Ah, this one is unfortunately completely unable to be fixed, but it certainly should be.
We see today that three GOP (potential) electors are threatening (or perhaps considering is the right word?) a vote for Ron Paul instead of Mitt Romney should Romney win their states -- Nevada, Iowa, and Texas. The problem of "faithless" electors is really just a Constitutional flaw. The system, as it evolved almost immediately after the Constitution was adopted, made electors automatic agents of their states, whose job became only to record the result of what happened. Within the system as practiced, there's no room for electors to have any independent judgement at all. Indeed, if we wanted to rewrite our rulebook to make it conform to what we actually do, in order to avoid "Constitutional hardball" in which the parties have a destabilizing incentive to exploit areas in which the written Constitution doesn't fully conform to our accepted norms, then I'd certainly support replacing actual electors with simple electoral votes. There's no good reason at all for the two-step process in which we actually elect humans who then cast electoral votes; we would be better off simply giving the electoral votes to whoever won them based on that state's rules.
Alas, as I said, this one will not be fixed. It would take a Constitutional amendment, and given how little support there is for the electoral college method of choosing presidents, there's just no realistic chance that everyone would put aside their differences and pass a minor fix. Nor is it plausible that anyone would care enough to push the idea. I suppose if we ever have a near or actual disaster in which the "correct" candidate loses or almost loses because of faithless electors, that might do the trick, but probably not; after all, the party helped by it would suddenly discover all the virtues of elector autonomy.
My guess is that in the event, this isn't going to become a problem; if the election is close enough, Ron Paul will personally appeal to these people, and they'll stay on board. So it's fun to speculate about, but the far more likely weird scenario is that we'll get a regular electoral college tie (something that couldn't happen if the District was admitted as a state but the House remained at 435, by the way). So it's not as if it's a desperately needed Constitutional fix. But it is a flaw, and it's too bad it can't be corrected.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Jacqueline Bisset, 68. The real Jacqueline Bisset; not the one that Sam almost married.
To the good stuff:
1. Dan Drezner on ten years of blogging. Mazel Tov!
2. Facebook makes you vote? A new study, reported by Alicia Cohn.
3. Political scientist Amaney Jamal on Egypt.
3. And one way to have fun with US political history is to ask who you would have voted for in historical presidential elections, as Jeremy Young does. I'll try to avoid being a spoilsport and reminding everyone that voters are mostly partisans, and wind up supporting a party based as much on group affiliation and family as anything.
To the good stuff:
1. Dan Drezner on ten years of blogging. Mazel Tov!
2. Facebook makes you vote? A new study, reported by Alicia Cohn.
3. Political scientist Amaney Jamal on Egypt.
3. And one way to have fun with US political history is to ask who you would have voted for in historical presidential elections, as Jeremy Young does. I'll try to avoid being a spoilsport and reminding everyone that voters are mostly partisans, and wind up supporting a party based as much on group affiliation and family as anything.
September 12, 1972
With the indictments on their way very soon now, talk turns to how to spin it, and there's a short-lived goofy idea that they should appoint a new Warren Commission to say that the Justice Department did it's job thoroughly. In addition to retired Chief Justice Earl Warren, they think of perhaps naming Abe Fortas to it:
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
A Much Better Defense of "Dumb" Poll Questions
The last Washington Post/ABC poll asked a couple questions that have been ridiculed (well, at least on twitter) all week. For example, “On a ship in a storm, who would you rather have as the captain?” WaPo's Chris Cillizza today attempted a defense of these questions, and only made things worse.
So of course voters don't vote based on a careful comparison of issue positions, but these kinds of questions don't get at how they do vote -- by party, by group, and yes, by retrospective evaluation.
But that doesn't make "dumb" questions a bad idea! If properly devised (and that's tricky to be sure), they may be able to get at the stories we tell ourselves about why we're supporting one candidate or another. That has to be done carefully, I think; it would be easy to imagine questions which essentially invent those stories, rather than reflect pre-existing ones. But in principle, it should be possible, and while that might not tell us why a candidate was winning, it might tell us something about what was in voters' minds, and that's not a bad thing at all.
Somewhat less seriously, such questions can be fun, and there's nothing at all wrong with having some fun with electoral politics. Just because we might realize that "who would you rather have a beer with?" might not be a question that really illuminates why swing voters went a particular way doesn't mean that it isn't any fun to think about.
In general, I'd say that too much political coverage is based on the idea that it's news if it predicts who will win or if it explains why a candidate is winning. Nothing at all wrong with coverage of how it's happening, even if it doesn't answer that "why?" question. And I'm really not convinced that this is viewer or reader driven; I think it's just a norm that doesn't make sense.
