This seems like a big deal to me …

Not sure about common patterns of upsets in special elections; but the NY Times coverage seemed to show this election as very tied into November, notably through the failure of Republicans to come out to vote and through the failure of the Republican candidate, despite major effort, to turn Obama into a liability for his opponent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/politics/14mississippi.html

It really doesn’t seem, at least so far, that Obama’s candidacy has toxic effects on other candidates’ races. In fact, it seems to be running the other way. Goddamn! America may actually have a little sense after all.

Certainly in Canada by-elections often go to the opposition, and lesser and even fringe parties get more votes than they will in a general election. It’s a standard rule that you shouldn’t extrapolate from by-elections.

All eyes should be on the US Senate. Because of the peculiar institution of the filibuster, all it takes is 41 senators to stop any reform legislation or block judicial nominations. Right now, it still appears unlikely that the Democrats will gain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in November, much less a veto-proof majority.

According to the Wikipedia list of special elections the Democrats took over two GOP seats in special elections in 2004, so this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Democrats have it in the bag. But I tend to think arbitrista is right, the GOP is in huge trouble.

Many indicators suggest the GOP is in big trouble: many incumbent Republicans have retired; they have not done well in recruiting strong candidates; they have very little money in the bank; the polls show a big swing in party id towards the Dems; Bush is the most unpopular 2-term president ever; on most major policy issues polls show voters aligning closely with Democratic policies; Dem turnout in the primaries has been much higher than Republican turnout; and new voter registration – typically younger and poorer voters who skew Dem – is very high (3.5M ?)

Latest state polling suggests even incumbent Republican senators untainted by scandal – Dole, Cornyn – are in danger. And while they’ll probably survive, defending those seats will consume scarce money.

The GOP is heading for a thoroughly-deserved beating. However, it’s still unlikely that the Dems can achieve the 9-seat senate gain needed to have a filibuster-proof supermajority (and even if they did, some of the Dem senators are pretty conservative).

The US constitution is rather badly flawed in this respect: in Jan 2009, even after 4 years of massive disapproval, two consecutive substantial election defeats, and 80%+ saying the country is on the wrong track, it’s most likely that the thoroughly discredited GOP will retain the power to block popular progressive legislation.

The Republicans are in trouble, because they have treated badly two of the three parts of the conservative coalition, and have executed poorly on serving the third.

Just as the Democrats routinely ignore civil liberties and African American concerns, the Republicans have mostly ignored social conservatives, and have vastly increased government intrusion and size.

For some reason, this has not hurt the Democrats, but does hurt the Republicans.

Richard,

Considering the track record of dismal unintended consequences, I think anything that slows down “popular progressive legislation” is a feature, not a bug.

In the end, “some animals are more equal than others”, and we are unlikely to be pigs.

Certainly in Canada by-elections often go to the opposition, and lesser and even fringe parties get more votes than they will in a general election. It’s a standard rule that you shouldn’t extrapolate from by-elections.

We don’t have “by-elections” in the US. Nor do we have “lesser parties”.

And as for “casting a protest vote against the government”, that doesn’t happen either. Every election is a contest between two individuals.

Instead of being fooled into voting for a party that claims to share their interests but actually doesn’t, like in Europe, people in the US are more often fooled into voting for a party that doesn’t even pretend to share their interests, on the strength of the completely irrelevant personal qualities of a specific candidate.

“Richard, what surprises me is that even given all those disadvantages, polls seem to suggest that McCain still has at least a chance in November.”

Polls don’t mean much this far ahead. McCain has strong name recognition from his Vietnam war record, his long time in the Senate, and his extraordinarily friendly relationship with the press. And people don’t really know much about his policies. But in the general election, he’s going to have to ‘fess up to his policies: phase out Social Security; make health insurance even more screwed up; stay in Iraq essentially forever no matter what the cost; more taxcuts for the rich; and fiscal insanity. And his votes on all these issues are on record: he talks a good game about being a maverick, but when it comes to the crunch he’s always voted as an orthodox Republican.

Beyond that, he seems to have anemic fundraising, while Obama is breaking all records with a real 21st-century online fundraising operation with already 1.5M small donors.

And the debates are going to be a nightmare for McCain: he’s old, short, not much of an orator, and an intellectual lightweight. He’s going to look terrible next to Obama – young, tall, eloquent, and scary smart. I don’t rate the importance of debates that highly: Bush got creamed by Kerry in the 2004 debates but still won. But it’s one more strike against McCain.

