HRC-Seward Watch, Part I

Andrea Mitchell:

Two Obama advisers have told NBC News that Hillary Clinton is under consideration to be secretary of state. Would she be interested? Those who know Clinton say possibly.  But her office says that any decisions about the transition are up to the president-elect and his team. Clinton was seen taking a flight to Chicago today, but an adviser says it was on personal business. 

William Seward, of course, was a Senator from New York and the favorite for the 1860 Republican nomination and shockingly lost to s skinny guy from Illinois, only to become the Secretary of State.

He’s better known for Seward’s Folly: buying Alaska. But that didn’t happen until Andrew Johnson was President.

Clinton, though, does not hold Seward’s seat. She does hold Gouvenour Morris’s seat, though. So she’s got that going for her, which is nice. On the other hand, there’s a clear reason why she was not made VP: she also holds the seat once held by one Aaron Burr.

Of course, plenty of others have made this comparison before, including me.

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Official Election Day “Until There’s a Winner” Liveblog

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2008 Election Results (President, Senate, House)

Here are live, up-to-the-minute, results for the presidential, Senate and House elections…

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Election Day AM Liveblog

8:07: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even Bill Ayers have all already voted. Why haven’t you? 

8:09: Morning Joe is pretty dull today.

8:11: Voting turnout is uniformly high, it seems, from early indications. A line in Madison was over a block long.

8:14: Bill and Hillary Clinton, celebrity voters.

8:26: Interesting point on MSNBC: If Obama wins, there’ll be no African-Americans in the Senate.

8:35: Joe Scarborough just said that no Republicans in Congress really supported the Iraq war: that if Bush ever vetoed a budget, they would all turn against it. That’s certainly not what Republicans ran on in 2002 and 2004, and even 2006. It was only after that election that Rumsfeld was replaced, despite wide signs that he needed to be removed before hand. I don’t think Scarborough’s analysis holds up. Also, if someone said that about Democrats, that they didn’t support the war but just did it to get their pork passed, the uproar would be huge, justifiably. Do Republicans care more about pork than war? That’s the implication of what Scarborough is saying. Just a really disingenuous argument, in my opinion.

8:49: Problems in Virginia and elsewhere:

According to reports from OurVoteLive, some precincts in Virginia are equipped with fewer voting machines than expected, while many voters are simply reporting that voting machines are “not working.” In Reston, there have been reports of paper ballot scanners malfunctioning. A few voters in Richmond report that the electronic machines in use told the voters their votes for president had been recored when, in fact, the voters had not voted for president yet.

Get that fixed.

9:07: Morning Joe is shocked that Obama is campaigning in Indiana today. But McCain is also campaigning in a couple of states today.

9:11: Harold Ford talks about unkowns being competitive in state races. Does he regret not running against Lamar Alexander?

9:16: Early non-scientific indications are that turnout is officially insane.

9:17: Joe Scarborough thinks all election lawyers are just out to turn a buck. That’s borderline offensive, and I’m pretty shocked no one on set has nothing to say, especially with voting fraud and problems really high on the minds of both parties.

9:26: More on exit polls: Nate Silver here, Mark Blumenthal here. Ignore them. They are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

9:44: In case you were wondering, Obama’s grandmother’s vote will count. Philosophically, I think it’s a good idea to count votes by people who subsequently die. I don’t really want the government to be in the business of deciding who lives long enough to be qualified to vote. Anyone voting today could die later in the day. Hopefully not, though.

9:48: How sad is it that Dan Rather has to be a guest on MSNBC to ask Chuck Schumer a question. Also, the question is stupid, asking if the party will move to the left. The new House and Senate members are uniformly more conservative than the general Democratic caucus that exists. The locus of power will move to the left, but the Democrats will move to the right. This is not particularly controversial or hard to understand, unless you’re a discredited former news anchor, apparently.

10:03: Speechless:

But when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer talks with Candy Crowley from the Obama headquarters in Chicago on Tuesday evening, the correspondent could simultaneously appear in the New York studio—at least as a 3-D hologram. Really.

