Geoff Robinson

Found an excellent new electoral analysis site FiveThirtyEight (the number of electoral college votes). It has a good post pointing out that John Edwards never did particularly well among workers, he was always outperformed by Hillary among lower income and less educated voters:

John Edwards didn’t quite have a base: there was no commonly-identified demographic group amongst which he had a plurality, yet alone a majority of the Democratic vote…But it sort of throws cold water on the notion that there’s something about Barack Obama — and particularly something about Barack Obama’s race — that makes working-class whites loathe to support him. (True, Obama performs poorly among certain types of working-class whites, like those in Appalachia and in much of the South. But he’s doing just fine in Oregon, which is also full of working-class whites.) Rather, it’s more likely that there’s something about Hillary Clinton that makes these voters want to support her.

This is the ‘dream ticket’ question. Is Hillary just the anti-Obama, in which case a white guy would be a better VP, or does she have a broader appeal? I think she does, so I incline towards the dream ticket.  Overall unions will be crucial to Obama they offer a entree to a constituency he has struggled with. Here there is a parallel with Australia, but the Democrats, unlike Labor, are committed to legislation that would facilitate union organising.

Before the last election I suggested that the National Party might be in particular trouble due to an erosion of Coalition support among lower-income conservative voters. Rudd might have a particular appeal to non-unionised workers. The election seemed to vindicate this analysis. Unionisation has fallen dramatically in Australia but even when unions were much stronger many workers were not union members or had been forced to be members by compulsion. I have recently finished a paper, somehow despite teaching three subjects,  on class and politics in the 1930s. I ask if Labor needed the votes of the middle-class (in this period seen as small farmers etc.) to win elections or could it have secured a majority by relying on manual workers alone. I use the 1933 Commonwealth Census to answer this question. My conclusion is that there was a working-class majority but a large portion of the working class were outside of Labor’s industrial-mining core base: they were shop assistants, rural workers and domestic servants - the ‘fringe working class’. Even then these workers were difficult to unionise (the AWU’s rural coverage has been overstated). The state where Labor probably did best among the fringe working class in the 1930s was Queensland here Labor was cautious and centrist and hostile to union militancy (very Ruddian) but was also committed to increasing union coverage of the fringe working class (un-Ruddian). The past and present has more in common than you might think.

The victory of Democrat Travis Childers in the Mississippi First District special election has attracted much attention. It is an indication of the problems of the Republican brand that they can lose such a safe seat, perhaps they shouldn’t have invited Dick Cheney to campaign for them. Better web design might have helped compare the Republican and Democratic sites. It is true that this is a seat which as Josh Patashnik says: This is a district no center-left party has any business winning or should we accept the euphoria of the posters on Daily Kos to whom any Republican district is no winnable? Some see this as a case of southern voters coming home:

Southern Democrats, turned off for decades by the party’s liberal-leaning leaders in Washington, seem to be coming home. This special election comes one week after Rep. Don Cazayoux (D-La.) picked up a House seat in the Baton Rouge area that Republicans had held for three decades. “You offer Southerners a conservative Democrat on the issues and a fiscal conservative, then I think they’re understanding it now,” said Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), who campaigned alongside Democratic nominee Travis Childers on Sunday. “They were fooled for about 12 years. What happened in 1994 is going to happen in reverse.”

True local politics in Mississippi is dominated by people who call themselves Democrats, but they are Democrat in a particular sense. Says another report:

One potential reason for Childers’ consistent standing: Despite the district’s conservative nature, Democrats hold the vast majority of countywide elected positions in much of northeast Mississippi. “He’s an old-time Southern Democrat, … an old-time Southern Democrat is a moderate Republican,” said Hayden Ables, the former chancery clerk in Tishomingo County. “People in the South have a tendency to vote the individual, not the party. That’s the reason that a Democratic county will vote Republican on national issues, when it comes to Gov. Barbour, but also vote for Travis. Because it’s the individual, not the party.”

