Gallup’s historical model suggests that a party needs at least a two-point advantage in the national House vote to win a majority of the 435 seats. The Republicans’ current likely voter margin suggests that this scenario is highly probable, making the question of interest this election not whether the GOP will win the majority, but by how much. Taking Gallup’s final survey’s margin of error into account, the historical model predicts that the Republicans could gain anywhere from 60 seats on up, with gains well beyond that possible.
It should be noted, however, that this year’s 15-point gap in favor of the Republican candidates among likely voters is unprecedented in Gallup polling and could result in the largest Republican margin in House voting in several generations. This means that seat projections have moved into uncharted territory, in which past relationships between the national two-party vote and the number of seats won may not be maintained.
Neat. Here are some historical numbers. Democrats lost 54 seats in 1994. The last time a party lost more in a midterm was 1938, when Democrats lost 72. (The Democrats also lost 54 in the 1946 midterm; then the Republicans lost 75 in 1948, a presidential election year.) Largest midterm loss of the 20th century: Republicans lost 77 seats in 1922. Largest loss ever: Democrats loss 125 seats (and Republicans gained 130) in 1894. Largest number of Republicans in the House: 302 after the 1920 elections. The last time fewer than 200 Democrats were elected to the House: 1946. The last time it happened before that: 1928. 1928 was also the last the Republicans topped 250. Since then, Republicans maxed out at 246 seats in 1946, but the Democrats have had over 250 seats 21 times, including 2008, when they won 257.
Apollo posted this at 10:41 PM HKT on Sunday, October 31st, 2010 as Politics
Back when establishment Republicans were trying to convince everyone that Charlie Crist was a conservative, the tea partiers didn’t buy it, and supported Marco Rubio. Were the tea partiers just being ideological purists driving moderates out of the Republican party, as the storyline went at the time? Or was Crist a snake in the grass who could not be trusted?
If there are still doubts in your mind as to whether marijuana will eventually become legal, this story will remove them.
When alcohol was chased underground during Prohibition, the resulting clandestine booze was notoriously rank — the paint-stripping moonshine, the barely drinkable homemade wine. Marijuana, however, has undergone radical advances since the war on drugs sent it deep into the shadows 25 years ago.
In the now semi-open marijuana landscape of Northern California, I find a plant species transformed. Skilled mom-and-pop breeders have developed hundreds of high-performing cultivated varieties, and home hobbyists have grown them to perfection using new techniques and technologies. Marijuana has never been more potent, more productive and more varied in its appearance, flavor and effect. It is twice as productive as in the 1980s and three or more times as potent. As the supply has increased, the value has dropped or stagnated, from $5,000 a pound 15 years ago to about $3,000 today. By the ounce, Ramsay says, the choicest varieties still sell for as much as $400, but the cannabis connoisseur can pick up high-grade strains for half that amount today.
Many Americans of a certain age will remember that in the 1970s, seedy homegrown pot was reviled for its raw, throat-burning quality. Now dope-smoking locavores steer clear of cheap, low- and mid-grade weed in favor of organically grown boutique strains. They speak of “presentation” and varieties so agreeably complex that “you inhale one flavor and exhale another.” Just as in the vineyards of the Napa Valley a few miles to the north, complexities come from the soil, from the fruits of labor, from careful breeding. Suddenly, pot has terroir.
The notion that the government can make a plant illegal becomes more obnoxious the more I think about it. I’ve got no clue whether Prop 19 will pass, but it’s largely irrelevant. Within a decade, pot will be legal nationwide.
From his first day, I’ve said that Barry was petty; a very small man on a very big stage. If I had to sum up the first two years of Obama in five minutes, it would be this video clip. Everybody else should shut up so he can tell you what’s in your best interest, because the time for debate is over. His preferred method of persuasion is bullying, and when that doesn’t work, frankly he doesn’t have much else except the ability to look huffy. One suspects he was only a few moments away from taking his teleprompter and going home.
This bit from Jonathan Chait is as eye-rollingly hackish as one should expect from its source. Turns out, unless Democrats lose more than 50 seats in the House, then the election had nothing to do with Obama’s policies. It’s all “structural.” Perhaps Tea Partiers should have just stayed home, as they were going to get control of the House anyhow.
1. This is a classic causation/correlation problem. The paper Chait bases his theory on shows nothing but correlation. The model’s answers are predetermined by starting off with the presumption that the president’s party will lose seats in the mid-term. This generally happens, but not always.
By presuming this enormous underlying premise, the model doesn’t purport to show causes, just make predictions. In two of the last three mid-term elections, the president’s party gained seats and this model didn’t see it coming. In 2002, it would have predicted Democrats taking over the House. In 1994, it would have predicted the Democrats barely losing the House. Seems to me, this model was a lot more accurate at predicting election results during the Cold War (and even then, it was off by fairly wide margins at times) than after the Cold War.
