Following up on my rant about guns on college campuses, I’d like to point out that a very large number of people believe both of the following:

1. College campuses are full of over-emotional, overly-hormoned, drunken, drugged, stressed-out, irresponsible louts who shouldn’t be allowed to carry guns.
2. We should achieve maximum voter turnout on college campuses.

To my mind, if we trust a man with a vote we should trust him a gun. But I regard both as the honors and torments of free men.

Apollo posted this at 12:47 AM HKT on Saturday, March 5th, 2011 as Philosophy, Politics

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Now there are six senators not running for reelection. Huzzah!

The U.S. Senate over the last decade or so has been a national embarrassment. I wish everyone who’s served more than one term would just quit. We might lose some good senators, but the amount of deadwood that built up over the 80s and 90s has made the institution the ass-clown convention we all know and love.  We’ve been fortunate to see a lot of turnover in the last few elections, and it looks like this year we’ll have even more.

Apollo posted this at 6:24 PM HKT on Saturday, February 19th, 2011 as Amer-I-Can!, Politics

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People tend to see what they want to see in political figures.  Consider this old Goldberg file about three old Reaganites: Joshua Muravchik, a foreign policy specialist; Irwin Stelzer, an economist; and Michael Novak, a theologian.  Each of them had a very different view of Reagan:

In the course of his answer, Muravchik said that the Reagan movement was primarily a foreign-policy cause united around defeating Communism. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I recall [he said this]. At this assertion, an “au contraire” was offered from Irwin Stelzer, Ronald Reagan’s former director of regulatory affairs. He said that Reaganism was essentially an economic philosophy and while anti-Communism was surely a vital part, foreign-policy activists were simply another wing emanating from the core of the true Reagan coalition. Seconds after Stelzer made his comments, my friend Michael Novak — one of America’s leading Catholic intellectuals, former Templeton Prize winner and an ambassador-at-large under Reagan — begged to differ. While, of course, fighting for free markets and against the Red menace was vital to Reaganism, these policies were largely outgrowths of a moral and religious vision, which is why the Reagan movement was essentially a religious cause.

In each case, what Reagan was got a heavy dose of coloring from the perspective of whoever was telling the story.  Robert Samuelson comments on and falls prey to this today:

We are deluged with Ronald Reagan celebrations and retrospectives, but most are misleading. They omit Reagan’s singular domestic achievement and the wellspring of his popularity: the defeat of double-digit inflation. In 1979 and 1980, inflation averaged 13 percent; by 1984, it was 4 percent — and falling. Without subdued inflation, the economy would have remained a mess and Reagan might have lost his 1984 re-election bid. He certainly wouldn’t have won his 58.5 percent to 40.4 percent landslide.You will not find this in most of today’s Reagan appraisals, which tell us more about the appraisers than about Reagan. In an 11-page cover package, Time magazine doesn’t mention inflation but pronounces Reagan a “transformational” leader whose political style — not his policies — should be emulated by Barack Obama. In its 11 pages on Reagan, the conservative Weekly Standard also avoids inflation and argues that Reaganism endures as the rediscovery of the “principles of the founding.”

Coincidentally, Robert Samuelson’s book is The Great Inflation and its Aftermath.

Hubbard posted this at 2:04 PM HKT on Friday, February 11th, 2011 as Politics, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet

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Egyptians need to come up with their own government. A people becomes free either when a tyrant is forcibly stripped of power (see U.S.A., Japan ca. 1945, France ca. 1789, Russia ca. 1919 and 1991) or after a very long time of gradual changes while suffering under marginally less tyrannical governments (see England).

The Egyptians have the chance to secure liberty and prosperity for themselves and their posterity. Either they can handle it, or they can’t. There’s no foreign army there to enforce good behavior; it’s all up to them.

In 1787, when America faced a constitutional crisis, some of its greatest citizens gathered in Philadelphia and, illegally, drafted a brand new constitution and seized control of the country through strength of argument and popular referendum. I’m not saying that Egyptians must do the same to earn self-government; frankly, holding anyone to the standards of The Founders is preposterous. But that’s the ideal to which popular uprisings should aspire.

