Republican Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced today that he would not seek a third term. Current speculation is that this decision was done with an eye on 2012, allowing Pawlenty to campaign for President full-time after serving two full-time terms as Governor.
If Pawlenty did run, he would immediately become one of the two or three most formidable Republican opponents for President Obama in 2012. Consider this table of net favorable ratings for Republicans that have been discussed or polled as potential 2012 candidates:
Republican Favorable Ratings
Republican
Net Favorable
# Polls
Condoleezza Rice
+29%
1
Tim Pawlenty
+5%
1
Rudy Guiliani
+4%
2
Sarah Palin*
+2%
5
Mike Huckabee**
+1%
4
Bobby Jindal
+1%
2
Mitt Romney**
-11%
3
Mitch McConnell
-16%
2
John Boehner
-21%
2
Newt Gingrich***
-23%
2
>* = Post-2008 election
** = Polling from January-February 2008
*** = Polling from early 2007
Not only is Pawlenty at the top of this table (and Rice is highly, highly unlikely to run), but most of the other Republicans listed here are true pretenders:
Newt Gingrich: People just don't like Gingrich. Never really have. No one this disliked will ever become President. You can't start your term with a 30% approval rating.
Rudy Giuliani: As the 2008 campaign made clear, Giuliani isn't a hard enough campaigner, and doesn't mesh well enough with the Republican base, to ever win the nomination. Given what will likely be an even more hard right-wing Republican voting electorate in 2012, and that he would start the election with a much, much lower favorable rating than he did in the 2008 campaign, there is no path to the nomination for Giuliani. At all.
Bobby Jindal. Jindal is not going to be a factor in 2012. Not only has he already declared that he isn't running, the peculiar timing of the Louisiana governor's campaign makes it virtually impossible for him to both run for re-election and to also run for President. A potential run-off for the 2011 Governor's campaign would take place on November 19th, only about six or seven weeks before the 2012 Iowa caucuses. Duel campaigning would put him in a nearly impossible position, as neither electorate would be happy with a candidate who is splitting time. His 2012 opponents won't give him a break just because he needs to run for re-election as Governor, either.
Mitt Romney: While not as bad as Gingrich, his favorable rating is, and has long been, simply too low to ever be considered a serious threat to become President. Perhaps he is too obviously an opportunistic wanker, or perhaps it is his hair. Whatever it is, the country doesn't like Mittens all that much, and he will not become President.
With those four out of the way, the picture clears up pretty quickly. Only Pawlenty, Palin and Huckabee remain, along with the possibility of a candidate who is currently relatively unknown.
Looking at only Pawlenty, Palin and Huckabee, it is not clear who would have the inside edge. Here are some factors to consider:
Bailout: Republicans have adopted harsh anti-government rhetoric in the past few months, making support for bailouts difficult to justify to the base. In this regard, both Pawlenty and Palin (through McCain) are tainted by their support for the 2008 Wall Street bailout. Huckabee will have the advantage of clear, early opposition.
Money: Palin should have no problem racking in huge amounts of small donor dollars. Pawlenty might quickly become the favorite candidate for Wall Street money, given both the praise he has received from such quarters for his term as Governor and once Romney's lack of viability becomes increasingly clear. Huckabee, by contrast, will once again probably struggle to raise money, perhaps even more than in 2008, due to his anti-Wall Street rhetoric.
Evangelicals: As the Republican Party becomes more and more white evangelical, these voters will become more important in the nomination process. Huckabee was unable to break out of his evangelical base of support in 2008, but their increasing influence in the party could benefit. However, the presence of both Palin and Pawlenty in the field might cause him problems within that base, given that both are evangelicals themselves.
Electability: Contrary to popular belief, perceived ability to perform well in the general election does make a difference to Republican voters. The nomination of John McCain is exhibit A in this regard. Come 2012, Pawlenty will probably take the early lead in perceived electability, given that he is the only top-teir candidate with the clear potential to flip a blue state (Minnesota), and that both Palin and Huckabee are famously gaffe-prone. Combined with his adoring admirers on Wall Street, something the other two candidates lack, this could quickly make Pawlenty the favorite of the Republican establishment. That would make up for his comparatively lower name ID.
Unless someone like Tom Ridge runs, or a relative unknown emerges (which rarely, if ever, happens in Republican nomination campaigns), Huckabee, Palin and Pawlenty strike me as a difficult to separate top three at this point. They are also the only Republican candidates who, as of now, appear to have any chance of defeating President Obama in 2012. All of their chances will depend just as much on the success of the Democratic trifecta in turning around the economy, as it will the performance and effectiveness of their own campaigns.
Here is a simple answer to a simple question: of course Dick Cheney staying in the spotlight is a big negative for Republicans. Polling over the last month on Cheney shows that he is viewed two to three times as unfavorably as he is viewed favorably. It is never a benefit for a political party that your most visible, or even one of your most visible, spokespeople is viewed unfavorably by two to three times as many people as s/he is viewed favorably.
