Is There An Enthusiasm Gap Among Republicans???

Things have been dark here for many months.  Now that the campaign is heating up, I'm going to try getting some things up on a more regular basis.  I've got a couple of posts in the works but let's start with a short little data exploration.

With two Republican votes already in the books and another taking place in South Carolina this weekend, one question that has gotten a bit of attention is whether Republican voters are enthusiastic about their choices, especially now that the field is winnowing.  For any party hoping to win the presidency--or any other election for that matter--turning out your voters is of primary importance.  The assumption going into 2012 for Republicans was that given the degree of opposition on the right to the Obama presidency, and coming on the tails of their success in the 2010 midterms, there would be tremendous energy and activism mobilized to propel whoever won the nomination into the White House.

While we've only had a few contests so far, there is reason to wonder whether this assumption is in fact true. 

If we look at the results from New Hampshire, a total of 248,447 votes were cast in the Republican primary across all candidates, more than in any recent Granite State GOP primary.  When compared to 2008, this year's vote was an increase of 3.6%.

To get a sense of whether this increase is significant or tells us anything about the state of the GOP electorate, though, we need some baseline of comparison.  I decided to look at recent New Hampshire primaries in which one party was trying to take over the White House from the other--a scenario that would seem to be ripe for increased turnout and mobilization.  When we look at these contests, 2012 doesn't stack up well.

For example, in 2008 the Democrats saw a 31% increase in turnout over 2004 (287,556 vs. 219,787 votes).  Also on the Democratic side--and also a successful party flip of the White House--1992 saw the Democrats increase their turnout by an even more impressive 36% over 1988 (167,664 vs. 122,912 votes).  Looking at Republicans, in 2000 the GOP turnout was 16% higher than it was in 1996 (238,206 vs. 205,856 votes).

Unlike in later contests where the eventual nominee becomes established and most candidates have dropped out, New Hampshire primaries have full fields and permissive voting procedures--it is an "open" primary.  Thus, we would expect the voting there to be a relatively good barometer of the party's enthusiasm.  If the turnout results in New Hampshire continue into the later contests, there's reason for GOP leaders--and the eventual nominee--to worry about the fall.

Once Upon a Time There Was Such a Thing as a Liberal Republican

Apologies for the absence of posting over the past few months.  Summers are always more busy than I think they'll be.  Plus, the toxicity of the recent debt ceiling debate hasn't put me much in the mood for writing.  Today, though, is a big day with the Wisconsin State Senate recalls so I'll try to get some posting up tonight as the results come in.  Democrats need to capture three seats to gain the majority.  The most likely gains, in my estimation and in order, would be Kapanke, Hopper, and Darling.

Before we get to that tonight, though, yesterday brought news of the passing of former Oregon governor and senator Mark Hatfield (see obits and rememberances here, here, and here).  Hatfield, who retired from the Senate after 30 years of service in 1996, was someone who would, unfortunately, be completely unrecognizable in today's Congress.  Today we find ourselves in an era when every Republican Senator ranks ideologically to the right of every Democratic Senator.  Hatfield was interesting in that although he was a "liberal Republican," his positions didn't necessarily fall in line with what we've come to understand that label to mean.  Yes, he was more socially liberal, but he was also staunchly pro-life.  Heavily steeped in his Baptist upbringing, his pro-life stance though (counter to what we see today) extended to opposition to the death penalty--an issue he grappled with as Oregon's governor--and most importantly the use of the U.S. military.  Serving in the Navy during WWII, Hatfield saw first hand the devastation of Hiroshima.  Upon election to the Senate he became an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam and throughout his career was a reliable vote against authorizing the use of force, including the Persian Gulf War.

Hatfield's tenure in Congress is also of note in that he embodied the old style independent committee chairman.  He was the top Republican on the powerful Appropriations Committee, both during the Republican majorities of 1981-1987 and 1995-6.  Staunchly protective of his prerogatives as chief appropriator, he famously defended his turf against an intra-party uprising brought about by his refusal to support a Balanced Budget Amendment.  It was his vote that sent the measure down to defeat.

While it's easy to become overly nostalgic when thinking about politicians and Congresses long gone, there can be little doubt that our political system would be better off if there were more people like Senator Hatfield still around.

What Does the Death of a Reclusive 104 Year Old Copper Heiress Have to Do With U.S. Senate Elections???

Every once in a while you come across a truly wild and fascinating story that seems to defy belief.  Even better, sometimes these tales have embedded within them some obscure bit of political trivia.  The death of 104 year old Huguette Clark, a long reclusive heir to a massive copper and timber fortune, is filled with the stuff of legend.  As the coverage has discussed, Clark's assets were not only massive, but largely unused.  Last photographed in 1930 (!!!) Clark had lived the last several decades of her life secluded in a variety of New York City hospitals, reportedly surrounded only by her doll collection.  With no direct heirs and few, if any it seems, personal friends or confidants there is very little information about her that might shed light onto her strangely interesting life.

So why am I writing about this?  Well, it turns out that Clark is a direct link to the politics of a bygone American era.  I've always found the Gilded Age to be probably the most interesting period of our political history.  While the post Civil War period is not known for its stellar presidents (although I do admire Grant), the times saw the massive growth of American industry and the rise of such titans as Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and the like.  The politics that developed around and in reaction to this transformation of America was raw, crass, and rough and tumble.  The country was moving westward at a fast clip with a population boom to match.  Industrialization, urbanization, and immigration fueled the birth of modern America...and a lot of people got rich.  The consequences of this unbridled expansion led to a number of policies and movements that are still with us to this day--think Progressivism, the birth of the regulatory state, etc.

This is where Clark comes in.  Her father, Willam A. Clark, was an industrial heavyweight on par with the greats of his time.  Making his fortune in the copper mines and timber fields of the American west, Clark used his millions to try and build political influence and gain elective office.  He bought newspapers and banking interests to further promote his interests.  He was instrumental in the development of Montana and was also an early booster in Nevada.  Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, is named after him.

It was his blatant attempts to parlay his fortune into a Senate seat from Montana that brought him some degree of notoriety.  Remember that until the passage of the 17th Amendment, senators were chosen by state legislatures, not direct election.  The backroom dealings that could lead to such appointments invited all types of corrupt behavior.  Clark's original campaign for the Senate was derailed in 1899 when it was revealed that he engaged in blatant bribery of the legislature.  Nonetheless, he succeeded in capturing the seat two years later and served a single term from 1901 to 1907.  With the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, such decisions were finally put in the hands of voters.  For those who fret about the corrupting role of money in our politics and elections, it's useful to remember just how much better the current system is than the one that preceded it.

It's not often that we get to establish a direct linkage with such distant eras of our society and politics.  While Clark herself didn't directly allow for this, her death does send us back to the time of robber barons and their Gilded Age fortunes.  As her father was quoted as saying, "I never bought a man who wasn't for sale."

Wisconsin State Supreme Court Election

See my analysis over at the Washington Examiner.

April 4, 1968

The Dramatic Diversification of America: Census 2010

Up until this point I've been reporting on the release of Census data in a piecemeal way.  In fact, it's actually quite overwhelming to try and keep up with each new batch of numbers.  The directions that one could take their analysis is unending.  Nonetheless, a new story by Ronald Brownstein over at National Journal does an excellent job of putting into context just what the Census is now telling us about America.

The take away...the pace of diversification in the U.S. over the past decade has been staggering.  This will have consequences not just for how we view ourselves, but for our politics as well.  Consider some of the following:

• The minority share of the population increased in every state between 2000 and 2010
• The percentage of non-Hispanic whites is 5.4% less than it was in 2000
• Minorities now make up 46.5% of the under 18 population (up from 39.1% in 2000)
• Four states are now majority minority--Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and Texas.  In eight other states, minorities comprise between 40 and 50% of the population

This growth has been overwhelmingly driven by Hispanics.  As Brownsein writes:

On the national level, Latinos now represent one in six Americans, or nearly 50.5 million in all.  That's up from one in eight, about 35.3 million, in 2000.   The Hispanic share of the population increased over the past decade in every state, with dramatic gains recorded not only in Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas but also in Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, and Rhode Island.  Latinos accounted for a majority of the population growth in 18 states, at least 40 percent of the growth in seven more, and at least 30 percent in five others.  In sum, Hispanics fueled about a third or more of the population growth in 30 states.

