The Clinton endorsement: It's all about 2008

In my last post on Bill Clinton's endorsement of Andrew Romanoff, I asked,

I'm sort of curious why Clinton got involved in this race at this point. Does he earnestly think Romanoff is more electable than Bennet and thought he could make a difference? Did either Bennet or Obama do something recently to irk Clinton? Is this a proxy war between the Obama and Clinton teams?

Alert reader David Karol writes in to say it's all too simple: Bennet was an Obama supporter in '08; Romanoff backed Hillary Clinton.  Now, as far as I know, this is the first Democratic primary since 2008 in which Obama and Bill Clinton have backed different candidates.  (Does anyone know of any primaries right now involving an Obama supporter versus a Hillary supporter?)  But, as David points out, Bill has been very active in helping out Hillary's former endorsers, including Gavin Newsom, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Libby Mitchell.

So it's not quite accurate to say that the Obamas and the Clintons are cruising the country looking for a chance to fight each other.  It's more like Bill Clinton is repaying those who stood with his wife.  Which is evidence that endorsing a candidate that loses is not necessarily a bad thing -- it can earn you the gratitude of some important people.

One thing I find interesting is that the Clinton/Obama split in the Colorado primary does not seem to be filtering down to the activist level.  I haven't conducted a thorough survey along these lines, but it looks like the 2008 Democratic delegates are not split between Bennet/Romanoff the way they were split between Obama/Clinton.  As David suggests, this shouldn't be too surprising, given that one of the main issues that divided the 2008 candidates -- Hillary's vote on the Iraq War authorization -- is not an issue in the 2010 race, nor are the demographic divisions between the candidates.

It's Big Dog versus Barack, with Bennet's Butt in the Balance

Okay, this is big.  Bill Clinton has endorsed Andrew Romanoff in the Colorado Senate race.  This strikes me as a potential game changer, although as Allison Sherry reported, the Clinton endorsement of Romanoff is not quite the same as Obama's endorsement of Bennet:

Clinton is not expected to do anything for Romanoff — no fundraisers, no stump speeches — beyond the letter sent out to supporters Tuesday.

I'm sort of curious why Clinton got involved in this race at this point.  Does he earnestly think Romanoff is more electable than Bennet and thought he could make a difference?  Did either Bennet or Obama do something recently to irk Clinton?  Is this a proxy war between the Obama and Clinton teams?

I suppose the main question, though, is what sort of effect this endorsement will have.  This will surely help out Romanoff with his Q2 fundraising efforts.  Beyond that, Clinton is now Romanoff's most visible and most beloved endorser among Democratic primary voters.

The most recent SurveyUSA poll on this race had Bennet leading Romanoff 53-36, with 11% undecided.  That's a huge lead, but this is the only poll we've seen in the past month and a half.  I'd feel a lot more comfortable in the finding if more than one poll were used.  But let's say it's an accurate reading of the Democratic primary electorate.  Can Bill Clinton actually bring the bulk of undecided voters and a chunk of the Bennet voters over Romanoff's way?  

Keep in mind that, unlike general elections, primaries are actually somewhat volatile.  Lacking the party label, primary voters look for some sorts of cues about support and viability.  Endorsements and funding end up being highly influential factors in primary elections.  Today, Bill Clinton substantially eroded Bennet's advantage on both counts.

Why the right should like soccer

I wanted to follow up on my soccer post from last week, in which I examined resistance to soccer by conservative opinion makers.  Drew Conway had a nice post showing basically no relationship between a country's freedoms and the success of its soccer team.  This inspired me to look into the relationship between wealth and soccer success.  The graph below charts out each country's per capita GDP (logged) on the horizontal axis and its FIFA ranking on the vertical axis (1 is best, 202 is worst).

The regression is negative and statistically significant (p=.001), suggesting that for each additional $10,000 a country moves up in per capita GDP, its FIFA ranking should improve by about 4 places.  However, as you can see from the smoother line, the relationship switches directions toward the upper end of income.  It looks like there's generally a positive relationship between national wealth and soccer success, but the upper end of the distribution is being distorted by some very wealthy nations (Andorra, Bermuda, Luxembourg) with disproportionately crappy soccer teams.

