Ezra Klein

It's hard to appreciate the sheer size of the financial advantage Obama will enjoy over McCain. For Democrats, who're used to being effortlessly outspent, it doesn't even sound plausible. But McCain, with his lax fundraising and decision to accept public financing, will have about $85 million for the election, with another $40 million coming from the RNC, some of which will go to the McCain campaign, some of which won't. By contrast, a very conservative estimate for the Obama campaign's fundraising is $300 million. A high estimate, in which 2/3rds of his donors max out at $2,300, is $2.3 billion. And neither of these totals include the new donors he's likely to get, nor the pool of Clinton funders who he's going to begin hoovering money from. I'm expecting him to raise $500 million easily.

In a national election, money isn't everything. Free media matters too. That's why the McCain campaign is desperately pleading with the Obama campaign to do 10 televised debates and townhalls, the better to equalize exposure. But money is how you fund organization. It's how you fund field. It's how you fund ads. It's how you set the terms of the debate. It's how you make the other campaign spend defensively. Obama will be able to fully fund his campaign in every state he thinks he can win and most states he doesn't. And he'll be able to do so while raising the money passively -- unlike McCain, he won't have to waste flying around to endless fundraisers.

McCain, by contrast, will have to make hard choices. He'll have to choose where to spend, and what on. Which attacks to rebut, and which assaults to launch. As Ed Kilgore concludes, "in assessing a general election campaign that currently looks like a cliffhanger, add financial resources to partisan identification trends, the issue landscape, and the mood of the country, as factors that should give Obama an edge. These factors do not in any way guarantee a Democratic victory, but it sure doesn't hurt to have so many aces in the hole."

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Tracy O.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)

"Tomorrow is the very last day Americans will have the chance to vote in this hard-fought and historic race for the Democratic nomination," reads the latest e-mail from the Clinton campaign. "Every vote we receive in South Dakota and Montana will help us add to our popular vote total."

It's a little peculiar to even have to say this, but the Democratic presidential nomination is decided by delegates, not the popular vote. There's a good argument to be made that it should be decided by the popular vote, but for now, it isn't. And so both candidates pursued strategies meant to attain the necessary number of delegates. If the "votes" in the non-election in Michigan and the no-campaign election in Florida were going to matter, the two candidates would have campaigned in both places. If the popular vote was the key, the Obama camp would have ignored small state caucuses and spent that money running up their totals in larger states like Illinois. Indeed, to get a sense for how contingent it all is, head over to Poblano's place where he's got an unbelievably cool little gadget that lets you measure the popular vote while changing different assumptions and variables (like how to count Michigan, Puerto Rico, etc). All these questions and uncertainties exist because the primary process is not set up to measure the popular vote. It's set up to measure delegates.

At the end of the day, you have to judge the game based on the rules set down at the beginning. Trying to decide the election based on the popular vote is like demanding that the NBA finals be decided based on which team brought more of its supporters to the arena. You can argue that that's the more relevant achievement if you want, but if that had been the metric from the beginning, then the two teams would have been out recruiting supporters and not on the court shooting free throws. The Clinton campaign is trying to change the game. But that's something you do before the season starts. Not 30 seconds before the final buzzer.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)

I've been sort of struggling with whether to write this post, but after Daniel Larison and Matt Stoller both toed around the point while offering their takes on Webb, I guess it's worth doing. Let me start by saying that this isn't really about James Webb. He is who he is, and
this post has nothing to do with his positions on the issues. But then, nor does most of the excitement around his candidacy. Rather, Webb represents something of almost transcendent importance to some post-Bush liberals: The opportunity to out-tough the GOP. A candidate who's not only a liberal, but in no way a sissy. He is the daywalker, combining a progressive's positions with a southern militarist's affectations.

But this is not a sustainable approach to politics. Democrats can't out-tough the GOP. It's possible that James Webb can do it. But he's sui generis; a Democrat who can win at politics when played under Republican rules. Democrats love those candidates, because they think of presidential elections as an away game, and they're endlessly hunting for the candidate who plays best under those conditions.

But Democrats can't win at politics when played under Republican rules. Progressivism can't prosper when politics is played under Republican rules. It needs to make its own rules.

Barack Obama's effort to do exactly that has been, by far, the most exciting element of his campaign. His policies -- particularly his domestic policies -- have not been half as innovative as his politics. But his willingness to double down on opposition to the gas tax holiday, to battle back on negotiating with dictators, to respond to attacks by pressing the point, has been genuinely exciting. And though he has been confident and even aggressive in all of this, he has not been "tough." He has not pretended to go shooting, or driven on to Jay Leno's show on Harley. He's essentially been making his own rules.

Continue reading "THE POLITICS OF MASCULINITY." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (63)

Matt wonders whether Obama is a new Jimmy Carter or a new Ronald Reagan. I think that's actually the wrong comparison to fear: The question is whether he's a new first term Bill Clinton. Like Clinton, Obama has fairly little Washington experience, and is running as a charismatic, post-ideological uniter helped along by a moment of intense economic anxiety. The danger is what happens when that man and moment collide with the constrained realities of the modern Senate? 60 votes remains a high bar to clear, and the list of priorities -- health care, global warming, Iraq, ethics reform -- are daunting even in the abstract.

Obama, to be sure, will have a team that's much more experienced with Washington politics and the Senate than Clinton did. Clinton's first chief of staff was Mack McLarty, an Arkansas buddy and businessman. Obama's current chief of staff is Pete Rouse, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Same is true down the line. Clinton had very little Washington experience in his team. Obama's circle of advisers and aides are, by and large, old Beltway hands. That, alone, is a huge difference.

Additionally, as Kevin Drum argues, both Clinton and Carter emerged in moments when the Democratic "brand" was in sharp decline. The angry white males of America didn't like the patrician George W. Bush, but they weren't liberal as such. There was a great and growing backlash against government, against welfare, against "elite" liberalism that manifested in 1994, and that Clinton sought to managed and evade throughout the remainder of his presidency ("the era of big government is over..."). Similarly, Carter came to power atop disgust with Nixon, but amidst an increasing skepticism of the fractious liberal coalition -- a coalition whose congressional leaders blocked many of Carter's initiatives and that later helped Ted Kennedy mount a primary challenge against him.

Obama, by contrast, is operating in a moment of historic Democratic unity and broad exhaustion with conservatism. In 1992, Democrats hadn't held the White House for 12 years, and Clinton ran a campaign explicitly premised on reforming the Democratic Party (hence the DLC, Sister Souljah, "New Democrats," etc,). Obama is running against conservatism and Bush's record. The leading magazines are running articles asking "have the Republicans run out of ideas?" It is, in short, a very different moment. Which is not to suggest it cannot prove a failed presidency. Obama faces immense policy challenges, both foreign and domestic, and the country's legislative machinery is faultier and more rusted than at virtually any time in recent memory. But he has advantages, too, chief among them an ascendant party, a weakened opposition, and a recognition -- unlike Carter and Clinton -- that mastering Washington requires understanding Washington.

Image used under a Creative Commons license from Steve Rhodes.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (66)

It should have been an inspiring moment. John Edwards, finally on a stage with Barack Obama, throwing his support behind a clean end to the Democratic contest. He was gracious and admiring towards Senator Clinton, as he should have been, and effusive towards Obama. Too often, endorsements, particularly those that come late in the game, are awkward, grudging affairs. But Edwards evinced no such hesitancy. Rather than haltingly trying to fit himself into Obama’s narrative, Edwards did the opposite: He set Obama up as the completion of his narrative.

Talk of the Two Americas always begged the question of how we could build one. It was never a question Edwards had a very good answer for. But nor did I think he ever really needed one. Surely step one was the simple recognition of the country's bifurcation. A candidate willing to admit our condition was better than one who sought to deny it. But last night, Edwards offered a fairly novel reply. Before you can knock down walls, he suggested, you need first unify those who live on either side of the barrier. Obama, Edwards said, could do that.

