How Crucial Is It To Win Primaries In Swing States???

With Mitt Romney escaping Michigan bruised, but intact, his attention now turns to a perhaps more crucial contest—Ohio.  Among the Super Tuesday contests, Ohio is important not just for the number of delegates it will award but because the Buckeye State will garner intense interest in the fall.  Whereas President Obama’s polling numbers in Michigan have been quite strong, and he won the state by more than 16 points in 2008, Ohio is less friendly territory.

One question we might ask is whether there is a correlation between a candidate’s performance in a state’s primary and how they will fare in November. The ability to pivot from the primary to the general is a skill that all winning candidates must develop.  On one hand, there’s reason to doubt a clear connection between a state’s primary and general contest.  Primaries, we know, bring a much more ideological electorate to the polls.  A losing primary candidate may have been “too moderate” for the party faithful—but consequently more competitive in the more moderate fall electorate. 

On the other hand, primaries give candidates the opportunity to build an organization and campaign infrastructure that can be put to work in November.  Those candidates who can win primaries and caucuses are those who demonstrate the ability to build the massive organization that will be crucial to winning the general.  Much of this organization will be directed toward the larger general election audience once the nomination is secured.  If they fail at this during the primaries, they may fail at it during the fall.

Should a connection between the primary and general exist, it is of most importance in “toss-up” or “swing” states.    Mitt Romney’s primary loss in South Carolina will not—absent complete collapse—matter in the fall.  Clearly more important was what transpired the next week in Florida.  It’s almost impossible to conceive of a Romney (or Santorum for that matter) win in November that doesn’t include winning the Sunshine State. 

So what does history tell us???

Most recent nomination contests—with the exception of the Democrats in 2008—have wrapped up quite quickly.  With the winner rolling through state after state there haven’t been a large number of states that allow us to explore the question of whether candidates can bounce back from primary losses.  However if, as it now seems, the GOP contest is going to go on for a while, we should have the opportunity to dig into this phenomenon some more.  Despite the relative lack of test cases, there are some examples that jump out.

Looking at those competitive or “toss-up” states, we find relatively few instances in recent cycles where a candidate lost his party’s primary or caucus there, and then recovered to win the state in November.  The one exception to this is Barack Obama.  In 2008, Obama lost spring contests in New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Mexico.  Despite this, he won all of them in the general.  In this sense, the long nomination fight that forced Obama to build statewide organizations may have paid off in the fall.

John McCain, who wrapped up the GOP contests more swiftly and with fewer losses, failed to win any swing states that he also lost during the primaries.  In 2004, John Kerry swept to the nomination in even faster order with only a small handful of primary losses.  None were in states seen as competitive at the time.   In 2000, George W. Bush won one swing state he lost in the primary—New Hampshire—while losing another--Michigan.  Bob Dole, in 1996, lost Missouri during the nomination contest but bounced back to win it in the fall.  In 1992 Bill Clinton managed to lose 3 spring state contests that he put in his column in November—New Hampshire, Colorado, and Nevada.  Finally, in 1988, Michael Dukakis managed one of his few fall wins in Iowa, whose caucuses he lost.  On the flip side, whereas George H.W. Bush only lost nine states in the general, three came in normally competitive states that he lost during the primary season—Iowa, Minnesota, and Washington.

So, despite the small number of cases that fit our definition—primary losses in swing states--there seems to be pretty good reason for Mitt Romney to worry about next week’s vote in Ohio.   Like Florida, Ohio is a state that GOP badly needs in November.  Should he fail to defeat Rick Santorum there next week, the loss may prove to be more lethal than even Michigan would have been.

Why Don't People Who Benefit From Government Vote For The Democrats???

Since it was published last week, this story by the New York Times has been garnering a lot of coverage.  In great detail and nuance, it tackles a theme and a dilemma that has dominated our politics for at least the last generation.  As the story illustrates, and as their fantastic mapping shows, Americans have become increasingly dependent on government programs, especially entitlements--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, veterans benefits, and other forms of income support.  At the same time, the willingness to pay for these programs has declined precipitously.  Hence, the current fiscal straits in which we find ourselves.  Ironically, among those most benefiting from these programs has been an attraction to anti-government rhetoric from the right.