So, contra Glenn Beck's rejection of soccer, conservatives should clearly love this sport, since you can buy success.  It's all about social mobility.  USA!  USA!

Comments welcome, although please keep in mind that I know very little about soccer, sports in general, or countries not called the United States of America.

Update: The inflection point in the trend above is largely caused by wealthy, relatively non-populous countries with unimpressive soccer teams.  Addition national population to the regression makes a big difference, straightening out the trend and raising the R-squared from .06 to .46.  Controlling for population increases the estimated impact of GDP.  Now it appears that a country should improve about one FIFA ranking place for every additional $1,000 in per capita GDP.  Here's a partial regression plot of GDP predicting FIFA rank, controlling for population:

Taking down an insider

Last month, I offered this quasi-prediction about Colorado's major statewide primaries:

At this point, based on everything I know about how primary elections actually work, I would say the odds still strongly favor Bennet, McInnis, and Norton winning the August primaries. I'd love to be proven wrong, of course... but given where the money and endorsements are, that's the likely outcome.

If the latest polls are to be believed, I may need to eat these words for the Republican Senate primary.  Jane Norton appears to be trailing Ken Buck badly, despite having raised twice as much and having spent four times as much as he has and despite having had a real advantage in terms of party elite endorsements.

Why are funding and insider support not doing for Jane Norton what they appear to be doing for Michael Bennet and Scott McInnis?  Well, for one thing, Norton's most prominent early backer was John McCain, who, you know, doesn't live here, and was never really the darling of the conservatives who dominate the GOP caucuses and primaries.  (Romney won the caucus in '08.)  People have questioned McInnis' conservative credentials, but no one really doubts his Colorado bona fides.  Yes, Bennet's appointment was a surprise, but he had the backing of the governor and much of the state's Democratic leadership.  Plus, he had President Obama coming out swinging for him.  No, Obama's not from here either, but I think it's fair to say that an Obama endorsement means more to Colorado Democrats than a McCain endorsement means to Colorado Republicans right now.

Some of it may also be candidate-specific.  Norton might just not be all that good at this.  Now, this stuff is much harder to measure, and she hasn't had any sort of Martha Coakley meltdowns.  I find her "war on terror" ad disgusting, but of course she's not trying to appeal to me.  What seems to be harder for her is that her opponent, Ken Buck, is actually pretty good at this.  Unlike other would-be giant killers in the primaries out there, Buck has some political experience and seems to have pretty decent political instincts.

Anyway, the primary is still more than a month away, and the polling data is pretty scant so far, so full caveats here.  But in this great "anti-insider" year, right now it looks like only one insider will be taken down in Colorado.  If that happens, the real question will be, why this race and not the others?

Point Break meets Bullwinkle

Don't you hate when you've waited on your longboard all morning for the perfect wave and then a moose totally cuts you off?  Well, yeah, that happens in Maine.

Even more powerful than a nail gun

The vuvuzela, in Doom. (h/t Kyle)

Are we post-racial yet?

Brendan Nyhan:

I was struck by how small a role race has played in Barack Obama's presidential campaign and time in office relative to what we might have expected a few years ago. His popular vote total in 2008 was very close to what the leading models forecast, and his approval trajectory in office is very similar to his predecessors.

All true.  But what do we make of this?  Does it mean that race just doesn't matter anymore, at least in our voting decisions?  That's possible.  But here's another interpretation.  Let's just imagine a scenario in which all the white racists in the electorate were members of just one political party.  (I know full well this is not the case, but bear with me for a moment.)  And let's further stipulate that race matters in this scenario -- voters vote based on their racial sentiments.  All the members of the non-racist party, plus a healthy portion of the unaffiliated, would have voted for Obama in 2008, with nearly all the members of the racist party voting against him.  Once in office, Obama would have near-unanimous support from members of the non-racist party and near-unanimous disapproval from the racist one.

Would such a universe appear very different from our own?  This would mean that race still mattered a great deal in politics, but we're at a point in the intersection of race and party where it's almost impossible to distinguish between racial sentiment and partisanship.

I'm not saying this is the case, and I'm certainly not saying that all racists are Republicans or vice versa.  I'm just suggesting that race might well still matter, even if Obama's election and trajectory in office appear similar to those of his predecessors.