“Considering the track record of dismal unintended consequences, I think anything that slows down “popular progressive legislation” is a feature, not a bug.”

Not sure what you have in mind there: I’d say that the achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society are pretty damn good, and more of that would be a Good Thing for America – it’s the richest country in the world, but it still lets a lot of people fall through the cracks into poverty, poor education, inadequate healthcare, and even malnutrition. The patchwork system of health insurance is just indefensible: expensive, inefficient, and ineffective in promoting good health.

Everything is pointing against the Republicans.

But this just highlights how much of a chance McCain has.

Yea it was in Mississippi but the GOP strategy was to link Childers to Obama and Childers went out of his way to deny the link.

Again, I understand, it was Mississippi. But that is not a good sign, for Democrats, for the presidential election.

It looks like one of Childers talking points was to challenge Davis to reject Rev Wrights remarks.

Also it looks like Jamie Whitten a Democrat held the seat for the 54 years previous to Roger Wicker. I am not sure how much of a Republican strong hold that makes the 1st District.

This seemed a local thing, plus a vote against free trade, as much as anything with Davis the suburban outsider.

Childers supports expanding SCHIP and getting out Iraq. A good victory for Democrats but if anything it seems to indicate that Obama might have a tougher time than expected in the fall.

Also it looks like Jamie Whitten a Democrat held the seat for the 54 years previous to Roger Wicker.

Right, but that was before the Nixon-era transformation of the GOP. Whitten, like Childers, was a Republican in all but name.

Whitten had too much seniority for switching parties to be viable. Today’s paper in Mississippi has a cover story lamenting how many senior senators and congressmen Miss. used to have, and how the pork they brought home isn’t available to the younger delegation today.

“The state of health care in the US is a direct result of “popular progressive legislation”, that created the system of third party payers and the subsequent massive cost increases.”

Actually, I think it was a system which worked reasonably well from 1945-1980. Since 1980 we haven’t had much in the way of progressive government, and the system has fallen apart as insurance companies and employers have pursued their own narrow interests with less and less regulation to keep them in line with the public interest. Times change, policies have to change: I favor single-payer, but Obama’s policy is at least likely to increase the proportion of people with insurance, reversing the Bush-era trend.
And that would be a Good Thing – and surely one which a Republican minority will try to block.
It seems you’re on their side in mindlessly opposing any such change.

“I thought the Great Society programs were supposed to eliminate poverty and malnutrition. If they were such a great success, how come we still have them?”

Before LBJ, we had institutionalized racism in much of the USA. The Great Society wasn’t perfect and didn’t achieve all its goals, but it made life a hell of a lot better for most minorities and for many of the poor and elderly (Medicare). Yeah, 40 years later we have a lot of research on what does and doesn’t work, and some of what was done in the 1960s looks misguided in hindsight. But I’m not going to throw out the Civil Rights Act and Medicare baby with the bathwater, thanks very much. And neither would most voters in the USA.

newshutz: “Really? Prolonged depressions and broken families are your idea of good achievements? (just one each of the many problems).”

Anybody who thinks that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression is a fool.

“Or do you imagine, that you will get to be one of the “animals that are more equal than others”?”

Some people read Orwell and think; others read Orwell and copy-and-paste.

newshutz: “Really? Prolonged depressions and broken families are your idea of good achievements? (just one each of the many problems).”

Anybody who thinks that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression is a fool.

or maybe anyone who doesn’t is
ignorant

Whatever, newshutz. Rightwing orthodoxy these days requires its adherents to believe a whole lot of black-is-white: cutting taxes raises revenue, killing Iraqis is going to create a model democracy etc etc. You can believe what you want, god knows no-one here can persuade you. The salient point is that the US public has seen rightwing ideologues running the government for the past 7 years, and by a vast supermajority (over 80% “wrong track”) they hate the results and blame the Republican party and seem to be voting accordingly.

You can cite obscure academics all you like: it isn’t going to change the fact that a large majority of the US electorate likes Medicare and Social Security and wants good public education, not less public education, and a more accessible healthcare system.
So the electoral outlook for the GOP is bleak, and will deservedly remain bleak until they come up with a policy agenda that is rational and appealing. And that’s going to be really tough since the party apparatchiks have purged out anybody with a streak of common sense or independent thought. It could take a generation.