This is too much. Way, way, way too much.

10:07: Sarah palin is voting from a helicopter.

10:14: John McCain is voting, and the camera crews are going nuts. Will he vote for Obama? THat’d certainly be the maverick move.

10:45 No recent updates because there’s nothing more to update. It seems we’ve reached some sort of equilibrium where any new information will be of less and less use. So I;m going to break for a while, pick up some things, and return here later, in a new post.

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How Off Were The Final RCP Averages in 2004?

Answer: a few points, generally.

Sources: RCP Final by state, Actual Voting, double-checked here. I’m only using states close enough that polls would be considered reliable. 

State	Bush/Kerry RCP Margin	Bush/Kerry Actual Margin	Difference
Florida	Bush +0.6%	Bush +5.01%	4.41%
Ohio	Bush +2.1%	Bush +2.11%	0.01%
Pennsylvania	Kerry +0.9%	Kerry +2.5%	1.6%
Wisconsin	Bush +0.9%	Kerry +0.38%	1.28%
Iowa	Bush +0.3%	Bush +0.67%	0.37%
Minnesota	Kerry +3.2%	Kerry +3.48%	0.28%
Michigan	Kerry +3.5%	Kerry +3.42%	0.08%
Missouri	Bush +4.2%	Bush +7.2%	3%
New Mexico	Bush +1.4%	Bush +0.79%	0.61%
Nevada	Bush +6.3%	Bush +2.59%	3.71%
Colorado	Bush +5.2%	Bush +4.67%	0.53%
New Hampshire	Kerry +1.0%	Kerry +1.37%	0.37%
Maine	Kerry +9.5%	Kerry +8.99%	0.51%
West Virginia	Bush +8.5%	Bush +13%	4.5%
Oregon	Kerry 4.8%	Kerry +4.16%	0.64%
New Jersey	Kerry 7.0%	Kerry +6.68%	0.32%
Arkansas	Bush 6.5%	Bush +9.76%	3.26%
Hawaii	Bush 0.9%	Kerry +8.75%	9.65%
Average			1.95%
Average w/out Hawaii			1.50%

The Hawaii polls were not really believed at the time either, so I included a separate average without them. As you can see, the numbers were generally quite close, with only a handful of states exceeding the excessive margin.

The point for this year is that most states will likely be very close to what is predicted, but a few may differ. And the few that differ are likely to be the states polled the least, like North Dakota.

The best that McCain partisans can hope for is that there are very, very large breaks against Obama. I think that is really unlikely to occur.

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Final Election Projection: The Turnout Election

[LOOKING FOR ELECTION RESULTS? Then Check Out Our ELECTION NIGHT LIVE BLOG]

As I was pondering a final election preview, I noticed how many states will be decided by turnout; specifically, Barack Obama’s turnout operation. 

Obama can win states like Florida, North Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri if turnout is high. If it’s just moderate or poor, those states probably fall off the map. In the more traditional and high-leverage tossup states, turnout is less of a factor, but still highly important. If Georgia turnout is massive for Obama, that also could be on the map, but it’ll take more to win there. North Dakota and Montana are somewhere in between these two categories - the data is not stong enough to really tell. 

I’d put states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada all lean Obama for now. So officially, I’ll go the safe route and pick Obama to win with 307 electoral votes, but his ceiling is 392 electoral votes. I expect something in that range. There’s so many different routes for Obama to win, it just depends on how high turnout is to determine the margin. McCain’s best hope is a game theory type laziness in swing states. He basically needs to run the table of the contestable states to win. I really don’t see that happening, especially with the sizeable early vote for Obama.

Personally, I think that voter turnout is going to reach record levels, but I don’t fetishize predictions enough to make some sort of random prediction in how that will manifest itself exactly in terms of the electoral college.

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When Will We Know?

One question for tomorrow is: When we will know when the election is over?