In reading this story and exploring the corresponding map, I began to wonder just how those areas most dependent on government income voted over time.  While the story focused in on one county in Minnesota, I wanted to broaden the scope and see if any interesting patterns emerged.  What I decided to do was zoom in on those counties who had the highest degree of what we might call "dependence"--those who received more than 40% of their income from these sources--these are the counties colored dark red on the NYT map. 

In total, there are 82 counties nationwide that fall into this category (I excluded the Alaska census area because voting data wasn't available for it).  I produced a spreadsheet, seen below, that lists these counties--by state--along with their percentage of government "dependence" as well as two other variables that I thought might be revealing: their racial makeup shown as % white; and their poverty rate (both from Census data).  Oftentimes in our politics there has been an assumption that poverty and government dependence is concentrated in minority communities.  This data clearly refutes that.

Next, I wanted to see how each of these counties voted in recent elections.  Rather than code each election, I picked a few that I thought might be of particular interest.  I coded the two most recent presidential elections to see the most recent political behavior of these areas and to explore whether there was any noticeable short term change.  I then decided to look at 1992.  1992 is of note in that it, like 2008, was an election contested during an economic downturn and might produce similar "pro-government" sentiment in those areas of greatest need.  Similarly, I picked 1980.  Also conducted during economic difficulties, 1980 is notable for the rise of Ronald Reagan and the ascendancy of anti-government rhetoric.  Thus, as American politics began to transition away from the New Deal assumptions of the previous generation, we might wonder if areas strongly dependent on government resisted Reagan.  Finally, I picked the 1964 Johnson landslide.  The thinking here is that this election would probably represent the apex of pro-government voting.

In looking at the spreadsheet, very few clear cut trends emerge and there is certainly no correlation between government dependence and support for the Democratic party.  Things are much more complicated (and hence interesting).  Nonetheless, there are a number of things to take note of and explore.  In 2008, of these 82 counties, only 30 voted for Barack Obama.  This is the type of result that makes many Democrats' heads spin.  How is it, they ask, that those voters most benefitting from programs championed by Democrats vote "against their interests"???  This phenomenon garnered a lot of attention a few years back with the publication of Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?"  If we map this voting--coloring Obama counties Blue and McCain counties Red--we get the following:

The most interesting aspect of this map, I think, is the clustering of McCain counties in the Kentucky, Tennesse, Missouri region.  These counties are, as the data suggests, overwhelmingly white and poor.  They also tend to be mountainous, low population, counties in the Appalachian and Ozark ranges.  Looking at the voting over time, these are also counties that have remained, for the most part, consistently Republican.  Clearly, it seems as if there is more than just economics at play here.  Indeed, these areas have long had a political culture that has confounded Democrats' ability to compete, going back generations.  The one modern Democrat who performed well in this region, perhaps not surprisingly, was Bill Clinton.  Not only did Clinton win 60 of the 82 counties nationwide, he did particurly well in this cluster of KY/TN/MO counties--so much so that he won all three states in both 1992 and 1996.  No Democrat has won any of the three since.

How do we explain this change?  While these counties and regions have changed little over the past  decades, they were receptive to Clinton but not Obama (and Kerry).  Going back further, these counties also supported Carter and Johnson.  Is the shift a result of a broader movement against the Democrats, as hinted at in the original NYT story?  Is it the result of the fact that the most recent Democratic nominees were northerners who were perceived as foreign to this region's culture and people?  Clinton hailed from this area and both Carter and LBJ were southerners so there might be some credence to this hypothesis.

A few other observations. 1980 stands out as the year in which these counties' vote was most divided, with Reagan winning 42 and Carter 40 counties respectively.  Thus, the notion that this was perhaps a "tipping point" election may have some confirmation.

Looking at the race variable, while I've so far discussed the overwhelmingly white KY/TN/MO counties, there are a number of overwhelmingly African American counties represented in the data.  Specifically, Perry and Wilcox County Alabama, Marion County South Carolina, and Holmes, Jefferson, Humphreys, and Quitman Counties in Mississippi.  Here, as expected, there was overwhelming support for all of the recent Democratic candidates (back during the lead up to the 2008 election I did a series of posts on the interesting political geography of these regions--see here and here).  Also remember, when looking at the 1964 vote in these counties, that the Voting Rights Act had yet to be passed.  Next, there are a few counties with large Hispanic populations--see those in Texas as well as Mora and Guadalupe in New Mexico.  Finally, make note of some counties with a large Native American population--Apache in Arizona; Sioux in North Dakota; Buffalo and Shannon in South Dakota.  Like with the heavily African American counties, those with large Hispanic or Native American populations have voted as we would expect.

