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Home > Blogs > Campaigns Don't Count > Archives > 2008 > April > 24 > Entry
Great Democratic Divide Is No Problem
This is a column I put out on the wires at the beginning of April, before Pennsylvania. It still stands (except that I just added the sentence about Eisenhower):
Under the prevailing rules of opinion journalism, if you have a regular newspaper column, you are now supposed to write one that says Hillary Clinton’s persistence threatens to tear her party apart and give the presidential election to John McCain.
Every single columnist in the world has complied with this edict. Or so it seems, anyway.
Every one of them is flat wrong —- and in a way that demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of American democracy.
Our presidential election outcomes are not determined by such trivial matters as when a candidate gives up on winning a nomination.
We know this because the outcomes can be predicted without any reference to such trivia, indeed, before such trivial matters play out. Take 2008, just as an example: The Democrats will win. It’s a Democratic year. Period.
Can you think of a situation in which a president who is so unpopular has been succeeded by somebody of his own party? Doesn’t happen. If it did happen, there’d be no accountability for political parties.
But there is accountability. Put up somebody who works out (in the nation’s eyes) —- Ronald Reagan —- and you can hold on. Put up somebody who doesn’t, and prepare for a vacation from governmental responsibility.
Allan Lichtman, a professor of political history at American University in Washington, has a system for predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. It has arguably been successful every time it has been applied, starting with the 1984 election. (In truth, though, there’s a dispute about 1992.)
It can also be applied retroactively. If it is, it comes up with the winner in every election in the history of the current two-party system, that is, back to the Civil War.
He has isolated 13 factors that tend to distinguish between winners and losers. Each factor alone successfully predicts the outcome 60 percent or 70 percent of the time, or more. When you combine them, you get an overwhelmingly powerful system.
This year, these factors suggest the Democrats are on a roll: They made gains in the 2006 election; they don’t have to face an incumbent president; the economy has been growing more slowly in George W. Bush’s second term than it did in the previous eight years; he failed to enact any major change in the government’s direction in his second term; the Republicans have experienced a major foreign policy setback (being stuck in Iraq, with no end in sight); meanwhile they have had no great foreign policy success; and they don’t have a charismatic candidate or, alternatively, a national hero on the order of Dwight Eisenhower or Ulysses Grant.
That’s all the Democrats need.
But they might get still another “key” (as Lichtman calls them) if there’s a recession in the election year.
As for this business about the Democrats’ divisions, there is simply no evidence that such things matter. Bill Clinton won in 1992 despite not wrapping up the nomination until June. Franklin Roosevelt won in 1932 after a four-ballot convention. Woodrow Wilson’s nomination took dozens of ballots. Dwight Eisenhower’s nomination in 1952 came at a deeply divided convention and angered the conservatives who supported Ohio Sen. Robert Taft.
Intraparty divisions are harmful only for the party that already holds the presidency. Such division reflects and suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s direction even within the governing party.
Division in the “out” party is taken for granted and has no such import. Some pundits point to polls showing that McCain now leads, though he didn’t a month ago, suggesting he is benefiting.
Polls, schmolls. Bill Clinton was behind in 1992 much later than this because he hadn’t wrapped up the nomination. In 1988, Michael Dukakis was ahead later than this, because he had wrapped up the nomination.
Anyway, the pundits who are so certain they know what the future holds are the same ones who were talking about Hillary Clinton’s “inevitability” last fall and her political death in New Hampshire.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: 2008 presidential race
Comments
By Mike
April 25, 2008 10:07 AM | Link to this
While it is frustrating to many Democrats that the process has evolved in a way that does not allow them to focus early on McCain and all of the associated negatives which will most certainly dog him in the fall, I too believe that the Obama-Clinton fight will really be a non-factor in the end. But when you have a national media that focuses and reports, almost without exception, on petty and trivial personality based issues, guilt by association, flag pins on lapels, how candidates laugh and their bowling prowess, it is not surprising that this fight is also an issue which the media relishes covering. To them, these kinds of issues are a reflection of “electability” in spite of the fact by all reliable measures of public opinion, they are the only ones who seem to care about them. With the continuing crash of the economy, soaring gas prices and the reality of food shortages and even food rationing staring us in the face, not to mention Americans still dying almost daily in Iraq, those are the important issues that the American public wants to hear discussed in a national forum. Unfortunately, from inside the bubble in which the national corporate media live, these issues have been deemed either too depressing, too complicated for them to report or too difficult for the public to understand. So we are left with what we see today. Pundits talking to each other about things that they have deemed among themselves to be important. A significant percentage of media pundits have been proven almost universally wrong on virtually every major issue on which they have weighed in during the last seven plus years. Yet they still enjoy front and center status on all the major media fronts, telling us all on a daily basis what we think and how we feel. The disconnect from reality could not be more stark. Lending any credence to a pundit prediction is a fools errand. The national media as a whole has really done a disservice to this country and its citizens by virtue of their almost complete shirking of basic journalistic practices and conduct. The are no longer watchdogs for the public against the potential excesses of government, they have become collaborators and enablers of the very institutions over which they are supposed to stand guard in defense of the interests and well being of the citizens which they are supposed to serve.By Ethel S.
