2008 has returned with a message and a mission," which is tax cuts for the rapidly vanishing middle class as opposed to retaining the "Bush tax cuts for the wealthy."

Admit it. You knew that, somehow, he'd find a way to work in Dubya. Yep, he doesn't like it when voters "complain" about Democrats who are in office right now and must defend their turf in a hostile environment — but it's OK to keep flogging a former president who has been away from Washington for nearly two years.

On top of that, though, I am skeptical of the coalition that Shrum is relying upon — minorities, liberals ... and the young, who Obama has been courting lately but who remain unpersuaded of the need to return to the polls to help people they just elected two years ago. Shrum concedes that they "haven't yet followed Hispanics and African–Americans into the likely voter column."

Shrum's problem is that Hispanics and African–Americans haven't arrived in that column yet, either.

"Obama can change the political weather by a few degrees," he writes, "and that might be just enough. In the process, he has to inspire and not just scold disappointed progressives."

That's another substantial "if." Scolding has become SOP for the parental/professor president.

Frankly, there are too many "ifs" and not nearly enough time — particularly when the overall objective can be summed up this way: Victory is possible "assuming Democrats, especially the young, are sensible enough to understand that we are past the excitement of 2008. There is more to achieving change than standing, cheering, and voting for it once, and then standing aside."

Pollyanna, please call your office.

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Darn! Denied Another Teachable Moment?

I have to think that, in Professor Obama's "Teachable Moments" lecture series, Rev. Terry Jones and his plans to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday — the ninth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks — had to be the capstone.

Consequently, it must have been a disappointment for the professor (even though he made a public appeal to Jones to listen to the "better angels" of his nature) late this afternoon when Jones announced that he would not proceed as planned but would, instead, go to New York to meet with a Muslim leader.

There are, after all, so few things Obama can speak about in public these days in which he will come off looking better than his naysayers.

And Obama, who must suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, has been bouncing around the country of late, trying to appease voters he lost long ago because he ignored their pleas for an emphasis on job creation.

There's nothing that can be done now about unemployment that will alter the outcome. In fact, the unemployment rate is about the same now as it was in July 2009, when Obama decided to take advantage of the highly publicized case of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates being taken into custody by Cambridge, Mass., police and have Gates and the arresting officer to the White House for a beer and a "teachable moment."

In the months after the teachable moment, unemployment continued its slog to the 10% level, then fell back a couple of tenths of a percentage point but now seems to be moving back up again. The difference is that, in 2009, only a couple of off–year gubernatorial elections and a special election in Massachusetts were on the political horizon. There wasn't much at stake.

But in 2010, the regularly scheduled midterm election is coming up. And what was once thought to be unthinkable — that Obama, who seemed to have the Midas touch when he campaigned for the presidency in 2008, has become an albatross for many of his fellow Democrats — appears to have come true.

Of course, that conclusion is based on the poll numbers. And, as always, I will concede that nothing is written in stone when one speaks of polls. Nor, for that matter, do the survey results that are being cited tell the whole story.

For example, many Obama defenders will point out that many polls show that, in the famous generic congressional poll, Democrats are closing the gap with Republicans — trailing, in many polls, by nearly the margin for error, which, in theory, means that they could be running about even.

But those polls only asked the respondents if they were registered voters. It is pretty easy to be a registered voter in this country. There is no shortage of politically active groups that set up registration tables and booths on college campuses, in shopping malls and at county fairs every election year.

The days when some voters were prevented from registering in some parts of the country are long gone.

Being a registered voter, though, is not the same thing as being a likely voter. Pollsters determine the likely voters by asking them questions about their past voting behavior. That isn't 100% reliable, of course, but it is the best indicator we can get for what is likely to happen in the election.

And the polls have shown, repeatedly, that likely voters are supporting the Republicans by ridiculous margins. In fact, if some of these polls are right, Election Day is going to be a brutal day for many Democrats.

It's hard — for me, at least — to conclude that there is a cause–and–effect relationship at work here, but it's even harder for me to make a plausible case that there isn't one.

After last summer's teachable moment, Obama's approval ratings remained — mostly — in the 50s for the next four months or so, but his approval ratings in most surveys dropped into the 40s around the start of December, and they have seldom seen the 50s range since.

Well, it seems that Obama may have the chance to have that teachable moment lecture after all.

Can it reverse the tide? I doubt it. But it might be entertaining.

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Split Decision

You know, history really does repeat itself. Not precisely, though. You have to look for it, but patterns certainly seem to emerge.

More than two years ago — when Democrats had held Congress for a little more than a year and Republican George W. Bush was in his final year as president — I wrote about the virtue of divided government.

On that occasion, I was offering my take on a column written by political analyst Charlie Cook for the National Journal, in which he also wrote about the disparity between the popular vote and the electoral vote. While I do believe the Electoral College should be scrapped — or, at the very least, revised — that's not what I want to discuss in this post.