But can he? Throughout the speech, my mind kept wandering back to a piece by Charlie Pierce that offered up a cynic's take on Barack Obama. "As Obama’s campaign gathered strength, the cynic [Pierce] kept hearing that 2004 speech again, in bits and pieces, in every stump speech Obama gave, and he saw that what Obama was offering was exactly what the country did not need. He was offering absolution without confession, without penance...He was offering a guilty country a nolo plea. Himself. Absolution without confession."

It's not quite that simple. George W. Bush is now the least popular president since the advent of modern polling. He has not had the support of a majority of the country in over 40 months. 71 percent of the country now disapproves of his performance. Nixon and Truman have both posted lower favorable numbers, but neither ever elicited such broad disapproval. Bush is the most hated president since we began measuring such feelings. Do those numbers not suggest confession? Is the painful recognition that the country we love is embroiled in a senseless and murderous war not a form of penance? Is the understanding that our nation is off track not an admission of guilt?

Continue reading "EDWARDS, OBAMA, AND THE CYNIC." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 3:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (80)

This seems like a big deal. From The LA Times:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, stung last week by the defection of a prominent superdelegate, could lose the backing of more of these Democratic Party leaders and elected officials if she fails to make significant gains in the remaining month of presidential nominating contests, several California superdelegates said this weekend.

Two of the five superdelegates aligned with Clinton who spoke at the annual California Democratic Convention here said they would reconsider their support if rival Barack Obama maintained his lead in elected delegates and the popular vote after the last contests on June 3.

1) It is absolutely impossible for Clinton to overtake him in delegates in the remaining primaries. It can't be done.

2) She's far behind in the popular vote. If you add Florida, where neither campaigned, she's still 300,000 votes behind. If you cheat and add Michigan, where Obama wasn't on the ballot, and you give him the "uncommitted" voters (as some Clintonites have suggested), she's still 188,000 votes behind. If you do all of that, and then Clinton wins every remaining contest by 10 points, according to Rick Hertzberg's calculations, she'll still be 160,000 votes behind. And that doesn't even include Obama's caucusgoers, who aren't in the straight popular votes tally. Point being: She's not making up the popular vote either.

So that's the math. Obama, meanwhile, needs 1/3rd of the uncommitted superdelegates to win, while Hillary needs 2/3rds. And if her pledged superdelegates begin switching to Obama after June 3rd, then the number she needs grows. Clinton's only real hope is that some scandal emerges that makes Obama literally unelectable -- to the point that his superdelegates abandon his campaign and everyone turns to Clinton in desperation. But that's increasingly unlikely. Which makes Clinton's endless assaults over gas tax holidays and elitism more aggravating. Her path to the nomination is very, very unclear. Her chances to win the nomination exceedingly slim. So it'd be one thing for her to remain in the campaign hoping for a lucky break or influence at the convention. But to continually try and damage the likely Democratic nominee and distract attention from McCain is rather more myopic -- and I say that as someone who does not buy into the idea that she's readying herself for 2012.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (68)

Petey seems to think that I'll be scared to mention this article about Hillary and misogyny, though it's not exactly clear why that would be. For most of the nomination battle, I leaned Edwards, and for some of it, I favored Hillary. I was actually relatively unimpressed with Obama till he actually proved his electoral appeal in the snows of Iowa. Put another way, there's an idea out there that anyone who doesn't think the superdelegates should sweep in with a counter-majoritarian decision that anoints the candidate who's won fewer pledged delegates has been some sort of implacable enemy to her candidacy. It's untrue. Moreover, some who are now ardent Hillary supporters, like Petey, were once deeply hostile to her candidacy (and my colleagues still remember being called "Clinton hacks" because they were occasionally sympathetic). The primary has been a long ride, and allegiances have proven fairly fluid.

But as it's come down to two candidates and dragged into a grueling battle between them, what were once weak preferences seem to have hardened into tribal loyalties, complete with a list of grievances, enemies, and plans for insurgent warfare in case of defeat. Petey, for instance, links to this New York Magazine article on what Clinton's candidacy has shown about latent misogyny and the actual condition of feminism in this country. It's a smart piece, and should be read widely. But insofar as Petey's suggesting that all challenges to Clinton's candidacy have come from sexism, it's an odd and ill-fitting narrative. It's not hard to imagine why a candidate who voted for the Iraq War and refused to apologize has met with hostility among segments of the Democratic base. Nor is it rare for an establishment candidate with tight links to the party's centrist wing and a unique interconnection with its moneyed interests to face a powerful insurgent challenge. Now, take that same candidate, and give the insurgent substantial appeal to African-Americans, the traditional bulwark against wine track renegades, and it's easy to predict trouble for the establishment choice.

Continue reading "ASSIGNMENT DESK: HILLARY AND THE FEMINIST NARRATIVE." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (116)

One of the trickier things to figure out as a political writer is when a scandal, or an impolitic statement, matters. Not matters in a substantive way, but in a political way. The impulse, of course, is to follow each newstory as if its salience in the news cycle corresponded to its actual importance in the campaign. But that's rarely the case. Time passes, comments are forgotten, new gaffes are made, and the election spins on. We've already seen Clinton endure a media feeding frenzy around her position on driver's licenses for immigrants, her remembrances of Tuzla, and her delays in releasing tax returns. We've seen Obama hit by Rezko and Wright. And we've watched McCain mix up al Qaeda members and Iraqi sectarians, pledge himself to 100 years of war, and admit that he doesn't know very much about the economy but was reading Alan Greenspan's memoirs. Any of these could've been a huge deal (and in a couple cases, they were). But what separates them?

This is what I've been trying to figure out. In order for a scandal to live on beyond a few news cycles, it needs one of a couple possible qualities. Here's what I've come up with:

Continue reading "A TAXONOMY OF SCANDALS." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

No one denies that Hillary Clinton's hopes for the nomination now rely on mass movement of superdelegates into her camp. It's a thin reed, but her supporters have held it close. The graph below tracks the movement of superdelegates since February 5th -- which means, it tracks the movement of superdelegates through Cinton's win in Ohio, through the revelations about Jeremiah Wright, through Clinton's victory in big states like California and New York. But even with all of that, the direction of superdelegate momentum is startlingly clear:

Since February 5th, Barack Obama has gained 69 superdelegates, while Clinton has lost two. And that's continued throughout some big losses and big hits for Obama. Which means it's not only that the math looks increasingly hard for Clinton. It's that the conceivable events that could reverse Obama's momentum aren't substantially impacting elites -- his lead has cemented enough that elite movement has overwhelmingly favored his campaign. Obama could, of course, be caught in bed with a live Arab or a dead Weatherman, but barring that sort of total implosion, it's very, very hard to figure out what could save Clinton's chances.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (41)

Over the past few days, Obama, Hillary, and McCain have all given speeches addressing the housing crisis. McCain gave much the talk you would expect -- short, obfuscatory, and including the increasingly annoying tagline "Let's start with some straight talk." The guy's speeches have begun to exhibit a pro-wrestling rhythm. "Straight talk" is used in much the same way as "Cause Stone Cold said so!"

It's also got some weird, let-them-eat-cake moments. At one point, McCain enthuses, "of [America's] 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million are doing what is necessary -- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets -- to make their payments on time." Three cheers for that! And parts are simply self-contradictory. "Any assistance for borrowers should be focused solely on homeowners," McCain says, "not people who bought houses for speculative purposes, to rent or as second homes. Any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren't." No one, as the New York Times has pointed out, has ever suggested a bail-out for speculators. But in the conservative telling, the homeowners who need assistance are definitionally irresponsible, in that they took out loans they couldn't pay back. So we're going to help homeowners but not the ones who can't afford payments? That seems bright.