Either the Egyptians can handles self-government – in which case some group will assemble and peaceably seize control – or they cannot. In either case, they shall get the government they deserve. I hope our national leaders understand that now is the time for all good men to STFU, and I hope against reason that Egyptians rise to the occasion. But the more we get involved in Cairo, the worse things will be.

Apollo posted this at 8:21 PM HKT on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 as Politics, Those Wacky Foreigners, Tragedy

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The American Spectator tartly notes:

Even as late as his Senate campaign, Webb favored capital-gains tax cuts, defended the Second Amendment, and seemed open to voting to confirm conservative judges. But once he was elected, the man Andrew Ferguson called “the most sophisticated right-wing reactionary to run on a Democratic ticket since Grover Cleveland” compiled a conventional liberal voting record virtually indistinguishable from Harry Reid’s.

Gone were Webb’s fiery denunciations of liberalism. He campaigned not only with Clinton but also John Kerry, a man whose hand Webb reportedly refused to shake for 20 years after the Vietnam War. The Jim Webb of Born Fighting and the op-ed page wasn’t the man who served in the Senate. The party-line Democrat and netroots darling who replaced him was unlikely to win reelection because the political ground shifted beneath Webb’s feet. He barely beat a mistake-prone incumbent in a Democratic year as Virginia was turning blue; he stood little chance as Virginia trends back to the right and has become ground zero for opposition to Obamacare, for which Webb voted.

It’s worth recalling that Webb’s left of center voting record was, if not predicted, at least strongly suspected, by none other than Andrew Ferguson:

Webb’s views of immigration, like many of his positions on questions of domestic policy, are unformed. It’s not hard to imagine where his populism and ethnic allegiance would lead him, though. One thing that all economists agree on—those who favor the present influx of immigrants and those who don’t—is that mass immigration lowers the wages of unskilled, uneducated native-born workers; “my people,” as Webb calls them. A quick way to raise those wages would be to cut off the future flow of unskilled immigration. Yet this step toward “economic fairness” is not available to a Democratic candidate these days (or to many Republicans either).

In a brief and uncomfortable stump speech, Webb told the Hispanic crowd that he was against a guest-worker program. “We must first define our borders,” he said. “And then we must ensure corporate responsibility, because a lot of this is going to come down to the employers.”

The crowd seemed puzzled. Later reporters asked Webb to clarify his position. With Tejada next to him, he said he favored some path to legalization and citizenship for the illegals already here. Tejada nodded solemnly. But what about the future? a reporter asked. Would Webb favor tough economic sanctions against businesses that employ illegals, as a way of drying up the tide of immigrants?

“Yes,” Webb said, “there needs to be corporate enforcement. We’ve had no corporate enforcement for six years! There’s got to be employer sanctions, otherwise you’re going to keep wages down. We have got to get a handle on this.”

Tejada glanced at the ceiling. Punishing employers who hire illegals is not, needless to say, part of the game plan for the community, or for Arlington Democrats.

After Webb was gone, I asked Tejada about this. “Does Webb really want to punish employers who hire members of the community?”

“The devil is in the details,” Tejada said. “Jim is a very complex thinker. We as a country need to have a long debate about these things.”

“But wouldn’t punishing employers reduce the opportunities for workers coming across the border?” I said.

“We will continue to work with Jim on this,” Tejada said. “We will consult with him, advise him going forward. Educate him.”

Every now and then, voting for the person rather than the party makes sense (see Lieberman, Joe).  But in twenty-first century America, most of the time it makes sense to vote for the party, which is a better predictor of how a politician will vote than his idiosyncrasies.

Hubbard posted this at 12:00 PM HKT on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 as Politics, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past

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You can prove almost anything when you pick your three favorite data points:

Anyway, when you look at the course of revolution in the modern era, it’s always the same-old same-old:

• Czar Nicky — Kerensky — Lenin
• Kaiser Willie — Weimar Republic — Hitler
• Shah Pahlavi — Mr. Bani Sadr — Khomeini

Really? That’s a comprehensive list of “revolution in the modern era” that’s useful for analyzing the Egyptian crisis? How about:

• Pflimlin — DeGaulle — Pompidou

Oh, wait, that revolution turned out a little different. Well, uh, how about:

• Honecker — Kohl — Schroder

I’m not fan of Schroder, but I still think that one turned out better than the original three. I’ll try again:

• Chiang — Mao — Deng

That one took a different curve altogether. Chiang was no hero, Mao is a legitimate contender for the title of Worst Man Who Ever Lived and probably champion in the Worst National Leader Ever category, but Deng was alright, all things considered. At the end of it, the country is almost unquestionably more prosperous than it’s been in it’s entire history, and has been at peace for over fifty years. Is China better or worse off than if there’d been no revolution? Considering Chinese history in the hundred years before the revolution, I don’t think there’s an obvious answer to that.

