2016 elections - because it's never too early

[sbr]

I found this interesting enough to take a few seconds to copy/paste it here.  There are some neat links and charts on the other side of the link.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-political-process-isnt-rigged-it-has-much-bigger-problems/

The Political Process Isn't Rigged — It Has Much Bigger Problems

All right, I need to vent. For months, I've watched Donald Trump decry as "rigged" everything from the Democratic primaries, the Republican primary rules (that's right, the same rules that helped him win the nomination) and the fall debate schedule. And I've winced as many Bernie Sanders supporters have accused the Democratic National Committee of "rigging" the primaries and thrown around wild, roundly debunked conspiracy theories about deleted votes.

Here's the truth: Washington is rigged, but not in a literal sense and not in any of the nefarious ways those loud voices are contending. Instead, the blame may lie more with voters than politicians: Our legislative process is not designed to withstand the current levels of partisan polarization in the electorate.

Voters' vexation with standard-issue, do-nothing D.C. politicians and party elites helps explain the Trump and Sanders phenomena of 2016, and the "rigging" theories seem to arise out of that frustration and suspicion. Yet much of this anger with "insiders" is misdirected. If only our political problems were due to "rigging" elections, we could arrest someone and get on with it. But our problems are much more structural.

In 2012, my colleague Nate Silver wrote: "Why is compromise so hard in the House? Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress. But the answer could be this instead: Individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives." That's truer than ever: When narrow primary bases dominate elections, everyone loses. And politicians as a whole get blamed.

Sure, many politicians on both the right and left fan the flames of partisan hysteria and feed off their base's fire — and they tend to get disproportionate attention. But in my experience, most candidates and officeholders don't see the world as red versus blue: They genuinely run for office to solve problems, not to please special-interest groups or for self-glorification. Unfortunately, they increasingly find themselves trapped in a voter-driven vicious cycle that shows no sign of abating.

Here are the five steps to how it works:

1. Geographic sorting — Voters tend to cluster near other people who share their cultural and political values, and the parties' coalitions have become far more geographically isolated in recent decades. In the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election, 52 percent of the nation's voters lived in states decided by 5 percentage points or less. In the 2012 Obama-Romney race, just 17 percent of all voters lived in such states.

As a corollary, there are far fewer truly competitive congressional districts. Just 90 of 435 House districts had a Cook Political Report Partisan Voter Index score, an attempt to measure the partisan lean of an area independent of the candidates on the ballot, between D+5 and R+5, down 45 percent from 164 in 1998.

Sure, gerrymandering has played a role in the House, but sorting is the dominant factor: In the impossible-to-gerrymander Senate, the number of seats with a score between D+5 and R+5 has declined from 52 in 1998 to 28 today.

2. Straight-ticket voting — Voters are splitting their tickets — voting for a Republican for one office and a Democrat for another — at lower rates than we've seen in decades. They're just not making distinctions between parties' presidential and congressional candidates like they used to. The decline of local news readership probably plays a role — after all, these outlets have traditionally provided an avenue for candidates to build a personal brand independent of their party's.

In turn, that's further narrowing the trading range of Senate and House seats that are truly up for grabs in November. Even a 53 percent Democratic district or 54 percent Republican district can now be considered a safe seat in most cases. Most races are no longer contests between two candidates with unique backgrounds and qualifications; more often they are censuses of how many Republicans or Democrats live in a given state or district.

3. Primaries have become the new general elections — The Cook Political Report currently rates just 37 of 435 House seats as competitive this fall, less than 9 percent of the House. As a result, primary elections have become tantamount to general elections in the vast majority of seats. Because primaries are held on many different dates, they tend to generate less national attention and attract disproportionate shares of hardcore, ideological party activists to the polls.

In 2014, only 14.6 percent of eligible voters participated in congressional primaries — a record low, according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate. That means a tiny fraction of voters who are the most hardened partisans are essentially electing more than 90 percent of members of Congress. And these low-turnout primaries are often easy prey for ideological interest groups who demand purity.\

4. Congress grinds to a halt — The enormous pressure to please narrow, extreme and grossly unrepresentative bases of primary voters has straitjacketed members who would otherwise be willing to collaborate across the aisle, ditch talking points or behave in a way that reflects their true conscience. No one wants to risk alienating their base unnecessarily for fear of becoming the next Eric Cantor.

One vehemently anti-Trump GOP member recently confessed to me that the NRCC, his party's campaign committee, had pressured him not to declare #NeverTrump until after his state's candidate filing deadline had passed, for fear that his stance would generate a primary challenge on the right and jeopardize the seat. My hunch is that some GOP members will be more willing to speak out against their nominee after their primaries pass.