Perhaps the most confounding set of counties--and those that I will need to research more deeply--are those found in Michigan.  What is interesting about these counties is that they are overwhelmingly white, have high degrees of governement "dependence," but are not terribly poor.  Their poverty rates all hover near the statewide average of 15%.  So what explains this?  Going back to the original NYT map, you can separate out the different components of government support.  These counties show a heavy reliance on both Social Security and Medicare, suggesting a large elderly population.  At the same time, though, these counties also have large reliance on unemployment insurance.  In a lot of ways, these counties seem quite similar to Chisago County Minnesota which was the focus of the NYT story.

These are just a few observations based on a cursory examination of this data.  There's a lot more that I hope to delve into, especially focusing on individual counties or regions, in the coming weeks.  What does come through, though, is that voters and regions have voting histories and behaviors that don't fit into a simple narrative or explanation.  This is especially the case when it comes to the correlation between reliance on government and party support.  As the Times story makes clear, voters possess a series of often contradictory feelings and beliefs.  For those on the left who aspire for an electorate that will vote strictly along economic lines, this data is bound to frustrate. 



What the Wilderness Looks Like

For the past several posts, John and I have been spending a bit of time writing about the current state of the Conservative Movement. With the results of the past two elections showing a clear trend in the Democrats’ direction, aided not only by the failures of the Bush administration, but also by demographic and cultural shifts—see Teixeira and Judis—a lot of ink is now being spent debating how the Republicans, and conservatives more broadly, should respond. Do they move leftward and try to recapture some of the vast middle ceded to Obama (thus potentially alienating the conservative base) or do they retrench at the right flank and hope that events bring the electorate back in their direction? While many on the right argue that we are a “center-right” country by temperament, a misreading of the country’s pulse and preferences could spell disaster over the medium and long term. Hence, whether or not the right has a true leader—hence the current kerfuffle about Rush Limbaugh’s place in the conservative pantheon—they seem to be in wilderness mode.
While two election cycles don’t necessarily mean the country is on an irreversible move leftward, I thought I’d look a bit at the last time the country was moving strongly in one direction. Here, however, the move was to the right. If what is happening now is of the same magnitude and duration, Republicans are in for a long period of soul-searching and electoral defeat. My decision to look at where conservatives find themselves was spurred by today’s announcement that Al From, the founder and longtime head of the Democratic Leadership Council, is stepping down as head of the organization. The DLC was created in the midst of the Democrats’ last long period of exile. The goal of the organization, simply stated, was to make the Democrats relevant again. As liberalism reached its nadir in the 1970’s & 1980’s following the collapse of the Great Society, the “big government” solution to policy problems was thrown into disrepute. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were able to capitalize on the excesses of the 1960’s and America’s fear and loathing of rising crime, growing welfare dependency, and affirmative action and bring about a re-ordering of the American polity. The result?? Republicans won 5 of the 6 presidential elections between 1968 and 1988.