Yes and no. Childers is ‘pro-life and pro-gun’. This is part of his appeal, but conservatism more than liberalism is not just about issues but about a general disposition. Many Southern Democrats turned Republicans aren’t ‘moderate Republicans’ in the sense of the old New England Republican tradition represented by Arlene Specter and Olympia Snowe, but neither are they automatically signed-up members of the cult that is the ‘conservative movement’. Then there is broader social change in the South described, if overstated, here. American conservatism has become a pseudo-rationalist dogma an echo-chamber of fantasy terrors like Nancy Pelosi. Will these voters rally for Obama in 2008? No (and they wouldn’t vote for Hillary either) but could 2010 or 2012 be a different story? Perhaps. The 2008 election has the potential to be the start of a realignment but only the potential.

Recent battles within the Victorian Liberal Party have seen the disclosure of email exchanges such as the following between two senior organisers of the party’s 2007 federal campaign:

On July 4 last year, frontbencher Wendy Lovell — since promoted, with Baillieu’s endorsement, to the position of deputy upper house leader — gained some media coverage when she criticised the State Government for raising public housing rents. The following morning, Osborn sent an email to Morgan and Chandler: “Why, oh why, oh why??? Pull your people into line Susan … someone needs to tell these people (the Liberal MPs) that public housing is for lazy layabouts that don’t work and are a drain on the rest of us. How about we leave the bleeding heart rubbish to the left of the ALP. Hasn’t she (Lovell) heard about your plan to abolish public housing?” Five minutes later, Morgan wrote back: “It’s housing for what it has become fashionable to call disaffect (sic), the disadvantaged, the differently motivated. What we used to call LAZY PEOPLE.”

What we see here is the manifestation of a particular conservative group that were once called ’swells’, in the 19th century these were the hard-drinking, hard-partying rich, the type who frequented the infamous ’saddling paddock’ of the Theatre Royal, ‘clubmen’ contemptuous of democracy and ‘the mob’.  Paul De Serville’s Pounds and Pedigrees describes this milieu. UQ legal academic James Allan bewails left wing puritans. It is linked to a broader sense of entitlement and privilege, evoked in the novels of Ralph Boldrewood.  Kerry Packer was a modern example. When some contemporary Liberals claim to be libertarian this is often the tradition to which they appeal, so look skeptically at Packer’s former Employee Malcolm Turnbull.

How are we to interpret polls that show for the first time Hillary Clinton performing better against McCain than Obama? It is difficult to place more reliance in these match-ups certainly but they may tell a story. Perhaps McCain for along period was seen as uniquely electable, hence his ability to win over doubtful Republicans. His good performance in match-ups against Clinton persuaded many Democrats to support Obama who was similarly seen as one with a unique appeal who might shatter existing patterns of party support, whereas Hillary at best could only grind out another victory. Now both McCain and Obama have fallen to earth. McCain looks like a Republican and Obama like a liberal Democrat, and an African-American one at that. Thus Hillary was able to win Pennsylvania whereas Obama earlier had easily won the similar state of Wisconsin (an interesting discussion of this here). Those voters who have turned away from McCain are in search not of a substitute hero but an alternative to the Republicans. It is now however too late for Hillary to make up lost ground. The fact that Hillary is now picking up support from members in Congress in more marginal seats may be evidence of my interpretation. An interesting observation at Electiondissection:

Wisconsin voted before the Reverend Wright controversy erupted. Thus, Badger state voters were looking at an Obama who hadn’t had much of his shine rubbed off. Wisconsin voted after Obama had run off an impressive streak of consecutive wins in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, and elsewhere. In other words, momentum was on his side and states were voting in a compacted schedule, thus minimizing the chance that any attack on Obama could metastasize. By the time Ohio, and especially Pennsylvania came around, he had not only been subject to much greater scrutiny but would have to spend weeks on these issues as they dogged his campaign. Thus, white voters may be perfectly willing to vote for a black candidate as long as they haven’t been thinking about race beforehand. When that issue becomes activated, Obama fares worse.

Matthew Yglesias complains about Glenn Reynolds (Republican law professor with some libertarian tendencies) calling Obama a socialist. The Reynolds article is no more than an expression of agreement with a Victor Davis Hanson article that is mostly a critique of moderate Republicans. But Yglesisas says that:

I’m pretty sure Reynolds knows that Obama’s not proposing the nationalization of industry or collective ownership of the means of production, so he must be confused about socialism.