The big picture, however, is that the tyranny of primaries has turned Congress into a legislative graveyard. The last two full Congresses, the 112th and 113th, were the two least productive in history. Last week, federal officials confirmed the first local transmission of the Zika virus in Florida, yet Congress is still struggling to pass emergency funding because of partisan squabbling over abortion and environmental regulations.

5. Anger at politicians grows — Every year, legions of candidates take to the airwaves with trite tropes about how "Washington is broken" and how they can fix it, in most cases by just fighting the other party harder. But most candidates end up contributing to the very problem they're decrying. When no one gets anything they want and Congress can't address basic problems, voters grow even more disillusioned with D.C. and hungrier for an outsider.

This has been especially true among Republican primary voters, who hold their own leaders in contempt for having fallen short of overturning President Obama's agenda after hearing overzealous campaign promises in 2010 and 2014. So while Hillary Clinton was barely able to turn back an insurgent in the Democratic primaries, Trump was able to co-opt the entire GOP by capturing 14 million votes from a pool of 220 million eligible U.S. voters.

How do we escape this insidious cycle of polarization? I have no easy solutions. But it might be time for a national conversation about how we can structurally modernize our system of elections to incentivize bipartisanship instead of fringe behavior. I tend to think redistricting reform is a bit overrated and primary reform is underrated. Left untouched, our politics will reach a breaking point — maybe we're already there. And ultimately, voters get the government they deserve.

David Wasserman is the U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report.  @redistrict

[DGuller]

I've been saying that for some time.  It's the voters that are the problem, not politicians.  If any specific people are to blame, it's not politicians but rather the Rupert Murdochs of the world, who would drive the country to civil war just to earn some bucks.

[CountDeMoney]

Last week, federal officials confirmed the first local transmission of the Zika virus in Florida, yet Congress is still struggling to pass emergency funding because of partisan squabbling over abortion and environmental regulations.

I thought it was particularly poetic how House Republicans wouldn't pass legislation for emergency funding to combat a mosquito-borne virus without wanting to roll back clean water regulations and pesticide controls because, hey, mosquitoes aren't born, they're self-radicalized.

[jimmy olsen]

Clinton up 6.8 in the RCP two way average and up 6.6 in the four way

2way
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

4way
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

538 now cast has her winning Georgia and Arizona in a brutal  374-164 curbstomp
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#now

[CountDeMoney]

That just means The Donald has her right where he wants her.

[Admiral Yi]

Yup.  She's toast. 

[jimmy olsen]

So, McCain was asked whether he was comfortable with Trump in control of the nuclear arsenal, and he basically says No as decisively as he can without saying the word. Every Republican Senator and Congressman should be asked this question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/04/this-30-second-video-is-absolutely-devastating-for-donald-trump/

This 30-second video is absolutely devastating for Donald Trump

By Greg Sargent

August 4 at 2:52 PM  


John McCain — one of the most respected voices in the Republican Party on national security — was asked a direct question: Are you comfortable with Donald Trump possibly having control of our nuclear arsenal?

This should be a no-brainer, since McCain is supporting Trump for president, a gig that includes having a measure of control over that aforementioned nuclear arsenal.

But in answering the question, McCain pulled a big time homina homina homina. He declined to answer, other than to say: This is on you to figure out, American voters!

That's not an exaggeration in the least. Here's video of the episode, which was flagged for me by a Democrat, in which McCain confronted this question in an exchange with reporters yesterday. It's the first episode on the video:

Here's the transcript:

QUESTION: Are you comfortable with Donald Trump possibly having control of the nuclear arsenal?

McCAIN: [Silence, followed by unintelligible stammering.] Anyone that the people of this country choose to be the commander in chief and the President of the United States — therefore can lead this country, and will lead in a responsible fashion. Anyone who is elected president fairly in this country. And that's the way that our democratic system works.  That's how our government works. The American people select the next president of the United States, knowing full well what the role of the commander in chief is. Therefore, I have the utmost respect for the verdict of the people.

The careful listener will have noted that McCain declined to say whether he himself would be comfortable with Trump gaining control of the nuclear arsenal. Instead, he essentially said that the American voters will have to take into account that electing Donald Trump president would bring about that outcome, and added that if the American people went ahead and chose Trump in the full knowledge that this is what they would be doing, then he would respect their verdict.

[Republicans nominate insane person to lead America, then panic when he proves he's insane] 

Translation: Better choose wisely, American voters! I'm not helpin' ya on this one!


Let's pause to consider how devastating this one moment is — or should be — for Trump. The 2008 Republican presidential nominee and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a man who is widely seen as a war hero — who has been tapped by the Sunday shows to hold forth on foreign policy and national security issues probably hundreds of times — declined to say whether he would be comfortable with putting Trump in charge of the maximal destructive power of the American military.