April 25, 2008 5:53 PM | Link to this
Since the Presidency goes on for years and the election process for months, I think a tough primary campaign is good for the country. If the news media had not tiptoed around Sen. Obama’s associations and record, then we would have not been at this place now. Sen. Obama is too immature to be President for now. Sen. Obama needed to explained his associations and record every step of the process. Instead, Sen. Obama has called such inquiries as distractions. And he is so right, they are very big distractions when they break out. When Sen. Obama needed to explain his ideas better, he blames the vast majority of Dem voters for being “bitter” And when Sen. Clinton defends the rights of the voters, Sen. Obama mocked and called her, Annie Oakley. But the biggest problem Sen. Obama has is his failure to show leadership in the face of the FL and MICH primaries. He did not agree to a revote because he lost those states and it was not in HIS best interest in the short run. But his lack of maturity comes when he will need those votes if he gets to the general election. Not only does Sen. Obama deny the civil right to vote to the FL and MICH voters, this is hardly a picture of a uniter, different from politics as usual, and he is also not a champion of civil rights for all. What this country needs is a fighter so I am so glad that Sen. Clinton has agreed to stay in the race. She has proven that she is strong and cares around the needs of all the American people. Thus, it was very appropriate that this race goes on until all the voters have voted, the votes counted, and the party picks the most qualified.By Tom Q
April 28, 2008 12:45 PM | Link to this
I want to commend you for being so adamant about Lichtman’s system, but I warn you not to expect many to listen. I’ve been a fan of the system since I read the book in ‘92, and have advocated for it on blogs across the Internet. But I can’t tell you the number of times people have either utterly ignored the points, or tried to rebut them with irrelevancies or falsehoods. Thanks to the ignorant press, many out there truly believe elections have turned on Reagan saying “There you go again”, the Weinberger indictment in ‘92, the swift-boaters, the DUI of 2000 (which is said to have been the only thing that prevented a Bush landslide) I’m sure you know of Occam’s Razor — which is frequently mis-stated as “the simplest explanation is probably correct”, but is actually “When considering an issue, cut away all but things that are truly relevant”. I’d say no profession is more disdainful of Occam than political punditry, which spends the vast bulk of its time on things that aren’t germane in the least. In a way, I’m glad about this election, which may finally put the lie to the media contention that Willie Horton and Boston Harbor torpedoed an otherwise completely electable Michael Dukakis. The GOP is clearly planning to run the precise same campaign this year — with media assistance — but the Keys circumstances are so wildly different that the result is certain to be the opposite. How will our press corps justify themselves in that aftermath? By the way, how many Keys do you see ultimately falling this year? The only ones I see as clearly staying up for the GOP are third-party and social unrest. Scandal is probably not quite bad enough to fall, though Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzales and heckuva-job Brownie push it into gray area. And incumbent party contest is devilishly hard to pinpoint. Surely McCain’s nomination was half-hearted and achieved solely through the combo of split right-wing votes and winner-take-all primaries. But McCain may top Lichtman’s 2/3 delegate standard. The rest, though — mandate, incumbency, short and long term economy (technically not a recession yet, but tell the public that), policy change, foreign policy disaster and lack of success, incumbent non-charisma and challenger charisma (yes, I assume Obama) — this is one of the surest elections in American history. (If you tilt either contest or scandal against the GOP, it’s 10 negatives, the most in all the years Lichtman surveys) Once again, thanks for taking up the standard of intelligent election coverage. At least some of us are on your team.By Alice
April 28, 2008 1:41 PM | Link to this
I think it’s good for both dem candidates to finish this primary through June, we don’t need anymore FL or MI, but when the Nov. election in November, there’s a big difference between June and August. By June, if the difference in delegates and pop vote is the same, will the trailing candidate continue to push for supers and take this to August? I believe the party needs more than two months to mend and unify. Secondly, I don’t know that you can compare it to past elections because this a historic election, turnout is at a record high because of this, and there may need to be more mending between them than at any other time.