Continue reading "TALKIN' BOUT THE CRISIS." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Via Kos, SUSA just did some major 50-state polling running hypothetical match-ups pitting Clinton against McCain and Obama against McCain. Bottom line? Clinton wins with 276 electoral votes, Obama wins with 280. But what's remarkable is that both Clinton and Obama win very differently. Clinton's victory looks like this:

And here's Obama's win:

First, just think through the macro message of these results. Both candidates beat McCain. And both do it by extremely similar electoral vote margins. So whoever, your candidate is, he/she is not the only electable one. And, indeed, it's fairly impressive that Clinton, for all her baggage, is still taking out McCain in national, specific, polling. But it's worth examining the actual composition of their victories:

Continue reading "YOUR WORLD IN POLLS: HOW CLINTON AND OBAMA WIN EDITION." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (37)

Like everyone else, I appreciated Michael Signer's op-ed lambasting the press corps for their shoddy coverage of foreign policy. But there may be a bit of a grass-is-greener dynamic afflicting his coverage. He writes:

Just entertain the thought for a moment. What if, in the coming months, every major journalist who covers foreign affairs wrote one story that actually recounted what the candidates are proposing on a foreign policy issue. On the Middle East, or the developing world. On energy independence, proposals to help veterans, the critical role of global aid, denuclearization, or how we should deal with rising powers such as Russia, China and India.

These stories would tell us what the candidates have proposed and whether their ideas are silly or workable. They would quote experts and present tough criticism and fair praise. They would tell us something about the candidates' characters. They would illuminate the future and tell us something about the past.

But I think Signer is also right to say that coverage of foreign policy has been particularly bad. For that, though, you have to blame Iraq. Policy disagreements in primaries tend to be very concrete. They're rarely about the underlying philosophy of the proposed policies. And they tend to be on the biggest issues, as not enough people care about differences in tech policy. So, on the domestic side, the focus is on health care, and you get a limited debate over mandates that's standing in for a broader debate on the government's role in health care. The debate over mandates isn't terribly important in and of itself, but it's the concrete manifestation of the larger differences in philosophy between the candidates, and it's something the press can report that Clinton supports and Obama does not. But on foreign policy, there's been no such easy wedge issue for reporters to exploit.

Continue reading "THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF FOREIGN POLICY COVERAGE." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I'll side with Kevin on the "experience" debate. To argue that Barack Obama has more direct legislative experience than Clinton and is thus not vulnerable to experience attacks is to be misled by a hyperliteralism around the word "experience." As Kevin puts it, "Obama partisans are missing the point here. Like it or not, most voters have a sort of vague operational view of experience that means something like 'involvement in big league politics.' And on that score, Hillary gets 15 years: 8 years as an activist first lady and 7 years as U.S. senator. Obama, conversely, gets a total of 3 years as U.S. senator. It may seem unfair that his eight years in the Illinois legislature don't count, but for most people they just don't. Being a backbench state legislator just isn't big league politics. Seen through this lens, the problem with Obama isn't that he's less experienced than Hillary, but that he's inexperienced, full stop."

I'd recast the issue of experience, actually, as one of familiarity and comfort. To voters, government is a sort of black box. It's actual workings are pretty much a mystery. So every four years, you vote for someone who appears to basically share your beliefs and your worldview, who you're comfortable with personally, and who seems able to step into that back box and make things happen. And if you can only get some of those traits, so be it. Voters are used to Hillary Clinton. They're even more used to John McCain, who's not only been on their television screen for eight years, but looks like most of the guys they're used to seeing on their televisions screens in this context. They're not used to Barack Obama. That, in part, is why he can shake them from apathy, and create this movement. But it will also be why many mistrust him, and are willing to believe everything from attacks on his patriotism to charges that he's just "not ready."

So far, Obama has had to appeal to primary voters, who are a much higher information electorate, and much likelier to vote for the candidate who involves them. In the general, he's going to have to attract a lot more people who don't really want to be involved so much as they want to vote for someone and trust that that person will take care of things for awhile. McCain will try and trade on that. Obama will try and degrade his credibility by ticking off aspects of his record that voters disagree with. But when McCain says that Obama has never met a world leader or had to vote to authorize a war, don't think that Obama can defuse the attack by pointing to his experience in the Illinois State Senate. Voters don't really know what goes on in Washington and they're totally unaware of how Springfield works. Many like Obama, and some are even excited about him, but if he wins the nomination, the challenge will be whether he can convince the apathetic majority to feel comfortable with him.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

It's been a long campaign, and a lot of very admirable candidates have been winnowed out. Chris Dodd, with his gruff, old school liberalism. Joe Biden and his aggressive contempt for the neoconservative foreign policy vision. John Edwards and his deep, gut-level populism. But the two Democrats left actually offer a pretty significant choice. They're almost oddly pure exemplars of two very different approaches to presidential leadership. It's a decisions between a presidential style based off competent stewardship or the hope of moral uplift. Or, as I put it in TAP's lead article today, "The Democratic Choice: A Manager or a Visionary?"

Clinton's great successes, the ones he and his wife tout on the campaign trail, were really the fulfillment of Reagan's principles. It was Clinton, after all, who declared, "The era of big government is over," and was able to back that up with actual decreases in the size of government. It was Clinton who actually balanced the budget, who reformed welfare. Reagan set the politics; Clinton played the steward. This is not, it should be said, an attack against Clinton. He governed in a difficult ideological atmosphere—in Reagan's America, not his own. And in Reagan's America, Newt Gingrich and his followers were intent on enacting a far crueler version of Reaganism. Clinton, sensing their threat, smartly co-opted their principles and refashioned them as part of a relatively progressive and unquestionably compassionate agenda. In doing so, he succeeded in making some admirable policy advances (the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a rise in the minimum wage, the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit) and staving off their most dangerous initiatives.

Hillary Clinton, similarly, means to govern within the ideological confines of the moment and to tirelessly work to implement better policy. Happily, compared to 1992, it is a moment more amenable to the progressive agenda, largely thanks to George W. Bush's eight-year project to discredit conservatism. (As John Kenneth Galbraith once said, "liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are painfully aware of the alternative.") A talented bureaucratic leader may prove best able to press the advantage and transform sentiment into substance. And Clinton is, by all accounts, exactly that. Her understanding of the bureaucracy is deep, and her command of the relevant policy is masterful. Given the circumstances, she will push, with savvy and determination, for the best policies possible.

But she largely accepts the circumstances, or at least her inability to change them through the application of her own charisma. Obama, by contrast, focuses more on changing the circumstances in which the legislation is made. The promise of his presidency is less its capacity to change our policies than its capacity to change our politics.

(Image used under a Creative Commons license from Why Tuesday.)

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

My writing focuses somewhat narrowly on my interests (health and social policy, inequality, stir fries, etc), so I think I owe you guys a slightly fuller description of my take on the election. And today, a couple hours before Super Tuesday, seems like the right moment. So, without getting into who I support, here, after months of candidate speeches and adviser statements and policy papers and debates, are what I've come to see as the main differences between the candidates:

Continue reading "THE DIFFERENCES." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (33)

Voting is, at base, an instrumental act. It is not a gesture towards civic engagement nor a calmingly and meditative break from the workday. This is why we care that "every vote is counted," because what a vote is supposed to do is register a citizen's preference, and if that preference is not registered, if the rules are changed somewhere between action and outcome, we recognize that the act's intent has been foiled, and that recourse is necessary.

In comments, many of you asked how I could be so dismissive of Floridians who voted for Hillary Clinton. And the answer is, I'm not. I didn't keep their vote from counting. When the Democratic National Committee decided to impose order on an out-of-control primary process by stripping Florida and Michigan of their delegates if they refused to return their primaries to their original dates, there were three individuals who could have restored the franchise to those states. Howard Dean, the Chairman of the DNC, could have changed his mind, or changed his proposed penalty. Even in the face of his intransigence, however, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could have simply refused his entreaty to avoid the offending states. A declaration by either that they disagreed with the DNC's decision and would instruct their delegates to alter the rules at the convention and seat Florida and Michigan would have forced all the other candidates to do the same, and the DNC's prohibition would have collapsed. The voters in Florida and Michigan would have attended speeches, and seen ads, and hosted a debate, and been able to make an informed choice

That didn't happen. Clinton's campaign manager backing the DNC, said, "We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process, and we believe the DNC's rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role." So Florida and Michigan didn't get their primaries. They didn't get campaigns. They didn't have serious Get Out The Vote efforts. And now, they're being cynically used, the language of democracy revisited and dusted off in service of a power play for additional delegates. Where, rightly or wrongly, the campaigns agreed to deny them a primary, now Clinton's campaign, which in Michigan won because they were the only campaign on the ballot and in Florida won because no one contested their lead, is demanding they be seated. The intervention did not come in time to give Florida and Michigan a full role in the democratic process, only in time to let the Clinton campaign benefit from their essential disenfranchisement.

