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You are here: Home / Dancing doesn’t help too much

Dancing doesn’t help too much

by David Anderson|  October 8, 201311:24 am| 59 Comments

This post is in: All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

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A few interesting things on polling and politics:

Business Insider November 2012:

Romney won self-identified Independents in Ohio by a overwhelming 10 points, according to exit polls, but lost the state to President Barack Obama by 2 points. 

A similar trend was seen across much of the country — Romney won among Independents by 5 points, 50-45, but lost to Obama, 51-48. The numbers illustrate why winning the Independent vote in pre-election polls isn’t necessarily a telltale sign of victory…

In 2012, a much more reliable indicator of success —  and a better example of the “swing” vote — came from voters who identified as “moderate.”  In every critical battleground state, Obama won the moderate vote. In Iowa, he captured more than 60% of it. Overall, Obama beat Romney by 15 points among moderates.

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

The final House vote on Obamacare was 219-212, with 34 House Democrats joining all Republicans in dissent. …While Democrats lost in all sorts of places in 2010, the results remind us that members of Congress, particularly those who occupy districts where the other party dominates in presidential elections, can only triangulate so much. Of the 34 Democrats who voted against final passage of the Affordable Care Act, half of them — 17 — lost in 2010 anyway. In other words, voters didn’t make an exception for them amidst the Republican wave. Strikingly, of those 34, only six members remain in the House…

 if Republicans do open the door to the Democrats in the House, it’s not going to be the “Ted Cruz Republicans” who will pay the price. Rather, it’s the House Republicans in marginal districts who could see their ranks decimated, just like the House Democratic moderates whose anti-Obamacare votes couldn’t save them in 2010.

So let’s keep tabs on how members vote in the pivotal roll calls ahead, but let’s also remember that if the field tips one way or the other, those votes might not mean all that much.

These two links go back to my point yesterday as to why Red and Purple state Democratic Senate incumbents who are up for re-election in 2014 are standing firm.  They’ve already committed to the PPACA vote and anything else is tap-dancing.  Great tap dancing can occassionally save an incumbent (Mathison in Utah is a good example) but the fundamentals dominate the results except for idiosyncratic edge cases.

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59Comments

  1. 1.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    October 8, 2013 at 11:34 am

    just like the House Democratic moderates whose anti-Obamacare votes couldn’t save them in 2010

    This “moderate” is a very flexible word.

    Or maybe it isn’t. Republican “moderate” = votes like a wingnut
    Democratic “moderate” = votes like a wingnut

  2. 2.

    Zam

    October 8, 2013 at 11:35 am

    I’ve said it before. People identify as independents because it gets them a cookie for being above partisan politics the actual number of independents is pretty small.

  3. 3.

    c u n d gulag

    October 8, 2013 at 11:36 am

    Maybe I’m wrong, but my take is that towards the end of W’s mis-administration, Republican voters ran away from the stench of being associated with him and the party, and registering as “Independents.”

    Some of them later defected to the Tea Party.

    But Republicans wouldn’t want to be known as “Moderates.”
    Why?’
    Because there’s nothing ‘moderate’ about them and their beliefs – and so, “Independents” they stayed, or Tea Partiers they became.
    Or, they came back into the fold, hoping that the stench was off the Republican brand.

  4. 4.

    Belafon

    October 8, 2013 at 11:37 am

    We’ve gotten to the point where party identification is almost completely determinations who a person votes for.

  5. 5.

    hitchhiker

    October 8, 2013 at 11:37 am

    Weren’t most of those “independents” really just Republicans who were too ashamed to admit it after W?

    I am dying to see this thing end in a good way.

  6. 6.

    Botsplainer

    October 8, 2013 at 11:37 am

    The term “independent” became meaningless some time ago, when it was coopted by Republicans who became disappointed when they decided that their party wasn’t extreme right enough for them.

  7. 7.

    Chris

    October 8, 2013 at 11:37 am

    Most “independents” seem to be the original teabaggers; white guys who love the image of themselves as rugged individualists who don’t need nobody in Washington telling them what to do and decide things for themselves (hence the registration), it just so happens, by coincidence, that everything they decide to do happens to line up exactly with what their gurus on Fox News tell them.

  8. 8.

    JasonF

    October 8, 2013 at 11:37 am

    @Zam: Many people identified as Independents in 2012 because anybody with a modicum of shame was too embarassed to identify as a Republican.

  9. 9.

    Chris

    October 8, 2013 at 11:39 am

    @Botsplainer:

    Well, that too.

  10. 10.

    Morbo

    October 8, 2013 at 11:44 am

    Every time I see “self-identified independents” as a polling constituency I want to also know what proportion of them find the Republican party insufficiently right wing for them. Thumbs up on the “moderate” distinction.

  11. 11.

    amk

    October 8, 2013 at 11:46 am

    Per twitterdom, the weeper called the kenyan today morning for ‘negotiations’ and the kenyan said FU, no deal.

