Palin/Oprah

I watched it (the broadcast version; I don't have the energy to try the unedited version). I thought it was relatively dull, for Palin. Probably the best stuff (as in: most fascinating, in a train-wreck way) was her explanation of what happened with Couric. The idea, now, is that she did terribly because (1) she was mentally still back on the rope line, and (2) that led her to get insanely defensive, taking a mild question about what she likes to read as some sort of weird anti-Alaska slur, which she reacted to by (logically, in her mind) just shutting down. No, it doesn't make much sense, and I won't be surprised if it turns out that there was no rope line. On the other hand, the immediate leap to victimization might actually be true. We've heard the Alaska slur explanation before; I'm not sure whether the rope line makes it sound more or less implausible. Of course, the idea that she expected it to be a nice chat about motherhood is totally implausible; she obviously knew that it was supposed to be a real interview.

At any rate...look, you can never tell which things that pols say are real, and which are just pieces of scripted junk that they use, whether it makes sense or not. Still, I tend to agree Palin obsessive Andrew Sullivan on this point:

"You don't need a title to make a difference." Here again she uses the term "title" as opposed to "office." She really does see politics as an extension of being a Beauty Queen, subject to nice p.r. events, interviews that are restricted to the "light-hearted, working mother" puffery that Oprah is enabling, and cover images on magazines. The idea that a politician holding public office is required to address tough questions about policy and record and the truth of various factual statements does not seem to have occurred to her.

(Andrew is checking about the "Bristol is in college" claim, right?)

Monday Movies Post

Back to this running feature after a short break...

Today's movie is titled, very simply, "Politics." It's a pre-Code comedy (1931) starring Marie Dressler, who leads the women of the town in a revolt against the men, including Dressler's campaign for mayor and, eventually, a full women's strike against their husbands (focused on household tasks, but...Everything? Yes, everything, we're told -- as I said, pre-Code).

I'm sure that people could have a field day reading the gender politics of the movie, but that's not my concern here. The plot has to do (at that late date) with closing the speakeasies and thus beating the mob; the women are dries, the men are wets, and they mostly do their best to uphold gender stereotypes. What interests me is that the idea of politics in the movie is clearly pre-Mr. Smith. Yes, Dressler's Hattie Burns is an ordinary citizen who stands up for what she thinks is right. But she's not really, at least in my reading, standing up for what is right. And that's all the difference in the world. Sure, in this movie there are clearly good people (Burns, the women) and bad guys (the mob), but there are still recognizable legitimate interests -- the speakeasy is there because the men want to drink, and the women are mostly acting in their own self-interest, not on behalf of a disembodied public interest.

One can see, then, multiple paths from "Politics." One leads to Preston Sturges and his great political comedies, in which politics is an arena in which very fallible, but mostly well-meaning if self-interested, fools contend with each other. A second path is basically not taken -- it takes the substance of politics, the legitimate clash of interests and opinions, more seriously. And then, there's where virtually all American movies about politics have ended up, along the path that Mr. Smith gave us: politics is a clash between evil special interests and pure, innocent, representatives of The People.

One can see the seeds of Mr. Smith in "Politics." But the seeds to the better paths were there, too (sorry about the mixed metaphor, there). Sadly, very few movies have picked up those threads.

I didn't really talk about the movie itself...it's short, and very obviously an early talkie. You have to like that sort of thing to enjoy it. Dressler is great; most of the other comedic players are, to my eyes, pretty weak. On the other hand, it's very quick (73 minutes). I liked it well enough to give it a recommend, but it won't be to everyone's tastes.

Adventures in Spin

Via Benen, the NYT actually asked Jeff Sessions why it was a violation of the Constitution for Democrats to filibuster against Republican judicial nominations, but A-OK for Republicans to filibuster Obama's choices:

Like many Republicans, Mr. Sessions strongly opposed Democrats’ use of filibusters to block confirmation votes on several of former President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, saying that the Constitution requires only a majority vote – not the 60 votes required to stop a filibuster – to approve judges.

But, Mr. Sessions told reporters on Monday, that principle no longer applies because Democrats altered the Senate’s traditions during the Bush administration.

“I think the rules have changed,” Mr. Sessions said.

Under the new rules, Mr. Sessions said, most of the time if senators do not like a judicial nominee, they should merely vote against confirming the nominee. But if senators think that a nominee presents “extraordinary circumstances,” then it is acceptable for them to try to block a confirmation vote.

"Extraordinary circumstances," in case anyone is wondering, basically comes down to "because I feel like it."

I happen to be with the Sessions (current) position: I see absolutely no reason to believe that there's a specific Constitutional problem with filibusters on judicial nominees. In fact, I think he's right that Senators should generally vote against anyone they oppose for the bench, including on ideological or partisan grounds, and should save filibusters for those they strongly oppose.

Granted, I don't think for a second that Sessions actually believes any of it. And it really is a pathetic attempt at spin. After all, Sessions didn't just say it was undemocratic or wrong or against Senate rules to filibuster judicial nominees; he said it was unconstitutional. Surely changes in Senate traditions couldn't possibly override the Constitution of the United States! Is that what Sessions is suggesting? Now, there's your Living Constitution.