Yet self-defined European socialists long ago largely rejected the view that government ownership was required to implement socialist values (the new radicalism of the 1970s notwithstanding) , rather regulation and union activism would socialise aspects of property rights. Ygeleisas’ argument would imply that the successes and failures of post-1950s European socialism are irrelevant to the policy challenges that confront the American left (I have noted this as a problem with the new American left earlier). It is like 1990s third wayers claiming that their brilliance is perceiving the obvious has made all previous political thought on the left irrelevant. It is a problem with the new American left that they seem at times to think history began in 2000. The world has changed since then but not as much as they think, S11 didn’t change everything and neither did Bush. Bill Clinton’s successes and failures remain relevant.

In light of my 2006 article in which I was the first Australian author to suggest that Nancy Pelosi would be a significant figure this is an interesting article from Bloomberg. It suggests that Pelosi, although representing a liberal San Francisco district has been an effective leader of the House:

Democrats said her clout results from her success in being inclusive with those in her party…Representative Elijah Cummings, 57, a Maryland Democrat who is a member of the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Pelosi had met with him at least six times this year. Representative Allen Boyd of Florida, a leader of the “Blue Dog Coalition” of conservative Democrats, said she consulted him about energy legislation, a farm bill, and other measures. “I’ve been on the other side of every leadership race she’s ever been in, but I’ve become a Nancy Pelosi fan,” said Boyd, 62…Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a “Blue Dog” Democrat, said Pelosi has solicited his group’s views and avoided votes on some social policies that would make his colleagues in Republican-leaning districts vulnerable. Her approach belies the “San Francisco liberal” label Republicans have attached to her, he said.“Governing is a lot different than guerrilla warfare,” said Cooper, 53. “She’s made the transition well.”

If Obama wins and I think he will the hard part with be getting progressive legislation through Congress. In the run-up to 2010 this will be the crucial test of whether Obama can create a realignment. It will require him to work closely with Congress. At least the ABC has given Pelosi some attention.

Gerard Henderson has a rather silly column comparing Obama and Kevin Rudd to the formers’ disadvantage. But there are parallels. Obama has seemed distracted and frustrated by the slow progress of his campaign. Rudd showed himself to be an effective political performer against inept opposition, a Coalition that had come to believe their own publicity. Obama faces in McCain a more effective opposition, the Republicans has shifted their ground substantially (at least in the eyes of the public with McCain’s nomination). Where would the Republicans be if the ‘conservative movement’ had imposed Romney?  Clinton too has refocused her appeal. How would Rudd have fared against more competent opposition? Remember how Wayne Goss (with Rudd as his key advisor) seized the historic opportunity for a Queensland Labor victory in 1989 but then proved surprisingly inept in losing the 1995 election. The ground for Obama has changed. Some of the early enthusiasm for Obama was like the 60% votes that Labor received in opinion polls in early 2007. This was never going to last to polling day. Says John Heilemann:

In a flash, a candidate who once was hailed as post-partisan, post-ideological, and post-racial was looking like a typical secular lefty, with a base comprising college students, African-Americans, and upscale “progressives.”

But the political terrain is more favourable for the Democrats. Victory will be achieved by building on the coalition of 2004 not by dismantling it. Rudd corrected Labor’s erosion of support among lower-income earners dramatically displayed in 2004 but he held or even advanced on Labor’s gains among public-sector managers and professionals. Hillary’s support base among older white women should not be difficult to hold for the Democrats once McCain is under policy pressure. As for the Reverend Wright I mostly agree with Katha Pollitt:

For years, Democrats have been trying to shed their secular image in order to appeal to voters who think Jesus is a Republican. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, because now, thanks to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Democrats have got religion and everything that comes with it — weirdness, wrath, insult, blowhardiness, vanity, paranoia, divisiveness and trouble. When Barack Obama told the 2004 Democratic convention, “We worship an awesome god in the blue states,” this probably wasn’t the result he had in mind.