In April 2008 — which, it is worth noting, was several months before the economic meltdown virtually guaranteed Democratic victories that fall — Cook said both parties had "self–destructive tendencies." If either controlled both the legislative and executive branches of government, it was like a "ticking time bomb; it's only a matter of time before it explodes and the party loses, and loses big."

That time appears to be at hand for Democrats who were so cocky after the 2008 elections. Everyone seems to be in agreement on that point. The disagreement, at this stage, centers on how extensive the losses will be — whether the Democrats will, in Cook's words, "lose big."

I can picture their spinmeisters, already working on the party's excuses for whatever lies ahead. I'm sure racism will be a prominent one. It's a very handy excuse for this president, one that hasn't been available to any of his predecessors — although I'm sure some variant of it has been applicable to a few (i.e., John F. Kennedy, who was not the first Catholic presidential nominee but was the first Catholic to be elected — and could conceivably have used anti–Catholic bigotry if he had lived to run for a second term).

But, even though racism is likely to be used as an excuse for congressional losses, is it valid? In some instances, perhaps it is. But not in most.

Well, two years ago, I wrote something that I still believe: "I've seen more efficiency under a divided government. Each side gets some of what it wants sometimes. But when one party controls the White House and the Congress, things get sloppy, inefficient — and expensive."

I've seen nothing in the last two years that refutes that. Precisely the opposite, in fact. Divided government promotes the art of compromise. Everyone gets involved. No one feels left out — and, consequently, feels the need to obstruct everything the majority tries to do because you just might need some of those folks on the next issue — and you have a realistic chance of winning over some of them — and you don't want to risk alienating them.

When voters elected Barack Obama president and, at the same time, expanded Democrats' majorities in both houses of Congress, there was much rejoicing.

I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I had serious doubts about the collective wisdom. In the aftermath of the economic meltdown, I felt the voters were having a (probably justifiable) tantrum against Republican rule, and I felt torn over the prospect of installing a one–party government to replace another one–party government.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am second to no one in my utter disdain for the George W. Bush administration (well, both Bush presidencies, actually, but let's stick to the most recent one).

And the only electoral decision in which all voters participate is the election of the president. Senators and representatives are chosen, as always, by states and districts.

No "decision" was made in 2008 to give huge majorities to the Democrats, just as no decision was made nearly a decade before that to turn over control of both the White House and the Congress to the Republicans. It's just how it worked out.

And I worried in 2008 that it would make things worse. Democrats seemed to have forgotten how disenfranchised they felt when Republicans controlled the national debate — and how that led the Democrats to become more energized about taking back what they had lost.

In such an adversarial environment, neither side ever seems to be willing to budge even an inch. Isn't that what we've seen in Washington in the last 18 months? Isn't that what we saw in Washington five years ago, in first the Terri Schiavo affair and then the Hurricane Katrina experience?

Not sayin' either side was right or wrong. Just sayin'.

As I say, I felt torn on Election Night. On the one hand, I felt that someone whose very existence would be politically sensitive — such as the first black president — would need to have many members of his party in Congress in order to get anything accomplished.

On the other hand, I have seen one–party rule at several times in my life, and it never really seems to work. The party that is in power always gets too carried away with itself and sees "mandates" where they frequently don't exist. That lends an aura of credibility to everything they do.

And there is often a sense that the party in power knows best, and that clearly seems to have been a problem in the first couple of years of the Obama presidency.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that Americans are worried about unemployment.

I'm going to repeat that, with added emphasis, because I really believe it is important.

Poll after poll after poll after poll has shown that Americans are worried about unemployment.

Now, you may argue — and not without some justification — that the opinions expressed in polls are not written in stone — and they aren't. But, when a topic consistently lands in the top spot of polls about the most pressing problems facing America today, that seems like, at the very least, a hint that it's something that Americans want to address. And a lot of them really want to address the jobs issue.

As George Carlin used to say, even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in awhile if only to feed the illusion that they're really in charge. In this case, they ain't been getting it — unless Obama and the Democrats were doing things behind the scenes to promote job creation while they were publicly barnstorming the country for health care reform.

But, if that is what they were doing, they missed an opportunity to get some visible credit for their efforts — credit they might wish they had when the voters go to the polls in November. As it is, the Democrats seem to be hoping — like Herbert Hoover at the dawn of the Great Depression — that the market will correct itself. That's not likely to be a winning strategy in 2010.

Because, unless something really dramatic happens, it is unlikely that we will see the kinds of improvements that will reverse the Democrats' fortunes in November's midterms.

It isn't that the voters blame the Democrats — but it would be terrific if they would stop obsessing about blame and focus on strategies for encouraging job creation. The five–figure job gains we've seen lately would have been great a few decades ago. They might even have been marginally acceptable a few years ago. But, since the end of 2007, we've seen waves of six–figure job losses that seemed like they would never end.