Thanks to Nate Silver’s maps of McCain victory simulations and Swing State Projects map of poll closing times, that’s something we can guess. 

Of the early states, McCain has to win North Carolina, and three out of the big four: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. He also has to win North Carolina. Polls in these states all close by 8 ET. However, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina might be too close to call right away. 

But we’ll probably know those results at some reasonable time tomorrow. Maybe 10 ish. If Virginia and Pennsylvania both go to Obama by 10 ET, which is entirely reasonable, then I think that will decide the election.

A lot of McCain states - Missouri, North Carolina, possibly Ohio (which is right now an Obama state but McCain needs it to win) will only come in very late at night.

If McCain wins, we’re up all night long and possibly for days. With Obama we may know right away. But then again, perhaps not.

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The Louisiana Purchase Election

A previous post looked at the Democratic hegemony over the Northeast, which is a very recent phenomenon. In response, I want to look at another recent phenomenon: Republican hegemony over the Louisiana Purchase region. The effect of the Reagan years on the electoral college have been that both parties have geographically consolidated strength. This was not always the case. 

States included at least partially in the Louisiana Purchase: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. 

While much is made of states like Florida and Ohio, Democrats have recently only won by keeping Republican electoral victories among these states to a minimum, and not allowing the Republican to run up the score. Before Reagan, the electorate really divided these states in such a way as to make them a bellweather when put together. That’s not the case anymore. 

In our latest projection, we have McCain winning 105 electoral votes from this region to Barack Obama’s 31. At most, Obama could probably win 48 electoral votes from this region (add in Missouri, North Dakota, and Montana). And perhaps another Democrat might have been able to carry Arkansas. But I’m not sure any Democrat could have possibly carried all of even these tossup states. Clinton, for instance, would likely not have been competitive in North Dakota or Montana. 

If I had more time, I might consider breaking it down and looking at total votes only in areas included in the Louisiana Purchase, and not include areas outside of it, like most of Alabama and Mississippi, for instance. Unfortunately for you, I have a life. As it is, the modern test for the Louisiana Purchase region shows that Democrats need to approach 50% of the Republican total to win the election. 

2004: Bush: 126, Kerry: 10

2000: Bush 113, Gore 22

1996: Dole 87, Clinton 48

1992: Bush 76, Clinton 59

1988: Bush 118, Dukakis 18

1984: Reagan 143, Mondale 10

1980: Reagan 123, Carter 10

1976: Carter 80, Ford 53

1972: Nixon 133, McGovern 0

1968: Nixon 66, Humphrey 35, Wallace 33

1964: Johnson 109, Goldwater 27

1960: Kennedy 75, Nixon 52, Byrd 15

 

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If It’s One Party Rule, Don’t Blame Only One Party

Patrick Edaburn:
One way to visualize what is going on is to look at New England, the six states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Since the founding of the Republican party in 1854 the region has sent at least one Republican to every single Congress. An unbroken record of 154 years of elections.

But after this week that could no longer be true. There is only one GOP House member left in New England (compared to twenty one Democrats). Incumbent Christopher Shays (R-CT) is in a tough race for re-election and may well lose to a Democrat. Activists are vowing to ‘turn New England blue’ by wiping out any opposition of any kind.

This kind of thinking is even being promoted on a national level by some of the more far left blogs like Daily Kos where the webmaster promotes the idea of crushing the opposition. Again this is not simply the idea that you have your views, I have mine and we both hope that we win. This is the idea that only one viewpoint should be allowed, only one political position is acceptable. This is not a healthy concept either from the point of view of good government or free speech.

Now I am sure that some of our more liberal readers are thinking ‘well what is wrong with the idea of winning’. In response I would suggest they consider how they would feel if a similar campaign were being waged to ‘turn red’. The idea of absolute one party rule is quite disturbing to me. I would think the people of New England would recognize this as many of their legislatures are very lopsided and have led to a lot of scandal and corruption over the years.

