Risk? No

Just a follow up on Obama's trip to MA: a lot of people seem to think that it's a "risk" for Obama to go up there, starting with the NYT (the word "risk" is in the front-page teaser, not the blog post, which uses "peril"), and John Nichols in The Nation, and Steve Benen, and many others. 

Nonsense.  There's no risk here.  If Coakley loses, everyone is going to blame the president.  Oh, she'll get blame as well, but no one cares about that; it has no effects outside of the state of Massachusetts.  If she loses be a narrow margin and he doesn't go, then he gets blamed; just as he would if she loses by a narrow margin and he does go. 

When something has only upside and no downside -- and that's pretty much the case with a trip to Boston for the president this weekend -- then it's not a risk.  Even if the overall situation is bad (for him and the Dems), this particular move has little if any downside.  It's far better for him to be able to say that he did all he could than to try to claim that it had nothing to do with him -- whether or not it actually has anything to do with him.

NY-23 and Parties 3: The Party Label

Returning to David Karol's guest post on NY-23 at the Monkey Cage. David concludes by saying:

Finally, the fact that the party label cut so little ice with voters has two implications: it supports claims that the scope of “party revival” has been overestimated at least in terms of affect and allegiance and suggests that party identification, which in many formulations is distinct from ideology, is probably not all that it is cracked up to be in the literature.

I think he's on to something here, but I'm really not sure how best to think about it.

Let's see...

On the one hand, what happened in NY-23 is, I'm confident, best thought of as a fight within the Republican Party. It was in the first instance between local formal party organization officials and national ideologues, professional communicators, and party-aligned interest groups, although some national Republicans entered on the side of the local officials. All of these actors are part of the expanded Republican party; they are part of Republican networks, or the Republican team. The people who would eventually decide that fight -- the Republican voters of NY-23 -- mattered, and could be fought over in the way they were fought over, precisely because they were Republicans. They watch Fox News, and listen to Rush, and know who Beck is; they may be NRA members, or be on right-to-life mailing lists.

But at the same time, these voters don't necessarily think of themselves as Republicans. Some do. Others may think of themselves as independent conservatives, or as Tea Partiers, or some other label. Now, I think it makes sense for us as outsiders to treat them as Republicans, because they behave as if they were hard-core Republicans, whatever they call themselves (and the same applies to Democrats). It is probably, and here's what David Karol is getting at, worthwhile to remember that there might be some important consequences of the complexity of their self-identity. For one, they don't seem to be particularly loyal to the party label! Now, to me that doesn't mean that they aren't acting as Republicans; they are, after all, following GOP-affiliated opinion leaders (Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh) when they cast those votes. It just means that things are a bit more complicated than a simple party strength picture might look.

Back in my dissertation, I talked about this a bit. I absolutely believe that parties right now are quite strong, and in part my diss was about the ways that parties are strong that traditional party scholars missed (that's the party network stuff). What I did note, however, is that there is one category in which contemporary parties are really weak, which is the realm of symbols and rituals. Are there "Republican" songs? Not patriotic songs that Republicans shout out to prove their patriotism (as do Democrats, with a similar, overlapping group of songs), but real Republican songs? The Democrats have "Happy Days are Here Again," but that belongs to a long-ago generation; beyond that, there's nothing. There's the donkey and the elephant, which have been surprisingly (if you think about it) persistent over time, but other than that...the only thing I can really think of that's pretty explicitly Republican is Reagan worship. The Democrats don't even have that; as Matt Yglesias comments today, Democrats have Jefferson-Jackson dinners, which is all well and good and, as far as I can tell, meaningless to 99% of all Democrats.

So one way to think about the Tea Parties is that there are a whole lot of people who objectively appear to be Republicans but in fact would feel silly rallying for Republicans, so they're up for something that is a Republican Party rally disguised as a whole new set of rituals that are careful not to call attention to it's Republican party origins. And that would be equally true on the other side of the aisle.

And that's all I have on this; I think it's interesting, but I'm not really sure what to make of it. If I had to summarize, I guess I'd say that we have strong parties, but one point of weakness is the symbols and rituals of party.

NY-23 and Parties 2: Party Networks

I'm blogging today on a bunch of topics in the study of parties, working from the fascinating case of NY-23.

