Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to the great Kent Desormeaux, 42. I lived in Washington when Desormeaux was riding in Maryland, and, well, it doesn't get much more dominant than that. (Although I was also in the Bay Area in the 1990s, so there's that).

On to the good stuff:

1. Nate Silver has an excellent overview of the GOP delegate rules; Josh Putnam has an excellent rant about misconceptions about the delegate rules. I'm with Josh about calendar being more important than delegate allocation in this cycle, certainly so far.

2. Really good piece by Greg Marx last week looking at how liberals -- and some in the neutral media -- got Rick Santorum's "phony ideology" comment wrong, and what Santorum was actually saying.

3. Ed Kilgore notes that the only attacks that have worked, and almost the only ones that have been used, in GOP WH 2012 have been from the right .

4. CNN moderators talked the least, Fox moderators the most, during GOP debates. Eric Ostermeier reports a Humphrey School study.  I've previous noted that CNN (at least in the early debates; I haven't tracked since then) tended to ask the most straight-up issue questions (that is, what is your position on X). Granted, they do toss away a big chunk on the front end with their silly introductions and the national anthem, but I think on the whole CNN has done the best job.

5. And a wonderful post by Matt Glassman on the occasion of Arizona's 100th birthday, all about how Arizona (and New Mexico) wound up looking like they do now thanks to the politics of the 1850s and 1860s.

Happy Arizona Statehood Day!

And it's not just any version of Arizona Statehood Day -- it's the centennial. Arizona, b. 1912. Still younger than Ronald Reagan.

As I've said, I've always been proud of my native state's contributions to national politics; we've mostly been a dinky little state, but we've had a lot of notable political figures. Let's see:

1. Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican presidential nominee and conservative icon.

2. John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

3. William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

4. Sandra Day O'Connor, Supreme Court Justice.

5. Mo Udall, presidential candidate, longtime Member of the House and key House reformer; considered one of the funniest politicians of the 20th century.

6. Bruce Babbitt, presidential candidate and cabinet Secretary.

7. John Rhodes, House Minority Leader.

8. John Kyl, Senator Minority Whip.

9. Stewart Udall, reforming Member of the House and cabinet Secretary.

10. Ernest McFarland, briefly Majority Leader of the Senate.

11. Carl Hayden, who set Congressional longevity records.

12. Janet Napolitano, cabinet Secretary.

And then there's Gabby Giffords, too. Not bad!

We've also had the most famous sheriff in the country for some time now. Granted, some of us aren't exactly bragging about him, but still -- if I'm listing famous, successful pols, I can't totally ignore him.

Granted, we also have had two relatively recent governors who were booted before the end of their terms (Evan Meacham and Fife Symington), as well as two of the Keating Five, and Charles Keating himself.

At any rate: Happy Birthday Arizona. Here's wishing you another 100 years and more of Grand Canyon greatness

Nightmare

The latest from my native Grand Canyon State: Arizona went through a spasm of Good Government redesign a while ago, passing campaign finance and redistricting measures designed to take the politics out of politics, or something like that. Regular readers will know that I'm not generally a fan. But that's not the story here. The story is about their newish redistricting independent commission. It reported back a plan that failed to help Republicans, and the Republican Governor and the Republican State Senate responded by...sacking the (independent) chair of the commission. As Greg Sargent puts it, it's a "Scott Walker style power grab."

This gets back to the issue of "Constitutional hardball" -- efforts to exploit loopholes or ambiguities in the rules of the game in order to win short-term partisan gains. Constitutional hardball has simply become the norm for Republicans these days. Sometimes it's relatively harmless, such as the recall election of Gray Davis in California.  But it can also be high stakes and have major consequences. The current major example, other than the AZ redistricting thing, are the efforts to rig the electoral college for Republicans by changing Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to a districted electoral vote scheme instead of the traditional winner-take-all. That's a big deal and quite outrageous, in my view. 

But the one I'm really worried about is what would happen if the Democrats narrowly defeat a Republican candidate in the presidential election. Could Republicans accept it It seems unlikely, doesn't it? The nightmare scenario is that Democrats win the presidential election by a handful of Electoral Votes; Republicans allege fraud, but fail in attempts to overturn it in the courts; and then in one or more states that voted for the Democrat but have Republican state governments, the legislature nullifies the states' election and installs a slate of GOP electors. 

That could happen either in a state where fraud was alleged (as was threatened in Florida in 2000, although in that case it was a threat to overturn state judicial rulings, not about fraud in the voting per se), or it could happen in a completely unrelated state acting in sympathy with the supposed victims of corruption in a Dem-run state. Either way, it's hard to imagine the effects on US democracy. It's one thing to have an election turn on regular, if unusual, judicial proceedings; it would be quite another for the current incumbent party to essentially nullify an election. 