• Allende — Pinochet — Aylwin
• Batista — Castro — ?
• Whoever came before Pol Pot — Pol Pot — Whoever came after Pol Pot

I’m really not drawing any obvious conclusions from this. Some revolutions go up and stay up, others go down and stay down, others go up and down, and the judgment is still out on others. For Michael Walsh, though, it’s “the same-old same-old.” I guess that’s why I also disagree with him over whether an Egyptian revolution would be a good thing or bad. He thinks it’s just more of the “same-old same-old,” where obviously a bad guy will come to power. I think it’s more of the “same-old same-old,” where it’s ambiguous who will come to power.

P.S. George Washington.

Apollo posted this at 7:04 PM HKT on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 as Politics, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past

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Governor Moonbeam today: Egyptian protests show us the significance of allowing people to vote, so Republicans should allow a state referendum on tax increases. Because the people have a right to vote.

Yes, I think that Moonbeam is right that Americans have much to learn about democracy from the Egyptians. Why, some of us still think that the people shouldn’t be allowed to alter their constitution when the amendment conflicts with what 4 out of 7 judges think. And certain elected officials place so little value on the votes of the people that they won’t even defend the result of a referendum in court. And certain states, rather than punishing those who hold their votes in such low esteem, elevate them to higher office.

Apollo posted this at 8:32 AM HKT on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 as Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, Politics

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Here is Rep. James Clyburn — the 3rd-ranking Democrat in the House — speaking on NPR yesterday about the Giffords’ shooting and freedom of speech.  I’ve posted the entire interview:

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Gabrielle Giffords’ brother-in-law, astronaut Scott Kelly, said this from the International Space Station today.

Commander SCOTT KELLY (International Space Station): These days, we’re constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions but also with our irresponsible words.

SIEGEL: Our irresponsible words. As we’ve heard, there’s been much discussion of the tone of current political discourse and the relationship between fighting words and violence.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

During the last election, for instance, Sarah Palin’s political action committee posted an online map, locating 20 vulnerable House Democrats who voted for the health care overhaul. Each district, including that of Congresswoman Giffords, was denoted with a crosshairs symbol. Some say there is no causal relationship between campaign rhetoric like that and violence.

SIEGEL: Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, says there is. And he joins us now. Welcome to the program, Congressman.

Representative JAMES CLYBURN (Democrat, South Carolina): Thank you so much for having me.

SIEGEL: What do say to people who, based on what they know in this case of the man who’s been arrested and charged with a crime, say this isnt politics, it’s not about political discourse, this is about mental illness?

Rep. CLYBURN: Well, you know, I think that those of us who are armed with the gift of gab are responsible for what we say and how we say it. And when people hear things and feel that they can make a martyr out of themselves because of the discourse around the political arena, they sometimes react with ways that are socially unacceptable. But that does not absolve us.

SIEGEL: Beyond self-restraint and self-policing, if you will, would you support, say, a move that would extend the legal bar against threatening the president or the vice president, to any threats made against any member of Congress?

Rep. CLYBURN: Well, I think we reached the point where that may be necessary. And I understand such legislation is going to be introduced. And if it is, I will support it. I may also try to amend it, because I think we might look at whether or not we ought to make it a federal crime to carry a loaded gun within a certain distance of people who are participating in federal elections.

I thought it was very unseemly for President Obama to be appearing at events and I believe it was in Arizona and for people to go to the event with guns strapped to their sides. Whats that all about? These symbols influence people and those people who are not mentally together may take it to a level which we did not intend.

SIEGEL: But is there a danger of going too far, in that political language is filled with images of war? A campaign is called a campaign because there were military campaigns before there were political campaigns. Some people say if we do this, we’ll end up censoring people to an unfortunate degree.