And they've left a path of destruction in their wake that is staggering.

As the voters see it, the Democrats are the ones who are in charge. If the voters aren't convinced that they're thinking outside the box in an all–out pursuit of an answer, they'll look for that leadership elsewhere. The Republicans may not be exactly what they want — but what other option do they have?

Well, anyway, I started thinking about all this when I was reading an article today by another political analyst for whom I have a great deal of respect, Michael Barone, one of the authors of what has been the best political reference for nearly 40 years, the "Almanac of American Politics," which is published by the National Journal every other year.

Barone also contributes to the Washington Examiner, where today he suggests that this year's midterms may resemble the ones in 1966.

"Some compare 2010 to 1994, when Republicans picked up 52 House seats and won majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades," Barone writes. "Others compare this year to 1982, when Democrats picked up 26 House seats and recaptured effective control of the House two years after Ronald Reagan was elected president."

As I say, though, Barone's focus today is on 1966, two years after Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats swept the elections of 1964. 1966, Barone writes, "was a year when a Democratic president's war in Asia was starting to cause unease and some opposition within his own party, as is happening now."

And, he continues, "it was a year of recoil against the big government programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The 89th Congress, with 2–1 Democratic majorities, had passed Medicare, federal aid to education, anti–poverty and other landmark legislation."

The key to Republicans' success in 1966, Barone suggests, was that they "actually won the popular vote for the House in the North (defined as the other 36 states) by a 51% to 48% majority. They have only done so since in three elections, in 1968 (a virtual carbon copy of 1966 in House races), in their breakthrough year of 1994 and in the post–9/11 year of 2002."

Recent poll results indicate, Barone continues, that it could happen again this year. Generic polls asking voters which party they would support in their local House race show "Republicans ahead by a historically unprecedented margin."

And, writes Barone, "[i]f those numbers hold, and if they turn out to underpredict Republican performance in the popular vote, as they have in the past, that could mean that Republicans would win a popular vote plurality or majority in the North."

Can't happen, you say? Hmmm, tell that to Massachusetts Sen. Martha Coakley and then tell me what her response was. Coakley was an exception, you say? A terrible candidate? OK. Gotcha. How about checking back with me in a month or so, after most states have held their primaries, and tell me how things are looking?

We should also have a couple more jobless reports in by that time.

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An Early Glance at the Senate Races

We're well into the nominating season for the 2010 midterm elections.

Some people have suggested that 2010 will be an anti–incumbent year, although there hasn't really been much evidence of this in the primaries — as cable TV's Rachel Maddow pointed out recently.

But political parties rarely reject incumbents. Instead, if an incumbent is going to be denied another term, it is likely to happen in the general election.

My argument — which, I must admit, was somewhat discredited by the results in Arkansas this month, although I'm sticking with it for now — has been that the parties, of late, have been pulled to greater extremes and nominate candidates who represent those views. Rarely, it seems, does a party nominate a self–proclaimed centrist for anything other than the presidency (and the "centrist" presidential candidates often turn out to be a lot less centrist than advertised).

Since there are no presidential nominations to be won this year, states will be holding their primaries through the summer months, even into the autumn, and we won't know until perhaps mid– to late September the identities of all the candidates who have been chosen by their parties to run for governor, senator, congressman. Voters in three states — the Carolinas and Utah — are going to the polls today.

My guess — keep in mind that we are barely past the first official day of summer, more than four months from Election Day — is that most of the nominees are going to reflect the views and values of the national party leadership. There will be some exceptions, but not many.

And, even though more Americans identify themselves as independents than Democrats or Republicans, most will have to choose between the candidates who were nominated by the two parties.

If the nation's independents truly are centrists, the elections may be decided by something as simple as which way the political wind is blowing.

And the prevailing wind seems to be blowing from the right.

Gallup reports that Republicans are very enthusiastic about voting in the midterm elections. Their level of enthusiasm smashes the numbers shown by either party since Gallup first asked respondents about their enthusiasm in 1994.

If Gallup's numbers imply anything, it is that enthusiasm usually translates to turnout because the party that has more enthusiastic members usually does better. And when one party has the edge in enthusiasm, it becomes a numbers game. If certain groups show up in greater numbers than other groups, their agenda, whatever it may be, is likely to prevail. And a party's agenda typically is embodied in its nominees.

If the majorities in either chamber are diminished, Barack Obama and the Democrats will have more difficulty enacting their initiatives than they have had in the first 1½ years of the Obama presidency — when the numbers in both chambers have been so favorable to the Democrats that it is hard to understand why anything in their 2008 platform has not been voted into law.

It is good news that jobs are being added to the economy, but the pace is too slow for many Americans who have already been asked to be patient long enough. Right now, it is barely keeping pace with the growth of the working–age population. Admittedly, that's better than the constantly–losing–enormous–amounts–of–ground cycle that we were in, but we aren't reclaiming those jobs we lost or creating jobs to replace them nearly as rapidly as we lost them.

