Left Flank

Andrew Gelman asks «what really happened» on November 4, but the graphs raise more questions than they answer. Gelman calls it a «national partisan swing». Perhaps, a feeble «step towards realignment» is a better guess.

Greg Mankiw thinks the GOP alienated younger voters on social issues, not the economic ones. Matthew Yglesias notes that ethnic «minorities» did it for Obama.

Barack Obama won 96% of African Americans, 68% of Latinos, 64% of Asians, and 44% of whites. In 2004, Kerry won 89% of African Americans, 55% of Latinos, 56% of Asians, and 41% of whites. So Obama gained the most among ethnic minorities.

The Obama ground game hoovered up the young voters, but what attracted the richer folk is probably just as interesting. But, something else Mankiw suggests leads me to believe the old 90s coalition of libertarianism plus social liberalism is not dead.

In this election, the young left the Republican party in droves.

Why? I am not enough of a political scientist to be sure, but recent conversations I have had with some Harvard undergrads have led me to a conjecture: It was largely noneconomic issues. These particular students told me they preferred the lower tax, more limited government, freer trade views of McCain, but they were voting for Obama on the basis of foreign policy and especially social issues like abortion. The choice of a social conservative like Palin as veep really turned them off McCain.

One Harvard Dem takes exception.

I would go further and suggest that the «liberaltarianism» Mankiw's reaching for is basically a yuppie fantasy, a silly and impractical ideology which exists nowhere -- except silly and impractical places like Cambridge.

It'll take a long time before the elite media can admit it, and the right wing never will, but redistributionism is popular; we just saw a resounding affirmation of that, after Republicans called Obama a SOCIALIST!! at the top of their lungs and, surprise, Obama won anyway. (Don't even get me started on «limited government and free trade,» which are not exactly big-ticket vote-movers either, DLCism notwithstanding.) Point is: people who think that kids these days are predominantly libertarian are probably spending way too much time writing textbooks.

But, that could just be the party line.

Kevin Drum bets on the other half of the combo.

Four years ago the big post-election meme was a warning that Democrats needed to get more socially conservative, but that didn't happen and they won anyway. Social liberalism is actually (surprise!) pretty popular.

On the other hand, there's certainly a place in America for an economically conservative party. Republicans have gone overboard on this during the past decade, but they might be able to get by with only a modest course correction on this score. The financial meltdown won't last forever, after all. On social issues, though, they're doomed if they continue to hitch their future to the hard edged conservatism of their evangelical base. They've mostly won the battle on guns, but on issues like abortion, stem cells, gay rights, immigration, and the environment (which most people view as a lifestyle issue, not an economic issue) I don't see how they survive if they don't moderate their positions fairly dramatically. The GOP is in danger of permanently losing an entire cohort of the electorate if they continue to be perceived as a party in thrall to xenophobes, bluenoses, and tent revival preachers. They created James Dobson; now they need to tame him.

It all depends on which disjunct is more important to the voter athe time of any given election, I assume. So, again, back to the figures we should go. There's four years to figure this out.

Powered by ScribeFire.

We've reached that time - the last month, mercifully! - when invective-laden rhetoric starts streaking the campaign battlefield like battery fire. Michael van der Galien launches a salvo: «The Democratic ticket is one straight out of hell. Neither Biden nor Obama have what it takes to lead the U.S.». I beg to differ.

Firstly, economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research don't think a President Obama a bad deal.

A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority—at times by overwhelming margins—believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers.

Our survey is not, by any means, a scientific poll of all economists. We e-mailed a questionnaire to 683 research associates, all we could track down, of the National Bureau of Economic Research, America's premier association of applied academic economists, though the NBER itself played no role in the survey. A total of 142 responded, of whom 46% identified themselves as Democrats, 10% as Republicans and 44% as neither. This skewed party breakdown may reflect academia's Democratic tilt, or possibly Democrats' greater propensity to respond. Still, even if we exclude respondents with a party identification, Mr Obama retains a strong edge—though the McCain campaign should be buoyed by the fact that 530 economists have signed a statement endorsing his plans.

Secondly, as much I agree with certain McCain positions - freer trade, immigration, and half of health care reform - a Republican presidency is an endorsement for divided government. As a pragmatic centrist, I recognize 2009 is a year for reform - combining a Diocletian-inspired approach to structural problems with a Gracchi-like sensitivity to welfare. If infrastructure reform in energy and transportation, social security, health care, and education were not pressing enough, now there's financial sector reform. McCain might get my vote in a plump year.

Thirdly, Senator McCain's decisions to nominate Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate and his impetuous, flip-flopping actions during the past weeks of the Wall Street debacle just frighten me.

Lastly, as a guide, I offer also The Economist's special section on the 2008 elections. That publication has not itself endorsed any candidate yet.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Blogging is about timeliness, and I should lay down my opinion on Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin. I don't claim to be a Palin-ologist, but David Noon at bhTV offers his appraisal of Alaska's latest non-fungible export. Noon contributes two bits of information, along with a wealth of backgrounder tidbits about Alaska itself, I found relevant. Firstly, he claims Palin's previous debate performances when running for state offices were lackluster, but that her opponents were even more forgettable. And, since her selection for the VP slot, McCain staff have overtaken her gubernatorial operation in Alaska. If one likes a VP whose subordinate, I guess this is not too distressing.

But, the institution of the vice-presidency is even less important than the lowliest bodily function, so an unremarkable VP makes for even more of a pathetic body marking time. The four seasons of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing alerted me to this heresy. But then, Bruce Ackerman's The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy not only punctuated the argument in a much more rigorous historical and legal manner, it also forced me the reevaluate my reverence for John Marshall, who, along with Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, headed my list for most relevant 18th-Century dead white guys. Ackerman has offered a political coda of sorts to that historical examination of the 1800 presidential election and the subsequent Jefferson-Marshall rivalry conducted in SCOTUS with an editorial calling for abolishing the vice-presidency. «Sarah Palin is the product of a design flaw - the unintended consequence of the founders' decision to create the vice presidency.»

My libertarianism and my social liberalism meet where I could responsibly accept reducing the Federal government's imprint without abdicating its role as protector of last resort and the nation's public forum. I'm not being snarky about this, either. Successive chief executives have labored in vain to create a role for an office whose purpose was, in Ackerman's argument, purely political, and never constitutional. That political purpose has not survived the 12th Amendment. It nearly cost the US a government in 1800, and it's not contributed anything relevant since then.

As Americans consider Palin and Senator Joe Biden tonight and yawn, in light of the financial sector reforms the next administration and Congress will need to enact next year, I would hope they would follow their inclinations and just scream for an end to the fruitless task of giving the office of the VP a purpose.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I wonder: Am I the type of American who needs to be babysat or waited on?

Powered by ScribeFire.

One aspect of the speeches even The Young Turks miss is, that Cindy McCain reduces foreign nations, like Bangladesh, to recipients of charity, while John McCain thumped his chest about going to war with the other hundred.

Powered by ScribeFire.

FT's Gideon Rachman calls Senator John McCain...the safe choice for dangerous times. Whether it's his selection of Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, or his persona as a skirt-chasing, cursing fighter jock, adding dice to his repertoire just doesn't reassure me.

Powered by ScribeFire.