So what does this mean electorally???  The premise of this site from its beginning was that demography matters...a lot.  While I never want to discount other factors that shape elections--candidate quality, campaign organization, rhetorical skill, underlying fundamentals like the state of the economy, money, etc.--the driving set of variables for me has always been those that describe who the voters are.  Furthermore, we know that so much of our demographic profile is wrapped up in a historical and cultural narrative as well--look no further than our history with race in this country.  Thus, if you tell me who the voters are and where they are I'm pretty confident that I can tell you what they're going to do.

Which gets us to the second part of Brownstein's article.  Given what we know about how the minority vote has broken down over recent cycles, these numbers are very good news for the Democrats not only in the short term but especially long term.  Republican success in 2010 was built upon 1) decreased turnout among minority and new voters and 2) overwhelming support from whites.  In 2008, Barack Obama received 43% of the white vote yet won the largest share of the popular vote of any Democrat since LBJ.  National Journal ran a series of scenarios based on a further erosion of white support for Obama in 2012 and found, nonetheless, little reason to bet against him.  Consider:

Obama, for instance, won Florida last time with 42 percent of the white vote; under this scenario, if he maintains his minority support he could win the Sunshine State with just under 40 percent of the white vote.  With equal minority support in Nevada, the president could win with only 35 percent of the white vote, down from the 45 percent he garnered in 2008.  Likewise, under these conditions, Obama could take Virginia with just 33.5 percent of whites, well down from the 39 percent he captured last time.  In New Jersey, his winning number amon whites would fall to just over 41 percent (compaerd with the 52 percent he won in 2008).  In Pennsylvania, under these circumstances, 41% of white votes would be enough to put the state in Obama's column, down from the 48% he won in 2008.

All of this takes place even though minority turnout, especially among Hispanics, lags behind that of whites (African American turnout was up substantially in 2008).  If, going forward, mobilization and turnout among Latinos were to approach that seen among African Americans, the situation for Republicans would get even more dire.  If I were going into politics today as a young progressive and wanted to find a niche for myself that guaranteed I'd have meaningful work for the rest of my career, I'd focus on Latino mobilization and turnout. 

This all assumes, of course, that minorities' allegiances stay firmly in the Democratic camp.  For the party's sake, one would hope that Republicans would figure out a strategy to cope with these numbers.  Watching the current crop of GOP presidential candidates as well as those on Capitol Hill, it's clear that they haven't figured this out yet.  Pointing to Marco Rubio as a reason to believe you can win Hispanics is not a strategy.  Party allegiances and loyalties are formed over time and require an understanding of why voters evaluate the parties the way they do.  For Latino and African American voters, the Democrats have had this understanding--and a willingness to seek it--for much longer.  These new numbers seem to suggest that they are in position to reap the benefits for years to come.

Remembering "The Day The New Deal Began"

Tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary of an event which did much to shape the direction of American politics throughout the 20th century. On March 25, 1911, the fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory claimed the lives of 146 individuals, mostly young women. Though an accident, the fire did much to jump start reforms related to workplace safety, child labor, and wages.  One can view the list of the victims, plus short snippets about them, here.

Two years ago I did a post on probably the best history of the fire, David Von Drehle’s “Triangle.” In it, I noted how Von Drehle weaves together a number of strains of our political history around the event and shows how the fire served as a lens through which we can view such stories as those of women’s suffrage, the labor movement, urbanization, immigration, and the evolution of the modern Democratic Party.

This week the New York Times has been running a number of excellent stories about the fire and its legacy. All are well worth reading to get a sense of just how important an event this was to our history. Also, there are a few films that have been made recently worth checking out. PBS’s American Experience has their film on the fire available to view here. HBO also has a documentary that will begin airing this weekend. Both have websites with additional resources. Finally, the Center for American Progress will be hosting an event tomorrow with several commentators discussing the legacy of the fire.

On the day of the fire Frances Perkins, then the head of the New York Consumers League, was in her office just blocks away across Washington Park. A witness to the day’s horrific events, she became one of the most forceful activists pushing for the reforms that ultimately came out of city and state government. A loyal supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, she became Secretary of Labor during his first term and as such was the first woman named to a Cabinet position. Thus, she and FDR were in position to further their progressive reforms and embed them in federal policy. Reflecting on the fire many years later, she called March 25, 1911 “the day the New Deal began.”

With a lot of attention being paid to labor unions in recent weeks, it’s important to have a broad historical perspective about their development and role in our society and politics. Events like the Triangle Fire show us not only how the labor movement has contributed to the creation of many policies that we today take for granted; it also reminds us that for many Americans, like the women who died that day, they offered a voice, an entrance into political life, and a path out of poverty.


**For a list of events happening in commemoration of the anniversary, see here.

How Much Trouble are Democrats In If They're Losing the Most and Least White States???

Here’s an interesting finding from Lee Drutman at the Progressive Policy Institute regarding the decline in Democratic identification across the country. Testing a number of potential variables, the one with the strongest, statistically significant correlation is the percentage of the state’s population that is white. Thus, the more white a state is, the greater the decline in Democratic affiliation among its voters.

Back during the 2008 electoral season, I wrote a fair bit about Thomas Schaller’s “Whistling Past Dixie” which counseled Democratic candidates to essentially write off the possibility of winning Deep South states. Despite the fact that these states have the highest concentration of African American voters—the most solid part of the Democratic coalition—they have become the hardest states for Democrats to win. The reason, according to Schaller, is that the long history of racial polarization and antagonism in these states have produced a reaction among white voters:

The central irony of southern politics is that the nation’s most Republican region is home to half of all African Americans, the Democratic party’s most loyal voters. Unfortunately, racial antagonisms exacerbate the Democrats’ electoral problems in the South, creating a white countermobilization—a “backlash” so to speak—that fuels Republican victories. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, many of George W. Bush’s biggest wins came in southern states with the highest share of African Americans, and some Democratic congressional candidates are capturing as little as 30 percent of the white vote in the south.

Schaller’s book was written before the 2008 election and much of the analysis I did of President Obama’s victory confirmed his underlying thesis. For example, in a statistic that never fails to amaze me, John Kerry received a higher share of the white vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi than Barack Obama did.

Drutman doesn’t attempt to offer an explanation as to white might be driving the current trend of declining Democratic affiliation. He’s simply pointing out the correlation. It may, in fact, be a normal correction from the abnormally high gains made by Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. For example, some of these homogenous states such as New Hampshire and other parts of New England have been home to a traditional Yankee Republicanism. The current emphasis on economic and fiscal issues re-enforces that tradition.

Nonetheless, these numbers should be worrisome to Democrats going into 2012 and are worth watching as we move closer to the election.

Another Time the State Capitol Was Overtaken

I’ve been writing a lot over at the Washington Examiner about the events in Wisconsin, trying to add a bit of context to what has transpired. To continue with the historical discussion, I thought I’d say a few words about another time when the state capitol in Madison was overtaken by protesters.

Late last year I came across a book that I had long hoped someone would write. "The Selma of the North" by Patrick D. Jones tells the story of the civil rights movement in Milwaukee. One of the shortcomings of a lot of the civil rights history (thankfully being rectified in recent years) is that it has focused almost all of its attention on the south. Whereas the movement in the south was directed largely on the issues of voting rights, public accommodations, and other basic constitutional protections, the focus in the north was on a wholly different set of problems. With voting rights not in dispute, the problems confronted in the north were in many ways more intractable and divisive—and in reality still with us to this day. The major conflicts were around school integration (with busing being an especially contentious component) and housing.