Think about it. Millions of Americans have been left jobless since the recession began in December 2007, and we are often reminded that the number of long–term unemployed (six months or more) is higher than it has ever been.

I think it is safe to assume that many of the long–term unemployed have been out of work since before Obama was elected president. For them, the prospect of a "lost decade" is not theoretical. It is frighteningly real.

And it's the kind of reality that influences a working man's vote. A working man who isn't working has time on his hands to think about his predicament. Democrats tell him, "It was Bush's fault that you lost your job," and he may agree with them.

But that man who is unemployed and may have a family to feed and clothe may then reply, "But I voted for your guy to fix things. And things aren't fixed."

The fact is that the Democrats can continue to control the agenda in the House, even if their majority is reduced. But Senate Democrats will be in serious trouble if they don't have the votes to break a Republican filibuster.

So, barring the kind of political tidal wave that swept in Republican majorities in both houses of Congress in 1994, this year's Senate races hold the keys to federal legislative power in the next two years.

Midterms typically go against the party in power — especially if the party in power seems to be controlled by events and not in control of events. How Democrats are perceived in November may well depend on how (and if) the oil spill in the Gulf is resolved or how many more jobs have been added to the economy (and whether enough have been added to bring unemployment down significantly) — or events yet to come.

Things may be better or worse — or unchanged — by the time the voters go to the polls this fall. Many had already come of age or were coming of age when Ronald Reagan summarized the perpetual question facing Americans — are you better off than you were four years ago? For far too many, the answer to that question seems likely to be a resounding "No!" (Interestingly, Bob Herbert of the New York Times warns today that "the greatness of the United States ... is steadily slipping away.")

With that in mind, here are the Senate seats I think Democrats are most likely to lose in November. A lot can happen in 4½ months, but if nothing of any positive significance occurs — like a dramatic decline in the unemployment rate — these are the seats Democrats need to worry about.

• Arkansas: Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln won the battle with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, but I think she will lose the war.
  
  Different polls report different results, of course, but Arkansas has been trending more to the right in recent years, and I'm inclined to believe the GOP will take Lincoln's seat in November. The only poll I've seen so far since the June 8 runoff showed Lincoln's opponent, Rep. John Boozman, leading by nearly two to one. His margin was smaller in a couple of polls I saw before the runoff — one co–sponsored by liberal–leaning Daily Kos, the other commissioned by Arkansas News Bureau — but Boozman seems likely to win Arkansas in what is shaping up to be a Republican year.


• Colorado: When Barack Obama picked Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar to be his secretary of the Interior, Colorado's governor picked Michael Bennet to complete Salazar's term, which is about to conclude. According to a Denver Post survey, Bennet and Republican Ken Buck are likely to win their parties' nominations and face each other in the fall.
  
  If that comes to pass, the same survey (which concluded last week) suggests Buck has a slight advantage that almost falls within the margin of error.
  
  Elections often seem to be close in Colorado. I'm guessing this one will be, too.


• Delaware: The seat that was once held by Vice President Joe Biden was expected to remain in the family, but Biden's son decided not to enter the race.
  
  I haven't seen any polls lately, but I've heard and read commentaries that suggested that Republicans are favored to win the seat.


• Illinois: Does it seem strange that Obama's old Senate seat is in jeopardy? Perhaps. But the corrupt governor, who was responsible for appointing Obama's replacement, did the new president no favors by virtually auctioning the seat to the highest bidder. And then Obama's replacement made the situation worse with his own ethical issues.
  
  The good news for Democrats is that the replacement won't be on the ballot. That's also the bad news. Because, although the seat is currently held by the Democrats, it is an open seat — and that, I'm guessing, will work in the favor of the Republicans.


• Indiana: It was my opinion, when I watched the election returns in November 2008, that Indiana's support for Obama was an aberration. Indiana has a long Republican history, and it makes sense that Republican Dan Coats enjoys a solid lead over Democrat Brad Ellsworth — Rasmussen says he's up by 14 points — in the campaign for the seat being vacated by Democrat Evan Bayh.


• Nevada: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in trouble, and everyone seems to know it.
  
  His opponent, a Christian conservative and a darling of the Tea Partiers, Sharron Angle, leads him by 11 points, says Rasmussen in a survey that was published a couple of weeks ago.


• Pennsylvania: Here is a rare example of an incumbent being voted out by his party. But that isn't the whole story. Arlen Specter had been a member of the Republican Party most of his adult life. But he switched parties last year and ran for the Democratic nomination this year. He wasn't the first party switcher to run into problems with his new party. He wasn't even the first this year. Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith suffered the same fate when he left the Democrats to join the Republicans.
  