Rep. CLYBURN: Well, I dont know that it’s necessarily to an unfortunate degree. Would you say it is unfortunate restraint or free speech when a justice said it does not give us the right to yell fire in a crowded theater? I dont think so. And I do believe that people can tell the difference between the sight of a gun and an asterisk. If you want a target a political district put an asterisk on it. The sight of a gun barrel, I think, carries a different connotation.

SIEGEL: Congressman Clyburn, I want to ask you to draw upon your own personal experience in your life. People are commonly saying that the political environment nationwide is today more vitriolic, more toxic than ever.

You’re an African-American from South Carolina, and you came up at a time when a black man who asserted himself could face really serious consequence. And there was nothing unusual about death threats at that time. Does this really compare to, say, the 1960s in South Carolina?

Rep. CLYBURN: Well, during the 1960s, we saw the cattle prods. We did see some murders and they were very, very unfortunate. But we didnt have the Internet back then. We had restraint on speech back then. I came up in a time that the Fairness Doctrine did not allow media outlets to say things about a candidate or a person in public office without giving that person equal time to respond.

And I really believe that everybody needs to take a look at where we are pushing things, and may need to take a serious step back and evaluate whats going on here.

SIEGEL: Well, Congressman Clyburn, thank you very much for talking to us.

Rep. CLYBURN: Thank you so much for having me.

SIEGEL: Thats Congressman James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.

Tom posted this at 12:17 PM HKT on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 as Liberty and/or Security, Politics

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Where people stop refering to everything that disproportionately affects black people as “a civil rights issue.”

If elected (or appointed-by-others-who-are-elected) local school boards run school systems into the ground through a combination of incompetence and giving the teachers’ unions the run of the place, whose fault is that? The voters’, that’s whose. “I voted for a bunch of nitwits” is not a statement of “a civil rights issue” and it does not make you oppressed. Quite the opposite, actually.

Apollo posted this at 1:13 PM HKT on Monday, January 3rd, 2011 as Edjamacation, Politics, Politics and the English Language, Race

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The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters.

Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world – more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined – deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

These numbers are part of why those of us who grew up in rural parts of the country simply don’t comprehend the gun-grabbing impulses of some. Every single year, millions of Americans carry high power rifles into the woods and more or less do as they please – some shoot at deer, some just drink a lot – and it is a complete non-story. The number of people injured and killed by these guns will pale in comparison to those injured and killed in driving accidents during the same time period.

But however well or badly we handle our guns, woe will befall he who thinks he can conquer America. 500 years ago, Machiavelli compared ancient Persia with then-modern France. Persia was highly centralized, so the emperor was firmly in control of all parts of his realm, and could muster enormous numbers of men to any part of the country. But if you could defeat that army and the central authority that raised it, then you would almost immediately control the whole nation, as Alexander showed. Medieval France, on the other hand, was very decentralized, with petty dukes controlling small centers of power throughout the country. Because of this, the king of France had only marginal control over vast swaths of his country , but no invader could stand a chance at conquering France because of all the small bands of local opposition.

I wish N.M. was around today, if only to hear the praise he would have for a nation that every year assembles and then disbands the world’s largest army purely for the purpose of managing its deer population. For millenia, philosophers have pondered how one can maintain a well-armed population that can fend off all attackers, while simultaneously maintaining ordered governance.  In America, we’ve fulfilled this dream, and we’ve done it so well and so effortlessly that no one seems to have noticed.

Apollo posted this at 2:12 AM HKT on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Politics

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This article, from some New York-based publication, is sheer enjoyment from start to finish.

Turns out, lots of Congresscritters who lost feel bad about it, and some are confused about why they lost. But if you’re concerned that the Democrats are going to learn any lessons from defeat, or even believe that they did something wrong, you can rest at ease.

Denial and bargaining are behind them, and some members who lost seem to have arrived at a shaky acceptance, shaped by their sense that the election was not about them.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m glad that they’ve stopped denying that “the election was not about them.” If there’s one thing that truly shows they’re moving along in the grief process, it’s the shifting of blame away from themselves.

“I don’t think the election had very much to do with me, and I don’t think it had much to do with my opponent,” said Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat who had served Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District since 1983. “That frustration and anger and desire to send a message transcended the knowledge my constituents had of my work in the district.”

