The Cool Kids Club

Paul Krugman joins Walter Shapiro in slamming Obama's supporters as "The Cool Kids Club." As Shapiro writes:

Either you are a full-fledged member (with the secret handshake and the decoder ring) or else you find yourself voting for a well-known, albeit flawed, alternative called Hillary Clinton.

Krugman then adds,

Despite this, Obama is still the clear favorite for the nomination. But if he is the nominee, and runs this way in the general election — if it’s about the candidate’s awesomeness, not about why progressive policies make peoples’ lives better — it’s a formula for defeat.

I've heard these lines of argument a lot, and I just don't get them. Shapiro seems to be criticizing Obama's supporters for liking their candidate more than Clinton's supporters like theirs. There's a certain -- dare I say it? -- elitism in this attitude, as though emotional attachment to a candidate conveys too much amateurism for modern politics, and the proper attitude is to vote for someone without caring.

And as for Krugman's point, how many elections have Democrats lost despite most voters preferring their policies to Republican ones? (Answer: a lot.) It seems to me that an effective presidential campaign would capitalize on both the candidate's positive personal traits and his popular policy stances.

I thought we were past the point of calling Obama vacuous. He's got a website full of policy proposals that he defends well under questioning. Just because he's capable of doing more than reciting policy stances on the podium doesn't mean he doesn't have any.

The Clinton approach

Jon Stewart pretty much nails this one (starting around 2:00):



"Activists? Those are merely the people who care the most!"

How much are campaigns mattering?

I heard Bill Schneider on CNN on the night of the Pennsylvania primary making some argument that there was very little evidence of campaign effects. He compared the exit polls from Ohio with those from Pennsylvania and noted that Obama's and Clinton's support from key demographic groups was pretty similar between the two states. And in the end, Clinton won both states by around 10 points. All the stuff that happened in the intervening six weeks, notably including Obama's "bitter" statement, appeared to have no effect.

A quick check of the exit polls largely supports Schneider's assertion. Note what's going on in this scatterplot; each data point marks how Obama did among a demographic group in both states. The line is x=y; if a point lies along that line, Obama did the same in one state as he did in the other. For most of the groups, there's not much movement. (The two votes correlate at .85) Actually, there's a bit of improvement for Obama between Ohio and Pennsylvania. But there are a few negative outliers. Obama did notably worse among union members, frequent churchgoers, and white Catholics in Pennsylvania than he did in Ohio six weeks earlier.

This is far from an exhaustive look at the demographics, but it does tend to suggest relative stability from one state to the next. Which would mean that you could probably predict the candidates' performances in the upcoming states simply by knowing the share of the electorate that each of these demographic subgroups comprises.

This is, in one sense, evidence against campaign effects. All the day-to-day noise about Jeremiah Wright and bitter voters and guns and bowling doesn't seem to be moving the vote much. On the other hand, the extent to which each of these demographic subgroups actually turns out to vote does matter and can be influenced by campaigns.

The tentative lesson: GOTV matters more than persuasion.

Charles Murray in the classroom

I just had to explain to an undergrad why I do not wish to have a debate about the heritability of IQ in my state & local politics class.

On becoming a delegate

I attended a Q&A session run by my county party yesterday devoted to informing candidates for national convention delegate seats about the realities of the race. I've survived the hurdles thus far. That is, on caucus night, I got elected as a delegate to the county convention, and there, I got elected as a delegate to both the state convention and the 1st congressional district convention. But the final stage looks to be the most formidable.

The state Democratic convention will be held on May 17th at the World Arena in Colorado Springs. Roughly 9,000 people (5,000 delegates + 4,000 alternates) are expected to attend. Of those, some 1,600 have filed as candidates for at-large national delegates, and only 12 will be elected. Just how does one campaign in such an environment? They're going to turn away people without credentials, so it won't do me any good to bring in volunteers. There's talk of allowing each candidate a minute to speak, but that would mean a 27-hour convention.

The environment will be slightly better at the district convention, at which about 265 people will be campaigning for 6 convention seats, only three of which can go to men. I can bring volunteers to this one. Somehow, I've got to bring enough fliers and buttons and distinguish myself in such a way that people remember my name when it comes to the vote.

I'm not sure what to do for a flier. I saw a flier for someone else who's running. He's an elderly pastor. The flier is filled with photos of him marching with Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr. I just don't have that kind of art. I have pictures of me and Bill Clinton, but I don't know if that will endear me to the Obama folks. I think my picture of me and Fabio will be the best I can do.

Also, I need to come up with a catchy slogan for myself. I think I should play up the professor angle -- there won't be too many other PhDs running. Any suggestions? I've only had a few...

• The doctor is in!
• I'm not gay, but I'll learn.
• My momma likes Obama.
• I'll eat my own puke before I vote for Hillary.

Still working on it...

Questions for lawyers

1. Can Rush Limbaugh be prosecuted for inciting a riot? Or can he at least lose his FCC license for this? I don't know how specific or imminent the threat has to be, but this one sounds pretty bad.

2. Can the Belfast ship building firm of Harland and Wolff be sued for using faulty rivets in the construction of the Titanic? Is there some sort of statute of limitations that would prevent the Astors and the Vanderbilts and Rose Dawson from suing this company out of existence? If so, why? The only reason they couldn't sue sooner is that the evidence was under two miles of water and we didn't have the technology to retrieve it until recently.

Damn, should've gone to law school.

APSA needs a humor section

If economists can be funny, why can't we?



And check this out - they're even funny in the hard sciences.

I think we should start some sort of humor group at the American Political Science Association. Maybe start it as just a casual gathering, then go for actual panel status. The funny is out there.