  Anyway, Joe Sestak, the guy who beat Specter in the Democratic primary, is even with Republican Pat Toomey, according to Public Policy Polling. Rasmussen says Toomey has a seven–point lead. Daily Kos' findings are nearly a month old, but they showed Sestak with a narrow lead.
  
  I anticipate a close race.

Well, the Democrats currently hold 59 seats in the Senate so they could lose all seven of those seats and still maintain a majority. But such a majority would have much more in common with the majority Democrats enjoyed following the 2006 midterms, not the "filibuster–proof" majority they had when Al Franken was declared the winner in Minnesota at the end of June last year — and then lost when Republicans won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in January's special election.

As I say, events in the next four months will influence things in ways we can't imagine right now, but, assuming nothing changes dramatically, Republicans will need to win three additional seats to seize control of the chamber. Is that possible?

On the surface, I would say no. A couple of seats that are currently held by women — Barbara Boxer of California and Patty Murray of Washington — could be in jeopardy. Recent polls suggest that both Boxer and Murray have seen early leads shrink in recent weeks.

And Republicans are not free of anxiety seats, either. Take, for example, the Ohio Senate seat currently held by George Voinovich, who is retiring. A couple of weeks ago, Rasmussen reported a tie between Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Lee Fisher. If Republicans lose that seat, it means one more seat will be needed to accomplish a takeover.

Presumably, the same thing could be said of Florida's race for a Republican–held Senate seat. At one time, Gov. Charlie Crist was a candidate for the Republican nomination. But, apparently convinced he could not win, Crist withdrew and decided to run as an independent. Now, Rasmussen reports that Crist is locked in a tight race with his former GOP rival, Marco Rubio.

In Florida, the Democrat appears to be far behind. And, given his background, I would expect Crist to vote far more often with the Republicans than the Democrats if he should win the election. So, while it is possible the Republican Party will lose technical control of the seat, it is unlikely that the Republican philosophy will lose control of it.

But, even if the Republicans hold on to Voinovich's seat in Ohio, and Boxer and Murray are upset in California and Washington, that would mean a 50–50 split. Joe Biden would get the deciding vote, which would give the Democrats the same kind of control over the Senate that the Republicans had in the first few months of George W. Bush's presidency.

Republicans would still need one more seat, but where would they get it? Wisconsin, perhaps. Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold appears to face a stiffer challenge from Ron Johnson than Bob Westlake, but Feingold won't know the identity of his opponent until the primary is held in September. Feingold is accustomed to tight races. He is seeking his fourth term; in his previous three victories, his share of the vote was 53% (in 1992), 51% (in 1998) and 55% (in 2004).

Other than the Wisconsin seat, I can't really think of any Democrat–held seats that would make viable targets for Republicans, but that, I suppose, can change, depending on whether the voters think they are better off now than they were a few years ago.

Still, there is that Gallup survey that shows enthusiasm at an astonishingly high level for Republicans this year. Maybe that will affect the outcome in Wisconsin — or in Connecticut, where Chris Dodd's seat is up for grabs.

But even a tidal wave of voter discontent seems unlikely to dislodge any other Democratic senators in 2010 — at the present time.

We'll see how things look at the end of the summer, when we probably will have some answers to some questions, such as ...

• Has the leak been plugged in the Gulf?


• If it has, how is the cleanup progressing?


• Is the economy still adding jobs ... or has it been stumbling?


• Is the American military presence in Iraq really winding down?


• And what about the military mission in Afghanistan?

At National Review, Jim Geraghty wonders if Democrats can re–create the magic that led to Obama's victory two years ago.

It's still a little early to reach a conclusion on that, and there is plenty of time for both parties to influence the answer, but, right now, I would have to say that answer will be the same as it was to Reagan's question 30 years ago.

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Arkansas Picks Its Senate Candidates

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On Tuesday, the voters in my home state of Arkansas will go to the polls.

The Democrats and Republicans of Arkansas will decide who their nominees (or the two contestants in decisive runoffs to be held in June) will be for a bunch of offices. Three of the state's four House seats are being vacated. Arkansans also will choose their governor this year, but I don't think there are contests for either party's nomination.

Currently, the state's congressional delegation is heavily Democratic, just as it always was when I was growing up there — both senators and three of the four representatives are Democrats. And one of those senators, Blanche Lincoln, is running for re–election.

It's possible, I suppose, that the governor's race will get really hot this fall, but, right now, it appears that the Senate race is really the marquee matchup this year — in both parties.

And the latest polls indicate that Lincoln is leading in the race for the Democratic nomination by nine points, but she's still a few points short of a majority. Her support level has remained in the 40s in the polls I have seen, and if she doesn't receive a majority of the vote on Tuesday, she will have to win a runoff so she isn't out of the woods yet. Her main rival is the state's lieutenant governor, Bill Halter, who went to high school with a friend of mine. He's seen his support level rise into the mid–30s in the last few weeks.