Toast, Defined

Ouch. I don't think I've ever seen an incumbent (via Goddard) polling 60 points behind for an upcoming election -- even worse, really, 60 points behind for a primary. That's David Paterson's situation now. As always, you can never really tell what's in the mind of any particular pol when they decide whether to run for not, but my guess is that Paterson will soon be hearing the call of Family Reasons for not seeking a full term. I'll be surprised if he goes through with the shellacking he's in for if he runs.

Speaking of which, I'll be even more surprised if Rudy Giuliani winds up running. Siena has Andrew Cuomo solidly beating him in a general election, and while it's not an insurmountable lead, no one has ever lost money betting against anyone taking the leap from NYC Mayor to NY Governor, and I see no reason to expect that to change. Giuliani, it seems to me, has plenty to lose here; no one holds it against you if you fail to win the presidency, but his reputation would take a real hit if he gets clobbered in a gubernatorial contest. He'd be a two-time loser, and he'd also have to do plenty of back-flips and other complex maneuvers to square his old issue positions with his presidential campaign positions, and then again with the things he'd have to say to stand a chance first in the primary, and then in November. He's mostly so far retained his 9/11 aura, but there's a good chance he'd lose a large part of it if he makes this campaign and loses.

Minority Candidate 3

One more thing before moving on from this topic...

I've been talking about Walter Shapiro's claim that if Sarah Palin could win 35% of GOP primary votes, winner-take-all rules would make her the nominee. I argued that Shapiro is wrong.

However, I've been focused on Shapiro's 35% assumption. It's worth mentioning that as Palin approached 50%, the odds start to change.

We're talking about a candidate who could win a certain, minority, percentage of the primary vote but be unacceptable to the rest of the party. At 35%, I think it's clear that the field would winnow, and the 35% candidate would lose some of the pre-winnowed contests and all of the post-winnowing contests. I think that still holds at 40%.

As the candidate approaches 50%, however, her chances improve. Now, she'll win most or all of the contests before the field winnows, racking up a delegate lead. Meanwhile, if the field winnows imperfectly, and as she gets closer to 50%, her chances of winning are pretty good. If the party is solidly against her 52-48, then all it takes is a small number of voters to cast their ballots for candidates who have already withdrawn, or perhaps for a Kucinich or Ron Paul type spoiler, for her to beat the broadly acceptable candidate. For example, in the 2008 Kentucky primary, held after the nomination was locked up, Romney and Giuliani combined for 6% of the vote (and Ron Paul took another 7%). So it's possible to imagine a scenario in which a 45% Palin edges out a Romney or Pawlenty, who draws only 44%, leaving the remaining 11% to be scattered among the also-rans. Again, that's more likely the closer Palin gets to 50.

The kicker here, however, is that the same thing could happen in a PR system. A candidate on the Democratic side who gets 48% of the vote will probably get a bit over 50% of the (pledged) delegates, because candidates below a threshhold (typically 10% or 15%) do not receive any delegates.

Is there some sweet spot in which a minority candidate could win the nomination under winner-take-all but not proportional representation? Sure. If the candidate's votes were distributed just the right way across states, a minority candidate could, in theory, win a system that was winner-take-all by state. It's even theoretically easier in a system that combines the two -- if the minority candidate can manage to concentrate most of her votes in the winner-take-all states, still picking up some delegates in the proportional states, that would help. Three years out (only two plus years before Iowa!), it's fun for political junkies, myself included, to speculate about such things. But realistically, a candidate who is solidly opposed by 50% or more of a political party isn't going to win a presidential nomination. If Sarah Palin wants to win in 2012, she'll have to do better than that.

Minority Candidate 2

Walter Shapiro thinks Republicans might want to change their rules to prevent the possibility of an ugly result: Sarah Palin winning lots of delegates in a multicandidate field with winner-take-all delegate rules, even in the event that most Republicans don't think she should be president.

I discussed in part 1 why she has no chance if she is only the choice of about 35% of Republicans and unpopular with the rest, but should the GOP try to change its rules just in case? We're talking about a Jesse Jackson type of candidacy: able to win a sizable percentage of the primary vote, but very unpopular with the rest of the party (for the nomination: it doesn't matter whether she would they would actively dislike her, or just act on their belief that she'd be a disaster for the party in November).

No!

A 35% Palin won't win the nomination, and generally won't disrupt much of anything, given GOP rules. Yes, if we further assume that the 35% is a national average, and she would range from 20% to 45% depending on the state, it is true that she would capture a few winner-take-all states, and with them a handful of delegates. But that's all. However, under the Democratic Party rules, which mandate strict proportional representation, such a candidate would be far more disruptive. A 35% Palin would win 35% of the delegates. That's bad enough; by controlling a large chunk of the delegates at the convention, Palin would be in a better position to make demands on the nominee in return for good behavior than if she arrived with only a handful of delegates (see, at a lower level of support, Ron Paul in 2008).