However, here is a more difficult question: if not Cheney, then who should be a leading figure for Republicans? It turns out that most visible Republicans have negative favorable ratings. There are however, some exceptions. In the extended entry, here is a list of the favorable / unfavorable ratings of national Republican figures looking at polling from the previous twelve months.
Republican Favorable Ratings
Republican
Net Favorable
# Polls
Laura Bush
+54%
3
Condoleezza Rice
+29%
1
John McCain*
+18%
4
Cindy McCain
+17%
6
Tim Pawlenty
+5%
1
Rudy Guiliani
+4%
2
Sarah Palin*
+2%
5
Mike Huckabee**
+1%
4
Bobby Jindal
+1%
2
Mitt Romney**
-11%
3
Mitch McConnell
-16%
2
Rush Limbaugh
-18%
4
Karl Rove***
-19%
2
John Boehner
-21%
2
Newt Gingrich***
-23%
2
Dick Cheney
-27%
5
George W. Bush*
-29%
6
* = Post-2008 election
** = Polling from January-February 2008
*** = Polling from early 2007
There is an overwhelming sense in America that the Bush administration, in tandem with Wall Street, is the main source of blame for the current financial crisis that we face. A recent CBS poll on the subject of blame for the crisis found that 54% of the country entirely blamed one of those two sources, and that an additional 21% partially blamed them. By contrast, only 2% blamed the Obama administration entirely, and another 21% blamed the Obama administration partially.
The blame for the crisis appears entirely accurate, and I see no reason to dispute it. However, if a new, lengthy, must-read, New York Times article on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to be believed, Geithner is practically the sole architect of the bailout and overall response to the financial crisis. At every turn, from the actions of the reserve banks to the creation of the various TARP / TALF / PIPPP programs, it was Geithner's decision to offer enormous, no-strings attached loans to the failing financial institutions the caused the crisis:
Last June, with a financial hurricane gathering force, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. convened the nation's economic stewards for a brainstorming session. What emergency powers might the government want at its disposal to confront the crisis? he asked.
Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation's most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.
The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars. (...)
But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation's financiers from their own mistakes.
The long and short of the article is that the bailout plan is almost entirely Geithner's construction, even back in 2007 and 2008 when the Bush administration was still in office. This means that even though the Obama administration did not cause the financial crisis, by hiring Geithner as Treasury Secretary, they have placed themselves entirely on the hook for the bailout itself.
Whether the bailout succeeds or fails (I believe fails is more likely), and whether it ends up transferring hundreds of billions in losses from Wall Street to the public sector (which, once again, seems highly likely), by putting the person who designed the bailout as Treasury Secretary, President Obama made this bailout his own. There is no way to shift responsibility for it. As such, the Obama administration has, in a real sense, taken on a level of risk in the political sector that the bailout has put taxpayers are on the hook for in the financial sector. If the bailout does not work, and the economy does not recover, in three years time Republicans will have a legitimate opening for the Presidency, so long as they nominate someone who opposed the bailout in the first place.
Not only do I feel extremely uncomfortable with the public being on the hook for Wall Street's financial losses, I feel very uncomfortable with Democrats being on the hook with this bailout plan. Our post-2010 electoral future is directly tied to its success or failure. That sucks pretty bad, but it does leave me hoping that, somehow, the Geithner plan will actually work. As a party, our continued ability to govern depends on it.
Another story we have been following on Open Left is the fate of the fifty-state strategy now that Howard Dean will no longer be DNC Chair. During the festivities here in D.C., I ran into a source close to the transition at the DNC who was able to provide an update on the new outlines of the DNC strategy, which does diverge from the current form of the fifty-state strategy in multiple ways:
Increasing Centralization: The shift in resources away from paid media and toward on the ground organizers will continue. However, these resources will be more directly controlled by the DNC itself, rather than by state parties. In other words, the SPP program where the DNC pays for organizers chosen by the state parties themselves is, as previously reported, done. Instead, the DNC will likely hire and assign organizers themselves. State party grants will also likely be transformed into more centrally directed expenditures by the DNC.
More swing state, less fifty-state: Many, if not most, states will have more resources spent on them during the next four years than during the previous four years. In addition to increasingly centralized control over how these resources are spent, there will also be a return to a swing-state focus for 2012. However, it is important to keep in mind that the Obama campaign's version of a swing state strategy was broader than either the Gore or Kerry incarnations.
In short, the DNC will be moving away from the long-term, decentralized, fifty-state strategy of Howard Dean's tenure, and toward serving as a short-term, centralized re-election effort for President Obama in 2012. It will continue the move away from paid media ushered in by Howard Dean, maintain or increase the amount of resource expenditures in most states, and the number of states it targets will be a broader effort than the narrow focus we saw in 2001-2004 (but more narrow than 2005-2008). However, it will return to the traditional role of the DNC as a supplement for the sitting President's re-election campaign, rather than as the long-term, localized institution building operation that is was from 2005-2008.