I'm going to continue by going back to David Karol's comment:

Relatedly, the fact that Scozzafava was nominated, not in a primary, but by local party leaders, while in keeping with the New York law for special elections, probably undermined her legitimacy once she was scrutinized. This is only one case, but as far as it goes it tends to undermine claims that party leaders would choose candidates more wisely than ordinary primary voters do.

(I should repeat for those who didn't read the first part of this that I agree with Karol's broader comment; it's really good analysis, in my opinion, and I highly recommend it).

Ah, but now let me focus on his claim about "party leaders." As David should know, one thing that NY-23 certainly does not show is anything about party leaders in general. That's because party leaders turned out to be quite divided.

The key here is that one has to be careful about what a party leader is. The party networks literature points out that formal party organizations -- that's who nominated Scozzofava, the Official Republican Party Organization -- are only one piece of contemporary political parties. And, depending on time and place, the formal party organization may be very important -- or they may be marginal, peripheral organizations that have little to do with the "real" party (see, for example, Seth Masket's book, which describes exactly that situation in California). Other components of what I've called (e.g. here, with Casey Dominguez) the "expanded party" include candidate campaign organizations, the staffs of elected officials, campaign consultants, activists, party-aligned interest groups, and campaign, governing and communications professionals.

In normal primary elections, all of those party components have a chance to organize and try to influence the nomination. Moreover, everyone (or at least the experienced players) know how primaries "work" -- they know how to bring their particular resources to the table. For example, party-aligned interest groups (such as, on the Republican side, right-to-life activists, the NRA, etc.) know how to attempt to enforce discipline on candidates for the nomination. As I said in the first post in this series, I strongly suspect that had Scozzafava had to go through a primary election, she would have modified her views to make them more acceptable to more of these groups and individuals. That is, when David Karol suggests that party leaders "should have nominated someone with moderate leanings, but more conservative than Scozzafava," the likely solution was Scozzafava after a primary. There's nothing unusual about that; at the presidential level, there's a long history of candidates (Romney, Gephardt) who adjusted their abortion positions when they moved from a narrow constituency to a national nomination constituency; right now, watch Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk, er, evolve as he moves to a statewide primary constituency.

So: in the case of NY-23, we had a variety of "party leaders" involved, only a few of whom were given any influence over the nomination. I don't know anything about how Republicans organize themselves in upstate New York these days, so I have no idea how important formal party functionaries are normally; it could be that they are quite influential normally, but it's also certainly possible that they are widely seen as irrelevant to everyday politics, and their control over nominations of candidates for the House in special elections is a massive anachronism. If the latter, they may have been ill-equipped to do the sorts of things (such as consultation with the real GOP players in the district) that might have either scared them off Scozzafava, or brought those other players on board.

Note too that there's a local vs. national component to this (although it's not all one-sided, if reports that the national party Congressional committee wanted Scozzafava). Again, in normal primary elections, these sorts of fights can play out properly, according to well-established rules and norms. But, and here's where I go back to David's formulation, these are not fights between "party leaders" on one side and "ordinary primary voters" on the other. Instead, these are fights between various different party leaders -- local formal party officials, local activists, local campaign and governing professionals, local interest groups, and also national formal party officials and staff, national activists, national campaigning and governing professionals, national interest groups, and national ideologues and whatever-Glenn-Beck-is. Ordinary primary voters may choose among those groups -- or, more likely, they ratify the winner of those fights (or the bargained consensus among the combatants).

So: NY-23 tells us nothing about the abilities in general of party leaders. It may, however, be a hint that Republican formal party officials in NY-23 are not central to the Republican Party of NY-23.

NY-23 and Parties 1: Primary Elections

The Monkey Cage has really had a great week this week; if you really want to use the excuse of the off-year elections to learn something about political parties, be sure to read what they've posted, especially guest appearances by Hans Noel (and look at the comments on that one) and David Karol. Away from the Monkey Cage, I've already linked to what Seth Masket said, and then there was my first reactions, which attracted comments from Seth and a few other political scientists. I'll admit to being a bit of a chauvinist here; as a student of parties as institutions, I think that we're basically the specialists on situations such as the NY-23 case, which I think it's fair to say we all see as fascinating.

For example, see David Karol's terrific comment about the nomination process:

If factions in a party do not respect their own nomination process that is a big problem for it. Alan Ware has shown that part of the reason party leaders supported the creation of the Australian ballot and, some years later, the establishment of primaries was that they needed a nomination process that would appear legitimate to losers in order to minimize splits. Part of being a successful party is accepting that you fight your fight inside the organization and then respect its verdict.