It’s a shame really: I’d be much much happier with US politics if there were a plausible choice between a progressive center-left party and an incrementalist-conservative party. But it ain’t so.

“Anybody who thinks that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression is a fool.

or maybe anyone who doesn’t is ignorant.”

Well, as the average annual GDP growth rate from 1933 to 1941 was 8%, more than Saint Ronald or any GOP politician post-WW1 has ever achieved, you’ll have an uphill battle making your argument.

The US constitution is rather badly flawed in this respect: in Jan 2009, even after 4 years of massive disapproval, two consecutive substantial election defeats, and 80%+ saying the country is on the wrong track, it’s most likely that the thoroughly discredited GOP will retain the power to block popular progressive legislation.

Consitution is badly flawed, for sure, but the filibuster ain’t one of the flaws, ebcause it’s not in the Constitution.

In principle, a Democratic majority could eliminate the filibuster, on the legal basis that the Senate rules need to be approved at the beginning of each new Senate. Since, at that point, the old rules are not in effect, the presiding officer can simply rule that a majority vote is sufficient to adopt new rules, and the majority can adopt rules with no filibuster.

I am moderately optimistic that if Republican diehards in the Senate spend the first two years of the Obama administration filibustering popular legislation, the Dem leadership will at least consider this option. I’m less optimistic that progressives will give it the full-throated support it deserves rather than wringing their hands about the dangers of majority rule.

Whatever, newshutz. Rightwing orthodoxy these days requires its adherents to believe a whole lot of black-is-white: cutting taxes raises revenue, killing Iraqis is going to create a model democracy etc etc. You can believe what you want, god knows no-one here can persuade you. The salient point is that the US public has seen rightwing ideologues running the government for the past 7 years

lol, I am not the one engaging in black-is-white thinking, neither do I make the mistake of assuming there are only black and white sides to issues.

“rightwing ideologues” that have:

increased the size of government faster than the previous “progressive” administration.

increased the centralization of government schooling through NCLB

instituted an aggressively interventionist foreign policy to spread democracy.

increased the government involvement in the US health care system by expanding medicare.

real increase in taxes through inflating the currency.

These are all progressive policies.

And the incoming government is going to be even more progressive, no matter what the election results. (including an interventionist foreign policy)

Face it. The real difference between Republicans and Democrats has been how fast to implement the progressive agenda.

The rehashing of 19th century arguments between conservatives and (classic)liberals has had the result of keeping those two groups from opposing the progressive agenda, but neither Rs or Ds do much for conservatives or liberals.

My warning remains. You will not be able to stop the growth of government at the “correct” level, nor can you limit its growth to only the “correct” areas. You can only hope to be one of those “animals that are more equal than others”

Good luck

The accepted interpretation is that since only 1/3 of the Senate is re-elected at each election, the Senate is a “continuing body” (is that the right terminology ?) whose rules remain in force indefinitely.

Perhaps an expert will enlighten us.

My understanding — which I owe to Tom Geoghegan — is that there is at least some ambiguity about whether or not the Senate rules remain in force between Senates. And some ambiguitty is all that is needed, because the courts are historically extremely reluctant to involve themselves in questions like this.

In any case, the real question is whether we respond to the filibuster by throwing up our hands and saying how sad it is that nothing progressive can pass the Senate, but the Will of the Foudners cannot be flouted; or whether we respond by insisting that the filibuster must go, even if that requires an aggressive interpretation of the Senate rules.

As we’ve seen in past posts here, there’s a significant strain of liberalism that sees strict proceduralism as trumping all other political values. But on the filibuster, I can imagine the Senate Ds turning out to be more progressive, as well as more pragmatic, than Crooked Timberites.

““rightwing ideologues” that have:

increased the size of government faster than the previous “progressive” administration.”

Well, I guess we have a disagreement about what “progressive” means. In my book it means trying to improve the welfare of the most disadvantaged, and believing that appropriate government action can make such change.

Total government spending is no measure of a
“progressive”. Spending $500B/year on the military while cutting social programs and giving taxcuts to the rich ain’t “progressive”.

“increased the centralization of government schooling through NCLB”

Well, maybe. Though many progressives view NCLB as a plan to gut public schools: strike a deal to provide more federal money in return for imposing federal testing; weasel out of providing the funding; rig the tests so that many schools are bound to fail; then use that failure to destroy the system. At best NCLB is a very mixed bag.