Jones centers his narrative around the figure of Fr. James Groppi. A charismatic priest in Milwaukee who was radicalized by his experiences in an inner city Milwaukee parish and by his participation in the protests in the south, Groppi was an immensely polarizing figure in 1960’s Milwaukee. He became a leader of Milwaukee’s NAACP Youth Core and helped channel the movement’s energies around issues of education and open housing in Milwaukee. A great on-line resource about Milwaukee’s civil rights protests can be found at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library’s website.

To appreciate the complexity and intensity of the protests around housing, one needs to wrestle with the reality of how many northern cities evolved in the early and mid part of the 20th century. As the two Great Migrations saw the African American populations of cities like Milwaukee explode (it grew 700% between 1945 and 1970) the white populations of these cities resisted the need to accommodate the newcomers in anything other than the already existing, overcrowded urban core. For perhaps the best examination of this tension, check out Beryl Satter’s "Family Properties" that explores how Chicago wrestled with housing at the same time Groppi was agitating up the interstate in Milwaukee. To this day, Milwaukee and Chicago remain two of the most segregated cities in America.

In 1969, toward the end of his work in Milwaukee and as his militancy increased, Groppi turned his attention to the issue of welfare. In response to proposed cuts in the state budget (sound familiar???) aimed at poor women and children, Groppi led a march of welfare recipients from Milwaukee to Madison. There, they took over the chambers of the State Assembly for eleven hours before they were ejected and Groppi was arrested. While the protests gained the support of many in the anti-war community in Madison, its numbers where nowhere near what we’ve seen over the past month. Nonetheless, I was reminded of the Groppi marches when watching and reading the coverage of the current protests.

As a final note, it’s important to remember that the Civil Rights movement in the north, including the Milwaukee protests, drove a wedge between what was at that point two pillars of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition—African Americans and white, urban ethnics (many of whom belonged to unions). George Wallace, for example, received 31% of the vote in Milwaukee during his quixotic quest for the Democratic nomination in 1964. He famously kick started his Wisconsin campaign at Serb Hall, the hub of the white urban ethic community on Milwaukee’s South Side. As I wrote a few weeks back in discussing the plight of “Reagan Democrats,” the issue of race was one that led many of these voters to gravitate to the Republicans. While union voters have been coming back to the Democrats—and may now be in the midst of a sprint back to the left— what remains to be seen is whether a strong bond can be forged between these two oftentimes estranged voting blocs.

A Couple of Quick Notes of Demographic Interest

Two quick things of note based on recently released Census data:

Out of California, more evidence of the surge in the Latino population.  Now, more than half of the children in Califronia are Latinos.  Among all age groups, Latinos are now virtually on par with whites.  They represent 38% and 40% of the population respectively.

The political implications of this are obvious.  As the story notes, California was one state that withstood the gains made by Republicans across all other parts of the country.  While redistricting plays a part of this as well--California has perhaps the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the country--the importance of the Latino vote to Democrats will only grow.  While Latino turnout still lags considerably behind that of other groups, the sheer surge in the population is good news for Democrats, not just in California, moving forward.

The second story worth mentioning deals with a topic I've written about here before--namely the Great Migration.  Census data from Chicago shows, interestingly, that the African American population in the city actually declined between 2000 and 2010.  What seems to be happening is a larger pattern of the "Great Migration in Reverse."  Discussed in this earlier study by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, recent years have seen large numbers of African Americans migrate from northern industrial cities like Chicago to southern metropolises like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Houston.  The proportion of the African American population now living in the south is the highest it's been since 1960.

Unions and the Democratic Vote

First off, some housekeeping.  The posting here has been extremely light as of late.  The reason for this is that I've recently joined the ranks at the Washington Examiner's Opinion Zone blog.  Thus, much of what has been running through my head has been appearing over there.  I'm going to work hard to keep posting over here as well.

The big story of the past few weeks has been the debate about the role of unions, specificially public sector unions, in our political system.  As numerous states, most notably Wisconsin, try to fix budget deficits, public sector unions have been called upon to increase their contributions to health care, pension, and other benefit packages.  While Wisconsin unions have agreed to these concessions, legislation that would take away their collective bargaining rights have set off a firestorm, resulting in large scale protests and a crippled state government.

In the commentary surrounding this, the role of unions more broadly in our politics has gotten quite a bit of attention.  I've written about this here and here.  To summarize, unions have been a key component of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition even as their membership has been declining and has been becoming more public than private sector oriented.  To get a sense of this, I thought I'd run an experiment whereby I rank states according to their level of unionization and see if there is a rough correlation with their statewide vote in presidential contests.  Thanks to the good folks over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one can get this data quite easily.

I've put together the following chart which looks at the past five presidential elections.  For each year I've ranked the 50 states plus DC according to the percentage of the population that belongs to a union--represented in the second column for each year.  I've then color coded the state for how it voted.

One thing to note is that while there is some variation as to the relative rankings of the states as to their level of unionization, by and large the state orderings remain constant.  High unionization states include New York, Hawaii, Michigan, Alaska, Washington, and California while low unionization states include the states of the deep south.  As you can clearly see, highly unionized states have tended to vote Democratic (and vice versa for low unionization states).  This obviously isn't a huge surprise but it is nice to be able to view the data this way.  Consider that in 2008, Barack Obama won 23 of the 27 most unionized states in the country.  He also, interestingly, won 2 of the 4 least unionized. 

As I was creating this chart, the Clinton elections of 1992 and 1996 jumped out as having seemingly less of a correlation between state unionization and the vote.  Clearly there was some regional appeal taking place with his wins in Georgia, Louisiana, and Arkansas (wins that no subsequent Democratic nominee has been able to replicate).  However, at the top of the scale, Clinton did just as well as Obama.  Thus, equating national or statewide electoral outcomes simply with union presence is a mistake.  There are a variety of other variables at play--a point made the other day by Nate Silver in an excellent post on the subject.  Especially when we have elections that verge on entering "landslide" territory, isolating one variable and assigning causality is likely to steer us in the wrong direction.

Nonetheless, it shouldn't surprise us that the proposals unleashed over the past weeks by Republican governors across the midwest--where presidential elections are ultimately decided--have set off the reaction they have.  Unions clearly see these bills not just as part of a debate about fiscal policy, but as a more fundamental attack on their role in society and politics. 

Sargent Shriver R.I.P.

Yesterday brought the sad news of the passing of R. Sargent Shriver (more remembrances here and here).  Best known for his work in the creation and leading of the Peace Corps, his direction of LBJ's War on Poverty, and for his tireless work for Special Olympics, Shriver also played a crucial role in several elections, both as a candidate and a confidante.  I'm going to devote a couple posts to Shriver, someone who I was vervy fortunate to meet while in college and who was inspirational to me in a lot of ways.

The first electoral episode that I want to explore relates to Shriver's role in the 1960 Kennedy campaign.  As brother in law to then candidate Kennedy, Shriver played an active role in many aspects of the campaign--delegate courting, position development, and especially working the important Illinois operation given Shriver's close ties to Chicago as head of the Merchandise Mart and positions on numerous boards and community organizations.  Most importantly, Shriver was the head of the campaign's Civil Rights section.  One thing that I think a lot of people take for granted is up until this point the African American vote was not as monolithically Democratic as it is today, nor was it as important to candidates' electoral college math.  Prior to FDR's ability to pull black voters into the New Deal Coalition, African Americans--dating back to Lincoln and Reconstruction--had strong GOP sympathies.  Furthermore, prior to the Great Migrations around World War I and II, the blacks (with few if any voting rights) tended to be heavily concentrated in the already solid Democratic deep south.  Thus, by the time of the 1960 election, Democratic candidates were becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the growing northern black vote, especially in close elections.  The peril of courting this vote however, was that it endangered upsetting southern whites whose votes were also crucial to victory.

