Sunday, January 6, 2013

Weekend Roundup

Kansas held both Democratic and Republican Party caucuses yesterday. Both had record turnouts, in many cases forcing voters to wait in line for hours. Still the caucus format is so inconvenient that at most 10% of the number of people who will vote in November showed up. I suppose you could argue that that means only the hard core fanatics showed up. You could go further and point out that both caucuses were won by the party's extremists -- Cruz and Sanders -- with both trouncing national favorites (Trump and Clinton) by more than 20 points. Still, while a primary might have narrowed the outcomes, I seriously doubt if it would have overturned either winner.

The Republican caucus was a big show here in Wichita, with most (or maybe all) registered Republicans required to head downtown to the Century II Auditorium, where the voting took place after speeches in favor of the candidates. Cruz and Trump represented themselves in person. Marco Rubio was AWOL, his slot filled in by local Congressman (and Bill Kristol favorite) Mike Pompeo. Trump was singled out for a counter-demonstration, and had some hecklers removed from the caucus. When the votes were counted, the results were: Cruz 48.2%, Trump 23.3%, Rubio 16.7%, Kasich 10.7%, out of about 72,000 votes (Romney got 689,000 votes in 2012).

The Democratic caucuses were organized by State Senate district. We attended the 25th, at the SEIU union hall on west Douglas. The 25th district covers the near west side of Wichita, between the Arkansas River and the flood control ditch from 25th North to Pawnee (23rd South), plus Riverside (the area between the Little Arkansas River and the big one -- this is where we live) and a chunk of south Wichita from the river east to Hillside, bounded by Kellogg (downtown) on the north and Pawnee on the south (this is the area I grew up in). The district is represented by creepy Republican Michael O'Donnell -- a "preacher's kid" who long lived rent-free thanks to his father's church, and who is best known for authoring a bill passed last year which placed many restrictions on what welfare recipients could do with their money (including a restriction that they couldn't draw more than $25 at a time from an ATM), but who was most recently in the news for providing beer to a party of underaged "campaign supporters."

The district is mostly working class, overwhelmingly white -- Wichita is still pretty segregated, and the Republicans who drew up the Senate district map worked hard to put every black person they could find into the 29th district -- the result is that Sedgwick County has only one Democrat in the state senate, compared to 7-9 Republicans (some suburban and rural slivers overlap into other counties). The district was formerly represented by Jean Schodorf, a liberal Republican who was ousted by O'Donnell in the 2012 GOP primary purge. He will be opposed this year by Lynn Rogers, a popular school board member who recently switched parties, so I think he has a good chance to flip the district (until they redraw it -- Republicans control the state senate 32-8).

We managed to park about three blocks from the caucus site, and spent a little more than an hour in line to get into the building. By that time, they had decided to run a primary instead of a caucus as they couldn't fit a tenth of the people who turned out into the hall. We saw a couple dozen people we knew (including a couple carrying Hillary signs), and many hundreds we didn't (a great many with Bernie signs or stickers). When we got in, I was chagrined to find that my name wasn't on the voter roll, so I had to register. (Being Democrats, they didn't require ID or proof of citizenship, so I'm not sure how my registration will set with the Voter Suppression Bureau -- or whatever they call it these days. I've been registered here since 1999, but changed from independent to Democrat for the 2008 caucus, so it's possible that the party change didn't stick).

The final vote total was 67.7% Sanders, 32.3% Clinton, with 41,000 votes cast (Obama got almost 440,000 in 2012). I've looked around for more local election results, but haven't found much yet. I do know that the 4th Congressional District, which includes Wichita and mostly rural counties southeast to Montgomery (Independence and Coffeyville), broke 70-30% for Sanders -- the highest of any Kansas Congressional District. There's a good chance my caucus went 75-80% for Sanders. It's likely blacks in Kansas broke for Hillary: I saw few, but those who did have signs supported Hillary. Sanders got 81.4% in Lawrence (where Cruz only got 37% and Rubio beat Trump 20-18%), but (as I recall) the 3rd District was the closest, so Hillary must have done better in Wyandotte (largely black) and/or Johnson (KC suburban) counties.

The 4th was also Cruz's top congressional district. He slumped a bit in the 3rd (suburban Kansas City, Lawrence) and, a bigger surprise, in the 1st, represented by his most prominent booster in the state, Tim Huelskamp. Good chance Huelskamp's endorsement actually cost Cruz votes: Huelskamp is much hated in the most Republican district in the state, mostly by farmers who don't appreciate his efforts to wipe out the government gravy train. Not a good day for other prominent endorsers either: Gov. Brownback, Sen. Roberts, and Rep. Pompeo all threw their political weight behind Rubio, who came in a distant third, performing well below his statewide average in Pompeo's district. The top Trump supporters -- Kris Kobach (ALEC) and Phil Ruffin (Wichita's other billionaire, like Trump a casino mogul) -- had no discernible effect. One might also add Clinton-backer Jill Docking, possibly the best known Democrat in the state -- she lost a couple statewide races, but bears the name of two former governors and a state office building in Topeka.

