Uh-oh for D.C. political writers: it looks like the Democratic retirements on Tuesday were actually a net positive for the Democratic Party's electoral chances. Colorado, too:
Now that Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has said he will step down rather than run for reelection, Democrats may be more competitive in this year's gubernatorial race. Ritter trailed former GOP Congressman Scott McInnis by eight points a month ago.
New Rasmussen Reports polling of likely Colorado voters shows that two of McInnis' potential Democratic opponents are a bit closer than that.
Three Democrats running for statewide re-election retied on Tuesday (a fourth Democratic retirement came from a Lt. Governor in Michigan seeking a promotion). The retirements in Colorado and Connecticut were helpful to Democratic causes, while the Democratic retirement in North Dakota was not. On balance, that makes so-called "Black Tuesday," almost universally defined as a negative for Democrats among D.C. political writers, a net positive for Democrats.
So much for there being "Black Tuesday" at all. As such, let's revisit some conventional wisdom that appeared on MSNBC's First Read yesterday:
Here is some more genius from MSNBC:
Of course, be wary when the first set of blind quotes you read from party strategists after a retirement is "[Fill in the blank's] decision may turn out to be a blessing." As we wrote above, that's probably true regarding Dodd.
And then, at the end of the same paragraph:
The fact is that retirements, party switches, etc. hurt a party -- period.
Yeah, retirements always hurt a party. PERIOD!!!!! Except that, at the start of this same paragraph, the author wrote that Dodd's retirement helped Dems. Awesome.
To put it in completely ungenerous terms, the claim that retirements are always bad for an incumbent party is just plain stupid. There are lots of cases where an incumbent retiring either is, or would be, good for the incumbent's party. Claiming otherwise is simply to cling to entirely qualitative, entirely fact-less, conventional wisdom rather than looking at the actual numbers.
Corruption cases are one obvious, glaring example that proves retirements can sometimes be good for an incumbent party. Take, for example, the Louisiana 2nd congressional district. There is no possible way Democrats would have lost that campaign in 2008 if the incumbent, William Jefferson, had retired. Further, take the California 50th congressional district as an example. There is no possible way Republicans would have held that seat in 2006 if Duke Cunningham had remained the Republican nominee, even if he had escaped jail time.
If an incumbent is unpopular, and his or her district is leans in favor of his or her party, then his or her retirement absolutely helps that party's electoral chances. PERIOD. This is why, as Kos pointed out yesterday, Democratic chances in Nevada and Arkansas would be improved with Harry Reid and Blanche Lincoln stepped aside, respectively. Reid and Lincoln are personally unpopular in Nevada and Arkansas, and a "generic Democrat" has a relatively better chance of winning either state. As such, their retirements would help Democratic electoral chances.
The same goes for Jim Bunning's retirement in Kentucky, which moved an almost certain Democratic pickup into toss-up / lean Republican territory. There is no hard and fast rule about whether an incumbent retirement, in and of itself, helps or hurts the incumbent's party. The effect of incumbent retirements needs to be examined on a case by case basis, using actual, scientific, empirical evidence (aka, polls).
Using such evidence, and engaging in such detailed examination, is not a strength of political writing from well-financed, established, national news organizations. And I'm not going to hide my agenda here: poor political writing from those organizations is what really angers me in this case. After spending years dismissing us, these well-financed, established, national news organizations are now stealing market share from smaller, independent, political websites by paying people lots of money to write "blogs" of their own. It pisses me off that they are able to do this even though those "blogs" are largely replicating the same, crappy conventional-wisdom and non-fact-based political writing that led to the rise of independent (in the institutional, rather than partisan sense of the word) political websites in the first place. They are beating us because they are able to pay people a lot more money, and because they are attached to well-established brand names, not because they have actually improved their writing all that much. This is exceptionally frustrating.
With the rare exceptions of people like Greg Sargent, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, who established themselves as independent bloggers before they became big media bloggers, most big media "bloggers" couldn't get even one million page views a year if they started independent political websites of their own. They certainly couldn't get the eight million page views of even a mid-range independent political website like Open Left. They would be nobodies without their institutions. Instead, they are well paid "bloggers" who help define the conventional wisdom. And yeah, as someone who has spent the last six years trying to make a living as an independent political writer, that really does piss me off. Effectively, with their move to "blogs," these news organizations are just yet more crappy superstores pushing small businesses to the side, to the benefit of absolutely no one except the superstore investors.
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