Alan Ware's book on the subject, The American Direct Primary, is just wonderful work. Do you know why Americans adopted the "Australian ballot" in the late 19th century? Odds are you believe that it was an anti-corruption idea; we call the Australian ballot the "secret" ballot, which shows our emphasis on what we think of as important about it. But what's actually important about the Australian ballot is that the government gives us names to choose from. Before the adoption of that reform, voters were responsible for listing the names of the candidates they supported, which in practical terms meant that party leaders would hand out pre-filled-out ballots, and voters would take those ballots from party leaders and turn them in. As populations grew, this became subject to various abuses, as Ware explains:

For example, it was quite easy to imitate the other party's ballot. If the voter did not know the person who was handing him the ballot, it was possible to give him one that looked like his party's ballot but which actually contained the names of some candidates, or perhaps many candidates, of the opposition party. The illiterate voter could well be at the mercy of such practices, but even diligent and literate voters might fall victim to them (35).

In other words, you go to vote, find the table outside that gives out the Democratic Party ballots (color-coded, to make it easier for you), but it turns out that it some Republican mole was actually giving out ballots with Republican candidates, not the Democrats. Oops!

But dirty tricks from the other party weren't the only problems. Within the party, there was nothing to keep local officials from dissenting from the larger party. To do so, all they had to do was either print up their own set of ballots with different names for one or more offices, or, if they didn't have the resources to print their own ballots, then they could just cover up the "real" nominee with another name, a "paster," stuck on over it. So in the 19th century equivalent of NY-23, the question would have been whether the party committee who picked Scozzofava could prevent the Republican Party officials and workers in the various towns around the district from "knifing" her and putting Hoffman's name on the ballot instead. Or, different factions could just hand out two sets of ballots, and then voters could choose.

This was a real mess for the parties, so they decided to solve the problem by getting the government to print up official ballots, with only the "real" candidates. OK, next problem: which ones are the real candidates? If the Republican Party officials send one name, and the Tea Party Republicans send another one, what is the State of New York to do? Again, that wasn't just a problem for the state; it was a problem for the parties, who wanted to maintain control over nominations. The answer, eventually, was to have the State of New York conduct primary elections, with the winner given exclusive right to the party line on the general election ballot. Parties believed (at first, Ware tells us, with good reason) that they could control those elections, and then with the state's help they could enforce that control.

Of course, in our actual NY-23, there was no primary; many states avoid primaries and let formal party organizations dictate the nominee in the unusual case of special elections. Now, there were some flukish things that allowed NY-23 to play out as it did...one was the absence of a primary election, but another is that New York happens to have an available "Conservative Party" line on its general election ballot, and that Hoffman was able to secure that line. Most states have one or two party lines on their regular ballots beyond the Democrats and Republicans, but New York (for various historical reasons, most of which I don't know) happens to be pretty generous with the size of their ballots -- and not only are there lines available, but the "Conservative Party" isn't an exclusive, single-issue group that might object to being hijacked by a rump group of GOP splitters. If all that were available, for example, was a Libertarian line, I suspect that in at least some states Hoffman might have failed to get the nomination because his policy positions don't match the Libertarian Party's positions.

As David Karol says, it's a pretty big deal if parties can't get everyone to accept nominations once they are made. He concludes (with caveats) that this case "tends to undermine claims that party leaders would choose candidates more wisely than ordinary primary voters do." I'm not sure if that's correct, and I'm going to continue talking about it in a second, less historical, post, but the first thing to say here is that I think that the primary process might have sorted some of this out. If she had been forced to face Hoffman in a primary election, Scozzofava would have had an opportunity to move to the right -- she could have at least ditched her support for same-sex marriage, and she could have emphasized those strong conservative positions she help on some issues that would have played well in the general election in upstate NY. I have no idea whether she would have won a primary against Hoffman, but I'm confident that the way things played out in the general election doesn't tell us what would have happened. So, I'd modify David's assertion: I'd say that this case tends to undermine claims that a process in which party leaders directly control nominations would choose candidates more wisely than party primary elections do. At least in the short run, primary elections turn out to be really successful at convincing everyone to treat their winner as the legitimate choice of the party.

Looking at the Results

...and the returns are in. Congrats to the GOP for electing two new governors; congrats to the Dems for retaining one House seat and picking up another.

What else is worth saying?