Continue reading "THE FLORIDA VOTE." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (82)

I originally wrote this post when John Edwards delivered his concession speech in Iowa. When the news came today that he was dropping out of the race -- and would be doing so in New Orleans, with a speech about poverty -- I spent some time thinking about how to write on his withdrawal. And maybe I still will. But for the moment, I'm republishing this post, which came closest to expressing my feelings on his campaign.

The talking heads on MSNBC just spent a few minutes puzzling over John Edwards' concession speech. "It had no concession," they fretted. It didn't talk at all about the horserace, or the vote totals. Instead, Edwards spoke of the downtrodden, the uninsured, the insecure, the exploited, the oppressed, the wronged, the scared, the hungry, the homeless, and the poor. It was a fitting speech. It was not about the candidate or the race, but about the ideas, and the individuals they are supposed to help. In that way, it was Edwards' candidacy distilled to its core: A search for justice, a cry for equality, a demand for empowerment.

Barack Obama won tonight, but, in a sense, John Edwards' campaign also triumphed. The progressivism of the race, the focus on ideas, the courage of the Democrats -- all were products of his early example. He began the campaign by talking about poverty, announced his candidacy in the mud of New Orleans, set the agenda with the first universal health care bill, and closed Iowa speaking of the uninsured. This is Barack Obama's victory, and it's richly deserved. But Edwards, running as a full-throated populist, set the agenda and finished second, ahead of the Clinton juggernaut. He said his role was to speak for the voiceless. He now barrels towards New Hampshire with ever more volume. And while his shot at the nomination is long at best, his candidacy, even if it fails, will have been far more successful than most.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (64)

I hadn't watched Obama's victory speech till now, but it's very good. He's getting a lot of attention for some smart shots at Clinton, but like Jon Cohn, I think the bigger story is that Obama is finally weaving the uplift into a concrete recitation of actual problems he hopes to solve. It was a less inspiring, soaring speech than the one he gave in Iowa, but it's probably better for that. Obama's Iowa address keyed into a feeling, a sense of a moment, and enlarged it, made it seem grand and historic. It worked on me. But if you weren't already in that space, it didn't do much for you.

This speech was more of an argument: It was addressed less to Obama's movement and more to those who might be willing to come into the fold. So, unlike most of Obama's addresses, he actually said that "all of us share an abiding desire to end the disastrous policies of the current administration," and he articulated a critique of the current politics, rather than simply spinning his vision of the new politics. It did less to inspire, but probably a bit more to convince. And that, for now, is what Obama needs to do.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

As EJ Dionne says, Barack Obama 2008 is really Bill Clinton 1992. But I'd take the analogy farther than EJ does. It's not just that both seem like fresh, new, post-partisan faces (and for those who think Obama's negatives will stay low, do remember that Clinton was once Obama, and seemed fairly post-partisan himself), but that both come with a fair amount of uncertainty. Take Clinton, for instance, He entered office and immediately pursued deficit reduction and NAFTA, failed on health care, then spent six or so years battling with a Republican Congress and finding relevance in incrementalism and orthogonal initiatives like welfare reform. But if he had succeeded on health care and not lost the Congress, would he be remembered as a grand progressive hero who married a strong welfare state to responsible fiscal stewardship? Probably.

But Clinton was operating in a rougher ideological moment, when government was deeply mistrusted and a Southern realignment was long overdue. Folks talk often about how Clinton didn't leave a strong Democratic Party, but he also didn't have a strong Democratic Party to rely on, but did have a surging conservatism to deal with. That's, in part, why he struck out on his own ideological journey, creating a presidency that survived without much of a party supporting it.

Obama, on the other hand, is operating in a much more progressive moment, with a stronger Democratic Party, more empowered liberal institutions, and a fractured conservative coalition. So the structural incentives would probably -- though not certainly -- push him in a different direction. With Clinton, though, there's somewhat less uncertainty. One thing about having been in the White House before and running so explicitly on that experience is that we know she has a distinct template for how to run a presidency. I think she'll be good at it. But I think it will be a center-left administration that performs its duties competently and pushes for center-left changes continuously, it's not going to gamble on new ideas or big moments. The chances for disappointment are less, but so are the chances for transformation.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (41)

Jon Chait makes the case for electability speculation, and says that, in electability terms, we can confidently say that Hillary Clinton is like the Detroit Lions, and Barack Obama is like the New York Giants. I don't agree.

Jon bases his analysis largely on Obama's healthy favorable-unfavorable numbers. He's at +27, Clinton is at +4. But the idea that Obama's current ratings are positive proof of anything is misguided in the most elemental way. It's like looking at a puppy, then an older dog, and going with the pup on the theory it'll stay cuter forever. I did a piece for the LA Times on Hillary's polarized numbers awhile back, and talked to a bunch of pollsters for it, and they all said the same thing: Obama will get there. He's not there yet, but he'll get there. For now, the press coverage is fawning. After nine months of being called "Barack Hussein Obama" and enduring dark insinuations about his religion and defending leaked pamphlets from his afro-nationalist church and battling back against decontextualized excerpts from his book where he speaks candidly (and bravely) of his complicated feelings towards whites, we'll see what the numbers look like. Obama will be polarized, just as John Kerry was before him, and Al Gore was before Kerry, and Bill Clinton was before Gore. Polarization is part of the process, not part of the person. Clinton, for her part, has a profile more like a president running for reelection, and so that's what her numbers look like.

As for Obama's advantage among independents, well, it's a more complicated picture than Jon paints. Obama is doing well with indies, who tend to be better educated, higher earning, and so forth. He's having much more trouble among downscale whites. If those voters don't thrill to him, and the cultural attacks sure to be levied against Obama intensify their apathy (or even quiet discomfort), that could easily overwhelm his advantage among independents (assuming that advantage even proves durable). And what of Hispanics? Particularly if McCain, who has a fairly good relationship with that community, is the Republican nominee? You can't simply assume Obama will be Hillary plus independents. He's a different candidate, and some of his new, interesting demographics may come at the expense of old reliables.

Is this an argument for Clinton? No. I could make a similar case as to her weaknesses, and am happy to do so if folks are curious. Moreover, I'm not saying you can't speculate about who is more electable. I'm saying that I don't yet find the speculation convincing, on either side. What we're largely seeing are supporters of particular candidates taking that candidates strengths -- Obama's favorability numbers, Clinton's political discipline, Edwards ability to look like a white male from the American South -- and simply doubling down on the existence, and political durability, of that condition. What I'd be more interested in seeing would be an argument taking on the weaknesses -- why Obama's campaign won't have trouble appealing to downscale whites and dodging vicious smears; why Hillary won't be dragged down by negatives and activate the Republican base; why Edwards won't find the haircut and the house interact with his occasional tendency to seem too smooth. I have no idea which candidate would be most electable (though my hunch, for months now, has been Joe Biden), but I'm pretty sure the calculus isn't as clear as some are making it out to be.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (38)

Early results show Clinton pulling out a win in Nevada. The interesting demographic tidbits are that she split union members with Obama, and won 64 percent of the Hispanic vote. That last is a big deal, as California, the biggest of the February 5th prizes, has a huge Hispanic electorate.

For Obama, this is a significant blow. His campaign is premised off the idea that his message, backstory, and political magnetism will rope new voters into the process. Nevada looked like a fairly good testing ground. It's a Western state that's trending Democratic, that's very diverse, and is a new participant in the primary process (meaning there were, theoretically, more new primary voters for Obama to pull out, and fewer traditional voters for Clinton to rely on).

It'll be interesting to read the transcript of Obama's speech tonight, as the "new majority" rhetoric he was relying on in New Hampshire won't exactly fit the moment. As his movement falters, or at least shows itself insufficient without new entrants, he'll presumably have to retool his appeal in a more concrete manner -- without the enthusiasm of momentum, you can't just welcome Americans into your moment, you have to persuade them to be a part of it.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (42)

I've been a bit puzzled by the relative absence of the worsening economic news is from the presidential primary campaign. If you'd dropped by Iowa a year ago and listened to some rhetoric and dropped by Nevada today to hear some rhetoric, you wouldn't necessarily assume anything had changed in-between. A bit more talk of stimulus now, a bit more talk of Iraq then, but the level of urgency has held basically constant.