Here is where Shriver played a crucial role in Kennedy's election.  In Theodore White's magisterial "The Making of the President 1960," he recounts Kennedy's deft decision, orchestrated by Shriver, to swing large numbers of black voters to the Kennedy ticket, thus helping ensure his narrow victory.  I'll quote at length:

The most interesting and precise of the decisions of this period, however, was one made by the candidate himself--particularly as it contrasted with the simultaneous Nixon decision on the same problem.  This concerned the Martin Luther King affair--an episode that tangled conscience with the most delicate balancing of the Northern Negro--Southern white vote.

Martin Luther King is one of the genuine heroes of the tumultuous Negro struglle for authentic equality in American life; a luminous man, he speaks responsibly for the best there is in his community.  On Wednesday, October 19th--at about the same time of the day that John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were addressing the American Legion in Miami on the national defense--Martin Luther King was arrested with fifty-two other Negroes in Rich's Department Store in Atlanta for refusing to leave a table in its Magnolia Room restaurant.  On the following Monday, all other "sit-ins" arrested in this episode were released; King alone was held in jail and, worse, sentenced on a technicality to four months' hard labor and thereupon whisked away secretly to the State Penitentiary.  This was no ordinary arrest--no Negro in America has more deservedly earned greater warmth and adoration from his fellow Negroes, North or South, than Martin Luther King; but no Negro menaces the traditional prerogatives of Southern whites more importantly.  It was not beyond possibility that he would never emerge alive from Reidsville State Prison, deep in "cracker" country, where he had been taken; nor did anyone believe more in the prospect of his lynching than his wife, then six months pregnant...The American Negro community girded; so did Southern whites; during the previous few weeks, even before the arrest, no less than three Southern governors had informed Kennedy headquarters directly that if he intruded in Southern affairs to support or endorse Martin Luther King, then the South could be given up as lost to the Democratic ticket.  Now Kennedy must choose.  This was a crisis.

The crisis was instantly recognized by all concerned with the Kennedy campaign.  On the night of Tuesday, October 25th, the suggestion for meeting it was born to one of those remarkably competent young men that the Kennedy organization had brought into politics to direct the Civil Rights Section of their campaign, a Notre Dame law professor named Harris Wofford.  Wofford's idea was as simple as it was human--that the candidate telephone directly to Mrs. King in Georgia to express his concern.  Desperately Wofford tried to reach his own chief, Sargent Shriver, head of the Civil Rights Section of the Kennedy campaign, so that Shriver might break through to the candidate while barnstorming somewhere in the Middle West.  Early Wednesday morning, Wofford was able to locate Shriver, the gentlest and warmest of the Kennedy clan (he had married Eunice Kennedy, the candidate's favorite sister) in Chicago--and Shriver enthusiastically agreed.  Moving fast, Shriver reached the candidate at O'Hare Inn at Chicago's International Airport as the latter was preparing to leave for a day of barnstorming in Michigan.

The candidate's reaction to Wofford's suggestion of participation was impulsive, direct and immediate.  From his room at the Inn, without consulting anyone, he placed a long distance telephone call to Mrs. Martin Luther King, assured her of his interest and concern for her suffering and, if necessary, his intervention.

Mrs. King, elated yet still upset, informed a few of her closest friends.  Through channels of Negro leadership, the word swiftly spread from Atlanta, and thus to the press, that Kennedy had intervened to protect the imprisoned Negro leader.  And Bobby Kennedy, informed in the course of the day of the command decision, proceeded even further and the next morning telephoned a plea for King's release from New York to the Georgian judge who had set the sentence; on Thursday King was released from Reidsville prison on bail, pending appeal--safe and sound.

The entire episode received only casual notice from the generality of American citizens in the heat of the last three weeks of the Presidential campaign.  But in the Negro community the Kennedy intervention rang like a carillon.  The father of Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister himself, who had come out for Nixon a few weeks earlier on religious grounds, now switched.  "Because this man," said the Reverend Mr. King, Senior, "was willing to wipe the tears from my daughter-in-law's eyes, I've got a suitcase of votes, and I'm going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap."  Across the country scores of Negro leaders, deeply Protestant but even more deeply impressed by Kennedy's action, followed suit.  And where command decision had been made, the Kennedy decision could follow through.  Under Wofford's direction a million pamphlets describing the episode were printed across the country, half a million in Chicago alone, whence they were shipped by Greyhound bus.  On the Sunday before election, these pamphlets were distributed outside Negro churches across the country.  One cannot identify in the narrowness of American voting of 1960 any one particular episode or decision as being more important than any other in the final tallies: yet when one reflects that Illinois was carried by only 9,000 votes and that 250,000 Negroes are estimated to have voted for Kennedy; that Michigan was carried by 67,000 votes and that an estimated 250,000 Negroes voted for Kennedy; that South Carolina was carried by 10,000 votes and that an estimated 40,000 Negroes there voted for Kennedy, the candidate's instictive decision must be ranked among the most crucial of the last few weeks.

Next time...Shriver is tapped, belatedly, as George McGovern's running mate in 1972.

The Census Speaks

Well, now we know which states are going to win and lose (and by how much) in the upcoming apportionment and redistricting of House seats.  With the numbers released today, speculation is already beginning on how these numbers will play out both locally and nationally.  The following map gives a picture of how 12 seats will shift across the country:

Texas comes out, clearly, as the big winner with a gain of 4 House seats (followed by Florida with a pickup of 2) while New York and Ohio emerge as the big losers with a contraction of 2 seats each.

For most, these results aren't surprising.  The population shifts from the industrial north and midwest to the southwest and southeast have been going on for decades--and have been affecting our politics for decades as well.  Nonetheless, the quick analysis that many commentators are providing suggests a boon to Republicans.  For example, of the 8 states gaining seats, 5 voted for John McCain in 2008 while of the 10 states losing seats, 8 voted for President Obama.  Further boosting Republicans is the fact that Republicans will control the redistricting process in most of these states--both gaining and losing seats--putting them in position to further pad their House majority.

A big wildcard in thus, however, is the fact that much of this growth, especially in Texas and Florida, was due to the growth of the Latino population.  In Texas alone, Latinos accounted for 70% of the state's population growth.  Latinos now make up 37% of the Texas population (although only 25% of the electorate).  The fundamental question, for both parties, going forward is how they will appeal to this growing Latino vote.  Should Democrats succeed in further cementing their support in this community, they can mitigate some of the consequences of these broader population shifts to traditionally red states.

New Census Data, Mapping, and the Coming Redistricting

In the last day or so we've started to see the release of a trove of new Census data.  What we're getting now are results from the American Community Survey which tracks demographic changes over the 2005 to 2009 period.  The New York Times has an incredible interactive tool that allows you to pull up maps based on zip code and census tract--allowing you to search by race, income, and a few other variables.

When one maps by race, the prevalence of segregation inevitably, and necessarily, comes up.  Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on some of the work done at the Brookings Institution with this new data.  Interestingly, what the data shows is that residential segregation has actually been on the decline, with differing degrees of white/black and white/Hispanic segregation.  Despite a general positive trend toward desegregation, many metropolitan areas remain highly segregated.  Not surprisingly these areas tend to be concentrated in northern, rust belt states.  I've talked about this phenomenon a lot on this site so I can't say I was too shocked by the findings.  Milwaukee, as it has in many similar studies, sits at the top of the list.  Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covers this story from the local perspective (If you want to get really depressed, read the comments section after the story).