I don't know much about Halter, but I've heard him described as a Bill Clintonesque policy wonk — without Clinton's charisma.

The X factor, I guess, is a businessman named D.C. Morrison, who appears to be making a name for himself with his folksy campaign quips — a la Ross Perot. None of the polls I have seen suggest that Morrison is anywhere near drawing enough votes to get into a runoff — but his vote total just might decide whether Lincoln must face a runoff challenge.

David Jarman observes for Salon.com — and rightly so — that the mystery to be resolved on Tuesday is not whether Lincoln will get the most votes, for she almost certainly will. But even if she runs first, she may be in trouble if she does not avoid a runoff.

If there is a runoff, it will be a good test for a pet theory of mine, which is: In any election, general or primary, involving an incumbent, anyone who votes for one of the incumbent's challengers is more likely to vote against that incumbent if his/her first choice does not make the runoff — or would have voted against the incumbent anyway even if his/her preference was not on the ballot.

In other words, any old port in a storm. If you're voting against an incumbent, I believe you would be likely to vote against that incumbent no matter what your option might be.

I've felt this way for a long time, but I guess I really started refining it in my head following the 1992 presidential election.

In that election, the incumbent (George H.W. Bush) was renominated by the Republicans, even though many had criticized him for his handling of the economy and many felt betrayed on the taxes issue. The Democrats nominated the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, whose memorable campaign mantra was "It's the economy, stupid."

And then there was Perot, who was running, then he wasn't, then he was running again as an independent. He often appeared flakey in the closing weeks of the campaign, but his message about the future of the American economy resonated with many voters, and he wound up receiving nearly one–fifth of the popular vote.

Clinton, of course, was elected president. He received 43% of the vote. Bush finished nearly 6 million votes behind Clinton, with 37.5% of the vote.

At the time, I was living in Oklahoma, which has, at times, voted for Democrats — for governor, congressman, senator — but not for president since 1964. And I heard some disgruntled Republicans who complained bitterly that Bush would have won if Perot had not been a candidate.

Well, that went against what I had heard from exit polls that were conducted on Election Day. These polls were conducted by polling firms that I believe are reliable — and exit polls have always struck me as more reliable than pre–election polls because the people being polled have already voted and are, for the most part, telling the pollster why they voted the way they did. They aren't speculating about how they will vote.

The polls I saw tended to agree that, if Perot had not been on the ballot, it would not have reversed the outcome. About 40% of Perot's voters said they would have voted for Bush if Perot had not been on the ballot. Another 40% said they would have voted for Clinton. And the remaining 20% said they would not have voted at all.

Those polls suggested that there would have been virtually no change in the Electoral College, which Clinton won by a wide margin.

Actually, given the high level of dissatisfaction with the incumbent that year, my guess is that far more of Perot's voters would have voted for Clinton if Perot had decided to withdraw for good.

Some may have been motivated to vote for Perot for reasons other than the economy, and they may well have been repulsed by Clinton over any one of several issues (legitimate or not) that his opponents chose to emphasize during the messy general campaign of 1992. Thus, those voters probably would have voted for Bush if the choice had been between the president and Clinton — assuming that they felt strongly enough about it to vote.

But I remember speaking with several Perot voters that year, and most expressed a deep disdain for Bush's handling of just about everything. Some may have had their reservations about Clinton, too, but none ever spoke of those.

Anyway, back to the Senate race in Arkansas ...

The Republicans seem likely to have a runoff as well. The front–runner, Rep. John Boozman who is vacating his House seat to run for the Senate, leads his closest rival by 27 points, but he's still a few points shy of a majority. In my experience growing up in Arkansas, when the second–place candidate has to make up that much ground in a runoff, it's practically an impossible task.

And, besides, Boozman isn't an incumbent so my theory doesn't really apply to the Republican race.

When an anti–incumbent mood is in the air, that's when you want to be seen as an outsider. Lincoln doesn't exactly qualify as one, which is one of the reasons why I wondered about the wisdom of having Barack Obama record a radio ad for her (see the attached video clip).

I guess Democrats who have never lived in Arkansas are prone to look at the state as the party's last refuge in the Republican South.

And, as president, one of Obama's roles clearly is to be the leader of his party. As such, perhaps he has been discovering how important it is for him to have Democrats in Congress to help him with anything else he would like to accomplish while in office — even though Democrats have shown themselves to be the same timid and ineffective wielders of legislative power that they have been in the past.

I don't admire much about Republican politics, but I do respect their tendency to do what they believe to be right (however misguided they may be) and treat bipartisanship as a worthy but probably unattainable (in most cases) objective, welcome if it occurs but not necessary if one can enact policy without it.

Right now, the Democrats can do most of the things they want to do in Congress without much, if any, help from their Republican colleagues. But that window is rapidly closing — even with the good news that jobs have been added to the economy in the last couple of months. Voters who became accustomed to the steady drumbeat of bad news for the last couple of years are going to require several months of good news to be convinced that things are turning around; they're still understandably skittish.