But much has change. The stock market has tanked. The job numbers are rough. Much of Wall Street is in turmoil. So I think Bob Kuttner is right to wonder why the Democrats seem so remote from these developments. His four, non-exclusive hypotheses -- that they're too unused to thinking ideologically, too in hock to large donors, too hemmed in by the rhetoric of deficit reduction, and too conscious and respectful of PAYGO's limiting effects -- all seem like significant pieces of the puzzle. But, in general, I think there's another side, too: They lack a template. The Democrats haven't run with a sense of urgency since, at the least, 1992, and I'd suggest far before that. And their main emotional reaction to the moment has to do with the end of Bush rather than any of the underlying circumstances. Edwards, of the three, has certainly come closest to making his campaign about the state of the country, but Clinton's running on her ability to manage government effectively (in contrast to Bush) and Obama is running on his ability to bring people together (in contrast to Bush) and neither message is all that adaptable, at least in tone, to the demands of the moment, though I think Clinton is increasingly finding hers to be pretty adaptable in substance.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

"In the wake of the John Kerry Fiasco people have tended to deprecate the 'electability' test," writes Matt, who rather agrees that electability can't be tested. I'd argue, though, that electability can't be deduced -- it can be demonstrated, and in some circumstances, proved.

The problem with the "electability" test as applied to Kerry was that it was applied shoddily and hastily. Kerry had spent most of the primary proving himself unelectable and unappealing. He had begun as the frontrunner and proven entirely unable to sustain that support. The voters, it appeared, did not like being exposed to him for long periods of time. But as doubts about Dean blossomed, and Clark decided to skip Iowa, and Gephardt went overwhelmingly negative, and Edwards generated a lot of elite buzz but little popular support, Kerry was basically the last man standing. And that powered him through the primary. The fact that everyone named "electability" as their primary reason for supporting Kerry proved how unelectable he really was. When voters like a candidate, they can think of a better reason to support them than that other voters will also like this candidate.

But this election will actually be an interesting test of electability. Clinton is running against a charismatic, well-funded, media-loved, anti-war newcomer and an appealing Southern populist. To beat both of them will require pretty formidable political skills. And Obama, for his part, gets to test out his theories of electability. He keeps arguing that he'll bring a wave of young voters into the process, attract hordes of independents, and generally expand the Democratic coalition. He'll now have plenty of chances to do so, including in California, where independents can vote in the Democratic primary, but not in the Republican one. That appeal will either manifest or prove illusory -- and it's good to find out either way in advance of the general election.

Had Iowa propelled either to the nomination, that would have largely been proof that they could best organize a tiny Midwestern state. Now they'll actually have to out-campaign one another, prove that their political styles are most attractive to the voters. The Democrats can now look forward to a test of electability, rather than simply an assumption of it.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

The first thought out of New Hampshire was that Obama was felled by the dreaded Bradley/Wilder effect -- the tendency of voters to overstate their support for black candidates in polls, and abandon them in the booth. But Matt Yglesias posted a series of polls showing that Obama got exactly the percentage he was predicted to receive; it was Clinton who increased her vote share among late-deciders. So maybe she just closed better. But now we find that, among late-deciders, 39 percent went for Clinton and 36 percent for Obama, so they're not the answer.

According to Andrew Kohut, a pollster for Pew, the disconnect is in methodology. Clinton beat Obama among working class voters, while Obama won more affluent demographics. This distorted the polling "Poorer, less well-educated white people refuse surveys more often than affluent, better-educated whites," Kohut writes. "Polls generally adjust their samples for this tendency. But here’s the problem: these whites who do not respond to surveys tend to have more unfavorable views of blacks than respondents who do the interviews." So it's not really a mysterious effect, it's the systematic underrepresentation of a certain demographic in the polling. Or, at least, it could be. But why didn't it happen in Iowa?

As the thinking goes, this effect is negated in caucuses because their public nature exerts communal pressure. But plenty of folks caucused for Clinton or Edwards without fear of public reprisal. So someone needs a plausible hypothesis of why Granite Staters are more racist than Iowans.

One other possible explanation is that gender made the difference. The really salient electoral shift between Iowa and New Hampshire was that, in Iowa, there was no gender gap. Obama won women and men in exactly the same proportions. In New Hampshire, there was a significant one, and women supported Clinton in much higher numbers. This could be because John McCain, who didn't really compete in Iowa, drew Obama-supporting men from the Democratic primary and into the Republican race. It could be because the caucus effect really does exist for gender, as husbands and wives caucus together, and pressure one another to vote similarly. It could be because the campaign, in the final days, hit a lot of gendered notes, from the apparent Edwards/Obama gang-up on Hillary at the debates (interestingly, voters who said the debate was important broke for Hillary, while those who said it was unimportant went with Obama), to the media's distasteful frenzy over Clinton choking up at a New Hampshire diner.

Or, the final answer could be that we just don't know, and never will. As my friend Chris Hayes put it recently, the voter's mind is the black box at the center of politics. And we've got no way to access it. Health care is so much more straightforward.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Before jumping into this post, it’s worth saying that I got New Hampshire wrong. So did everyone else I know, but that’s not really an excuse. So the following analysis reaches back to facts and reportage that seemed, at the time, to point towards a different outcome, and reassembles them into an analysis that makes sense in light of the actual results. I think there’s some validity to it. But I also think there’s a lot of overthinking here, and that a lot of voters in New Hampshire simply liked, and felt comfortable, with Hillary Clinton, and one needn’t look much deeper than that to explain a three percent victory.

In the final week of the campaign, both Obama and Clinton subtly shifted their rhetoric. Clinton doubled down on her experience. She essentially dissolved her message to do so, spending ever more time demonstrating policy chops and broad knowledge to the voters. Obama, by contrast, enlarged his message. Where he used to speak of unity and imply that he could expand the current coalition, now he spoke of that talent concretely, explicitly. He invited listeners to envision “a new majority,” talked of the “Independents who recognize that the current course we're on is not working, and are ready to form a coalition with Democrats for progressive change," spoke often of the remarkable fact that “young people voted at the same rate as senior citizens” in Iowa. In other words, in the final days of New Hampshire, the movement became ever more the message.

Hillary, in part, was able to “where’s the beef?” him. Where Obama had message, she had specifics. Where Obama spoke of his ability to get elected, she spoke of her capacity to govern. And that’s what the exit polls showed. Voters bought Obama’s argument that he was the most electable. They even bought Obama’s argument that he was the best able to bring about change. But a plurality named Hillary Clinton “the best Commander-in-Chief,” and Clinton overwhelmingly won their votes. And my hunch is that those deciding in the final 24 hours — which is the group who made the difference — decided on that criteria. I don’t think you make last-minute decisions based on electability or visions of a new majority or desire to be part of a movement. When you decide at the last minute, you go with the safe choice, not the gamble. And Clinton was able to make herself the safe choice. In the final week, Obama spoke too much to his movement and too little to those who hadn’t already bought into it. Clinton spoke to those who were simply looking for a competent choice for president.

(Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user chuckumentary.)

Posted by Ezra Klein at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (40)

The Republican debate has, remarkably, come to center around why the terrorists attacked us. And Romney, Giuliani, and the rest of the non-Paul contenders are furiously rejecting the idea that our foreign policy had anything to do with. Giuliani put the panel's wisdom best when he said, "our foreign policy is irrelevant, totally irrelevant. If you read what they write, listen to what they say. They hate how we live, what we stand for, our freedoms." He went on to name all the wonderful freedoms they loathe -- our respect for women, our speech, our ecumenicism. So let's ask the question: Has Giuliani read Osama's writing, listened to his speeches? Because here's what I remember him arguing:

Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example – Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 – may Allah have mercy on them.

No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours. [...]

So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you to consider.