2. More interestingly, one of the three “structural” issues the model takes account of is disposable income. To label this as “structural” is to repudiate the first two years of the Obama administration. Porkulus and bailouts were all hinged on the presumption that the federal government could, at will, boost the American economy. The president and his supporters don’t consider disposable income to be “structural” at all, they consider it a function of government action. Does the president effect the economy or not? If he doesn’t and the economy is merely “structural,” I’d like for the resulting Republican Congress to demand our trillions of dollars back, as they were wasted from the beginning. If the president does effect the economy, then this model doesn’t hinge on “structural” issues at all. Presidents get the whoopins they deserve.
3. What’s interesting about this election isn’t merely the number of Republicans who will win, but the types of Republicans who will win. There is a large cadre of adamant right-wingers about to win election. Frickin’ Hayek is on the bestseller list (!) and people make Ayn Rand references with seeming impunity. It’d be one thing if a bunch of mealy-mouthed Mike Castles were about to be elected on promises to investigate government waste and make minor reforms. That’s more or less what happened in 2006, when Democrats ran a bunch of centristy candidates in marginal districts campaigning for budget balancing and against corruption. But that ain’t what’s happening. We’re about to see a Congressional majority elected after campaigning on stopping and eventually rolling back the president’s entire agenda.
4. There are two types of elections in which the president’s party loses seats. Either they lose seats and maintain their majority or minority status, or they lose seats and lose their majority. It strikes me that these elections are qualitatively different, not just quantitatively. Where a president’s party loses 72 seats but maintains its majority (1938), it’s a much smaller repudiation of the president than when the president’s party loses 52 seats and loses its majority (1930). Over the last 27 mid-terms, going back to 1902, only 7 times has a president lost a Congressional majority in the mid-term. Compare that to 10 times when a president’s party has lost seats but maintained its majority, and another 3 times when a president’s party has expanded its majority. It may well be the case that the president’s party is predetermined to lose seats in the mid-term (I’m not convinced this is true anymore), but in the 20 elections where a president was elected with a majority of the House, he maintained that majority 2/3 of the time. Losing a majority is a special treat for truly unpopular presidents.
Apollo posted this at 11:15 AM HKT on Saturday, October 30th, 2010 as Politics
A misanthrope was enjoying the brisk weather when the Devil dropped by to chat.
“Cold?” asked the misanthrope.
“I come from a hotter climate,” said the Devil. “Still, since you were actually enjoying the day, I figured it was time to rain on the parade.”
“Didn’t Milton once say something about it being better to rain in hell?”
“No more ghastly puns,” said the Devil. “But if you really want me to go, I will.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” said the misanthrope. “Right now, I’m trying to shake the sense of foreboding I’m feeling about this election.”
“You’re a right winger,” said the Devil. “Are you afraid that Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? I’d guess they’ll win everything that isn’t nailed down.”
“Winning elections is only part of the game,” countered the misanthrope. “What you campaign on and how you govern interests me rather more. And the recent past election cycles have a clear lesson and warning.”
“Are you thinking of the tea partiers, who were inconspicuous in 2006 and 2008?” asked the Devil.
“They were rather invisible, weren’t they?” agreed the misanthrope. “Mostly, they were thoroughly disgusted with Republicans, but knew that Democrats would be worse, so they simply stayed quiet. But I’m really thinking of the movement that was the left wing precursor to them, the Anti War Fanatics, AWF for short.”
“Ah yes,” said the Devil. “They’ve mostly gone into hiding now, haven’t they? That was rather inevitable, in my less than humble opinion. America can’t avoid wars and death, and campaigning against it is rather like promising the electorate unicorns and rainbows.”
“Which is what President Obama did,” observed the misanthrope. “His campaign caught the energy of the old Howard Dean folk. The big difference between him and Hillary Clinton was that she’d backed the war and that he hadn’t. Then he beat John McCain in the general—the Senator most associated with the Iraq surge and who forced the appointment of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.”
“So naturally, the AWF expected a dovish administration,” said the Devil.
“Instead, President Obama—to his credit—kept Gates on and made Clinton his secretary of state,” said the misanthrope. “Though he campaigned on rainbows and unicorns, he has governed realistically. But this has left the AWF utterly disheartened: they wanted their rainbows and unicorns! In short, the AWF is feeling like the tea party did in 2006: they don’t like what the current administration is doing, but even though the other guys will be worse, they feel betrayed and are sitting it out.”
“So why does left wing angst upset you?” asked the Devil.