Beyond the correlations between race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and voting behavior, this data is important in that it begins to set the context in which the next round of reapportionment and redistricting will take place.  As constituencies get created for local, state, and national offices, politicians oftentimes use deliberate strategies to encompass certain populations within district lines.  At the congressional level, the 1965 Voting Rights Act mandates that race be taken into account in certain circumstances.  Thus, pay attention to how this type of information is used as each state begins this oftentimes highly contentious process in the next few years.  The largest and most comprehensive national portrait, of course, will be provided by the 2010 Census.  The first batch of that data will be released next week so I'll probably have more to say then. 

Returning to Slave Maps

Today's NYT--as part of its series remembering the 150th anniversary of the onset of the Civil War--has a short piece on this map, used before on this site.

Be sure to follow the links that zoom in on the map and provide further explanation of the numbers and how their variance from state to state and county to county affected how secession was viewed across the south.



Stephen Solarz--Redistricting, Congressional Reform, and Foreign Policy Activism

Yesterday saw the passing of former New York Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz.  As his obituary notes, there is much to mention upon his death and much that is of interest to us here.  For example, Solarz came to Congress as a member of the famed "Class of '74."  In the aftermath of Watergate, Democrats scored huge gains in the 1974 midterms, picking up 48 House and 4 Senate seats.  As we continue to digest this year's midterms, it's always useful to go back and look at other elections that saw huge turnover.  With every wave comes a crop of new members seeking to make their mark--usually sooner rather than later.

This "Class of '74" was important institutionally as well.  As I always discuss in my class on the US Congress, the early '70's were a period of dramatic transition for the Congress.  With large numbers of ambitious new members--like Solarz--the era of the "Old Bulls" came to an end.  Strict seniority rules for choosing committee chairmanships were abolished, the subcommittee structure was expanded, and the number of party leadership positions grew.  Thus, power in Congress became much more decentralized, all to the advantage of this new crop of members.  This decentralization happened in tandem with attempts by Congress, systemically, to realign the balance of power between itself and the President.

Solarz was extremely aggressive in using his new seat, within this changing congressional context, to assert himself in the making of American foreign policy.  For each of the past 12 years I've taught a course on the role of Congress in American foreign policy.  The underlying theme for the course is that Congress--its members, structures, etc.--is for numerous reasons temperamentally uncomfortable as an active participant in foreign policy, despite its constitutional prerogatives.  Most members have little incentive, preparation, or expertise for this work.  Solarz was very much the exception to this from the onset of his career.  By the time he left Congress he was one of a small handful of members, especially in the House, who were not only involved in foreign policy but could point to tangible results of their work.

Finally, we should note that the end of his career, although no doubt affected by his role in the infamous House bank scandal, was more than anything brought about by the rough and tumble process of redistricting.  With the boroughs of New York being an ethnic mosaic unlike any other in our country, gotham districts have often been carved to create distinct constituencies with a specific ethnic flavor.  Consider this description of Solarz's 13th District, from the 1976 Almanac of American Politics:

The 13th congressional district of New York, in south central Brooklyn, might be called the Ocean Parkway district: it takes in terrain from both sides of that thoroughfare as it makes its way from Prospect Park to Coney Island.  There is a large Italian American community in Bensonhurst, most of which was removed from the district by the 1974 redistricting; still the 13th, according at least to the census figures, is one of the most heavily Italian American districts in the nation.  But most of the neighborhoods here, from Midwood in the north, through the streets lined with low rise apartments along the Parkway, to Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, and Coney Island in the south, are heavily Jewish.  With Flatbush, most of which is in the 16th district, the 13th is the heart of Jewish Brooklyn.  Though no reliable data exist, the 13th is probably the nation's most heavily Jewish district, and most likely the 13th and the 16th are the only Jewish majority districts in the nation.  It is, of course, overwhelmingly Democratic by tradition.

By the 1990's, however, efforts were underway to use the redistricting process to increase minority representation.  With states like New York losing House seats in reapportionment, districts were often combined and lines radically redrawn, upsetting the ethnic balance that was in place.  Thus, Solarz was forced to run for re-nomination in 1992 in the newly drawn 12th district.  CQ's Politics in America from the time describes the result:

One certainty of New York's redistricting for the 1990s was that a second Hispanic-majority district would be created.  As a result of an ongoing influx that began just after World War II, Hispanic population had grown by 1990 to nearly a quarter of the city's total.  Yet only the South Bronx House district had sent a Hispanic to Congress.

Drawing a new Hispanic majority district, however, was no easy matter.  Unlike blacks, who often live in geographic concentrations, Hispanic immigrants settled in disparate low and middle income communities across the city's five boroughs.  Mapmakers had to go block-by-block to build a district that could reasonably assure a Hispanic's election.  The result was the 12th, one of the most unusually shaped House districts in the nation's history.  It follows a widely meandering path through parts of three New York City boroughs: Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.

In the resulting six way Democratic primary Solarz was defeated by Nydia Velazquez, an activist in the New York Puerto Rican community.  She holds the seat to this day, having risen to the chairmanship of the House Committee on Small Business.  The district was quite radically redrawn again after the 2000 census and now includes more western and northern neighborhoods in Brooklyn.  The heart of Solarz's 13th district is now divided between the neighboring 10th and 11th.

Lots of Losses Out Yonder

During my election night posting, I mused about the end of the southern rural Democrat.  It turns out that not only were the ranks of southern rural Democrats decimated, but that rural Democrats nationwide had a very, very bad night.  This story by the Daily Yonder, a great site dedicated to rural politics and policy, dispels the notion that Tuesday's losses were distinctly southern in flavor.  Looking at the 125 most rural districts in the country, we see how badly Democrats fared.  Check out the map above to get a visual sense of what happened.

More Midterm Musings

Some more quick hits as we start to get some real data:

The best predictor of whether a Democratic incumbent would lose?  The underlying partisanship of their district.  Seems obvious, right?  In all the post mortems, John Sides at TheMonkeyCage reminds us that fundamentals matter.  Swing districts are the most likely candidates to flip.  Because swing districts are found across the country Tuesday's GOP gains, as I noted yesterday, were not concentrated in any one region.

On the turnout front, there are some indications that the Latino vote mattered quite a bit, especially out west.  The Democrats can perhaps thank Latino voters for keeping their Senate majority.  As the GOP wave swept westward, it lost momentum by the time it hit Colorado, Nevada, and California--three states with large Latino populations.  Nate Silver picks up on this from a polling perspective, showing how the polling in the states with the largest Latino populations tended to be the most off in terms of predicting winners.  A few weeks back I attended a forum at the Center for American Progress on the Latino vote.  I was going to do a post on it, but the event turned out to be kind of a dud.  Some interesting takeaways though was a discussion on the difference between primarily English or Spanish speaking Latinos.  Estimates are that about 40% of the Latino population is primarily Spanish speaking and that these voters tend to be more strongly Democratic than English speaking Latinos.

On the redistricting front, two states approved provisions to eliminate the gerrymandering of districts and take the process out of the hands of state legislators.  Moving in the direction of a state like Iowa, California and Florida will seek a redistricting process based solely on population numbers and geographical contiguity.  California and Florida are two of the most gerrymandered states in the country.

I'm going to have more to say about Wisconsin as we move forward, but suffice it to say, the results were staggering when compared to 2008.  Whereas President Obama outperformed his national average in the Badger State during the presidential race, Tuesday so a massive reversal of Wisconsin's recent voting trends.  Going into Tuesday, Wisconsin had 2 Democratic Senators, a 5/3 advantage for Dems. in the House delegation, a Democratic governor, and Democratic majorities in both houses of the State Legislature.  After Tuesday: Split Senate delegation, 5/3 Republican advantage in the House delegation, a Republican governor, and Republican majorities in both state houses.  An absolute wipeout.  This article in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gives an excellent rundown of what happened at the top of the ballot, including an emphasis on turnout.  While turnout was high overall and constant in the big Democratic counties of Milwaukee and Dane, it surged in the suburbs surrounding Milwaukee (Ozaukee, Waukesha, and Washington), propelling Ron Johnson and Scott Walker to victory.  Not only that, but as the below maps show, their vote totals, down to the county level were virtually identical.