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorized and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Beyond McCain's promise of war today, war tomorrow, war forever, his townhall with Lieberman offered some interesting insight into his New Hampshire campaign strategy. Lieberman was not, to be sure, merely an on-stage gladhander, or emcee. McCain asked him to stay on the podium and help answer questions. It became, in effect, a McCain townhall featuring Joe Lieberman.

Thats a bit abnormal. But it actually makes sense. In my article yesterday on the tensions in McCain's campaign, I argued that McCain's great challenge is to simultaneously channel the authenticity and independence of his 2000 run with the "good soldier" positions of his 2008 campaign. That's a few multitudes more than one man can comfortably contain. But what became clear yesterday is that two men can achieve that balance just fine.

In the townhall, McCain was on the stage to continue his 2008 campaign for president. And Lieberman was on the stage to replay his 2000 campaign for president. So McCain would offer the pat conservative response, and then Lieberman would jump in and wink and nod and nudge and imply that, yes, McCain is conservative, but he loves to listen, and learn, and work across the aisle, and get things done. Were McCain to suggest these character traits in himself, he'd be written off as an insincere apostate. But Lieberman, in his new guise as "sworn enemy of Democrats," can make arguments on McCain's behalf that McCain himself could never get away with. A good example came on health care. McCain offered standard conservative pabulum, darkly arned about the hell that is Canada, and happily promised to ruin our system. Lieberman then jumped in to say the really great thing about McCain is that hed listen to all sides, work with both parties, and actually get something done. If you like Lieberman because he hates Democrats, you understand that to mean he'll bring conservative Democrats over and outflank the liberals, just as Lieberman did. If you're really an independent, you're comforted that McCain can achieve reform. And if you're a hardcore conservative, you're happy he's bashing Canada. Everyone leaves pleased.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)

I think Dave Roberts gets the reshaped contours of the race exactly right. As he says, Hillary's candidacy had a whiff of loss aversion to it. She wasn't the candidate most likely to steal your heart, but she promised to be the candidate least likely to break it. Obama and Edwards both ran campaigns with a higher shot at grand change, and a greater apparent risk of total collapse.

But while Hillary's vote total was not, in fact, that far behind Obama's, and was certainly quite near Edwards, for the overwhelming frontrunner and the wealthiest candidate to take third in Iowa does feel like an implosion of sorts. And suddenly, Obama's campaign doesn't seem like a promise for the young and naive, but a tangible reality. As Roberts writes, "After tonight, though, the Obama phenomenon is real. He really did attract tons of new young voters. He really did sway tons of Independents and Republicans. It really does feel like a movement. A black candidate won big in a 95% white state. Something genuinely new seems to be happening....I've always understood how a Dem voter could cling to Hillary. And I've always understood how a Dem voter could leave Hillary and take a chance on Obama. What I can't imagine, especially after tonight, is a Dem voter leaving Obama's camp and going back to Hillary. What would motivate that?"

So that's the question for the Hillary campaign: Which voters do you go after? Now that Obama's candidacy is a safe choice, rather than an untested gamble, what's the appeal that makes voters love you, rather than simply accept you?

Update: Here, via Marc Ambinder, is Clinton's comeback strategy. In contrast to Matt, point 6 is the only part that really makes sense to me. If McCain weren't on the upswing, I think Obama's nomination would be relatively safe. You can pit Obama against Huckabee, or Thompson, or Romney, or even Giuliani, with fair ease. McCain, for better or worse, has that gravitas that sets hearts aflutter, attracts glowing press coverage, and is almost custom bult to give a national newcomer who claims to be a bipartisan uniter a very hard time.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

I've been blessed to hear many great orations. I was in the audience when Howard Dean gave his famous address challenging the Democratic Party to rediscover courage and return to principle. I have heard Bill Clinton speak of a place called Hope, and listened to John Edwards bravely channel the populism that American politics so often suppresses. Some of those politicians mirrored my beliefs better than Obama does. Some of their speeches were more declarative and immediate in their passion. But none achieve quite what Obama, at his best, creates.

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

In the days to come, just as in the days that have passed, I'll talk much more about Obama's policies. About his health care policy, and his foreign policy, and his social policy, and his economic policy. But so much as I like to speak of white papers and scored proposals, politics is not generally experienced in terms of policies. It's more often experienced in terms of self-interest, and broken promises, and base fears, and half-truths. But, very rarely, it's experienced as a call to create something better, bigger, grander, and more just than the world we have. When that happens, as it did with Robert F. Kennedy, the inspired remember those moments for the rest of their lives.

The tens of thousands of new voters Obama brought to the polls tonight came because he wrapped them in that experience, because he let them touch politics as it could be, rather than merely as it is. And for that, he deserved to win. And he deserves our thanks. The politician who gets the most votes merits our congratulations. But the politician who enlarges our politics and empowers more Americans to step forward into the public square deserves our gratitude. And we, in turn, deserve to permit ourselves to feel inspired, if only for a night.

Photo used under Creative Commons license from Joe Crimmings.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (227)

I think Hillary's concession speech worsened her plight. Edwards had fire in his voice and excitement in his eyes. He rearticulated the central themes of his candidacy, and his reasons for fighting on. Hillary didn't. She pulled back, congratulated the party, spoke slowly, offered a laundry list rather than an argument. Her candidacy now lacks its central advantage: The impression of inevitability. Worse, its central rationale -- "experience" -- was decisively rebutted by the voters, who voted to change the system rather than seek to better master its workings. Indeed, the argument of experience now boomerangs back against her campaign: If she was so experienced, such a consummate professional, what happened in Iowa? And can she credibly argue that Obama is a naive and weak politician after he bested her in their first, and arguably most important, contest? Experience was really a promise that she would win, and tonight she lost.

Having watched all the speeches, I know what Edwards is going to argue tomorrow morning. He will offer his populism as the alternative to Obama's call for consensus. What will Hillary offer?

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from MarcN.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

Obama wins the Democratic Caucus in Iowa, with 37 percent of the vote, leaving Edwards and Hillary to battle it out for second. On the Republican side, Huckabee took the gold, followed by Romney, then Thompson, then McCain.

All of this has been so fully gamed out that it's hard to add any new insight to the issue. Obama is now the favorite. Clinton's aura of inevitably has been banished, and whatever momentum she had has been crushed. It's tough, though not impossible, to imagine her regaining it. Edwards' path to the nomination is unlikely. Gravel's coronation looks increasingly uncertain.

On the Republican side, Huckabee doesn't look like a winner to me, but he may well have dealt a fatal blow to Romney's chances. The path is open for McCain to take New Hampshire, but it's hard to see what comes after it.

Howard Dean was just on the teevee saying the Democrats had twice the turnout of the Republicans. In 2004, 125,000 Democrats caucused. Tonight it was more than 200,000. That's meaningful. Much of the spike was among the young. That's even more meaningful. It's the demographic that so often turns away in disgust arising in empowerment.

And atop it all, Barack Obama won. A black man just won the Iowa caucus. And he won not because of his race, nor in spite of it; not because of the novelty of his campaign, nor because of its historic import. He won because a broad swath of Americans found him to be the most inspiring, the most elevating, the most attractive of the candidates. He won because so many Iowans felt their heart quicken before his words that they smashed all turnout records in order to add their voice to his. It's a remarkable night. Not just for Obama, or for Democrats, or for political junkies. For the country.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)

There's an old joke that the only answer an economist can give to any question is "it depends." At the moment, the only answer that an Edwards staffer in New Hampshire can give is, "it depends on Iowa." Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can both make a credible case for independent strength in New Hampshire. Either could, in theory, survive their opponent's victory in Iowa and still win New Hamphire, though my hunch is that that's more true for Barack than Hillary. But for Edwards, there's no similar independent strength. What exists, rather, is an organization ready to catch momentum out of Iowa. He's got 80+ paid staffers on the ground, ads on the air, a mature field organization, and even a bit of momentum. The latest American Research Group poll gave him a six percent jump over a reading taken earlier in December. Similarly, yesterday's Franklin Pierce University poll (pdf) showed a seven point jump, to 19 percent, over his September reading, with an 86 percent favorable rating (the same as Obama's, and a bit above Hillary's). And his support appears to be coming from his identification with progressive issues. Asked to name the single reason they support their candidate, 71 percent of Edwards proponents name "position on issues," as opposed to 44 percent of Clinton's backers, and 34 percent of Obama's supporters.