1. It's a good night for Republicans. Going into a redistricting cycle, I'd rather have the governors of NJ and VA than a single seat in NY. Winning is certainly better than losing.

2. There will, no doubt, be all sorts of consequences for the people of New Jersey and Virginia, Maine and Washington, and Atlanta, Detroit, New York, and the other jurisdictions that had elections today. There will not be any significant consequences outside of that, nor is there any great meaning to be figured out from the returns.

3. I've been going back and forth a bit with Seth Masket about the consequences of NY-23. Here's what he said tonight. I agree with just about all of it, but when Seth says:

So now what [conservatives have] done is proven the importance of ideological positioning -- if you nominate too extreme a candidate, you lose the election. So the folks in the Republican Party who sabotaged Scozzofava and rallied around Hoffman now look silly and more than a tad disloyal. They cost their party a seat in Congress.

I'm very skeptical about that. To outsiders, sure, the conservatives "look silly and more than a tad disloyal." But I really don't think that's how most Republicans are going to interpret NY-23. I think they are going to consider the formal party officials of NY-23 the villains of the piece. For them, this will be the story of a near-outrage that was foiled by a determined group of conservatives, and despite all disadvantages the conservative candidate nearly won. From that point of view, it was the party officials of NY-23 who were the disloyal ones, and it was their mistake in nominating an unacceptable candidate that cost Republicans this seat.

I think most Republican elites will either believe that version of events, or act as if they believe it.

Anyway, if Seth is right, then tonight's Democratic victory in NY-23 will have real consequences. If I'm right, it won't. The thing to look for (I think Seth would agree) is whether GOP elites react by actively opposing the Beck/Rush/Palin forces in upcoming primaries. Another thing to look for is how recruiting goes for the Republicans (a lot of '10 recruiting is already done, but not all of it), but here the GOP wins in VA and NJ will probably help some; at any rate, it's a lot harder to measure the effect on recruiting because there are multiple things going on. And a third thing to look at is how GOP candidates next year treat the Palinite, tea party wing of the party.

4. I mentioned it above, but it bears repeating: the one real consequence for 2010 from tonight is that VA and NJ should help Republicans in their efforts to recruit strong candidates.

And don't forget -- campaigning is well under way for 2010, especially in those states that have early primaries. It's an election year!

Feeling Patriotic

I do love Election Day.

And it's a good one, lots of great stories. The two Gov races, two House specials (one in CA, in addition to the big blowout in NY-23). Some mayors. Marriage in Maine, quasi-marriage in Washington. NY-23, one of the most entertaining House elections in a long time. Political Wire has some of the poll closing times.

You know, most of my academic work and interests are all about how small a portion of democracy is occupied by today -- I think democracy is found in the complex workings of elites within party networks, and in Congressional committee rooms, and in interactions within issue networks, and in White House showdowns between the president and a reluctant Senator...all those things, to me, at an intellectual level, are democracy just as much as today's events. But nothing beats the rituals of Election Day. Hey, I even like the annoying and useless "What Does It All Mean" stories, as long as I can restrict my intake enough. I love watching the spin (I caught Haley Barbour yesterday on CNN patiently explaining why New Jersey was dominated by obscure and inscrutable local factors, while Virginians are clearly, no-question-about it conducting a pure referendum on Barack Obama. Awesome job, Haley!). I love the weather stories, and the cheesy shots of the candidates voting, and the oh-so-careful anchors not revealing what they all know from the exit polls (I guess we don't get that today -- even more fun to wait for the actual votes!). I'm one of those people who could easily do without the National Anthem, and the Pledge doesn't do much for me -- and I really dislike the Selig-imposed 7th inning GBA. But then today comes around, and I know that I'm a very patriotic citizen of the USA.

So, Happy Election Day, everyone! Vote early, vote often!

Consequences of Maximalism 2

I was going to move on to incentives within Congress, but I see that Seth Masket has posted a somewhat different response to Frank Rich's column than I did. I don't think that Seth and I disagree, but his emphasis was different, and I thought I should go back and think about it a bit more (if you don't read Seth, you should, and you should also read his book, which is excellent.

At any rate, Seth took issue with Frank Rich's assertion that

No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers.