“instituted an aggressively interventionist foreign policy to spread democracy.”

Oh come on ? You really believe the rhetoric about “spreading democracy” ?? No-one else does.
Suggesting the Iraq debacle is a “progressive” policy is just wacky. Progressives want to spend money on schools and pensions and healthcare in the USA, not on foreign wars. LBJ made that mistake, but the left wing of the Dem party hated
the Iraq war and voted against it.

“increased the government involvement in the US health care system by expanding medicare.”

I’ll grant you that one as a somewhat progressive measure, albeit one that was done in a way that made it a giveaway to drug and insurance companies rather than an efficient benefit.

“real increase in taxes through inflating the currency.”

Offset by enormous tax cuts aimed at the most
wealthy. Making life harder for the poor and
easier for the billionaires isn’t “progressive”.

“These are all progressive policies.”

Bull. Government spending isn’t “progressive” per se. Spending to help the poor and disadvantaged is progressive. Taxing the rich is progressive.
Spending billions on no-bid contracts to Halliburton and Blackwater, not so much.

“My warning remains. You will not be able to stop the growth of government at the “correct” level, nor can you limit its growth to only the “correct” areas.”

I’m not looking for perfection. But I do believe that carefully-designed government programs can do a lot of good. And that programs run by idiots (the CPA and Brownie’s FEMA spring to mind) can burn all the money in China while being useless or worse. It seems both those beliefs are shared by the bulk of US voters; and that right now they don’t trust Republicans to make any of those decisions. That leaves the Dems as the only game in town. And fortunately, Sen Obama seems to have gathered a very impressive policy team – both for foreign and domestic policy.

They’re not going to do just what I would like
(shrink the military budget from $500B+ down to
$150B or less; increase non-military foreign aid from $20B to $100B+; single-payer health care),
but they’ll be a hell of a lot better than McCain’s incoherent grab-bag of more-Bush-than-Bush policies.

Thanks, Richard. I don’t have and didn’t mean to claim any expertise here, so I’ll revise that to “the procedure Lemuel describes is supposed to be different from the nuclear option,” which by any measure took place in the middle of the term.

I’m not sure about the 200 years of tradition argument, though — I believe it used to be that a single senator could filibuster (or anyway that the number of votes required to end debate was greater than 60), and that changed somehow. That changed somehow, and it’s worth looking at how. [OK, Wikipedia says that from 1916 to 1949 two-thirds of the whole Senate were required for cloture; in 1949 it was changed to two-thirds of those voting; in 1975 it was changed to three-fifths of the Senate, and according to this page that was a simple majority vote, 51-42, which if true casts doubt on the idea that it’s a tradition that the rules can’t be changed by simple majority vote at the beginning of the session.]

In any case, I’m with Lemuel here; though ordinarily I’m a big fan of procedural justice, part of procedural justice is the informal norms of how the branches should work together, and the Republicans have been wiping their ass with those norms since 1993. (I could mention the various blue-slip shenanigans under Clinton and Bush, including how the treatment of blue slips magically changed with the change in Administrations; or the GOP’s unprecedented number of filibusters since the Democrats took over the Senate; or the refusal to confirm any — not the most radical, any — of Clinton’s appointees for many judicial vacancies, or cutting the ABA out of the judicial nomination process; but what I’d point to is the exceptionless refusal of any Republican member of Congress to vote for important Clinton bills in 1993. That was unprecedented obstructionism; having lost the election, the GOP decided not to let the winner govern.)

So in this case, there is no procedure anymore. For the Democrats to obey niceties about continuing bodies when the Republicans have shown themselves willing to break them at any time is a sucker game. If they can break the filibuster, they should.

And Richard, I think the example of 1993 shows that this is too optimistic: “the party not occupying the White House doesn’t have any coherent leadership to hold it together and set an opposition agenda.” Voting “no” on everything doesn’t take an agenda, and the Republicans have shown themselves willing to do it before, even after electoral defeats. We shouldn’t count on them seeing reason.

“in 1975 it was changed to three-fifths of the Senate, and according to this page that was a simple majority vote, 51-42, which if true casts doubt on the idea that it’s a tradition that the rules can’t be changed by simple majority vote at the beginning of the session.”

The wikipedia entry for “cloture rule” suggests that the issue is that while rule changes are passed by a simple majority, debate on rule changes is itself subject to cloture with a requirement of “2/3 of those present and voting”. This all gets quite self-referential and arcane …

“So in this case, there is no procedure anymore. For the Democrats to obey niceties about continuing bodies when the Republicans have shown themselves willing to break them at any time is a sucker game. If they can break the filibuster, they should.”