That's how the Edwards campaign sees it, too. Edward Vale, the Deputy New Hampshire press secretary, puts it clearly. "If we win in Iowa, then come here and win, we think that proves that an aggressive, populist campaign can win. And then if Edwards wins in the general, he comes in with a very specific mandate."

But that'll come after. For now, neither poll puts Edwards in first, or even second. But both keep him in the game, and close enough that momentum out of Iowa could conceivably overwhelm the gap. And that's what the Edwards campaign is hoping for. For them, it all depends on Iowa. It all depends on tonight.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

Good line from Huckabee on The Tonight Show. Asked what's behind his remarkable rise in the polls, Huckabee decided to stop calling it divine intervention and try out a populist response. "I think it's because people want to vote for someone who reminds them of the guy they work with rather than the guy who laid them off." Take that, Mitt Romney!

As per usual, Huckabee is staggeringly charming. He's not as gorgeous a speaker as Obama or Edwards, but is possibly a better talker than both combined. He mixes off-the-cuff eloquence with easy humor and evident compassion. His jokes are a serious advantage: It's a bit unnoticed, as the media reports all funny candidates as funny in the same way, but there's a political difference between folksy humor and wry, ironic, or observant humor. Folksy wins, and Huckabee's humor is always folksy.

Plus, he's such a good liar. Good enough that you're never really sure if he's lying, or simply uninformed on his own policies. For instance: He sells his massively regressive tax system as "very progressive" and the only one that will make "pimps and dealers pay just like the rest of us." He offers a compelling example of a guy working a second shift to pay for his daughter's college education, who takes a second job, and who could do more to help his daughter by dropping both jobs and letting her qualify for federal assistance. Of course, Huckabee's tax plan would not end educational assistance for the children of low-income workers, but that doesn't matter, as it all sounds so good! He comes off as more bleeding heart than any Democrat, including Edwards. And his invocation of his faith makes him seem more like a social worker than a theocrat. He mentions the church in terms of the "social pathologies" it exposed him to, rather than his desire to be a "true soldier" for the Christian Right movement.

Of course, sometimes he does exactly the opposite. It just depends on the audience. That's a very powerful, and very dangerous, political talent. This guy is very good. It's easy to forget, as I tend to not hear Huckabee, but rather read about his gaffes. But he's very, very good.

Image used under a Creative Commons license from IowaPolitics.com.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

Earlier today, I mentioned a bizarre Romney radio ad about the time when he shut down his investment bank to find a lost little girl in New York. The story smelled fishy to me, and, via comments, we find that it was fishy. First, here's the ad in video form:

Now, here's John Podhoretz, contextualizin':

Continue reading "SUPER-ROMNEY." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

This is a useful article from the Nashua Telegraph on the differences between Iowa's caucusgoers and New Hampshire's primary voters. Though both electorates are disproportionately pale-skinned and well-educated, there are some politically meaningful divergences. New Hampshire's Democrats, for instance, are more likely to be in a union, which should in theory help John Edwards, though I'm not seeing any of that reflected in the polling. That may be because New Hampshirites are New Englanders, and less likely to regularly attend church or possess much cultural affinity for Southern-fried populism. New Hampshire also has more independents, and a far deeper libertarian streak, than Iowa, which may explain why the state's politics emphasize taxes, and why there's neither a sales nor income tax in the state (which raises the question of how they fund anything, a topic viciously explored by my friend Josh Bearman four years ago). Additionally, Iowans are tremendously concerned about health care, while Granite Staters tend to fear for more for the economy.

Also, for those of us still working in the context if 2004, where Kerry's victory in Iowa catapulted him through New Hampshire, it's worth remembering that the Granite State actually has a history of blocking Iowa's winners, as they did to Bush in 2000. Kerry was himself a New Englander, and thus had latent support and appeal that made him a natural fit once he looked electable again. That's the sort of effect that could help Mitt Romney, if he wins Iowa, and harm Huckabee, if he loses it.

Pohot used under a Creative Commons license from Impact Artistry.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)

One of the fun bits about being in New Hampshire is that all commercial breaks on television are now fascinating opportunities for political reporting. In other words, lots of ads.

Mitt Romney: His campaign is running a fairly bizarre radio spot consisting of some guy you've never heard of explaining that his daughter went to New York, alone and...disappeared. The father didn't know what to do. The police were lost and unhelpful. There was only one man he could turn to. A longtime business partner who he'd seen do the impossible. Mitt Romney. Romney set up a command center, pulled employees off their jobs to search New York, and found the daughter, alive and safe.

None of the ad, of course, makes any sense. Why did the daughter go missing? How would sending employees to a massive city to conduct ground searches help? Did they find her, or did she finally call her father back? No idea. But it makes Mitt look competent and decisive in a crisis, and acts, I think, as a subtle jab at Giuliani, who ran the dark, dangerous city in which a presumably shy white girl got swallowed.

Barack Obama: His current ad is a mixture of his unity rhetoric and near Edwards-level populism. The center of it is Obama, on a podium, booming that "I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda are over," then transitioning into the togetherness portions of his speeches. It actually strikes me as a pretty effective linkage, as, in Obama's populism, "we" becomes not just economic liberals and the downtrodden, but everyone who's not a corporate lobbyist, Republicans and Independents concluded. You can watch it here.

Rudy Giuliani: I'd forgotten what a brazen fear-monger he is. Giuliani's ad is all about Islamic terrorists who want to kill us, and in particular you, all the more so if you live in a primary state. But democracy in America means we can disagree with us, but if you take away our freedoms (something that terrorists haven't really attempted, but Giuliani often tried), we'll rip off your head and defecate on your corpse. The ad implies, through body language and tone, that it's in fact Giuliani who will personally do this, but he keeps on with the "we." The strategy, so far as one exists, seems to be to leap ahead by being the candidate who takes IslamoFascistTerroThunderdomeism the most seriously, and win simply by mentioning it the most times.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Based on my scientific sample of this morning, McCain is going to win New Hampshire with approximately 98 percent of the vote (I did see one John Edwards sign). The above picture is a couple blocks from my hotel, and it was taken at about 8am, in 20-some degree weather. Which is to say, those sign-holders are dedicated. Some of those guys (a bunch aren't in the picture) are volunteers who flew in from other states. One is a native of Jacksonville, Florida; another a former state senator from Vermont. But others of their number are local, including a very sweet guy named David MacLaughlin, who's a Ward Alderman here in New Hampshire. And the admiration for their candidate is real. Indeed, they seemed almost uninterested in the rest of the race. They didn't want to bash other candidates, weren't really sure who they'd vote for if McCain dropped out, thought Barack Obama seemed like a good guy with real potential, and generally had weak views on the non-McCain elements of the campaign. But there they were, from 7:30am on, standing on a snowbank, not to beat the other candidates, but to elect a guy they unanimously spoke of with an affectionate awe bordering on love.

McCain, for his part, remains in Iowa, trying to battle out a better-than-expected finish. He's being represented in New Hampshire today by Joe Lieberman (who one of the volunteers described as a "moderate Republican"). The McCain folks invited me to a coffee klatch with Joe for later tonight, and even drew me a helpful map to get me there:

Should be interesting.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

In a move that's roiling the political world David Broder's column, a crew of ancient has-beens is threatening to support Mike Bloomberg's run for the presidency if the current crop of candidates don't spell out their plans to create a "government of national unity." Digby says much of what needs to be said here. But her eloquent outrage underplays the almost charming mix of naivete and self-deception underlying this cozy enterprise. In his article on the threat, David Broder says:

The list of acceptances suggests that the group could muster the financial and political firepower to make the threat of such a candidacy real. Others who have indicated that they plan to attend the one-day session include William S. Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the Clinton administration; Alan Dixon, a former Democratic senator from Illinois; Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida; Jim Leach, a former Republican congressman from Iowa; Susan Eisenhower, a political consultant and granddaughter of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower; David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency; and Edward Perkins, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Of course not. This set of elderly white eminences can count on affection from a small group of DC's political elite, and is mistaking that recognition for actual power. Alan Dixon and William Cohen do not have the clout to themselves pass legislation, nor lift the objections of the forces impeding reform. What they do have is David Broder's home phone number, and so can expect a laudatory column detailing their efforts. But this, right here, is the peak of their power. And that's the problem. One could imagine a political movement dedicated to a more functional vision of governance and willing to apply real pressure, both financial and political, to those in the system who insist on obstructing needed reforms. It would be an interest group for reform, just as there now exist interest groups for lower taxes, and less regulation, and all the rest. The model exists, and with sufficient money and energy, could be easily adapted to good government concerns. But that movement would need the buy-in of existing political actors, tangible constituencies, corporate backers, and a ruthless vision. It would need to be a long-term -- dare I say Leninist? -- strategy for changing the system.