Seth, quite sensibly, points out that it's always better to win than to lose, and I think he's right about that. However, I think I'll take the middle ground here. Given the situation now, it would be better for the Republicans if they hold the seat than if they don't. Rich makes much of the idea that conservatives will be emboldened if they succeed, but that's silly; conservatives didn't need much emboldening (is that a word?) going into this race, and if they should happen to fall a little short of actually electing Hoffman (the conservative candidate), it'll be easy for them to still think of NY-23 as a glorious victory over the evil RINOs, and it was just too bad that given the special circumstances and all it unfortunately cost them a House seat.

On the other hand, while Republicans will be better off with the seat than without it, I think Rich is correct that this has been a net loss for the party. What they've gained (should they hold the seat) is a bit more loyalty on floor votes; odds are that once Scozzofava had moved from Albany to Washington, she would have moved right anyway, since committee assignments and money for reelection would have pushed her pretty strongly in that direction. And she would have been a safe seat, while we don't know that yet about Hoffman, should he win. Meanwhile, as I said earlier, this high-profile example of GOP intolerance of moderates is going to hurt Republican recruitment in the future. So I agree with Rich that this episode is a net loser for Republicans, although I agree with Seth that, at this point, Republicans should prefer victory to defeat.

Consequences of Maximalism I

The Republicans really do have a problem with the conservative strategy of taking the maximalist position on things. First up, electoral consequences.

You don't need a political scientist to tell you this one: conservatives are rapidly making it impossible for Republicans to win very many elections in large portions of the nation. By now everyone has heard the latest news from NY-23, in which the moderate Republican candidate, who dropped out yesterday, has now endorsed the Democrat. This time, what all the pundits are telling you is correct. This is at best a major problem for Republicans, and at worst a complete disaster. Not, of course, the single seat, but because of the continuing incentives and lessons that future candidates, potential candidates, and activists are going to take from it. Future candidates are going to find it necessary to stick to extreme conservative positions in order to secure the nomination, even if they appear to have the full backing of the party establishment. Potential candidates are going to be less likely to run, because they can't trust promises of full support from the party establishment. And activists are going to learn the lesson that they can take down establishment candidates. We're going to see more of this, not less, next year.

And it's going to cost the Republicans seats. I should say: it's going to continue to cost Republicans seats. I'm not making any predictions about this one, although as I read Charles Franklin's analysis and then add Scozzafava's endorsement, it doesn't look bad for Owens, the Democrat. Still, special elections are notoriously difficult to predict, and the polling on this one leaves the outcome very much in doubt. However, overall, this is certainly costing Republicans seats.

Of course, that's balanced, for conservatives, by intense loyalty among those who do win office. You can see that in NY-23. Without conservative support for Hoffman, the seat would have gone to a moderate, pro-choice Republican. Now, it will either go to a mainstream Dem or to a conservative candidate who will caucus with the Republicans. That's what's been happening nationwide, which is part of the reason that there are only 40 Republicans in the Senate, but also why most of those 40 are intensely loyal conservative votes.

Overall, that's bad news for Republicans, and I would argue that it's bad news even for conservative Republicans. In the House, by far the most important vote anyone casts is the vote to organize the House (that is, the vote for Speaker). It's going to be hard to win very many of those votes if the Republicans refuse to compete at all in marginal districts.

Dede's Demise

Yesterday, I referred everyone to this useful caution from John Sides not to search for the Real Meaning of Tuesday's elections.

I don't really want to take it back, certainly not as far the actual results are concerned, but the events in the NY-23 special are, in fact, significant. I don't think I've blogged about this yet...it's a heretofore safe GOP district, in which the local Republicans nominated a seemingly strong candidate, the local Member of the State Assembly.

And then all hell broke loose. The GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was conservative by NY Republican standards, but certainly not by national Republican standards. A third-party candidate, however, was sufficiently conservative. Special elections get lots of attention, and in this case national conservatives descended on upstate New York on behalf of the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. Now, just a few days before the election, we get news that Scozzafava has suspended her campaign as polls show that she's fallen into a distant third place.

I don't think that the actual results of the voting on Tuesday are particularly important, but the process within the Republican party certainly is important. There's no question but that national conservatives are increasingly using primary elections (and, in this case, extra-primary processes) to enforce rigid issue-position consistency. NY-23 is important as an example of this trend, and as a very visible warning to prospective candidates: keeping national conservatives happy is essential for a career within the GOP, regardless of what local incentives apply. It's also, of course, a very visible warning to current incumbents that national conservatives are willing to risk losing seats in order to enforce discipline. Hoffman may or may not wind up winning, but it's clear that keeping a Dem out of office was a lower priority for national conservatives than preventing a moderate Republican from serving in Congress.