[PS: Here are some figures by Congressional District: Cruz got 58% in the 4th, 49% in the 1st, 46% in the 2nd, and 42% in the 3rd. Rubio led Trump in the 3rd 22-20%, but with Pompeo's help trailed in the 4th 13-22%. Kasich got 15% in the 3rd, only 6% in the 4th. Sanders did best in the 2nd District (Topeka) with 72%, followed by 70% in the 4th, 69% in the 1st, and 62% in the 3rd.]

Sanders also won in Nebraska (57.1-42.9%), while Clinton mopped up in Louisiana (71.1-23.2%). Evidently Clinton finished the day with a slight increase in her delegate edge. Maine votes today, and should go to Sanders. [PS: That indeed happened, Sanders leading 64.2-35.6%.] Michigan and Mississippi vote on Tuesday -- Michigan should be an indicator of whether the Sanders campaign is looking up or down. Recent polls there favor Clinton (60-36%, 57-40%, 55-44%; 538's weighted average is 57.1-37.2%), but Michigan Democrats have been known to think out of the box -- George Wallace and Jesse Jackson are former winners -- and the last-minute focus there will be intense. (Trump is a heavy favorite on the Republican side, leading Cruz 37.0-21.4% with Kasich above Rubio 20.7-18.4%.)

Trump won primaries yesterday in Kentucky (35.3-31.6% over Cruz, with Rubio at 16.4% and Kasich 14.4%) and Louisiana (41.4-37.8% over Cruz, with Rubio way out at 11.2% and Kasich half that), while Cruz solidly beat Trump in Maine (45.9-32.6%, Kasich over Rubio 12.2-8.0%). The latter was a surprise to me: Cruz had done very poorly in New England thus far, and Maine is about the last place in the nation where moderate Republicans have any traction. May be worth noting that turnout in Maine was extremely low (18382 votes vs. 292276 for Romney in 2012, so 6.3% -- about half the ratio in Kansas).

For more on this round, see 538's How the States Voted on Semi-Super Saturday. They are very impressed by Cruz, at least as unimpressed by Rubio, and quick to dismiss Sanders. You also get things like:

The Republican race is quite challenging to model demographically, and also isn't all that well-explained by ideology. So I expect that personality really might have something to do with it. Is it a coincidence that some of Trump's worst performances so far are in "nice" states like Minnesota and Kansas, and that his best is in neurotic, loud Massachusetts?

My first reaction to the first line was that there's no division in the Republican party either demographically or ideologically, but then the third line made me think of one: Catholics, especially those who got worked up over race and left the Democratic Party for Reagan. Massachusetts, which Reagan won in 1984, was ground zero for them, but Kansas and Minnesota have far fewer Catholics and a lot less urban/suburban race panic. They are also states where the Republican Party has never made much effort to pander to racism -- I suppose you could say that was "nice" of them, but they didn't really have the need in Kansas, nor the opportunity in Minnesota. Of course, we don't really need to define this group as Catholic: the more generic term is racist, and Trump does very well in those ranks.

One thing that 538 does point out is that Carson's votes seem to be going to Cruz, not Trump. I think he's right there, especially in Kansas, where Carson is very highly regarded and would probably have pulled 10% were he still in the race. They also note that while Trump led Louisiana in early ballots, Cruz may have gotten more votes on primary day than Trump.

Some scattered links this week:

  • Jeffrey Toobin: Looking Back: The New Yorker's legal expert, author of two books on the Supreme Court -- The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (2007), and The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court (2012) -- considers the legacy of the late Antonin Scalia and gets to the point quick:

    Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward. [ . . . ]

    Scalia described himself as an advocate of judicial restraint, who believed that the courts should defer to the democratically elected branches of government. In reality, he lunged at opportunities to overrule the work of Presidents and of legislators, especially Democrats. Scalia helped gut the Voting Rights Act, overturn McCain-Feingold and other campaign-finance rules, and, in his last official act, block President Obama's climate-change regulations. Scalia's reputation, like the Supreme Court's, is also stained by his role in the majority in Bush v. Gore. His oft-repeated advice to critics of the decision was "Get over it."

    Toobin has a follow-up piece, The Company Scalia Kept, including an overdose of the wit and wisdom of Scalia's hunting buddy, C. Allen Foster ("when the last duck comes flying over with a sign around his neck 'I am the last duck,' I will shoot it"). Also post-mortem is Jedediah Purdy: Scalia's Contradictory Originalism, which treats Scalia's signature rationale with more respect than I can muster. I've felt "originalism" was nothing more than Scalia's way of echoing Pope Urban's "Deus vult" -- a cheap way of selling anything that enters his wretched mind (although effective only if you think Scalia, like the pope, is infallible).