To get a sense of just how bad the Democrats’ period of exile was, consider the five elections between 1972 and 1988. With the exception of Jimmy Carter’s Watergate-aided win in 1976, the Republicans not only won all of these contests but won them handily. Here is the Electoral College vote in each of the contests. Overall, Republicans won 2200 electoral votes to the Democrats’ 487—82% of the total. Note how in 3 of these elections (’72, ’80, and ’84) Republicans won more electoral votes in a single contest than the Democrats won in total over all 5!!! While the Democrats managed to maintain majorities in the House and Senate (with the exception of ’81-’87) the party’s national standing was in tatters. It had no dominant spokesperson and no compelling narrative to explain how it would fix the country’s ills beyond simply rehashing liberal dogma. The question then confronting the Democrats, like the dilemma of the Republicans now, was what to do.
When the DLC was founded in 1985 the Democrats were perhaps at their lowest point nationally. In order to regain the party’s footing, the organization called for an end to the traditional “liberal” approach to policy. Rather, building on a cadre of centrist governors and members of Congress—Bill Clinton, Sam Nunn, Joe Lieberman, John Breaux, and Dave McCurdy among others—it proposed solutions that were more market based, pragmatic, and fiscally responsible. With Clinton’s election in 1992 the movement reached its ascendancy and policies such as NAFTA, welfare reform, a balanced budget, and the earned income tax credit helped reposition the Democrats as a party once again competent and identified with economic growth and prosperity.
While Bill Clinton brought the Democrats victories at the ballot box in 1992 and 1996, his centrism brought criticism from his left. Many members of Congress, still ensconced in the old liberalism (now rebranded “progressivism”) were critical of his stands on trade, welfare reform, and health care. While these intra-party squabbles were not totally responsible for the Republicans’ capture of Congress in 1994, one can argue that Clinton was more successful in dealing with the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole than he was in corralling the Democratic base. Whichever side one took in this fight for the heart of the Democratic Party, one can’t deny the fact that the debate revitalized the party and made it think hard about policy. Despite George Bush’s capture of the White House, the elections of 2000 and 2004 were fought much more closely than those of the 1970’s and ‘80’s. The Republican’s Electoral Vote margin over those two contests was a mere 40 EVs and Bush never captured 51% of the popular vote. Democrats regained their congressional losses of the mid 90’s and laid the groundwork for what we saw transpire last year.
So what can the right learn from the Democrats’ period in the wilderness?? One lesson that can be drawn is that a party needs to grapple honestly with its past excesses. Those on the left who were being honest with themselves realized that there was a reason that voters moved so definitively to the right. While events such as last weekend’s CPAC gathering isn’t going to cater to this type of reflection among today’s conservatives, other more sober venues must. What makes this introspection complicated for many on the right, though, is that they are convinced that what was repudiated in 2006 and 2008 was not conservatism, but Bush-ism. For them, Bush failed not because he was too conservative (or because conservatism more broadly was being rejected) but rather because he was too liberal. With exploding deficits and long term expansions and commitments to Medicare and other programs, “compassionate conservatism” was simply liberalism by another name. Among many congressional Republicans, the decision to now vote against spending increases—despite consistently voting for them during Bush’s reign—signals an attempt to recapture the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

Another lesson for conservatives to ponder is the need for policy debate, intra-party discussion, and diverse solutions. While not everyone on the left shared the DLC’s approach to issues, it not only helped to stop the party’s decline (perhaps it couldn’t sink any lower) but allowed it to regain a foothold in certain parts of the country where the damage of the 1970’s and 80’s was most severe—i.e. the south. Not only was the DLC a centrist organization, it was also heavily southern flavored. Whereas New Deal liberalism was strongest in the urban north, southern Democrats have always been a different breed. By giving Democrats another model, and winning elections because of it, the DLC was able to help the party begin to grow again. One can’t help but look at today’s Blue Dogs and their contribution to the Democrats’ new and expanding majority in Congress as the progeny of what Clinton and others began. If the right wants to regain not only relevancy but power, it seems obvious that they must realize that parties—should they hope to be successful nationally and over the long term—are at root coalitions. The creation and maintenance of these coalitions requires a degree of pragmatism and leadership that seems lacking on the right. It also requires a belief that many of those not currently in the coalition should be allowed under the tent. This also seems to be a point of contention among many conservatives. If the right fails to come to these realizations, they may be closer to the beginning of their time in the wilderness than to the end.

The State of the Conservative Movement--The Battle Between Purity & Pragmatism

Like John, I was at Tuesday's press conference by David Keene of the American Conservative Union, built around the release of their 2008 ratings of Congress and a preview of this weekend's CPAC conference. While perusing the ratings guide prior to Keene's remarks, I focused in on those members who received a perfect "100" rating from the ACU. As John noted, the ACU selects a handfull of votes in a given year, equates one side of that vote with the "conservative" position, and tabulates each member's vote over all the votes in their sample. Thus, each member is arrayed along a continuum of liberal to conservative. This year, 31 Republican House members received the magic 100.

In looking at those 31 members I immediately asked myself if there was anything that linked these members together--region, district composition, level of seniority, electoral safety, etc. The second question I asked was how these members--and their number (31)--compare to earlier Congresses. In other words, did 2008 have more pure conservatives and what might this tell us about how Congress has changed. Fortunately, ACU has posted their rankings for the past thirty odd years, allowing for some further exploration.