Why is Edaburn not even considering that part of the problem is that the GOP is aligning themselves in such a way as to not appeal to the region? This sort of ebb and flow is natural in American politics, and it’s not fixed by pushing back and telling people to change their minds for their own sake, but by making the second party appeal to people.

Did Edaburn ever complain in the past 30 years about the GOP strength in the South? Or in the area of the Louisiana Purchase?

Edaburn’s concerns ahould not be directed at partisans who want to win. The better question is: Why is the GOP not able to win in New England?

When that question is answered, the GOP will be on the rise again. But sometimes, losing is the best recipe. The Democrats would not be the party they are today without 1984 and 2004. Reagan needed 1976 and 1964 to win in 1980. 

Blaming a party for wanting to win is patently ridiculous.

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VIDEO: Jeremiah Wright Pennsylvania GOP Ad

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Quote for the Day

“If John McCain wins, we’re not a racist nation. If Barack Obama wins, we’re not going to hell in a handbasket.” - Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe.

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2008Central.net Presidential Election Podcast (11/02/08)

In this podcast, we discuss projections for election day and reflect on the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain in order to glean insight into how they would serve as president.

[Subscribe to 2008Central.net's Presidential Election Podcast]

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Our Election Projection

In case you missed my last electoral projection from a week ago, you can see it here. We’re going to be doing a final one tomorrow sometime, but I’m absolutely confident in this one still. I don’t expect much to change. Maybe North Carolina or Ohio at most might swing to McCain, but not enough to swing the election.

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Obama and Keith Ellison: Fact Checking

Andrew Sullivan accurately derides this piece by Scott Johnson as “It is the highbrow equivalent of the Obama-Is-A-Muslim-Terrorist emails. Except it isn’t even that highbrow. It’s a strange attempt to draw parallels between Congressman Keith Ellison’s career and Barack Obama’s.”

I can personally fact check one point made by Johnson, and want to push back on another point:

Johnson claims::”both Ellison and Obama were the leftward-most viable candidates running for the Democratic Party endorsement, and both won endorsement against heirs apparent.”

Hilalry Clinton ran to the left of Obama in the primaries on domestic policy, and John Edwards ran to the left of both of them - and was certainly viable as a candidate in a way that Dennis Kucinich was not (Kucinich is the only other candidate Johnson mentions by name).

But that’s just triviality, really.

The one point I can fact check personally is Johnson’s claim that “Despite the natural alliance that should exist between them, Obama has scrupulously avoided Ellison.” As his only data point, he notes that Obama did not want Ellison to address a mosque. It seems that given the shady sites wrongly linking Obama to being a Muslim, Obama would think that sort of event would be counterproductive.

Indeed, I can think of three events personally that I saw Ellison address Obama, two of which I even live blogged:
1) Obama’s Minneapolis event in the primaries. Would Obama want to hide from Ellison, but still have him address 20,000 people?

2) Obama’s rally the night he won enough delegates to win the nomination in St. Paul. Ellison was in the building, and shook hands with the crowd. 

3) Event as University of Minnesota Law School this year. Ellison spoke there, and in his remarks included why he endorsed Obama. I can’t prove this, obviously, but I think Occam’s Razor is on my side.

And a bonus fact check from Google:

4) Doing a quick check of Google, Ellison campaigned plenty for Obama. There’s even video on Obama’s site.

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Obama TV Tonight: What Did You Think?

Reminder that obama’s network TV special starts at 8 eastern / 7 central. 

Put your thoughts down in the comments section. We’re going to be watching, but not liveblogging unless something extraordinary happens. 

Do you think the idea is ridiculous? a good idea? 

I’m inclined to shrug at the idea - apparently it was common in the 70s and before. But we’ll see based on the execution if it’s more over the top messianic stuff or pragmatic details and appeals.

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More on the Fallacy of Divided Government

I’ve talked through the philosophical problems with divided government here and here. John Judis looks at it historically, and it’s still a bad idea better:

Let’s first look at those past administrations that enjoyed singular success. Most lists would include George Washington’s two terms, Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, Theodore Roosevelt’s (just about) two terms, and Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms. A longer list not based on consensus might include Thomas Jefferson’s first term, Andrew Jackson’s two terms, Woodrow Wilson’s first term, Harry Truman’s two terms, and Ronald Reagan’s two terms.

