Rules of the Nomination Game

In Epic Journey, we place a good deal of emphasis on the rules of the nomination process. In a recent paper at the annual meeting of Midwest Political Science Association, Caitlyn Dwyer confirms the crucial role of the rules. Specifically, she finds that Obama won under proportional representation, Clinton would have been leading in delegates under a winner-take-all system. On the Republican side, conversely, Romney would have been leading in delegates if the Republican Party had used proportional representation.

Internet Politics in 2008

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project has some findings that cast light on politics in 2008 and beyond:

• Among the entire population the Internet is now equal to newspapers and roughly twice as important as radio as a source of election news and information.
• Voters are moving away from news sites with no point of view, and towards sites that match their own political viewpoints.
• Due to demographic differences, McCain voters were more likely than Obama voters to use the Internet. But online Obama supporters were generally more engaged in the online political process and were more likely to post original content, share content with others, sign up for updates , give money to a candidate online, set up news alerts and sign up online for campaign activities.
• Perhaps most relevant for those planning 2010 campaigns is the following: 83 percent of those age 18-24 have a social networking profile, and two-thirds of young profile owners took part in political activity on these sites in 2008.

Plouffe at Harvard

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, appeared at Harvard's Institute of Politics on Wednesday. He took questions about Obama's New Hampshire loss during the Democratic primaries, Sarah Palin, and the future of grassroots organizing.

Palin's Problems Persist

It continues to be a rough season for Sarah Palin.

AP reports that things are difficult in Alaska:

Palin was once praised for her ability to work with Alaska Democrats to push through major initiatives, but in the wake of a bruising national campaign she's more likely now to reach across the aisle to pick a fight.She exasperated Alaska Republican legislative leaders with mixed messages on federal stimulus plans and ended up crosswise with reporters over whether she did or didn't call on the state's junior U.S. Senator, Democrat Mark Begich, to resign.

Ditto The New York Times:

Many pivotal alliances between the governor and minority Democrats are obsolete, undone by mutual bitterness from the election. The rush of oil revenues that helped Ms. Palin press for big-ticket projects in the past has been replaced by a budget deficit that will require taking at least $1 billion out of state savings.

Some think John McCain dissed her on Jay Leno:

“We have, I’m happy to say, a lot of voices out there,” Mr. McCain told host Jay Leno before listing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Utah Gov. Jim Huntsman, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. “There are a lot of governors out there who are young and dynamic.” ecognizing his error, the Arizona senator added, “I’ve left out somebody’s name, and I’m going to hear about it.” That somebody was Mrs. Palin.

And she's learning that it's not a smart idea to get into a public spitting match with an 18-year-old kid:

A recent statement by a spokesperson for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin only served to fuel the media’s coverage of the ongoing feud between Palin’s family and that of Levi Johnston, the father of Palin’s infant grandson and the ex-fiance of Palin’s teenage daughter, two journalists said Sunday.

Democrats, President Obama, and the Media

At the Huffington Post, psychologist Drew Westen notes that the Democratic Party is not doing nearly as well as President Obama. (For instance, Democrats have only a very modest lead in the generic congressional ballot.) Westen attributes the gap to the silence of Democratic leaders in articulating their agenda. "Someone needs to be in the fray other than the GOP," he says, suggesting that Republicans have had the field to themselves. "The worst thing to be in politics is silent, because it allows the other side to shape public sentiment uncontested."

Nexis offers a rough and ready way to test his explanation. Look at the number of times in the past month that the four party leaders in Congress have appeared in the headline or lead paragraphs of major newspapers and wires. Here are the results:

Nancy Pelosi 424
John Boehner 106

Harry Reid 209
Mitch McConnell 73

Westen is clearly wrong: if the Democrats have a problem, it's not because they've ceded the media to their GOP counterparts.

Positive Polarization?

Pietro Nivola of Brookings finds virtue in partisan conflict:

Maybe, among the many inflated expectations that we attach to the Obama presidency and should temper, those about the advent of “post-partisanship” ought to be lowered, drastically. In other words, get over it. The rough-and-tumble of our party politics is here to stay. What’s more—and this is even greater heresy—not everything about that fact of political life is horrible.

So far, so good, but he seems to support a crude majoritarianism:

But a political order in which technically just over 7 percent of a legislature—that is, a sub-group that possibly represents as little as 10 percent of the population—can have the last word, as our Senate arithmetic can imply, raises serious questions of democratic accountability and even legitimacy. Let’s face it; making a regular practice of putting, in effect, veto-power in the hands of a minority is hard to square with a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

On this point, Nivola seems to overlook James Madison's argument that there must be more to republican government than the rule of 51 percent. As William Connelly of Washington and Lee University explains in a forthcoming book, the Madisonian system invites both compromise and confrontation, and generates both heat and light. In order to prevail in this system, a leader needs to marshal arguments and assemble coalitions. It it not enough -- and should not be enough -- to shut down debate by saying "I won."

Gloom on the Christian Right

James Dobson has taken a very pessimistic turn. Looking at the results of the 2008 election and the early days of the Obama administration, he says: “We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action. We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.” Dobson may be too gloomy. A decade ago, Paul Weyrich said something similar, only to see Christian conservatives have a resurgence.

But both friends and foes of the Christian right might remember what Tocqueville wrote:

[W]hen a religion chooses to rely on the interests of this world, it becomes almost as fragile as all earthly powers. Alone, it may hope for immortality; linked to ephemeral powers, it follows their fortunes and often falls together with the passions of a day sustaining them. Hence any alliance with any political power whatsoever is bound to be burdensome for religion. It does not need their support in order to live, and in serving them it may die.