There's one caveat we must deal with first. Rankings like these suffer from a number of methodological problems. The most fundamental one is that because each year looks at different votes--dealing with different issue areas--making meaningful temporal comparisons is difficult. Its an apples to oranges dilemma. While the ACU says that they try to find a good cross section of votes across a range of issue areas, looking at each year's sample shows a wide disparity. Another problem is that not all votes are the same, even within a year's sample. Some votes might be more likely to produce one outcome over another. In this year's sample, for example, two votes (SCHIP and Farm Bill) were veto override votes. In a vote of this type one would assume that members would be under more pressure than normal to vote with their party, thus--for Republicans--making it more likely that they would cast the "conservative" vote. So, in short, we need to take these rankings with a big grain of salt. Another thing I will note is that focusing just on those members who receive a perfect score from the ACU might emphasize a distinction without a difference. In other words, how different is a member with a score of 95 from one with a score of 100?? Having said this, what do we see?

Again, this year 31 House Republicans received a perfect 100 score. Geographically, a few--mostly southern--states dominate the ranks. Georgia and Florida each produced 5 members. Next was California with 4 and Texas with 3. Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina had 2 members each with 1 member coming from Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Utah. While this "southernness" dimension may speak to the increasingly southern composition of the House Republican ranks, a more appropriate explanation may lie with the redistricting process. States such as Georgia, Texas, California, and Florida all have had very robust gerrymandering episodes in recent years. In fact, this recent study by Avencia Inc. which studied this process, listed GA, PA, OH, NJ, and CA as 5 of the 10 most gerrymandered states in the country. So we need to look at these members district by district.

To further explore this, I next looked at the competitiveness of these members' recent campaigns. One would expect the most conservative members (as with the most liberal) to have easy re-elections, especially if they come from very favorably drawn districts. At left is a simple spreadsheet that looks at these 31 members and their four most recent elections (except for those members who have been elected fewer than 4 times). One thing that immediately jumps out (and which I picked up on when first looking at the list) is that 2 of these members were defeated in 2008--Steve Chabot in OH-1 and Tom Feeney in FL-24. Also of note is the poor performance of Michelle Bachmann in MN-6 who managed to win despite receiving just 47% last year. The fate of these members in particular raises the fundamental question of this post--How do members straddle the dual pressures of ideology and pragmatism?? If one's district is becoming less and less conservative, does one change their behavior in order to stay in office?? In looking at these members over the years one can see how several have seen their margin of victory decline. Others, we should note, have seen relatively stable levels of support or increased margins of victory even in the face of two consecutive election cycles highly unfavorable to Republicans. This might be further proof of a gerrymandering effect. At the bottom of each column I provide the average vote of these members for each year. One sees the degree to which the last 2 cycles decreased the performance of even these most staunchly conservative members.

Next, we can look at the prevalence of these "perfect conservatives" over time to give a sense of whether or not some broader, more systemic, changes might be taking place. While I didn't look at the ACU ratings for each year, I did pull out their scores for 1974, 1984, and 1994. Election years tend to produce higher degrees of partisanship within Congress as both parties jockey for electoral advantage. I also picked these years because they represent both presidential ('84) and midterm ('74 & '94) elections as well as years with a Republican in the White House ('74 & '84) and a Democrat ('94). So we've got a good cross section of political contexts and governing arrangements to look at. In all of these years, though, I'd note that you had Democratic majorities in the House (more on that in a minute). What do we see in terms of the number of members receiving perfect scores from the ACU??

In both 1974 and 1984 9 House Republicans received a perfect rating--roughly 30% of 2008's total. Thus, we may have some evidence of a more moderate Republican caucus during that era. This would seem to jibe with much of the literature on partisanship in Congress which discusses not only increased partisan voting in recent years but also the changing composition of the membership over time. Of the members in the '74 & '84 classes, only 4 hail from southern states (1 each from GA, LA, TN, and TX). Compare that with the 5 Georgians, 5 Floridians, 3 Texans, and 2 North Carolinians in 2008's class. During these early Congresses you still had a sizable number of Southern Dems. whose voting record would be a mixed bag in the ACU's estimation.