I respect that view, but I disagree. The winner-takes-all view tends to be dangerous: one interpretation of the last 7 years of US politics is that by ramming through their own agenda with no regard for compromise or cosideration of constructive criticism, the Republican party has driven itself over a cliff and killed its chances for a generation. While there’s nothing to be gained by trying to compromise with Republicans like Inhofe, Stevens, or McConnell, there are still a few reasonable people like Collins, Snowe, and maybe Hagel that it’s worth trying to work with. Playing fast and loose with the rules doesn’t go over well with the voters in the long run, even when the rules are flawed.

I don’t like the rules of US politics much: I prefer a parliamentary system where the voters can throw the bums out all at once (and often even before their time is up). But ripping up the whole US constitution isn’t an option, so any proposed change has to be evaluated in the context of a fairly elaborate system. It’s hard to get things done, but that’s the way the system is designed to be.

One interesting theory I’ve heard is that if Obama gets the White House, he might be able to use his donor list of 1.5M+ names as a tool to buttress the top-down power of the Presidency with grass-roots bottom-up pressure on individual senators and representatives. If effective, that approach might be quite revolutionary in its effects. The game can change a lot without any change in the rules.

Just to clear up a few points:

1. There were a bunch of unusually close special election in 2005 that could arguably be called a sign of the Democratic victory in 2006: OH-2 (Jean Schmidt’s suquaker victory), Oh-18 (Bob Ney’s seat flipping from R to D), TX-22 (Tom DeLay’s seat flippping from R to D), TX-23 (another R to D), etc.

2. The New Deal did not extend the Great Depression.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/261143

3. The Great Society programs were intended to reduce poverty, they were never funded at levels required to eliminate poverty. Nonetheless, poverty rates declined from 19.5% in 1963 (the start of the Great Society) to 12.1% in 1969 )the end of the Great Society proper, although many Great Society programs and social programs in general continued thereafter).

Poverty rates held and even declined slightly through the 1970’s, and only began to increase in the 1980’s with the Reagan budget cuts.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html

What richard cownie said upthread: recruitment is a real issue, when you’re expected either to self-fund in the autumn or have the capacity to raise money. Unlike countries with tighter limits on campaign finance, in the US, if you think it’s not going to be an easy year to run for federal office, then you don’t run.

There are a relatively large number of GOP retirements, and problems with recruitment. And I have my 1997 UK déjà vu all over again.

Admittedly, you do have the issue that the presidential election is a set of state elections, and Obama’s strategy hinges on a large increase in turnout, and an electoral map that’s relatively unfamiliar to Democrats. But if that turns out to be a gamble too far, you’re still likely to end up with McCain facing an incredibly hostile Congress, and 2009-10 spent working out who got the mandate to govern.

CT needs to confer with Yglesias now about comment moderation policies. I quit reading when someone started explaining what a disaster the New Deal was.

Childers supports expanding SCHIP and getting out Iraq. A good victory for Democrats but if anything it seems to indicate that Obama might have a tougher time than expected in the fall.

Posted by someguy

What can that possibly mean?

As I explained elsewhere, there are always those who take advantage of discursive charity, especially in political discussions. (Leibniz: “People would argue about the multiplication table if there were enough money in it”). In those cases, discursive charity must be supplemented by the discursive lead pipe to the face.

(Discursive! Not real! No actual violence is being proposed!)

Steven Attewell — Agreed with the rest of your posts, but I believe that the TX-22 and TX-23 elections didn’t come before the 2006 blowout — the Democrat didn’t even run in the TX-22 special election, so the seat didn’t flip until the general (when, due to DeLay’s fecklessness, there was no Republican on the ballot); and in TX-23 the special election actually took place after the November elections; after the primaries the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas legislature had illegally drawn the district so as to dilute Latino voting power, so the general election had to be run as an all-in election with the top two candidates making it to a December runoff, which the Democrat won.

Oh, and on “Democrat/Democratic”; I think Geoff is from Australia, where there is a party that calls itself the “Democrat Party”; in the U.S. the party calls itself the “Democratic Party” so when an American says “Democrat Party” he sounds like an asshole. But as an Australian Geoff surely meant no harm.

Matt,

You’re quite right, my bad.