The fifty-state strategy of 2005-2008 is going to be replaced with the "re-elect President Obama" strategy of 2009-2012. Both have their advantages, but I still consider firing the 200 state party organizers a real blow to the long-term development of local Democratic Party talent and infrastructure.
DavidNYC points election junkies to a new report that shows blue states will lose fewer seats in 2012 than previously thought. This shift has some very positive implications for the 2012 swing state map:
Obama 262, Republican 254, Toss-up 22 Electoral College 2012, tied popular vote projection
Solid Obama (PVI of D +6.0 or greater): 217 electoral Votes
Lean Obama (PVI of D +2.3 to D +5.9): 45 electoral Votes
Toss-up (PVI of D +2.2 to R +2.2): 22 Electoral Votes
Lean Republican (PVI of R +2.3 to R +5.9): 47 Electoral Votes
Solid Republican (PVI of R +6.0 or greater): 200 electoral Votes
In the previous projection, Obama needed Virginia in order to win re-election. However, with this new projection, Obama can win re-election by holding the Kerry and / or Gore states plus only Colorado and Nevada. With this new projection (using the far left-hand column in the new report) Virginia, Ohio, and Florida are all unnecessary, and Obama would only have to hold states that he won by 8.95% or more (by comparison, Obama won Virginia by only 6.30%). What follows is still a victory map, and not only for 2012, but also for 2016 and 2020:
Blue 271-267 Red Minimum victory map, estimated 2012-2020 electoral college
Looking at the two maps together, all but three of the swing states Democrats need to win according to the victory map are trending toward Democrats over the long-term. The three exceptions are Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, as John Kerry did better in these states relative to his national popular vote share than did Barack Obama. From 2012-2020, holding those three states will be the key to the Presidency for Democrats.
Electoral College 2012, tied popular vote projection
Obama 258, Republican 258, Toss-up 22
Solid Obama (PVI of D +6.0 or greater): 213 Electoral Votes
Lean Obama (PVI of D +2.3 to D +5.9): 45 Electoral Votes
Toss-up (PVI of D +2.2 to R +2.2): 22 Electoral Votes
Lean Republican (PVI of R +2.3 to R +5.9): 47 Electoral Votes
Solid Republican (PVI of R +6.0 or greater): 211 Electoral Votes
This map does not project demographic changes in given states, and assumes an even popular vote. "PVI" refers to "partisan voting index," or the degree to which a given state's popular vote is projected to be different from the national popular vote. The 2.2% toss-up / lean line and the 6.0% lean / solid line were derived from previous polling research, which was reinforced in 2008 (more on that later).
This map forecasts an almost precisely even Electoral College, with Virginia as the ultimate swing state. Whoever would win Virginia's 13 electoral votes would reach 271 electoral votes, thus winning the election no matter what happens in Colorado. Virginia's preliminary Partisan Voting Index is Republican +0.86%, but ongoing demographic changes in the state, particularly in Northern Virginia, probably would render it an even contest by that point.
As already noted, this map is crude, and does not take inevitable fluctuations of demographics, organizing, and candidate appeal into account. Still, if Virginia is the number one swing state in the event of a close 2012 presidential election, the Virginia Governor's campaign in 2009 becomes a lot more interesting. Apropos, this first poll on the campaign was released today. It revealed, unsurprisingly, a very close campaign for the seat to be vacated by Tim Kaine.
I will post on the daily details of the tracking polls later today. However, the short version is that McCain was clearly ahead in Saturday's polling, probably by about 4% in Rasmussen and 6-7% in Gallup. With numbers like that, there can be no doubt that McCain is currently leading in both the national popular vote and in the Electoral College (the Electoral College is not as divergent from the national popular vote as some commenters imply). Before going into the minutia of the numbers, in the extended entry, I list five broad implications for our national politics if McCain were to win.
I have acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my - or any - sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better. I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the State of New York. But I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard that I expect of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family. I will not be taking questions. Thank you very much. I will report back to you in short order. Thank you very much.
This is a serious blow. I feel as though progressives have lost their top bench contender for President of the Unites States. Spitzer could have run against a Republican in 2012 or 2016. He could have run for an open seat in 2016. He could have even been a possible primary challenger in 2012 if a Democratic President had screwed up and sold us out really badly.
Even though the two actions are not comparable, I feel about the same today as I did back in April of 2005 when Russ Feingold announced that he was getting a second divorce. The progressive bench for possible presidents is pretty darn thin, suffering from the electoral bloodbaths progressives received, both in general elections and in primaries, from 1980-2004. And yes, obviously, when I talk about progressive presidents I mean something different than either Obama or Clinton (or probably Edwards for that matter). Centrist policy positions and faux transformative progressivism dominate even non-DLC Democratic politics these days. Remembering how much days like these hurt reminds us that we need to embrace the few progressive we have, and help incubate a bunch more, in order to one day build a progressive national leader. It takes a long time to build a President.
Among Democrats who have never run for President, who do you see as possible leaders in four, eight, or even twelve years time?