1994 is the year where we seem to see these changes in partisanship and member composition materialize in greater conservatism. In that year 46 House Republicans received a perfect rating from the ACU. What might we conclude from this?? A few things, I think. 1994 was the one year in this quick examination that saw Republicans facing a Democratic President. Thus, being in the minority in Congress and up against a partisan adversary in the White House pushed the House Republican caucus in a more ideologically cohesive and rightward direction. With little chance of winning votes, attention turned toward obstructionism. What we also know is that the election that year brought the Republicans into the majority. This is where things get a little interesting. As a result of the '94 election the Republicans gained 52 seats in the House. We would expect, then, that the number of members with a perfect ranking from the ACU would go up as a result. With many more members plus very little turnover in the existing membership (i.e. few R's in office in '94 but not '95) how could they not go up?? Well, they didn't. When we look at the ACU ratings for 1995 we see that only 33 House Republicans got a perfect score. What happened??

What happened is that the Republicans became the majority and becoming the majority entailed a different set of responsibilities in terms of governing. Simply stated the tradeoff between ideology and pragmatism became more pronounced. In order to pass legislation--and get it signed by a Democratic president--members were forced to make compromises and thus dilute the ideological purity of their policy preferences. Any examination of this period of the Clinton presidency will note the delicate dance that the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress engaged in to try and get things done. If you look at the '94 and '95 classes of those with perfect ratings, several of the '94 class weren't present in '95. 18 of the 33 for 1995, in fact, were freshmen members--those most radicalized as a result of the '94 campaign. More senior members--those most responsible for getting legislation passed as committee chairs for example--were more likely to compromise their ideology in order to pass legislation.

Thus, as conservatives hit Washington this weekend for a mixture of pep rally and rebuilding session, they must grapple with the competing demands of their ideology and quest for power. While David Keene and others in the movement would note that "conservative" and "Republican" are not necessarily synonymous (he was very critical of George W. Bush, for example), the realm of practical politics requires figuring out how to get enough votes to win. Did Republicans lose because they were too conservative or not conservative enough?? How does this jibe with the direction the country is moving demographically, economically, and socially?? More fundamental to some conservatives--What good is winning if the result is a retreat from one's principles?? How these questions get answered will go along way toward explaining our politics in the future.

***Watch streaming video of CPAC here.

ElectionDissection.com Book Club--Revisiting 1976

A few weeks back, while visiting Milwaukee for work, I stopped into my favorite bookstore, Renaissance Books. A towering warehouse filled with miles of shelves lined with musty books, I like stopping in a few times a year because I’m always sure to find older works of political history and biography that can’t be found easily anywhere else. Sure enough, I found a few things destined to find their way into future posts. The treasure of my visit was a copy of the 1976 Almanac of American Politics. For political junkies—especially those who study the Congress—this is our bible. I’d never seen a copy this old (1974 was the first edition) so the past several days have been spent digging into the congressional bios of members long since gone and the voting data from the post-Watergate Democratic landslide. This is high level politics nerd-dom.

What I have found particularly interesting in my reading so far is how it described the upcoming 1976 presidential election. With the benefit of hindsight, we don’t often appreciate the uncertainty that exists a year or so out from an election. However, it was far from clear who would emerge from the chaos of the Watergate era to win the White House. Michael Barone and his co-authors' description of the potential candidates is fascinating.

For example, at the time of the book’s publication in 1975, the presumptive Democratic nominee appeared to be Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson:

…at this writing he is probably the leading candidate for the nomination. The impetus for the Jackson candidacy comes from those Democrats who are liberal on domestic policies and basically hawkish (though Jackson dislikes the word) on foreign policy. And his backers believe that Jackson has shown by his work in the Senate that he has mastered more subjects a President must understand than any other American legislator…Jackson has two majors problems as a presidential candidate: he is still not terribly well known, and he faces the implacable hostility of the portion of the Democratic Party that nominated George McGovern in 1972. At this writing, he is not known by almost half the American electorate; this will probably change in the course of the primaries, unless he runs unexpectedly poorly in the early contests. He certainly has the financial support necessary. He has already collected large sums, much of it from ardent supporters of Israel who appreciate his long record on Middle Eastern policy, much of it from businessmen who see him as a more congenial kind of politician than most liberal Democrats. The antiwar left is another matter. There are literally thousands of Democrats, including now some members of Congress, who got into politics primarily because of the opposition to the Vietnam War; why should they now support a man who was one of its major proponents?