Starting To Dig Into The Results

You already know what happened.  Some first thoughts as we start to dig in.

Here's the list of House and Senate seats that changed hands, including defeated incumbents.  What's striking is how broad the geography of these losses were for the Democrats.  Republicans gained seats in 33 states across the country.  This was not an election that was regionalized although some stretches of land were a killing field for the Democrats--namely Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.  Essentially if I were to drive from my house to visit my parents, I'd traverse the land that gave the Republicans their majority.  I-70 stretches across this part of the country.  This sets up the battleground for Obama's re-election.  Expect him to spend a lot of time here over the next 2 years.  Not surprisingly, the Rust Belt has hemorrhaged jobs over the last decade with many parts having higher than the national average in unemployment.

The second source of Democratic losses, including some from the above states, was among the Blue Dog Coalition which essentially saw its ranks cut in half.  These conservative, often rural and southern, Democrats were no match for yesterday's wave.  Despite the fact that many voted against health care reform, cap and trade, and other parts of the Democratic agenda, they lost in droves.  The result of this is the creation of a smaller, yet more liberal, Democratic caucus.  Progressives have always criticized Blue Dogs as being Democrat-lite and impediments to more liberal policy.  Nonetheless, without them you don't have a majority.

Seniority wasn't insulation to defeat.  Normally the most difficult campaign that a member of Congress will have will be his earliest ones.  In the first few terms members are still learning the job, learning their district, and are thus susceptible to being knocked off.  They haven't built up a record and reputation to deter serious challengers.  Yesterday's losses were across the seniority spectrum.  26 of the incumbents knocked off were in either their first or second term--products of the 2006 and 2008 Democratic waves.  At the same time, 3 committee chairmen (Oberstar, Spratt, and Skelton) were also knocked off as were 14 term Rich Boucher (VA), 13 term Paul Kanjorski (PA), and 10 term Gene Taylor (MS) and Chet Edwards (TX).

Aside from these numbers and trends, another subject that has been discussed in the commentary today relates to the upcoming re-districting process.  With the census concluded, state legislatures will undertake the process of redrawing House district lines to correspond with population growth and shifts.  Results in governor's and statehouse races will obviously affect how this process proceeds on a state by state basis.  Something that I haven't heard discussed however, is how redistricting will have an immediate effect on the members elected for the first time last night.

All of the incoming freshmen members (with the exception of those from one district states) were elected from a constituency that is going to change over the next year.  Rather than have time to learn the contours of their district and develop the representative skills to maintain their seat, they have to assume that the people who just elected them are not necessarily going to be there to vote for them in 2012--many of them will be pushed into neighboring districts while others from surrounding areas are added.  This has to be unsettling to these members, especially those elected by small margins.  Furthermore, a number of states where Republicans made gains--Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York--are slated to lose seats in the reapportionment process.  Depending on how these states redistrict, GOP gains could be wiped out not by the 2012 elections but by the hand of mapmakers.  This is a dynamic that I would pay a lot of attention to over the next year or so.

That's it for now.  More to come.

Midterm Live Blogging

Here we go.  I'm doing my monitoring strictly on-line.  I can't stand tv coverage so for my sanity's sake--and for you, my fair readers--we're going to do this without having to cut through the yammering of Chris Mathews and other "experts."

8:23:  So far, things not looking good for Democrats in Virginia.  Pereillo going down, which was expected.  The bigger story is Rich Boucher down in coal country.  Boucher had always been able to not only hold this corner of the state, but do so quite handily.  Apparently that's over, which is a shame as I always found him to be a pretty serious, policy oriented member.  Gerry Connolly also in trouble in northern VA.  Along with Nye down in Hampton Roads area, Dems could lose 4.

8:34:  Connecticut Senate called for Blumenthal.  Republican hopes for the Senate take a hit.  Not unexpected but R's are going to need to run the table.

8:37: Manchin win called in WV.  That should pretty much end the R's Senate dream.  Only question seems to be whether Reid will be around to lead or if Schumer/Durbin battle looms.

8:45: Wisconsin getting ready to close in 15 minutes.  Polling shows bad night for Dems on the horizon.  Keep an eye out for 7th.  Obey open seat the most competitive.  Feingold not in good shape for Senate seat.

8:49: Boyd down big in FL-2.  Blue dogs are having their ranks decimated.  New Congress is going to be much more partisan as the remaining moderates are purged. 

8:52: Giannoulias looking good in IL w/12% in.  As with all IL races it will be the magnitude of Chicago turnout that determines the outcome here.  Does the machine still live???

8:55: Marcy Kaptur has a good night in what could be an ugly night for OH Dems.  Electoral Politics Rule 1: Don't dress like a Nazi.

9:05: Networks calling it for a Republican House majority.

9:20: Indiana's "The Bloody 9th" flips again.  Baron Hill out.  One of the most competitive districts in the country cycle after cycle.

9:29: New Hampshire goes back to its Republican roots?  Both House seats flip plus R's hold Senate.  Yet...Dems hold Governorship.

9:31: Just in case anyone was unclear about First Amendment, Oklahoma has voted to ban Sharia law.  Good God.

9:36: Dems. Kanjorski and Carney in big trouble in NE Pennsylvania.

9:41: Rahall holds on in WV.  Wonder how much Manchin momentum helped him.  Very ugly race as Lebanese American Rahall tarred with "Arab" tag.  Glad this kind of crap wasn't rewarded, at least here.

9:44: Lincoln Davis seems done in TN.  Another Blue Dog.  How many rural southern Dems left???  Chet Edwards also out in TX.

For Dems out there, might I recommend Clynelish 14 y.o. Single Malt Scotch?  Quite nice as I'm enjoying it now.

10:03: For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans hold the North Carolina legislature.  Gotta get my Eric Foner out to get the history.

10:11: Dems. Marshall and Bishop going down in Georgia.  The south is becoming essentially Republican unless you've got a sizable black population in your district.  Shuler hangs on in NC but he's very much the exception.

10:25: Wisconsin in for big changes.  Looks like two House seats flip (7 and 8).  Scott Walker elected Governor.  Obama got 56% in WI, one of his most impressive performances for a swing state.  WI unemployment not as bad as other Rust Belt states.

10:32: If anyone would have told you, 2 years ago, that West Virginia would be a bright spot for Democrats in the future, you'd have thought they were certifiable.  2010 is the bizarro 2008.

10:42: Russ Feingold defeated in Wisconsin.  Never won by a lot but was reliable.  Can't wait to see turnout data.  Low turnout in Dane and Milwaukee???  The Progressive tradition in WI really took a hit tonight.  With Feingold loss and Obey retirement, few remnants left.

10:48: South Texas has 4 Latino Dem. House members.  After tonight only 2 may be left.  Ortiz out, Rodriguez trailing badly.

10:54:  Only about 10-15% in for most races, but things looking really weird in upstate NY.  GOP renaissance where they previously only held 1 seat???  Numbers may not hold but interesting nonetheless, especially as GOP did well elsewhere in NE, especially NH.

11:07: How could so many PA Dem Incumbents lose but there still be a close Senate race?  Normally, I don't think campaigns matter much compared to underlying fundamentals but Sestak seems to be proving that wrong.

11:12: $160 million isn't quite enough to win CA Gov's race.  Moonbeam back.

11:18: Gene Taylor looks done in MS gulf district.  Longtime Blue Dog.  Well tanned, great hair, Catholic.  Fixture at Capitol Hill haunts Tune Inn and Hawk n Dove.  Better settle up on your tab.

11:25: Old Bulls and Dem Committee Chairs Spratt (SC) and Skelton (MO) go down.  Two more rural Dems hit the canvas.