Of the consensus choices, all enjoyed a united government (in George Washington’s days, there were not really parties.) Of the more controversial choices, Truman suffered through divided government for only two of seven plus years. Reagan is somewhat harder case. In his first six years, he enjoyed what was functionally a united government, because he could count on a majority of Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats; only in his last two years did he have to deal with a Congress controlled by the opposition – and those, of course, were the years of the Iran-Contra scandal, where, on domestic policy, his administration ground to a halt.

Now let’s look at the more disastrous moments in the history of American administrations – where charges of impeachment were brought, and recriminations paralyzed the government. That would have to include the administrations of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton – all instances of divided government. I’d also add the last two years of Wilson’s second term when divided government (and Wilson’s illness) set America on the track of irresponsibility in foreign and domestic policy. So if you look at America’s moments of glory and ignominy, the conclusion is inescapable: divided government is a curse, not a blessing, and should be avoided, if at all possible.

Moreover, the type of relationship McCain would have with Congress is even worse historically:

[T]here are presidents who, in Skowronek’s words, are “affiliated with a set of established commitments that have in the course of events been called into question as failed or irrelevant responses to the problems of the day.” Skowroneck numbers among these James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. These presidents don’t necessarily have to contend with a Congressional opposition in power, but like Hoover and Carter in their last two years, with a nascent and growing opposition in Congress that constitutes a functional majority in opposition to what they want to do. These presidencies have also proved disastrous.

A John McCain presidency would clearly fall in the latter group, and McCain, unlike Hoover and Carter, would have to face clear and unequivocal majorities in Congress united against him. Rather than promising success, that kind of divided government would promise chaos and failure. But don’t tell that to the proponents of divided government.

Divided government works when the jo of the federal government si to do less, not more. But if actual reform is needed, large congressional majorities for the president are fairly essential to that reform.

And hey, if don’t think reform is needed, you’re probably already voting for McCain.

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On Redistribution and the Courts

Marc Ambinder explores the Drudgeism of the day:

 ”Socialist” … “redistributive” … These are 20th century words with 20th century connotations; indeed, the point of Obama’s relfection was that the most progressive — most liberal — court of the era could not bring itself to violate a core American principle and could not extend the sphere of justice to the economy.  Obama wasn’t simply making a technical point about jurisprudence and history; he was expressing a liberal positivist’s lament about the court’s reluctance in one specific case – San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez – which dealt with education funding.

And here’s the redistributionist part:

“One of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still stuffer from that.”

“..so court focused…” is the tragedy, not the court’s refusal to redistribute wealth.

Conservatives find it absurd that Americans are about to elect the most liberal president of the modern era and aren’t terribly upset by it; but in capitalizing on this particular argument of Obama’s, the Republicans are rearguing whether some form of economic redistributions from white people to black people was necessary — even though Obama never really made the point.

I think that says everything to say on Obama, but I can add value by contextualizing Rodriguez a bit more. 

The case was essentially a challenge to unequal education funding across Texas. More money was spent per pupil in some areas, less than others. We see that reflected today with some public schools being really, really good, and others that barely deserve the name “school.” 

If you look this up on Wikipedia, you’ll find that the relative benign finding that “[Justice] Powell led the 5-4 majority in deciding that education was “neither ‘explicitly or implicitly’ protected in the Constitution.” He also found that Texas had not created a suspected class related to poverty. ”

Obama was specifically referring to mostly the inability of the Courts to solve problems like that, and needing social movements and social power to fix those sorts of problem. You need millions of people trying to fix funding problems for inner city schools, not a dozen people in a courtroom. He’s also conceding that the poor should not be a protected class of people, like has been done with race, age, disability, gender, and a number of other classifications, to different extents, of course.