I should say that I'm having some difficulty finding a good term to describe exactly what national conservatives are enforcing. In NY-23, it appears to be issue positions. But in the upcoming Florida Senate primary, national conservatives seem especially upset with Charlie Crist because he appeared with Barack Obama and approved of stimulus money coming into Florida. The appearance portion of that, which was really what got conservatives upset, seems more like a partisan complaint. Yet it's hard to use "partisan" in the NY-23 case, since national conservatives there showed no loyalty to the properly nominated GOP candidate. I'm also reluctant to use the word "ideology" since the issue-positions that are enforced seem, to me at least, to be at least as much a function of partisanship as they are of any kind of intellectual consistency.

At any rate, I do think that the ability of national conservatives to enforce discipline through GOP primaries is a very important story in American politics right now, and it's very reasonable to point at the NY-23 special as an important case of it.

Read Stuff, You Should

This time, the thing to skip is Slate's John Dickerson's look at the state of play in the Senate. Great topic; zero value added.

On the the better stuff I've seen in the last ten days or so.

1. Want to know what the Meaning of the November 3 Elections is? If you are tempted to think that's not a stupid question, go straight to the Monkey Cage and listen to John Sides, who nails it.

2. Matt Yglesias says he's done fighting this battle. Say it ain't so, Matt! Someone really needs to keep saying it.

3. Jack Balkin is good on the topic of the partisan press. Jacob Weisberg gets the idea. Conor Friedersdorf is fighting a probably hopeless battle against the partisan press, but he's certainly on the money about Rush as a race-baiter.

4. Forget November 3 (well, don't; the NY special and the NJ governor race, and the ME marriage vote, are all very interesting and very close, but after that regroup) and start f0llowing the MA Senate contest. Hey, we could be stuck with the winner forever; they don't cycle through very quickly up there. As always with MA politics, you want to read my brother' s reporting.

5. Yes, Free Ross. Useless column; great blogger.

6. Fred Kaplan on Karzai's brother.

7. TNC quotes PE.

8. Noah: funny. Republicans: even funnier.

Can't Help It, The Gray Lady Can't Help It

Let's say that you know that off-year elections, such as the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, are not important indications of how well the president is doing, how well the president's party will do in the midterm elections, or the president's chances of reelection. Do you:

A. Run no story at all about the Meaning of the upcoming off-year elections.

B. Run a story about the overblown hype that surrounds such elections, making it clear that it is, in fact, hype.

C. Run a story about the Meaning of the upcoming off-year elections, but sprinkle occasional disclaimers throughout the piece, attributing most of them to the White House (i.e., off-year elections are full of portents, although the White House says that Obama might not be driven from office immediately if the Democrats lose in Virginia). And perhaps conclude:

For all that, Virginia, a laboratory for many of the ways Mr. Obama tried to change the ideological appeal and tactics of his party, is looming as an early if imprecise test of this president and his policies.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Those of you who guessed C, please enjoy this Adam Nagourney conventional-wisdom distillation in today's Times. Oh, and extra credit to the Times for the headline they slapped on it: "2 State Races May Put Lens on Obama." Or, they may not! Who's to say?

Actually, one might find actual news in these sorts of stories, but the Times does it's best to avoid that. For example, it would be interesting to know whether local pols in various parts of the nation consider the president an asset or a liability. That's not really an indication of future election results, but it would be interesting, I'd say. Yet, in this story, there's nothing at all about whether Corzine considers Obama an asset. And, in Virginia, we get full-on confusion. First, "Mr. Obama’s policies have become a flash point for Mr. Deeds’s Republican opponent." Next, "Mr. Deeds’s aides have pleaded with the White House to send Mr. Obama into the state." Then, "Mr. Deeds has made efforts to put some distance between himself and Mr. Obama, including saying he was not an Obama Democrat." And finally, "Mr. Deeds seems ambivalent about the president, inviting him to campaign here even as he places at least some of the blame for his troubles on what Democrats are doing in Washington." Got that? No, I don't, either. Oh, and the story avoids any other evidence (such as, perhaps, polls comparing Obama's approval ratings with the current Democratic governors within those states) -- indeed, there's no sense at all from this story that Corzine stands a better chance of winning right now than does Deeds.

Nice work, NYT!