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Earlier in the campaign, Lincoln tried to tap into that anti–incumbent mood by presenting herself as a voice of sanity in a childish legislative atmosphere. That doesn't seem to have done the trick, though, so, in the waning days of the campaign, apparently she wants to channel some of the president's popularity.

Perhaps the radio ad featuring Obama's endorsement (even though Lincoln has not been a dedicated supporter of the Obama agenda) may help her win the primary. But, down the road, I think it might hurt her in Arkansas.

I'm not really sure why folks outside Arkansas seem to be convinced the state is so much more progressive than other states in the South, including the state where I live now, Texas. Maybe it is because Arkansas produced the only other Democratic president in nearly 30 years.

And, yes, I realize that Texas hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since 1976, whereas Arkansas did support its native son twice.

But, in terms of percentages, Texas actually gave Obama a greater share of its vote in 2008 than Arkansas did. More than 58% of Arkansas voters voted for John McCain, while 55% of Texas voters did. Of course, Obama didn't make much of an effort to win over Arkansas in 2008. To me, it seems a little lame to be trying to throw his political weight around there now — Arkansans haven't been showing much approval of what Obama has been doing in office.

Maybe, as I say, it will help Lincoln win her party's nomination. Arkansas' Democrats may be receptive to the message from the president.

But I don't think its Republicans and independents will be — and I am all but certain that Boozman will bring up that radio ad on the campaign trail this fall.

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On Journalism and Being Wrong

The other day on Facebook, a former newspaper colleague of mine made an observation that evoked an odd combination of reactions within me.

Newspapers will never become extinct in America, he wrote, because of the need for an independent government watchdog.

I found that reassuring. It reminded me of what I was told, over and over, when I was a journalism student in college. And it tied in nicely with what I learned in my studies of American history.

It spoke to something that I have always held to be true — that a free and independent press is necessary for a nation to remain free and independent as well.

In the 18th century, the role of a free press in preserving liberty was considered crucial by those who led the American Revolution. That is why the guarantee of the independence of the free press was included in the First Amendment.

The press could not be free, the thinking went, if it was controlled to any extent by the government. Thomas Jefferson, who is remembered as one of the greatest presidents, was no stranger to the vilification of the press of his day; nevertheless, he asserted in his second inaugural address that if the government could not withstand criticism from the press, it deserved to fail.

That still seems pretty sound, observed as it is from the perspective of more than two centuries later. Just about all the people with whom I have worked in the newspaper business — or with whom I studied journalism in college — believed in this concept.

But does it only have relevance for print journalists? Are they the only ones who bear the burden of truth? If that is so, why are newspapers struggling while broadcasting outlets appear to be thriving?

Well, it seems to me that, unless all you look at is the balance sheet, broadcasting isn't necessarily thriving — at least, not when it comes to the perception of independence. That may be an inevitable by–product of the polarized society in which we live, but surely, it seems to me, there is more to it than that.

For many years, I have heard complaints about the media's "liberal bias." I have resisted such talk, not because I agree with liberal political philosophy — I agree with some, but not all, of it — but because it contradicts what I was taught. More than that, it contradicts what I have believed most of my life.

Having said that, though, I feel compelled to point out that scientists (and I have known a few in my life) face this sort of thing all the time. I haven't known a scientist yet who did not have some sort of preconceived notion — a pet theory — that was verifiably disproved through the results of experiments.

Perhaps that is why scientists (in my experience, anyway) are more open to opinions that differ from their own than just about anyone with whom I have ever exchanged ideas. Mind you, I don't always agree with them. In fact, I frequently don't understand the concepts they talk about. What makes them different, I think, is that they are not just accustomed to being wrong — they are accustomed to being proven wrong.

And, when you are proven wrong, you really have no choice except to change your mind. Scientists have to do that a lot.

That works pretty well in fields where concepts can be tested. But journalism isn't really like that. There are subtle differences inherent to the same words, whereas the value of a number tends to be consistent.

Words are open to individual interpretations. Reporters can't afford to be casual about the words they choose. Are you old enough to remember Art Linkletter? He used to say, "Kids say the darnedest things." Well, I can tell you that newspaper readers interpret the darnedest things.

I'll give you a for instance. When I was in journalism school, my professors told us that it was a good idea to use neutral language whenever possible.

We could write, for example, that someone said something. If what was said was expressed in the form of a question, we could write that the person asked something. But other descriptions implied some sort of judgment call. If, for example, something was said loudly, would it be appropriate to write that someone shouted it? Maybe. And maybe not. The speaker may have a naturally loud voice.

And what if the person laughed while speaking? Should you make laughed the verb instead of said? If you use laughed, what does that imply to the reader? Does it suggest a sneering, belittling attitude? Or does it indicate a nervousness on the part of the speaker? Perhaps that depends on what was said.