11:35: Wave doesn't seem to crest over Mississippi River in Iowa.  3 Dem. House incumbents holding on.  Minnesota also holding solid for Dems, plus Gov. pickup.  Wisconsin really looking like an outlier now in my mind.

11:39:  Scott Brown doesn't improve Massachusetts GOP chances.  House delegation stays 10-0 Dem. with win in Delahunt open seat.  Deval Patrick re-elected Gov.

11:50: Grandpa voted, junior didn't.  Exit polls show a huge shift in turnout based on age compared to 2008.

12:07: No longer the one.  John Hall, former lead singer of Orleans, out in NY.  Those early NY numbers coming to bear.

12:17: First African American GOP congressman elected since J.C. Watts.  Tim Scott wins easily in SC.  With Susanna Martinez elected as first ever Hispanic female Governor (NM), is this the most diverse GOP since Reconstruction???

12:28: Reid seems to have it well in hand in NV.  Murray hanging on in WA.  All things considered, Dems seemed to do better out west.  Not sure what this means yet.

I'm going to sign off for tonight.  There's a lot to digest and sort through.  I may hold off tomorrow to allow me to put something together that isn't stream of consciousness.  There will be enough commentary out there to hold you over.

What Will Happen Today

In short, I have no idea.

All media accounts and polling suggest that the Democrats are going to get massacred today. That may well be.  One of the things that I pride myself, and this blog on, is that I don't make predictions.  No better way to look foolish that to make predictions about politics.  Rather, I try to rely on the fundamentals.  Given my training as a political scientist, there are certain fundamentals when it comes to congressional elections.  Namely:

• Midterms are bad for the incumbent President's party.
• Incumbent members of Congress are overwhelmingly re-elected
• Turnout is lower in midterms and favors the out-party, which tends to be more energized
• Minority party gains tend to be concentrated in open seat contests

Three of those four suggest Republican gains.  The wildcard is #2.  All indications--although largely anecdotal to this point--are that this is a bad, bad year for incumbents.  The comparison being most often made is to the 1994 Republican landslide.  In that election, 35 Democratic House incumbents lost.  If the Republicans repeat that performance--they need 39 House seats to gain the majority--they will have a big night, given that they are expected to win a slew of open seats in the south.

Beyond these, however, there is another "fundamental" that will probably play the greatest role tonight, although it won't get discussed nearly as much as it should: 10%.  The unemployment rate.  In all of the commentary on why Republicans will do well, few people--especially Republican flaks--will admit that in many ways their success will be due to factors completely beyond their control.  Sophisticated campaign operations, money, targeted GOTV, etc. are in the end ancillary.

I'll be blogging throughout the night as results come in. 

ElectionDissection.com Book Club: Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait In Letters Of An American Visionary

Last week saw the release of a trove of letters spanning the career of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  Moynihan had arguably one of the most interesting and broad careers of any modern politician.  Assistant to four presidents (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford), ambassador (India and United Nations), and four term Senator, Moynihan's peripatetic life of politician/public intellectual is virtually inconceivable now.  Though clearly a liberal (he called himself a Kennedy Liberal), Moynihan was known for--and often criticized by the left for--his contrarian-ness.  Just as much a critic of liberalism as a champion of it, Moynihan's intellect, curiosity, and skepticism made him more of a thinker than a true legislator.  Thus, while he did not produce a policy legacy akin to that of contemporaries like Ted Kennedy or Bob Dole, he added something distinctive to the Senate, something that I would argue is sorely lacking today.

 Moynihan's greatest impact, probably, came in the realm of urban and social policy during the 1960s.  Some of this work has contributed to how we look at electoral politics.  Specifically, Moynihan, along with his longtime collaborator Nathan Glazer, were pioneers in the study of ethnicity.  Their seminal work, "Beyond the Melting Pot", explores how different groups--the Irish, Italians, Jews, etc.--competed for and rose to power in New York.  Not simply a study of voting and party formation, "Beyond the Melting Pot" is a larger sociology of these groups with a focus on how they assimilated (or have yet to assimilate) into the broader culture.  It was Moynihan's attempt to explain the plight of the African American community at the time that is one of the most oft cited aspects of his work, even now several years after his passing.  While serving in the Johnson Administration, he authored what has come to be known as the "Moynihan Report."  "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" was an attempt to frame how the government should proceed with social policy aimed at impoverished African Americans.  Focusing on the historical factors that, he believed, led to a decline in the stability of black families, Moynihan's analysis can be read as a warning shot to liberal policymakers who believe that the right program can solve complicated, entrenched, and long standing problems.  In the aftermath of the study's release, Moynihan was vilified by many on the left for, at best, "blaming the victim" or being a high brow racist.  A reading of the report (which many of its critics failed to do) doesn't really bear these critiques out.  What it shows, however, is how social science and politics oftentimes create a very explosive mixture.  Given the social upheaval of the period and the hegemonic Great Society liberalism of the Johnson years, Moynihan's willingness to raise tough questions from inside the tent left him scarred for quite a long time, if not the remainder of his life.

Having been stung by the reaction to the Moynihan Report, especially from so many of his friends and colleagues on the left, Moynihan spent much of the late 60's and early 70's further engaged in critiques of liberal shibboleths.  The fact that he did this from within Republican administrations makes his career all the more fascinating.  How one reads this part of his career--was he trying to fight the good fight for liberalism within the enemy camp or was he increasingly a traitor to his roots?--depends, I suppose, on one's willingness to give Moynihan the benefit of the doubt.  He would have perhaps said that he did not so much leave the Democratic Party as much as it left him.  In the field of social policy, it is quite clear that the policies Nixon supported--i.e. a guaranteed income--not only had Moynihan's fingerprints on them but would be inconceivable in a Republican administration today. 

After his ambassadorial stints, Moynihan sought the Democratic Senate nomination in New York in 1976.  In a heavily contested primary, Moynihan won by about 7,000 votes over his top challenger, Representative Bella Abzug--she of the fiery personality and big hats.  The race also featured former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and NYC Council President Paul O'Dwyer.  As an aside, I should probably devote an entire post to Abzug at some point.  She features prominently in another fascinating Democratic primary of the era, the 1977 NYC mayoral contest that also featured Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch.  For a great primer on that race, check out Jonathan Mahler's "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning."  Anyhow, in the general election Moynihan went on to defeat Republican incumbent James Buckley (brother of William F., himself a frequent debating foil of Moynihan).  Once ensconced in the Senate, Moynihan was never seriously challenged for re-election.  He won 65% and 67% in 1982 and 1988 respectively.  In the Republican landslide of 1994 that saw his co-Empire State Democrat Mario Cuomo dispatched from the Governor's mansion, Moynihan won quite easily with 55%. 

As I mentioned above, Moynihan's legislative record doesn't seem to square with his ambitions.  This retrospective on his career, published on the eve of his retirement in 2000, explores some of the reasons.  I like to think that some of his failures can be attributed to his training as a social scientist.  As one myself, I know that we're often better at pointing out what's wrong with a proposition than what's right with it.  Every graduate student gets quite proficient at deconstructing, critiquing, and picking apart someone else's work.  Thus, someone like Moynihan could quite easily look at a state of affairs--say persistent urban poverty--and quickly ascertain what has gone wrong in the past, what will probably go wrong in the future, and conclude that attempting to change it is futile (especially if the proposed change is sweeping).  To many, this would make Moynihan a "conservative."  The fact that he spent much of his time in the liberal wilderness kibitzing with the likes of Irving Kristol and other "neo-conservatives" perhaps gives some credence to this.  That aside, this temperament also makes legislating difficult.  To successfully push policy through the Senate one needs to be willing to both suspend belief about the shortcomings of one's ideas (what won't work) and also find ways to get others on board.  In short, you need to be an optimist, a salesman, and a trader.  Thus, Moynihan seemed destined to be the "brain" or the Senate without exercising much of the "brawn."