So, pollsters: go ahead and ask "dumb" questions; reporters, have fun talking about them. Just don't think they're explaining stuff that they can't explain, and you'll be fine.
(UPDATED Note: I didn't save the links, but Brendan Nyhan on twitter has been really good about silly polling questions.Also, John Sides had a really good post about knowing our reasons for political choices, but I couldn't find it. [Link added above, but it was a Lee Sigelman post, not John] My apologies for the laziness. I have no idea how either of them would feel about my defense of these questions, however).
We’ve long maintained that the vote for president, more so than any other vote, is a feel vote. That is, the up-for-grabs voters don’t simply go to the websites of the two candidates, make a check next to every issue they agree with Obama or Romney on and then add up the columns — voting for whichever of the two men had more checks to his name. If they did, George Bush wouldn’t likely have beaten either Al Gore or John Kerry.The problem is that they can maintain that all that they like, but there's just no evidence that this sort of thing is real. Or, more to the point, the odds are very good that the relationship runs the other way: first voters figure out who they will vote for, and then they go back and make up justifications for it, later mistaking those explanations with the real reasons. Those justifications might be issues-based, or they might be classic retrospective ones (such as the "better off" question), or they might be these personal attribute questions. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve everything if we directly ask people why they decided. For better or worse, we're just not very good at all at understanding the reasons for our candidate preferences.
So of course voters don't vote based on a careful comparison of issue positions, but these kinds of questions don't get at how they do vote -- by party, by group, and yes, by retrospective evaluation.
But that doesn't make "dumb" questions a bad idea! If properly devised (and that's tricky to be sure), they may be able to get at the stories we tell ourselves about why we're supporting one candidate or another. That has to be done carefully, I think; it would be easy to imagine questions which essentially invent those stories, rather than reflect pre-existing ones. But in principle, it should be possible, and while that might not tell us why a candidate was winning, it might tell us something about what was in voters' minds, and that's not a bad thing at all.
Somewhat less seriously, such questions can be fun, and there's nothing at all wrong with having some fun with electoral politics. Just because we might realize that "who would you rather have a beer with?" might not be a question that really illuminates why swing voters went a particular way doesn't mean that it isn't any fun to think about.
In general, I'd say that too much political coverage is based on the idea that it's news if it predicts who will win or if it explains why a candidate is winning. Nothing at all wrong with coverage of how it's happening, even if it doesn't answer that "why?" question. And I'm really not convinced that this is viewer or reader driven; I think it's just a norm that doesn't make sense.
So, pollsters: go ahead and ask "dumb" questions; reporters, have fun talking about them. Just don't think they're explaining stuff that they can't explain, and you'll be fine.
(UPDATED Note: I didn't save the links, but Brendan Nyhan on twitter has been really good about silly polling questions.
Kennedy Center Dishonors (2012 edition)
(Warning: I know there's a lot of news today, but this is a yearly tradition, so here it is. No real political content here -- I usually try to keep myself out of Plain Blog except for the baseball posts, but once in a while, I make an exception...hmmm, I guess there are the birthday wishes too, but anyway, as I said, this is a tradition. Indeed, this is just updated and lightly edited from the last years' complaint. Oh, also: I'm really happy that Our TV Friend Dave got it; Letterman and Carson remain the two essential late night hosts, at least after the early years of TV. Rant follows:)
The new Kennedy Center Honors list is out. Now, granted, there's no reason anyone should care about the Kennedy Center Honors, but nevertheless...
This year's popular music honoree is...Led Zeppelin. More specifically, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. This is two years running that I can't even start my rant properly this year, because instead of it being Paul McCartney (2010) or Bruce Springsteen (2009) it's been Neil Goddawful Diamond and the guys who inspired Tap. Who would, some would argue, have been just as good a choice (and at least they're American, sort of). At any rate, Zep? C'mon. They're not even trying, now.
I mean, you can't really argue with McCartney or Springsteen, both obviously deserving, as were Diana Ross in 2007, Smokey Robinson in 2006, and Tina Turner in 2005. That's fine; they were making their way through the 1960s and 1970s, but it's clear they're just going to keep doing that well beyond reason. And even so, Neil Diamond over Carol King is still nuts, and while I'm in the unusual middle ground on Zep, I just can't see it. The Byrds are still alive, and they're at least American, if you have to go with classic rock acts. But, you know, they started with the 1960s in the mid-90s, putting in Aretha about thirty years after her first hit; it's been more than 30 years since Prince's first album, and 35 since Talking Heads '77, and both of them are far more deserving than Led Zeppelin. Maybe it's just time to move on. But all that is a distraction from the main point of this rant.