Also given much discussion, but not much of a chance, was Alabama Governor (and 1968 and 1972 candidate) George Wallace. Reflecting on the Alabaman’s journey, including the 1972 attempt on his life, Barone writes:

No one doubts that he wants to run for President; it appears now that for all his primary runs and third party candidacies he has been seeking a way fro a one-time vocal segregationist to make it to the White House. Wallace has managed to raise literally millions in small contributions through direct mail, and he has enough hard core support—augmented, if anything by the respectability conferred by martyrdom—to run ahead of all other Democratic presidential possibilities in early 1975. But even more Democrats find Wallace totally unacceptable and would back anyone in the general election against him, even Gerald Ford; for all his talk of how he reflects the people’s real views, Wallace is clearly the weakest candidate the Democrats could nominate. And of course they won’t.

Also garnering attention, Arizona congressman Mo Udall:

Udall has not yet raised anything like the amount of money a presidential candidate is thought to need, and of course his name recognition is about zero. But he does have certain advantages: most notably, after the withdrawals of Edward Kennedy and Walter Mondale, there is a dearth of candidates acceptable to the liberal wing which dominated the Democratic convention in 1972 and may well again in 1976. Udall is at least acceptable to that group.

Where, you might ask, is Jimmy Carter, the eventual nominee and winner in 1976? Barone et al, less than a year before the beginning of the nomination contests, have very little to say about the former Georgia governor, and don’t seem to view his as a top tier candidate. Writing about his rise in Georgia political circles and election to the governorship in 1970, they state:

During his campaign, in which he shook tens of thousands of hands, Carter liked to describe himself as a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia. He placed somewhat less emphasis on the fact that he had served as a top aide to Admiral Hyman Rickover in the nuclear submarine program, and that his peanut farm was not a shack-and-forty-acres affair but a well-managed, thriving business. Carter lost the Atlanta metropolitan area in both the primary and general election; but surprised some of his erstwhile supporters by coming out foresquare for integration…Now he is running for President, vowing that he will go into all the primaries; barring a major upset of George Wallace, it looks like a uphill race.

Thus, on the eve of the Democratic nominating process, it was virtually impossible to predict who would ultimately emerge victorious. It’s important, I think, to appreciate how hard it is to predict the way events, especially electoral and political, will play out. To maybe put this into a more contemporary perspective, try to go back to the recent editions of the Almanac or its competitor “Politics in America” and find anyone making a convincing argument about Barack Obama’s chances of becoming President. Momentum can develop very quickly in American politics.

As a final note, check out this snippet, written almost in passing, in the section on Arkansas in the ’76 Almanac:

Arkansas seems full of young, fairly liberal, personally attractive Democratic politicians these days—a type that simply was not around in the days before Winthrop Rockefeller (although, ironically, none is in Rockefeller’s Republican Party). There are Bumpers and Pryor, of course, and state Attorney General Jim Guy Tucker and Congressman Ray Thornton and almost successful congressional candidate Bill Clinton.

Bob Barr Blusters: Pres Nomination Campaigns don't "affect change"??!!

ElectionDissection ventured over to the National Press Club for a couple of press conferences today.   The first featured Ron Paul with his by-now-signature unfocused, “aw shucks” style with which he urged his acolytes – and the American electorate at large – to reject McCain and Obama and consider any of four third party candidates.  Green nominee and former Dem. Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, independent perennial Ralph Nader and far-right Constitution Party standard bearer “Pastor Chuck” Baldwin were all on hand to bask in Dr. Paul’s glow.  Libertarian Party nominee, former GOP Georgia U.S. Rep. Bob Barr pointedly declined the invite.

Half an hour later, Barr responded with a press conference of his own.  Barr and his top aide, former Ross Perot campaign honcho Russ Verney, explained Barr’s absence that morning, with Barr insisting that his bid offers “bold, focused, specific leadership,” not Ron Paul’s “amorphous kind that says ‘any of the above’ or ‘none of the above.’”  Barr asserted that the goal of his campaign is to amass as many votes as possible, hoping to affect policy change in his direction; a worthy and very reasonable goal for a third party candidate determined to run an actual political campaign, seeking actual votes, not just to hit the college lecture circuit and bloviate ad nausea. 