Yes, Democrats, your stupid constituents are to blame for this. Your ignorant, stupid constituents. I think lots of the remaining Democrats need to start pre-explaining their 2012 losses by calling their constituents ignorant before the election, rather than waiting until afterward when it just looks like rationalization.

Mr. Oberstar, who was tossed out with several state legislators from his area, said he was no match for the “upfeed” from the powerful Republican ground game that moved against him. “I expected to leave at some point, that I’d make that decision in due course,” he said. “I’m not angry; I’m disappointed.”

Is there any greater demonstration of our governing class’s sense of entitlement than for a Congresscritter, who faces an election every two years, to presume that he controls how long he’ll stay in Congress?

But my favorite comes from Mike Castle. Now if you’ll jump in the Wayback Machine with me, we’ll revisit 2006 and 2008. After (and even before) those elections, Republicans actually mouthed words that purported to show they had learned a lesson. Phrases like, “We’ve come unmoored from our principles,” or “We were elected to change Washington, but Washington changed us” were rampant, even from elected Republicans who stayed in office. There was a palpable sense from the party that understood they had done something wrong.

In hindsight, there are not many who better represents what Republicans did wrong than Mike Castle. His one saving grace (morally speaking) is that he never had any of the conservative principles that others in the party lost. But he was the sort of big-spending, bring-home-the-bacon Republican who we were blaming for our losses over the last two elections.

He ponders daily, he said, which is preferable: to falter in a tight race with a Democratic opponent, or to have lost in the primary, as he did, to the inexperienced Tea Party candidate who never had a shot in the general election.

“My wife argues it’s almost better to lose the way we did because it all seems so irrational,” he said. “But you lose, you lose. I wish I could say one way was fun. They’re both pretty bad.”

Can you think of a better example of someone just refusing to accept any personal responsibility? He lost to an “inexperienced . . . candidated who never had a shot in the general election,” and there’s absolutely no indication here that he thinks he had anything to do with the loss. O’Donnell’s inexperience and unelectability are here used to show how irrational the voters were, not to show how badly Castle failed.

It just up and happened. Had nothing to do with him not adequately representing Delaware Republicans, had nothing to do with him being a petty jackass (as proved by his refusal to campaign for O’Donnell), had nothing to do with him being part of our big spending problem.

Nope, it’s just “irrational.” Can’t understand it. Elections are as unpredictable as roulette wheels, and his number finally came up.

Good riddance. If I had to attribute our current problems to a single cause, it would be a lack of individual responsibility. Elected officials refuse to accept it, and voters refuse to force them to accept it. Show me a defeated Congressman who says “I lost because I failed to do my job properly,” and I’ll be sympathetic to that guy. As for the no talent ass-clowns quoted in this story, I hope they keep shedding those yummy, yummy tears.

P.S. Arlen Specter is going to be replaced by Pat Toomey. Not since Lincoln replaced Buchanan has a newly elected official been such a dramatic improvement over his predecessor.

Apollo posted this at 11:04 AM HKT on Saturday, November 20th, 2010 as Buffoon Watch, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, Politics, Running with the antelope, The Democratic Congress

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What does the electorate actually think?  AEI crunched the numbers.

Hubbard posted this at 11:54 AM HKT on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 as Nerdom, Politics

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After Goldwater’s debacle in 1964, Richard Nixon observed that Republicans couldn’t win the presidency with only the Goldwaterites, but also couldn’t win without them.  For Republicans, the tea partiers are the 21st Century Goldwaterites.

Where both the establishment and the tea party (eventually) agreed, the candidates generally won: Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Marco Rubio in Florida, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire.  Where the tea partiers went rogue and blew off the establishment, things got ugly: Carl Paladino in New York, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada.  Two that are too close to call as of this writing are Ken Buck in Colorado and Joe Miller in Alaska, but both look like they’ve blown it.

Another random thought: Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies concept might need to be retired.  The Mama Grizzlies lost (Whitman, Fiorina, Angle, McMahon, O’Donnell) or underperformed (Nikki Haley in South Carolina).  Kelly Ayotte, who won New Hampshire going away, should be studied.  Most of these women were viciously smeared—and even in a big Republican year, the smears worked.

Hubbard posted this at 9:57 AM HKT on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 as Politics

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Gallup’s assessment of their final polling is staggering:

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

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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

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