Here's the list of original rock'n'rollers who have received the Kennedy Center Honors:
Ray Charles
Chuck Berry
That's it. Now, it can't be helped that Buddy Holly died long ago, and that Elvis Presley was gone just before the Honors opened for business in 1978 (and long before they noticed rock-era performers with Charles in 1986). Fine. But: notice anyone missing?
Where's Little Richard?
(For that matter, where's Fats Domino? Jerry Lee Lewis? If Perry Como rates...well, granted, if Perry Como rates, why not the Everly Brothers, Danny & the Juniors, and plenty of others, but still, Fats Domino and the Killer are pretty damn important).
I have no inside information here; I suppose it wouldn't shock me if they had offered it to Little Richard and he turned them down flat. But I've been following this for well over a decade, and there's never been any reporting to that effect, and he showed up in 1993 and 2000, apparently, to take part in the festivities for others.
Little Richard is a more important figure in American culture than Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Elton John, or Tina Turner...I hardly even have to mention Neil Diamond or Led Zeppelin, do I? Or, as much as I think he's great, Smokey Robinson. He wasn't greater than the other rock-era nominees (Bob Dylan, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and the Who), but he certainly preceded them. Paul McCartney? Without Little Richard, there's no "I'm Down", no "I Saw Her Standing There", no "Oh! Darling." In the comments last year, I asserted that If I was to try to make a list of the ten most influential singers of the recorded music era, I'd probably say there are about five real obvious ones (Crosby, Armstrong, Sinatra, Elvis, Ella) and then you can start getting into fights, but Little Richard is to me at least very much part of the conversation after those five, right?
I mean, I'm not asking them to celebrate the careers of Bob Mould or KRS-One or Andy Partridge. This is Little Richard. C'mon! What's the hold up?!?
Romney and the Rally Effect
I said yesterday that Republicans don't appear to read political scientists on the subject of the effect of the economy on elections. But I've always suspected that sometime in the 1990s Republicans did read Richard Brody's classic article about the "rally effect" -- in which he found that "rally around the flag" effects depend on the reaction of the out-party, not (for example) whether the event in question is successful or not. If the out-party immediately criticizes the president, then he doesn't get a bump in his approval ratings; if they support him or stay quiet, then there's a positive bounce.
So if you're the out-party, always attack, right? That might be what was going through the minds of Mitt Romney and his campaign last night and this morning, and -- I speak here purely in terms of electoral politics, nothing more -- that's not a terrible instinct, based on the research.
But: why don't out-party politicians simply always attack the president on everything? Ah, that's a good question, and one that Team Romney might have asked itself before it jumped. The main reason is paradoxical, in a fun way. Out-party politicians often hesitate to attack during a foreign policy crisis because they're afraid that they'll be branded partisan during a time of national unity, for one thing. Those potential attacks might be unfair -- as Democrats during the Bush years correctly said, it's patriotic to dissent if you believe that the nation's policy is wrong -- but nevertheless, politicians must reckon with a national political culture that sometimes (and not entirely predictably) can turn against partisanship. The paradox part is that out-party politicians may refrain from attacking out of fear that the president's handling of the event will prove wildly popular, when it's the restraint from normal partisan attacks which actually signals to voters that the president did the correct thing and therefore makes the president's actions wildly popular.
That's one reason. The other reason is that out-party politicians are operating, usually, at a severe information deficit. Indeed: during events such as those in Libya and Egypt, the president himself often doesn't know what's happening; a campaign relying on CNN or, I don't know, its twitter feed maybe, is even more apt to get things wrong. And while no politician wants to be exposed as not knowing what he or she is talking about, presumably that's an even greater caution flag for a presidential candidate. Especially one without conventional foreign policy and national security credentials.
(Once again: this is all just about electoral-type politics and motivations. It's of course possible that out-party politicians might support the president because they believe that it's patriotic to do so during a crisis, or because they actually do support what the president is doing, and attacks could be because they really do believe the president has erred. Those things can happen! But they're beyond the scope of this post).
At any rate: none of this has much to do with whether Romney made the best choices last night and this morning, or whether the way he carried out his attack on Obama was well-done. I wrote a little about it over at PP, so there's more there. Here, I'm just thinking about the incentives that play into what he might be thinking.