Continue reading "REVOLT OF THE HAS-BEENS." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

In his provocative piece on Barack Obama's theory of political change, Mark Schmitt writes, "This is not a primary about ideological differences, or electability, but rather one about a difference in candidates' implicit assumptions about the current circumstance and how the levers of power can be used to get the country back on track. It's the first 'theory of change' primary I can think of."

It's worth asking why the Democratic primary ended up in this odd spot, where even the candidates are talking about their tactical superiority to one another. My hunch is that this is less a "theory of change" election than a "progressive convergence" election What we've seen from the top three Democrats is an absolutely extraordinary level of agreement around progressive principles, or at least in the presentation of progressive principles. There is not one of them who hasn't professed a deep desire to end the war in Iraq, a total dedication to achieving universal health care, and an utter commitment to averting climatological catastrophe. Compare this to 2004, when Iraq split the field and universal health care plans were virtually unknown.

The reason progressives have been able to ask about theories of change -- which is to say, ask who will prove most effective at the construction of a progressive America -- is because they've not had to fight to simply see their ideology represented and defended. With liberal beliefs broadly accepted by the contenders, the set of questions has become much more technical and, on some level, much more relevant to actually choosing a nominee. It's a heartening development, and even as people get pissed off by various candidates and feel their loyalties cementing, it's worth being aware of how much more progressive a field Democrats have furnished in 2008 than in 2004.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)

I think Dana's wrong to suggest that this election will see the sublimation of foreign policy beneath domestic concerns -- at least for very long. Hillary Clinton's success at muddying her own opinions on Iraq has created an appearance of rough unity among the Democrats, which is "why this contest has turned into a debate over corporate influence, economic insecurity, and health care."

But the key words there are "this contest." Foreign policy has receded has a definitional issue in the Democratic primary by virtue of the Democrats largely agreeing that Iraq is going poorly. Within that agreement there exist plenty of shaded prescriptions, from Richardson's "all troops out yesterday" to Clinton's "end the war but keep thousands of troops in Iraq to carry out combat missions," but wonks have proven unable to force those distinctions out into the open, and voters don't seem to exhibit much preference for one approach over the other. So the conversation has moved onto other issues where Edwards and Obama see more hope of drawing distinctions with Hillary.

The day the nominee is chosen, however, that ends. The space between the Democrats and the non-Ron Paul Republicans on foreign policy isn't a pothole -- it's a chasm. And the Democrat is going to do everything he or she can to push Mitt Huckabee into it. It will be defining in the general for the very reason that it's been quieted in the primary: Democrats disagree with Republicans, rather than with each other, on what to say about Iraq. That's not to suggest that health care and the economy will recede from the agenda. With a potential recession looming and nearly 50 million Americans uninsured, neither issue is going away. But I wouldn't use the primaries as a template for how the general will look. The places where the Democrats are exhibiting convergence are places where they've settled on what they believe to be a strong political argument. Since they're all making that argument, it's not doing them much good against each other. But it will roar forth when they can use it to pound the Republican into a pulp. However, it will not be like health care, where they all make basically the same case. How the Democratic nominee chooses to attack on foreign policy is damn important, and will vary substantially from candidate to candidate.

Continue reading "WHEN DEMOCRATS (WILL) STOP BEING POLITE, AND START GETTING REAL." »

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It seems to me that the plans for an "Iowa entrance poll" -- like an exit poll, but tracking how Iowans intend to caucus, rather than how they actually did caucus -- has the possibility to totally destroy the caucuses. Imagine if the networks spend the night reporting that a plurality of Iowans decided to vote for Barack Obama. They report the win, there's much talk of what it means, everyone gets all excited. Then, Bill Richardson fails to make the 15% threshhold for viability and releases his caucusgoers to Clinton. Meanwhile, John Edwards, who's been amassing support in the disproportionately influential rural counties -- 25 caucusgoers in a small precinct have the same influence as 2,500 in a big one -- sees his strategy achieve terrific results. So Clinton comes in first, Edwards second, and Obama ends up in third -- even though a plurality meant to vote for him.

That will, for one thing, blunt the impact of Clinton's win. But won't it also trigger a wholesale reassessment of whether this caucus system makes any sense at all? It would seem very hard for the major networks to commission and tout this poll, receive the results, watch them get totally invalidated by the caucus's procedures, and then pretend that nothing happened. There would be some precedent for that, of course, as exit polls in 2004 showed Kerry doing quite a bit better than he actually did. But the possibility for variance is much greater here, and the sanctity of the caucus much less.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

Sadly, my bit on Hardball wasn't anywhere near the most compelling portion of the show. That came a few segments before, when Joe Trippi, Mark Penn, and David Axelrod (the chief strategists behind the Edwards, Clinton, and Obama campaigns, respectively) squared off. It was, for my money, the most arresting segment of political television I've seen since the campaign started. Notice, among other things, that Trippi and Penn are standing in the same room, and Trippi clearly finds Penn an almost unbearable repulsive presence. Notice that Penn is the only man on earth more disheveled than Trippi, making Trippi, for once, "sheveled." Notice how everything Penn says ends up sounding like a plaintive, "but they started it." Notice that Axelrod comes off almost seeming like a statesman. Notice that consultants, in general, seem a little loathsome, as it's simply weird to hear people speak in message, rather than in more traditional languages, like "conversation." Politicians are good at making message sound like conversation, but consultants are not. They just make it sound like bullshit.

My hunch, right now, is that if Clinton goes down, Penn is going to be blamed. You can see the knives coming out already, but he really does a poor job here, and he's hampered not merely by his shortcomings as a speaker, but by the absence of message within the Clinton campaign. When the rationale for your campaign is that you're the frontrunner with the experience to win, losing your lead in the polls doesn't only put you in second place, it actually shreds the argument for your candidacy. What we're beginning to see here is how underdeveloped the arguments for Clinton were when separated from her aura of inevitability.

Posted by Ezra Klein at 1:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (51)

Though he's still marginally ahead of the pack, Rudy Giuliani's "blow up the Earth" platform doesn't seem to be protecting his lead in the polls for the Republican nomination. Over the course of this year, he's dropped from 53 percent to 19 percent -- a loss of 34 points. But I thought the GOP wanted to blow up the Earth! Indeed, I've got to cop to total confusion over what will happen with the Republicans. I used to think Mitt Romney would win because had a hammerlock on the early states. But then Mike Huckabee took him down. Then I figured Mike Huckabee would blunt Romney, and throw the nomination to Giuliani. But Huckabee seems to be robbing Giuliani of his support. The potentially obvious solution here is that Mike Huckabee will win, but since no one can say that without breaking into convulsive rips of laughter, that also seems unlikely. My tentative prediction is that Romney actually ekes out a win in Iowa and New Hampshire, and because his victory was no longer expected, gets enough of a media bounce to capture the nomination. But, honestly, I have no idea. Maybe McCain mounts an upset in New Hampshire and gets another look.

Then, of course, there's the brokered convention scenario. Since the media always predicts these and they never happen, I've basically given up on them as impossible. But imagine the GOP's bosses could choose a ticket from the safety of a smoke-filled room. And imagine, for the sake of this game, that they can't choose anyone currently running for president. What dream ticket do they come up with?

Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (42)