Barr’s and Verney’s “we’re the grownups here” mein bordered on farce.  Barr got so wrapped up in the “we’re not goofing around here” meme that, invoking Verney’s old boss Perot repeatedly, he asserted the patently preposterous claim that primary campaign vote totals, and failed nomination campaigns, are irrelevant; rather, building significant general election vote totals is the only way for alternative presidential candidates to affect policy change.  This is indubitably true for segregationist George Wallace’s 1968 American Independent bid that first identified “Reagan Democrats” among Northern Urban Ethnics and rural Southern Democrats and liberal Republican John Anderson’s 1980 indie bid that gave us sneak peaks at segments of the coalition that vaulted Obama to the Democratic nomination this year.  But for the highest vote getting third party bid in modern electoral history – Ross Perot’s snaring of nearly one in five votes in 1992 – the jury is still out as for its long term impact.

Barr’s claim was made to counter claims that Paul’s 1.2 million primary season votes did more than Barr’s effort will to further a libertarian agenda.  There is a question to be considered that Paul’s 2008 primary totals – as scattered as his message – may tell us less about a long-term libertarian vote trend than does Ed Clark’s 1980 Libertarian Party high water mark. 

Nevertheless, the litany countering Barr’s ludicrous contention is a long and venerable one.  

Let’s start with Wallace: the 670,000 votes and 3.75 million votes he garnered, respectively, in his upstart 1964 and 1972 Democratic nomination bids were dwarfed by the 9.9 million votes he attracted in his 1968 indie bid, but reinforced to Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips that millions of those voters – especially in states like Wisconsin in ’64 or in Maryland and Michigan in ’72 – who might never have voted for him in a general, or before his assassination attempt, were up for grabs.  Peeling these proto-Reagan Democrats away built the Conservative Coalition that governed under Reagan during his first term. 

Eugene McCarthy’s quixotic bid for the 1968 Democratic bid may have been as unfocused as Paul’s this year, but his 2.9 million votes forced the incumbent president, LBJ, to withdraw from consideration for re-nomination and marked the first electoral inklings of popular discontent over the Vietnam War that culminated in Nixon – the staunch anti-communist – pulling US forces out of Indochina a few years later. 

The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s nearly 10 million votes between his 1984 and 1988 bids put his slice of urban America’s agenda on the table, arguably prompting passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 in a still conservative-oriented Congress and signed by a Republican president.    

Walter Mondale famously ridiculed Gary Hart’s “new ideas” bid for the 1984 Democratic nomination with the then-popular fast food chain ad refrain, “Where’s the beef?”  But the third of the Democratic primary vote and 1200 delegates that Hart’s platform attracted - a melding of cosmopolitan social liberalism with an appreciation of foreign trade and a recognition that market forces can’t be dismissed - took most observers by surprise and challenged the union orthodoxy that Mondale accepted.  Hart’s “New Democrat” agenda presaged the moderate Democratic Leadership Council from which Bill Clinton launched his successful bid for the 1992 Democratic nomination and upon whose agenda he generally governed during his tenure.  Nearly a quarter century later, Hillary Clinton reverted to Mondale’s playbook, but came up short against Barack Obama who racked up huge majorities among the very voters Hart first identified. 

Two more examples stand out because of the candidates’ associations with associates of Barr’s campaign in 2008:

Barr advisor and conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerie keynoted the Libertarian convention this year.  Viguerie supported Ronald Reagan’s nearly victorious challenge to President Gerald Ford’s re-nomination in 1976, and tried to lure Reagan to a splinter conservative third party when Ford finally secured the GOP nod.  Of course, Reagan built upon the momentum of that strong ’76 bid to win the White House four years later, launching his “Reagan Revolution.”

“A Call to Economic Arms” was the theme of Paul Tsongas’ 1992 campaign that attracted unexpected support among Democratic primary voters.  Ross Perot – Verney was his spokesman – built upon Tsongas’ momentum in the fall, memorably campaigning with a series of charts to illustrate the federal fiscal dangers both these “deficit hawks” feared.  Bill Clinton’s first term stabs at getting the federal budget under control can be attributed to both Tsongas’ nomination and Perot’s general election campaigns.