So if you're the out-party, always attack, right? That might be what was going through the minds of Mitt Romney and his campaign last night and this morning, and -- I speak here purely in terms of electoral politics, nothing more -- that's not a terrible instinct, based on the research.
But: why don't out-party politicians simply always attack the president on everything? Ah, that's a good question, and one that Team Romney might have asked itself before it jumped. The main reason is paradoxical, in a fun way. Out-party politicians often hesitate to attack during a foreign policy crisis because they're afraid that they'll be branded partisan during a time of national unity, for one thing. Those potential attacks might be unfair -- as Democrats during the Bush years correctly said, it's patriotic to dissent if you believe that the nation's policy is wrong -- but nevertheless, politicians must reckon with a national political culture that sometimes (and not entirely predictably) can turn against partisanship. The paradox part is that out-party politicians may refrain from attacking out of fear that the president's handling of the event will prove wildly popular, when it's the restraint from normal partisan attacks which actually signals to voters that the president did the correct thing and therefore makes the president's actions wildly popular.
That's one reason. The other reason is that out-party politicians are operating, usually, at a severe information deficit. Indeed: during events such as those in Libya and Egypt, the president himself often doesn't know what's happening; a campaign relying on CNN or, I don't know, its twitter feed maybe, is even more apt to get things wrong. And while no politician wants to be exposed as not knowing what he or she is talking about, presumably that's an even greater caution flag for a presidential candidate. Especially one without conventional foreign policy and national security credentials.
(Once again: this is all just about electoral-type politics and motivations. It's of course possible that out-party politicians might support the president because they believe that it's patriotic to do so during a crisis, or because they actually do support what the president is doing, and attacks could be because they really do believe the president has erred. Those things can happen! But they're beyond the scope of this post).
At any rate: none of this has much to do with whether Romney made the best choices last night and this morning, or whether the way he carried out his attack on Obama was well-done. I wrote a little about it over at PP, so there's more there. Here, I'm just thinking about the incentives that play into what he might be thinking.
Read Stuff, You Should
Happy Birthday to Barry Andrews, 55. For some reason, I've never much listened to Shriekback. I really should, at some point. I like White Music, but I'm a very big fan of Go 2. Two stars, All Music? No way.
Aw, no one cares, I suppose. So I'll move on to the good stuff:
1. I really liked this John Sides post about the recent jobs report, and the remaining ones. I've been saying similar things, but he really nails it.
2. Joseph Cera: the "better off" question may have caused the Democratic bounce by framing the economic question in a way that favors Barack Obama.
3. Republican amnesia: wait, they can't remember why there's a scheduled sequester? Suzy Khimm, fortunately, remembers.
4. Molly Ball on Barry Goldwater's granddaughter, Obama supporter. Although it seemed to me that there was a fair amount of feuding involved in addition to policy preferences. But always happy to link an Arizona story.
5. Abby Rapoport is absolutely right: state legislative elections are really, really important. I'm afraid I rarely talk about state politics, mostly because I really don't know enough to say much about it...basically, every few months I'll toss in a reminder about how important state and local politics are, and that's about it. But it's true! Anyway, she's looking at what's at stake this year.
6. Hey, remember the war on terror? Spencer Ackerman has a quick overview of what's going on now. Helpful.
7. And if you didn't see Mike Konczal's brilliant illustration of Bernanke, QE3, NGDP targeting, and the rest of it then you really should click over now and enjoy. And learn something.
Aw, no one cares, I suppose. So I'll move on to the good stuff:
1. I really liked this John Sides post about the recent jobs report, and the remaining ones. I've been saying similar things, but he really nails it.
2. Joseph Cera: the "better off" question may have caused the Democratic bounce by framing the economic question in a way that favors Barack Obama.
3. Republican amnesia: wait, they can't remember why there's a scheduled sequester? Suzy Khimm, fortunately, remembers.
4. Molly Ball on Barry Goldwater's granddaughter, Obama supporter. Although it seemed to me that there was a fair amount of feuding involved in addition to policy preferences. But always happy to link an Arizona story.
5. Abby Rapoport is absolutely right: state legislative elections are really, really important. I'm afraid I rarely talk about state politics, mostly because I really don't know enough to say much about it...basically, every few months I'll toss in a reminder about how important state and local politics are, and that's about it. But it's true! Anyway, she's looking at what's at stake this year.
6. Hey, remember the war on terror? Spencer Ackerman has a quick overview of what's going on now. Helpful.
7. And if you didn't see Mike Konczal's brilliant illustration of Bernanke, QE3, NGDP targeting, and the rest of it then you really should click over now and enjoy. And learn something.
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