Justice Powell’s argument against redistribution was based on the fact that poor people live everywhere, and redistribution imposed by courts would just move the problem around (citations removed):

The complexity of these problems is demonstrated by the lack of consensus with respect to whether it may be said with any assurance that the poor, the racial minorities, or the children in overburdened core-city school districts would be benefited by abrogation of traditional modes of financing education. Unless there is to be a substantial increase in state expenditures on education across the board - an event the likelihood of which is open to considerable question - these groups stand to realize gains in terms of increased per-pupil expenditures only if they reside in districts that presently spend at relatively low levels, i. e., in those districts that would benefit from the redistribution of existing resources. Yet, recent studies have indicated that the poorest families are not invariably clustered in the most impecunious school districts.

Interestingly, the one person of interest Obama is disagreeing with is Thurgood Marshall, who wrote a very spirited defense in Rodriguez. Marshall argued that the discrimination because of disparities in funding was so vast that that action was required:

The Court seeks solace for its action today in the possibility of legislative reform. The Court’s suggestions of legislative redress and experimentation will doubtless be of great comfort to the schoolchildren of Texas’ disadvantaged districts, but considering the vested interests of wealthy school districts in the preservation of the status quo, they are worth little more. The possibility of legislative action is, in all events, no answer to this Court’s duty under the Constitution to eliminate unjustified state discrimination. In this case we have been presented with an instance of such discrimination, in a particularly invidious form, against an individual interest of large constitutional and practical importance. To support the demonstrated discrimination in the provision of educational opportunity the State has offered a justification which, on analysis, takes on at best an ephemeral character. Thus, I believe that the wide disparities in taxable district property wealth inherent in the local property tax element of the Texas financing scheme render that scheme violative of the Equal Protection Clause.

You can see here how Marshall waves away the possibility of legislative reform as irrelevant. Obama’s point is that there obviously is a problem in the pay, but judges are unwilling to push that far to make changes, as evidenced by Marshall’s argument not attracting a majority vote. 

The reality that people seem to understand is that a broadly-based redistributionist scheme like Drudge et. al are trying to conjure up has zero chance at ever passing. It’s completely unrealistic. 

Also, this blog was totally the only election blog to mention Rodriguez before today. Suck on that, Ambinder!

Cass Sunstein has a great post up on this on TNR.

Also, see more here and here, including some dissenting views from Sunstein.

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The Final Countdown: 8 Days Until Election Day

With 8 days left until election day, here’s a quick roundup of what’s going on…

• Obama will campaign in Canton, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania today.  Biden will campaign in Greeneville, North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina and New Port Richey, Florida today.

• McCain will campaign in Dayton, Ohio and Pottsville, Pennsylvania today.  Palin will campaign in Leesburg, Fredericksburg and Salem, Virginia today.

• Desperation continues to spread in conservative circles.  Rove recognizes the bleak situation McCain is in, but doesn’t really have any good ideas on how he could bounce back.  Hewitt’s blog has a sad post that tries to flip all the election coverage for real: “If MSM Isn’t Trustworthy, Why Are Conservatives Trusting The MSM 8 Days Out?” Because failing to recognize reality is the best way to win this election, right?  Kristol offers some advice for McCain, but not before invoking Foch.  Foch!

• Josh Lyman says that it is your “duty to get Obama elected”.  Oh celebrity endorsements.

• As the election draws near, there is a deafening silence in the liberal blogosphere on Obama’s plans for Afghanistan.  Has that ship already sailed?  Does everyone just blindly accept the need to substantially increase troops there?

• Palin and The View co-host Elizabeth Hasselback sit down with Sean Hannity for an interview scheduled to air tonight.  Hasselback? Really?  Why does the campaign insist on Palin doing this awkward joint interviews?

• Bloomberg’s Al Hunt scolds both candidates for sugar coating reality a bit.

• If Obama wins, is there a role for Axelrod in the administration?  Ben Smith explores this.

• Morning Show summary here.

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