Having said that, one shouldn't conclude that Moynihan was a failed or unsuccessful Senator.  There is a tremendous value in having someone who can provide the institution and other senators with what we might call "context."  While Moynihan may have struck people as pedantic and somewhat windy, one can't deny that he brought to the debate a tremendous amount of substance.  There should be a place for people like this in politics.  That Moynihan was able to be both professorial and a tremendous vote getter is quite remarkable.  In reflecting on his career and now diving into his until now unpublished correspondence, I can't help but lament the fact that he seems like a relic of a bygone era.  Despite the fact that he's been out of office only a decade, the current political environment seems to have regressed to a point that a Daniel Patrick Moynihan would be un-electable.  Our politics is worse off for that.  Can you imagine twitter.com/dpmoynihan???

For some more on Moynihan, check out these interviews:

CSPAN "Life and Career of Daniel Patrick Moynihan" from 1987
Charlie Rose from 1998
Charlie Rose from 1996
Charlie Rose following Moynihan's death

A Visit To Antietam: Why the Civil War Matters

Of all the topics that have been explored on this blog since its creation, the one that has received the most attention, both explicitly and implicitly, has been the role of race in our politics.  No doubt the 2008 campaign made much of this discussion necessary and inevitable.  However, this country’s tangled and troubled, yet sometimes hopeful history with race has fascinated me since I first became interested in politics.  I’ve always felt that it has been our most important societal cleavage and, while not always the most appropriate lens through which to view our politics—there are surely others like class, region, gender, etc.—it is the one that I always seem to come back to regardless of my starting point.

When we look at our country’s historical narrative, no event has shaped our society, politics, economy, and understanding of ourselves more than the Civil War.  I’d go so far as to argue that the Civil War, if it was indeed the “Second American Revolution,” serves as the point around which America’s story revolves.  Those issues that couldn’t be reconciled at the founding, most notably that of slavery, but also the fundamental question of the relationship between the states and the federal government, ultimately led to the conflict.  In its aftermath, we can also see how the Civil War has left a long wake.  As we know, the end of slavery did not heal its wounds and solve the “race problem” in this country.  In fact, it has in many ways gotten more complicated.  Furthermore, we still debate the role of government in our society even as the Civil War, as the greatest period of governmental expansion in our history, seemingly propelled us toward the reality of perpetual big government.  If indeed, as Faulkner tells us, “there is no past,” we are destined to reckon with the Civil War as long as we are Americans.  If nations have what I would term “existential moments” in which their very identity is debated and ultimately defined, the Civil War was ours.  So, if we want to understand American politics, including elections, we need to spend a lot of time thinking about that most vexing time.

As any student of the Civil War knows, there were numerous points at which the conflict could have turned.  In retrospect, the outcome may seem assured given the vast resource and manpower advantage of the Union and the seeming ill-preparedness of the Confederacy for the reality of secession.  Both sides enjoyed military victories and had momentum working in their favor at different points in time.  Yet, both sides failed to capitalize on their successes and both struggled mightily to keep their people committed to the fight.  The tragedy of the Civil War was not only that it seemed destined to occur in the first place, but that once engaged, both sides seemed destined for a war of bloody attrition that would stretch the country to its very limits.  With no common ground, however small, to compromise an end around, the conclusion would have to come through exhaustion and surrender rather than negotiation.

Throughout the war there were a number of battles and events that were crucial—Bull Run, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, the Wilderness, etc.  But for me, Antietam has always seemed the most pivotal and important.  Prior to the battle on September 17, 1862, the Confederacy had enjoyed a string of victories.  Beginning with Stonewall Jackson’s success in the Shenandoah Valley and McClellan’s decision to abandon his efforts against Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign, then followed quickly by the rout at Second Bull Run, Lee’s forces were emboldened enough to undertake their first serious incursion onto northern soil.  With aims on Washington, it was hoped that this thrust would bring about European recognition of the Confederacy and an end to the conflict in the South’s favor.   In pursuit, the hastily reorganized northern army, again under the command of the shortly deposed McClellan, tracked westward from Frederick Maryland, across the Catoctin Mountains.  The two armies, roughly 150,000 men total, converged on the tiny hamlet of Sharpsburg Maryland.  Situated between the meandering Antietam Creek to its east and the Potomac River to its rear, Sharpsburg would become the next spot of American soil upon which so much blood would be shed.

Given the run of recent events, the north needed a military victory badly.  What those positioning themselves on the Maryland countryside did not know was that a much larger and profound outcome hinged on the result.  For months, President Lincoln had struggled with how to address the issue of emancipation.  While Lincoln had not campaigned for the presidency as an abolitionist, the rapid secession of southern states was premised on the notion that he would nonetheless proceed down that path.  Without going off onto a tangent regarding Lincolns’ view of slavery and its relation to the war, by 1862 Lincoln had come to the conclusion that the issue could no longer continue to simmer on the back burner.  From the beginning of the conflict Lincoln had to balance his growing desire to attack the institution with his need to keep the non-seceded slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in the Union.  Coupled with this was the dubiousness of whether an emancipation could even be enforced and for what ends.  Despite this, by the summer Lincoln had decided to move forward with an Emancipation Proclamation--but to couch it in a way that put the burden on the seceded southern states.  Should they not return to the Union after a designated period, slaves residing in such states would from that point forward be free.

Given the military doldrums of the spring and summer, however, Lincoln was in no position to issue the Proclamation.  It would smack of desperation and no doubt signal the weakness of the Union.  For it to have any effect, no doubt psychological more than practical, it had to be issued from a position of strength.  Thus, Lincoln needed a win.  

The Battle of Antietam would provide Lincoln the opportunity he so badly wanted, but at a tremendous cost.  September 17, 1862 was the single bloodiest day in American history.  Over 25,000 northern and southern troops were killed or wounded.  The battle raged over three quite distinct locales on the field.  For a comprehensive rundown of the battle, see here.  Dawn saw the advance of General Joseph Hooker’s First Corps from its position on the extreme north of the field.  With General Stonewall Jackson’s Confederates emerging from the West Woods, some of the war’s most brutal fighting took place in what has become known simply as “the Cornfield.”  The second theater that day, further south, occurred along a Confederate entrenchment along a sunken farm road.  The “Bloody Lane” saw wave upon wave of Union forces mowed down until an exhausted, disorganized, and spent Confederate line was finally breached and overtaken.  Finally, on the extreme southern end of the field, the Battle of Burnside Bridge raged throughout the day.  Aided by the natural fortifications provided by the rolling hills opposite Antietam Creek, a small force of Georgia troops was able to continuously repel Union General Burnside’s attempts at crossing the creek in order to unify with the other northern forces and crush Lee’s army.  Although ultimately able to break across, it was too late.  Lee was able to muster his army together, retreat across the Potomac, and continue to fight for 2 ½ more years.

With Lee’s thrust northward repelled, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.  As a result, the war became more explicitly about ending slavery.  As I wrote a few posts back, opinion within the Union ranks, and among northern voters, was decidedly mixed about waging a war on emancipationist aims.  Northern Democrats campaigned throughout the war to try and end the conflict and many were keen to do so without abolishing slavery.  That Lincoln was able to withstand such criticism and be overwhelmingly re-elected in 1864 signaled the desire of the country to see the war through.  In fact, there is much evidence to suggest that many of those on the front lines became much more opposed to the horrors of slavery once they confronted it directly during their campaigns southward (for an excellent overview of this, see Chandra Manning's "What This Cruel War Was Over").

Next year will mark the 150th Anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.  No doubt there will be much discussion about the currency of the Civil War for modern day Americans.  For me, its relevance is obvious, especially if we are being honest with ourselves about the war's cause--slavery.  When we think about the long arc of America’s history with race, the Battle of Antietam is one of those few events which changed the trajectory of our nation.

**Photos taken September 24, 2010.