Well, that's a relatively benign example, I suppose.

What is not so benign, it seems to me, is the way that, more and more, poll results are reported as facts when all they really are is the sampling of public opinion (and, frequently, the most extreme examples of public opinion that can be found) at a particular time. And that colors not only how people feel about what they read but the publication in which they read it. The results were not written in stone, even though some people (including some journalists, who really ought to know better) seem to have believed that they were — which may account for the gnashing of teeth you hear on the left these days. Many of the folks on that side of the political spectrum apparently were under the impression that the astoundingly high approval numbers that followed Barack Obama into office in January 2009 were permanent when, in fact, they were an expression of general relief that an unpopular president was leaving office.

Obama and the Democrats have experienced something that nearly every president and his supporters have experienced in the history of this nation — a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. It is the main reason why midterm elections tend to go against the party in power.

I think (and, again, I could be wrong, although I know of no experiment that could put this to the test) that the fact that Obama's initial approval numbers were unsustainable has created a problem of credibility for some folks in the media. And that's a problem that was largely created by the media folks themselves — in the way they presented those numbers.

CNN, for example, has long prided itself on its reliance on hard news, yet it has been a target for those on the right for years. During the Clinton presidency, it was derisively called the Clinton News Network because it supposedly promoted Clinton administration policies.

The perception that CNN fawns over the left may be taking its toll with audiences. Bill Carter reported this week, in the New York Times, that CNN's prime time ratings declined in the first quarter of this year, as did MSNBC's — in spite of the fact there was plenty of hard news (i.e., the earthquake in Haiti and the battle over health care reform).

Meanwhile, Carter writes, "the Fox News Channel ... enjoyed its best quarter ever."

Thomas Lifson wrote about this in American Thinker in an article headlined "Liberal media death spiral intensifies." To be sure, Lifson displays some biases of his own. For one, he refers to CNN's Anderson Cooper as "openly gay," a point that is in some dispute (although by casually mentioning it in his article, Lifson was able to fan the flames). Cooper, son of heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, has refused to discuss his sexuality; although he has never married, he has discussed his desire to someday have children.

Whether Cooper is gay or not is really beside the question, and it has no real bearing on the subject being discussed. Nevertheless, Lifson raises a point that is more germane when he observes that Fox is "the only major news source willing to ask tough questions to President Obama and the Democrats."

Now, there is an issue that has dogged Obama since the 2008 campaign. It has long been asserted that many in the media gave Obama a free pass during the campaign while seizing every opportunity to criticize Sarah Palin. It may be a false assertion, but it is tough to plausibly present that case when one compares video from Obama's campaign coverage and Palin's.

Well, I guess that's plain vanilla compared to John Avlon's article for The Daily Beast that quoted a Harris poll that made such incendiary suggestions as "[t]wo–thirds think [Obama's] a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim — and 24 percent say 'he may be the Antichrist.' "

This seems almost fundamental to me, but Greg Marx felt compelled to remind journalists, in the Columbia Journalism Review, that they should not do what Avlon did: He made references to the complete results of the poll, which would not be available for a few days. And that, Marx wrote, meant that "there was no way for readers to see them — and, more importantly, no way for skeptics to examine the poll's methodology — as the early numbers filtered through the media."

When those results did come out, they were "promptly and persuasively skewered."

Yet there were many in the general population who believed those conclusions, and there are some who still believe, in spite of the evidence, that they are accurate.

"[T]he existence of these polls makes it harder to communicate good information," writes Marx. "For a number of reasons, it would be journalistically valuable to try to deduce the broader state of opinion among conservative voters, and both polling and old–fashioned reporting can play a role in that process."

But he has a warning. "[I]n order both to be credible and to be perceived as credible, that undertaking has to come from a place of open inquiry, not from an expectation that the results will boost book sales, create a news cycle, or confirm a political narrative. The whole appeal of polling is its promise (sometimes oversold) to produce objective, almost scientific data that tells us something about the state of our politics. When that enterprise itself becomes an exercise in political gamesmanship, it may foster cynicism about the utility and quality of any effort to collect information. If any given piece of news is valuable only insofar as it advances a particular political view, then they are all in a sense equivalent, which is to say worthless."

In essence, Marx advocates "closer scrutiny." Those in the Fourth Estate "need to push back against rhetorical opportunism and statistical sloppiness on all sides. Journalists can do this by not cutting corners when reporting and compiling data — but also by making the case for why methodological rigor is valuable, and by providing readers with the tools to evaluate information themselves."

My friend was right when he wrote about the necessity of the watchdog role played by journalists. But journalists must be diligent watchdogs not only when dealing with elected officials — but also with any other source of information.

In the quest for the sensational to drive up ratings or increase circulation figures, it is all too easy for journalists to be used.

And then they cease to be free.

I think I would rather be wrong on my own from time to time.

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