Could it happen? I'd have to say that at this point I'd almost expect it to, if the conditions allow it. Let's see...if there's a very close race, it's virtually certain that there will be accusations of fraud in one or more very close states, and that solid partisans will mostly believe those accusations (remember, many on the left believed, and probably still believe, that the 2004 election was stolen in Ohio, although the evidence does not support those claims). The question is what the losers would do about it. Take it to court? Of course; that's what Al Gore and George W. Bush did in 2000, and Richard Nixon did in 1960. But would they take the extra step to legislative nullification? That's the harder question. I believe it's likely, but there's no hard evidence one way or another.

Now, whether the opportunity would ever arise is another question. Elections that are close enough that a handful of electoral votes could make the difference are rare. And of course generally one would expect states with solid partisan legislatures to go the same way in presidential elections. Since you need enough electoral votes in the nullifying states to successfully flip the election, that narrows it further (depending, that is, on how close the national vote is); usually a New Hampshire isn't going to do the job. 

But if it did happen? Yeah, it's a nightmare, alright. And the more we see things such as the Arizona redistricting thing, the more likely it seems to me that the current crop of Republicans would do exactly that if the opportunity ever occurs.

Arizona Shocker?

There's new polling out showing Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney in a general election trial in Arizona. Arizona? I've lost the link, but someone responded by expressing serious surprise, given that Democrats have only carried the Grand Canyon State once in recent years.

Let's step back a bit. First of all, it's too early for head-to-head polling to be meaningful. Second, that's especially true, as I've said many times, of state-level polling. It's safe to assume that any candidate who wins solidly at the national level will win the electoral college, and far too early to analyze how the EC will turn out in any potential very close contests.

My point about the link that I lost earlier, however, is that the key is to look at where states fall compared to other states. So Arizona of course was very Republican in 2008 with John McCain on the ballot, although even then it was only 18th most Republican state -- but a solid 15 points more Republican than the nation as a whole. In 2004, however, it was a lot closer, with George W. Bush winning by only 8 points better than he ran nationally, and it was just 6 points more Republican than the nation in 2000 and 1996. So ignoring 2008, it's certainly a Republican state, but hardly one of the more solid ones.

Indeed, Arizona was a bit more Democratic than Colorado in 1996 and 2000, although Colorado was slightly more Democratic in 2004. If the two states are similar, then it's certainly relevant that Colorado moved strongly away from the Republicans -- compared to the nation as a whole -- in 2008, when it was just slightly more Democratic than the national average for the first time in a while.

Granted, there's no way to know whether Arizona is in fact likely to shift blue along with Colorado, or for that matter whether the Rocky Mountain state just had a one-time blip for whatever reason in 2008. And the 2010 election cycle probably is evidence for divergence between two states, not convergence. Still, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Arizona move in that direction in 2012.

Whether that would put it in Obama's column, of course, will depend on how the overall national trend is pushing things.

So while I'm interested in my native state in particular, the real lessons here are: think about states in comparison to other states when you're thinking about the electoral college; it's the national trend that produces the state results, not the other way around; and it's still far too early for general election trial heats, anyway.

Empty Places

I mostly agree with Matt Yglesias on the general question of immigration, but the exercise in seeing how many people the US could hold if everywhere (but Alaska and Hawaii, I guess) had the population density of New Jersey reminds me again how NY-provincial Yglesias can be sometimes. I'm very proud of my native Arizona, but really, it's hard to picture very many people wanting to move to large parts of AZ, NM, NV, and UT...and plenty of California isn't exactly human-friendly, either.

Now, granted, you can keep getting the density of Arizona to increase by packing more and more people into Phoenix, and there doesn't seem to be any limit to that process. Except for the big one that applies to all the places I'm listing here: water.

I know, it was just a fun exercise...and who knows, as demand increases perhaps someone will figure out the technology fix that'll allow 30M or 40M to live in the Phoenix metro area without the whole thirst problem (it would take over 100M to match New Jersey's density). And as I said, I agree with the larger point. Couldn't let this one pass, though.

AZ Senate Trivia

Arizona will celebrate its centennial next February 14th, and has had only ten Senators over the 99 years so far (counting Barry Goldwater once; he was out of the Senate for four years after his presidential campaign and returned to the other seat).  Arizona's contemporary, New Mexico, has had seventeen Senators.

Of Arizona's ten Senators, only three were born in the state: Goldwater, Dennis DeConcini, and Carl Hayden, with Hayden actually born in Arizona Territory. Turns out Alaska has only had two native-born Senators -- the two current officeholders.  There are two current Senators (at least that I know of) who were born in Arizona, the Udall cousins. I was born in Phoenix, although I haven't lived in the Grand Canyon State for some time, so I'm rooting for whoever takes Jon Kyl's seat to be a native of Arizona.