“Because it’s a precursor to what the right is probably going to go through,” answered the misanthrope. “Many people in the tea party movement seem to think that the federal budget is bloated thanks to earmarks, which are about 1% of all federal spending. The real budget busters are Social Security, the Defense Department, and the Medicare and Medicaid tag team. So the tea party movement will clean up in 2010 like the AWF did in 2006. They may even win the presidency in 2012.
“But cutting those programs is going to cause a lot of political pain. Members of the tea party are generally older and more hawkish: they loathe Obamacare because it balances the books by cutting Medicare! They want the best military money can buy! AND they want to balance the budget. This is the fiscal version of rainbows and unicorns.”
“Ah, and now you see what I have seen for a while now,” said the Devil. “Unreality can play well in politics for a while, but from my perspective, it ends wonderfully. Warms the cockles of my heart enough that I can face a brisk fall day. Toodles!”
Hubbard posted this at 11:21 AM HKT on Friday, October 29th, 2010 as Devil and Misanthrope
If anyone needs a good cheer-up today — or cheer-down, depending on one’s disposition — read Ann Althouse’s analysis of President Obama’s obfuscations and dodges regarding DADT and gay marriage. It’s devastating.
[Barry] said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”
It doesn’t make any sense. I have driven into and out of ditches, and I was once pulled out of a ditch. Just because someone pulls you out of a ditch doesn’t mean they get to drive your car or dictate who gets to sit where. Who gets to drive the car is determined by who owns the car. What sort of socialist crapland are we living in when someone gets to drive off in your car just because you drove it into a ditch? The Greeks long ago killed off the Persian notion that, as Cyrus would put it, the flute should be given to the best flute player. We have a system of justice that revolves around private property, thank you very much.
And just because you drove off into a ditch doesn’t mean you’ll do it again, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re a worse driver than the first shlub with a 4X4 to come along and pull you out. In fact, I’d say that driving off into a ditch and surviving is valuable experience; having learned a lesson from driving off into a ditch (i.e. the importance of countersteering), I’m less likely to run off in a ditch than someone who has less skills and fewer earned experiences.
This doesn’t even get started on more fundamental questions: were we going in the right direction before driving into the ditch? is the new driver going to take us in a better direction, or are we actually better off staying in the ditch? is the new driver just going to run us into a worse ditch? was the ditch, in fact, just a rough patch we needed to get over in order to get to our destination, and going around the ditch is just going to add lots of time to our overall itinerary?
This analogy is inane, and it could only come from someone who has no personal knowledge about driving into ditches. I don’t really care where Republicans drove us, but Barry is driving me nuts.
Across San Francisco Bay, for example, Victoria Kolakowski was the leading vote-getter in a June election for Superior Court judge in Alameda County; a victory in a runoff next month would make her the first transgender trial court judge in the nation.
“I want people to know that we are capable of being everything,” Ms. Kolakowski said.
Apollo posted this at 10:59 PM HKT on Sunday, October 24th, 2010 as Journalism
We can argue over whether Christine O’Donnell’s understanding of the 1st Amendment matches up with various Warren Court opinions, or we can stare mind-boggled as Barbara Boxer goes on national television and simply makes up numbers and has no clue how much “the stim” was.
This woman’s been in the senate for 18 years. She chairs a committee. She’s considered a leader of her party.
But don’t let me distract you with something petty like an elected official being clueless about the billions/trillions (eh, what’s the difference?) she votes on. Sarah Palin’s probably out there insisting that something interesting happened in 1773, so we should go make fun of her.
Later on I read The Fountainhead several times and lots of other books as well before writing a few of my own, which is why I am always glad when anybody reads anything at all. However, to tea partiers who have just discovered Ayn Rand, I give warning: You are approaching her backwards.
You are presently hooked on her third and final novel, her tour de force, Atlas Shrugged, because it demolishes socialism and exalts capitalism. The trouble is, it reads like a first novel by a writer who has yet to learn control. It’s much too long, her characters talk too much, and she talks too much, i.e., she commits that most mortal of literary sins: She “tells” instead of “shows.”
Her second novel, The Fountainhead, shows vast improvement, but the characters still talk in philosophical tracts instead of dialogue. For the best of Ayn Rand you must read her first novel, We the Living. Set in early Bolshevik Russia, its narrative thrust is flawlessly timed, the heroine has two lovers, an aristocrat and a Communist cast in the Ashley Wilkes/Rhett Butler mode, and it has a heart-wrenching final scene reminiscent of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s description of Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom’s Cabin— except it’s even better.
Hubbard posted this at 12:43 PM HKT on Monday, October 18th, 2010 as Belles Lettres