I have stressed the higher levels of toleration of religious diversity in the US, but this account of the campaign against the Principal of an New York school shows that it has its limits. It involves the loopy Richard Pipes who I have noted before. The proposal was an Arabic-English school:

In February 2007, the Department of Education announced that the school had been approved. It would eventually encompass grades 6 through 12, teach half of its classes in Arabic and be among 67 schools in the city that offer programs in both English and another language, like Russian, Spanish and Chinese.

To the school’s opponents it was part of a ’soft jihad’. Says The Times:

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, critics of radical Islam focused largely on terrorism, scrutinizing Muslim-American charities or asserting links between Muslim organizations and violent groups like Hamas. But as the authorities have stepped up the war on terror, those critics have shifted their gaze to a new frontier, what they describe as law-abiding Muslim-Americans who are imposing their religious values in the public domain.

We are in the same terrain as those who argued that ‘political correctness’ had created ’soft gulags’. The curious view that criticising someone is oppressing them. Thus ASIO in the 1960s bored with actually tracking Soviet spies preferred to focus on the ‘psychological warfare’ of the peace movement.  Or in the 1930s the Soviet leadership apparently believed that anybody who criticising them, or might be imagined to criticise them, such as past Communist leaders, who objectively guilty of terrorism. In Australia we have the Christian Democratic Party which according to its website aims believes that:

The CDP seeks to ensure that all legislation is brought into conformity with the revealed will of God in the Holy Bible, with a special emphasis on the ministry of reconciliation. 

Yet they accuse Muslims of trying to impose their own values! CDP leader Fred Nile declares: We are a Christian nation but we believe in giving religious freedom to minority religions

Interesting article by Brian Morton on the rise of the new American left:

new breed of liberal writers who have emerged on the web—a network of writers who are bringing together reformism and idealism in a way we haven’t seen in many years. I’m thinking of people like Joshua Micah Marshall (the man behind Talking Points Memo); Eric Alterman, the Nation columnist, author of many books, and blogger for Media Matters for America; Ezra Klein (The American Prospect); Kevin Drum (the Washington Monthly); Glenn Greenwald (Salon); Matthew Yglesias (the Atlantic); Bob Somerby (the Daily Howler); Rick Perlstein (the Campaign for America’s Future); and the writer who goes by the name of Digby who blogs for her own website, digbysblog… These writers are exciting because they’re unapologetically, un-defensively liberal, and because their liberalism isn’t the cautious, hesitant, scared-of-its-own-shadow, skim-milk liberalism that we’ve all gotten used to. It’s a militant liberalism, of a kind we haven’t seen in decades. Their liberalism is both practical and ambitious. By saying it’s practical, I mean it’s interested in results. None of these writers is tempted by Naderite fantasies. ..although these writers can be scaldingly critical of the Democrats, all of them are working for a Democratic victory in 2008. By saying they’re ambitious, I mean that most of these writers share a politics that is interested in deep-going social reform—you could say it’s a social-democratic politics, although few of them would use that term. (As far as I can tell, they have absolutely no interest in socialist thought, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. At any rate, I can’t see that any of them has been hobbled intellectually because of a lack of opinions about Bukharin.) Because most of these writers came of political age after the end of the Cold War, they’re not afraid of being red-baited, and this fearlessness in some curious fashion makes them freer to mount radical critiques of U. S. policy than older generations of writers grouped around Dissent and schooled in the socialist tradition.

Is it true that all that long history from 1917 is ultimately irrelevant and that to be interested in it is a hobby like Civil War enactments? Italy might suggest this. It saw the most sustained and ambitious attempt to develop a parliamentary politics based on Marxist principles. Strangely even the few open opponents of Marxism on the left, such as Benito Craxi, felt obliged to appeal to another 19th century thinker; Proudhon. But now the hegemony of Marxism has entirely evaporated on the Italian left. This not just a matter of the disappearance of the post-Communists who with their Green allies could only manage 3.5% in the recent election than of the project of the moderate left to form a Democratic Party explicitly modeled on the US Democrats despite a leadership that includes many former Communists. The Democrat model to be emulated by the Italian Left will be that of the 1990s rather than the present.