Now, it's certainly possible that McCain has said elsewhere that he'd be fine with Trump controlling our nukes, or that he'll subsequently clarify that he's certain Trump is rock solid commander-in-chief material. But it's very easy to imagine this archetypal deer-in-the-headlights moment featured in a Democratic ad. McCain's visible, cringing discomfort with the question is potentially a seminal moment in this campaign.

After all, this comes at precisely the moment when Democrats are raising questions about Trump's temperamental and emotional unfitness to handle foreign policy in a complicated world, and about his obvious lack of knowledge or curiosity about the complexities of international affairs — with a particular emphasis on the potential horror of allowing Trump to control nuclear weapons. (This is a high stakes political battle, as some polls have shown Trump with an advantage on terrorism, while others have shown Hillary Clinton with a wide advantage on handling crises and handling foreign policy in general.) As Clinton put it in her convention speech, summing up the Democratic case: "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

What's more, Democrats are trying to line up as many Republicans as possible — see this ad from the pro-Clinton Super PAC Priorities USA as an example — to shed light on the riskiness of putting Trump in charge of our military machine, in order to win over GOP-leaning voters. McCain perfectly captured this entire argument in a 30-second performance.

But this moment also captures just how awkward supporting Trump is growing for Republicans — and indeed how reckless it is — as his instability and erratic behavior become more and more evident to everyone. McCain should be a safe incumbent, but he's facing a potentially tough reelection fight, perhaps in part because Trump's abusiveness and demagoguery are alienating Latino voters (of which there are many in Arizona) to an untold degree. Trump has repeatedly questioned the war hero status of McCain — "I like people that weren't captured, okay?" he once said — which has also alarmed Republicans about Trump's temperament. In recent days, as Trump attacked the family of a Muslim-American killed in combat, that alarm has escalated into widespread GOP panic that the Republican nominee for president is now revealing himself to be deeply, catastrophically unfit for the job.

Now McCain has shown he's visibly uncomfortable with the question of whether the man at the top of the ticket can be trusted with nukes, but he's voting for him anyway? That's a hard position to sustain, both politically and substantively.

Is there anyone who doubts that many of the Republican leaders who are currently backing Trump would have just as much trouble answering the nukes question as McCain did?

[Berkut]

I've been saying that for some time.  It's the voters that are the problem, not politicians.  If any specific people are to blame, it's not politicians but rather the Rupert Murdochs of the world, who would drive the country to civil war just to earn some bucks.

What you've been saying for some time is that the answer to partisan gridlock is for more people to vote for your party.

[jimmy olsen]

Really good 30 second ad on national security

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsMXoW_qXco

[DGuller]

Really good 30 second ad on national security

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsMXoW_qXco

I wonder how effective any ads of such sort will be.  To anyone who has not drunk the kool-aid, isn't it already fucking obvious?  And if they have drunk it, will this ad be what snaps them out of trance, rather than reinforce their belief that the corrupt elites are afraid of Trump and damn well they should be?  I almost think that just letting some of the kool-aid drinkers to come to realization all on their own without any counter-productive prodding would be the most effective strategy.

[Phillip V]

Clinton up 6.8 in the RCP two way average and up 6.6 in the four way

2way
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

4way
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

538 now cast has her winning Georgia and Arizona in a brutal  374-164 curbstomp
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#now

I would also like to see Clinton win Indiana (fuck Pence) and Utah (go Mormons!).

Obama won Indiana in 2008, and Romney/Huntsman should endorse Clinton or Johnson.

[jimmy olsen]

Clinton 41%, Johnson 23%, Stein 16%, Trump 9%. Clinton would get a 50 state sweep if that was the national spread wouldn't she?

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/761335772016435200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Trump running fourth behind Clinton, Johnson and Stein among 18-29 year-olds in the Marist poll (h/t @dznyc)

[celedhring]

Clinton 41%, Johnson 23%, Stein 16%, Trump 9%. Clinton would get a 50 state sweep if that was the national spread wouldn't she?

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/761335772016435200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Trump running fourth behind Clinton, Johnson and Stein among 18-29 year-olds in the Marist poll (h/t @dznyc)

This is not the world of Logan's Run though.

[Liep]

538 now cast has her winning Georgia and Arizona in a brutal  374-164 curbstomp
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#now

And a week ago they had Trump winning in their "now" forecast. There's a long way to November.

[jimmy olsen]

Clinton 41%, Johnson 23%, Stein 16%, Trump 9%. Clinton would get a 50 state sweep if that was the national spread wouldn't she?

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/761335772016435200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Trump running fourth behind Clinton, Johnson and Stein among 18-29 year-olds in the Marist poll (h/t @dznyc)

This is not the world of Logan's Run though.

Still a mind blowing stat.