Even worse, however, is the possibility of a true disaster: a deadlocked convention. If it was really true that Palin was seen as likely to win 35% of the delegates (but no more) in a system governed by proportional representation, the normal incentives in the system start to break down. The logic of winnowing has always been that there's no particularly strong incentive for a candidate to remain in the race after he or she can no longer win, because showing up at the convention with 10% or 20% of the delegates doesn't give you very much (that is, for candidates who are trying to win, as opposed to ideological candidates who just want to be heard). However, to the extent that the convention is likely to be deadlocked, the opposite logic applies: everyone will want to be a player at the convention, and the admission price will be delegates. As long as the frontrunner can be held under 50% of the delegates, then any candidate who controls a group of delegates should be able to get something valuable.

Now, granted, the party has a lot of ways to pressure losing candidates to drop out; odds are that in the event of Palin 35% and proportional representation rules, only one other candidate would survive South Carolina, and that candidate would wind up with well over 50% of the total delegates. But it's risky; if party insiders cannot choose between, say, Romney and Pawlenty, it is possible that both could be viable into Super Tuesday, and if they both remain, then others might decide to stay in as well, perhaps (like Huckabee '08) concentrating on a handful of states.

All in all, changing the rules would simply shift from one set of speculative headaches to another set of less speculative problems. And I should emphasize again that I don't really think the basic assumption, about Palin winning around 35% of the primary vote but being unacceptable to the rest of the party, is by any means inevitable, or even likely. Still, the Democrats showed the dangers of a PR delegate selection system with the Jackson candidacies in 1984 and 1988, and the Republicans would be foolish to ask for that result.

Minority Candidate 1

This Walter Shapiro column, suggesting that Sarah Palin could steal the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 as a fringe candidate, is getting some play, but it's badly mistaken.

The premise is that Palin may enter 2012 not only unelectable in November, but also generally unpopular within the GOP except for a small, but enthusiastic base. If that happens, Shapiro argues, the rules of the GOP process would break in Palin's favor:

Republican Party rules are made-to-order for a well-funded insurgent named Sarah to sweep the primaries before anyone figures out how to stop her. If Palin can maintain, say, 35-percent support in a multi-candidate presidential field, then she is the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination.

Shapiro cites some of John McCain's minority victories in 2008 as evidence. But his own evidence shows why a 35% Palin would have no chance at all to win the nomination. For example:

In California, where delegates were allocated by congressional districts, McCain won 158 delegates with 42 percent of the popular vote. Mitt Romney received 34 percent of the California vote but was awarded just 12 delegates.

Well, yes. This is not strong evidence that a 35% candidate would win (and McCain did better in several large Super Tuesday states, including NY, NJ, and IL).

The 2008 Republican field was unusually fragmented. It's unlikely, however, that this will be repeated in 2012 or any future contest. The problem for the GOP in 2008 is that each of the leading candidates (McCain, Romney, Huckabee) was unacceptable or at least highly problematic for at least one party faction. That's less likely to be the case in 2012; the repeat candidates have time to work on their weaknesses, and the odds are good that at least one new candidate will be safe for everyone within the party -- Pawlenty certainly seems to qualify.

Therefore, in 2012 the likely result is that the normal incentives work properly, and that means that the field will winnow rapidly. Shapiro can't imagine that:

The best way to stop Sarah would be for GOP insiders to rally quickly around a single anti-Palin candidate. But such cabals rarely work in politics because there are too many egos involved. Would, say, Romney be so panicked about Palin that he would prematurely abandon his presidential ambitions to support a potentially more winnable candidate like maybe Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? Not bloody likely. For that matter, would populist Huckabee drop out in favor of a big-business Republican like Romney to prevent Palin mania? Yeah, sure.

But that's the wrong way of looking at it. Would Huckabee or Romney drop out to "prevent Palin mania?" No. But if a 35% Palin wins Iowa, and Pawlenty (say) wins New Hampshire...well, in that scenario Huckabee probably drops out after New Hampshire. Perhaps Romney, if he manages to finish 2nd in NH and win somewhere else, staggers on into South Carolina, but there's almost no way that more than three serious candidates (Palin included) emerge from South Carolina, and with three serious candidates Palin isn't going to sweep winner-take-all primaries with 35% of the vote. More realistically, if Pawlenty, Romney, and Palin contest South Carolina and Palin receives 35%, then either Pawlenty or Romney is going to finish third and no longer be a viable candidate, leaving Palin one-on-one with an acceptable choice.

Now, that's all about the possibility that Palin is unacceptable to most of the party, but a strong favorite with a bit over a third. I don't know whether that will turn out to be true; Palin may wind up the first choice, or the second choice, of a lot more than a third of the GOP primary electorate. If that's the case, she could easily win -- not because of winner-take-all rules, but because she would be the leading candidate. It's easy to imagine Palin being wildly popular within the GOP but unacceptable to independents. But if 60% or more of Republicans won't vote for her, Sarah Palin will not be the nominee, whatever the rules might be.