  • Nate Silver: Republican Voters Kind of Hate All Their Choices: My first thought was, not as much as I hate them, but then I remembered that we're talking about Republicans, who seem to have a boundless capacity for hating other people -- so why not themselves? One chart here shows that in in the 2012 primary season, Republicans were more likely to have at least a "satisfied" view of Romney (63%) than of Santorum (55%) or Gingrich (52%). The current leader is Rubio (53%), followed by Cruz (51%) and Trump (49%). Another chart puts Trump's 49% well below that of all but one previous nominee or major candidate since 2004: Ron Paul in 2012 was lower; Cruz, Gingrich, and Rubio were the next lowest, behind Huckabee (2008), Santorum (2012), and Edwards (57% in 2004). Another chart shows that the 2008 race between Obama and Clinton was less divisive: Clinton led 71-69 -- the main difference was that while Clinton never dropped below 58 (in Mississippi), Obama had lower scores in a few states that turned hard against him in the general election: West Virginia (43), Kentucky (43), Arkansas (47), Oklahoma (49), and Tennessee (51). Clinton's figure this year is even higher at 78, while Sanders is well behind at 62 -- still high enough to suggest he would do a better job of uniting the party than any of the current batch of Republicans.

    No More Mister Nice Blog has a piece which looks beyond Rubio's bare margin in acceptability, arguing there's not much to it: Cruz is the other Trump, and Rubio continues to be friendzoned. The argument is basically that Trump and Cruz, as militant outsiders, are more acceptable to each other's bases than an obvious corporate tool like Rubio would be to either's. The result is that if a brokered convention hands the nomination to Rubio, a big chunk of Cruz and/or Trump supporters would go home or break loose or otherwise wreck the Republican Party.

  • Stephem M Walt: It's Time to Abandon the Pursuit for Great Leaders: From Napoleon to Donald Trump, the track record of investing great power in a charismatic individual has been lousy (in Walt's words, "always a mistake"). The Germans had a word for this, Führerprinzip, which has since become as discredited as it deserves to be. That's one example Walt doesn't bother with, for the problem is not just the higher you fly the harder you fall (surely no one can argue about Napoleon in any other terms), but that Great Leaders may not even be possible any more (and that may be for the better). Walt surveys the recent wreckage:

    I suspect the appeal of the Great Leader also reflects the present shortcomings of existing democratic institutions in Europe and North America, the transparent hypocrisy of most career politicians, and the colorlessness of many current office-holders. If you strip away the well-scripted pageantry that tries to make presidents and prime ministers seem all-powerful and all knowing, today's democratic leaders are not a very inspiring bunch. I mean, seriously: whatever their political skills may be, can one really admire an undisciplined skirt-chaser like Bill Clinton, an insensitive, privileged bumbler like George W. Bush, or an unprincipled opportunist like Tony Blair? Does listening to David Cameron or François Hollande fill you with confidence and patriotic zeal? I still retain a certain regard for Barack Obama, who is both thoughtful and devoid of obvious character defects, but nobody is talking about him being a "transformational" president anymore. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's lackluster performance on the campaign trail and the clown show that is the Republican primary season is just reinforcing the American public's sense that none of these people are sincere, serious, genuinely interested in the public's welfare, or deserving or admiration or respect. Instead, they're mostly out for themselves, and they would say and do almost anything if they thought it would get them elected. And if that is in fact the case (and many people clearly believe it is), then a buffoon like Trump or a grumpy outsider like Bernie Sanders are going to look appealing by comparison.

    Leaving aside the irrelevant sidepoint of whether Sanders is grumpy, the obvious follow-up points are that lacking any policy goals that in any way bear up under scrutiny, the Republican primaries have turned into a forum on leadership posturing, may the greatest of the great prevail (although it's not clear to me how this hasn't ruled Rubio out yet). Meanwhile Clinton has developed (or should I say was given?) the counter, that it is not the president but America that is great, a blessing she will surely shepherd and sustain. From where I stand, all this adds up to is a culture of narcissism -- the last thing in the world we should look to our political leaders to fix.

    Still, I'm haunted by Trump's "make America great again" -- the nagging question being, when was America ever really great? Indeed, what could that possibly mean? Sure, empires from Rome to Brittania to Nazi Germany have exulted in their brutal power while lavishing their elites with the spoils of war, but hardly any of their gains trickled down to the masses, and every last one sowed the seeds of its own destruction. What's so great about that? For that matter, what's so good? The difference is not just rhetoric: back when Lyndon Johnson was president, he had an argument with Bill Moyers over what to call his programs to lift the poor out of poverty and broaden the middle class. Moyers wanted to call this vision the Good Society, but Johnson insisted on cranking up the superlatives, giving us the Great Society. Problem is, while it's easy to think of lots of things that would make most lives better, no one could really envision what it would take to make them great. By overselling his programs, burdening them with grand gestures and empty rhetoric, he undermined them. (Same for his War on Poverty, which he actually did a much better job of executing than his Vietnam War, but which could never be won as definitively as Americans had come to expect from WWII.)

    Perhaps Sanders seems grumpy because he's stuck thinking about real problems and viable solutions instead of engaging in the great national ego stroke of our collective and/or individual greatness?

Also, a few links for further study (briefly noted:

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