  12. 12.

    Jewish Steel

    October 8, 2013 at 11:47 am

    Independent = Tea-Party Curious

  13. 13.

    WereBear

    October 8, 2013 at 11:47 am

    @c u n d gulag: According to a new study, “moderates” are 1/4 of the current party. And yes, they are lonely and depressed :)

  14. 14.

    MomSense

    October 8, 2013 at 11:47 am

    It all comes to down to sane vs insane. Some of the so called “independents” I have met are wingnuts who have slightly better vocabularies than the tea partiers. They still want to drown the government in a bathtub but the language they use is about how private companies are more efficient.

  15. 15.

    Botsplainer

    October 8, 2013 at 11:49 am

    @amk:

    Per twitterdom, theweeper called the kenyan today morning for ‘negotiations’ and the kenyan said FU, no deal.

    The big TV over our receptionist always plays CNN. They were reporting via the chyron that the weeper was saying that Obama negotiated before and should be willing to negotiate again.

  16. 16.

    ? Martin

    October 8, 2013 at 11:49 am

    CNN headline:

    THE VOTES ARE THERE … but not the will
    A CNN survey finds there are enough House votes to end the partial government shutdown, but Speaker Boehner won’t set a vote.

    When CNN breaks ranks on “both sides”, you must be in trouble.

  17. 17.

    amk

    October 8, 2013 at 11:53 am

    @Botsplainer: Which completely undermines his and teabagger clown caucus’ claim lie that Obama is adamant and is not negotiating with them. Guess none of the media asses asked him that.

  18. 18.

    Matt McIrvin

    October 8, 2013 at 11:55 am

    Speaking of Sam Wang, he just linked again to that big xkcd history of party and ideological alignments in Congress (as measured by DW-NOMINATE):

    http://xkcd.com/1127/large/

    What’s happened in the House over the past 30 years is stark. Majorities come and go, but the centrist Republicans have been vanishing and the far-right flank consistently growing.

    Meanwhile, a similar loss of centrists has been playing out for the Democrats more slowly for more like 70 years, but it’s harder to tell from year to year, because big Democratic waves generally bring in a lot of centrists. In the Republican waves, though, it’s centrist Democrats who lose and far-right Republicans who win.

  19. 19.

    raven

    October 8, 2013 at 11:57 am

    @amk: Negative, Obama called his orange ass.

  20. 20.

    mericafukyea

    October 8, 2013 at 11:58 am

    Guess all this over analyzing bullshit is a sign people are getting tired of talking about the shutdown.

    The explanation of the ‘independent’ voter is that they are mostly just Republicans who don’t want to call themselves Republicans. Simple as that. Kind of like wr0ng way Cole. He still has the same fucked up wiring in his brain that he had when he voted for G. Dubya twice and you can’t fix stupid.

  21. 21.

    amk

    October 8, 2013 at 12:03 pm

    @raven: All the more positive. That means he is ‘adamant’.

  22. 22.

    Cacti

    October 8, 2013 at 12:03 pm

    @mericafukyea:

    He still has the same fucked up wiring in his brain that he had when he voted for G. Dubya twice and you can’t fix stupid.

    Cole will jump on the Rand Paul train in 2016 after his brain, Glenn Greenwald does.

  23. 23.

    amk

    October 8, 2013 at 12:08 pm

    @Cacti: So the blog will be renamed as freedumbjuice then?

  24. 24.

    Anoniminous

    October 8, 2013 at 12:09 pm

    This election environment is shaping more like 2006 than 2010. There’s still time for the GOP to turn it around but I don’t see how they can back away from Teh Crazy without pissing off their base.

  25. 25.

    cmorenc

    October 8, 2013 at 12:09 pm

    @Richard Mayhew:

    These two links go back to my point yesterday as to why Red and Purple state Democratic Senate incumbents who are up for re-election in 2014 are standing firm. They’ve already committed to the PPACA vote and anything else is tap-dancing. Great tap dancing can occassionally save an incumbent (Mathison in Utah is a good example) but the fundamentals dominate the results except for idiosyncratic edge cases.

    Tell that to the doggiest of remaining blue-dog dems, Mike McIntyre from a southeastern N.C. congressional district, who only beat a truly extreme asshole teahadist GOP opponent by 500 votes in 2012. McIntyre is nominally a democrat who would have fitted right in with the GOP of Newt’s original ’94 band of republicans, but who missed the window to viably jump parties, and so is stuck depending on the democratic party’s machinery and legacy for core support, but has campaigned the last couple of cycles as if he was a conservative, just not tea-party conservative, republican. Against the ACA, of course. He will sooner or later lose to either a primary challenger from the true moderate center, or to a true tea-party asshole, because to most dems, he’s a DINO, and to most right-leaning independents and GOPers he’s not to be trusted either.

  26. 26.

    Frankensteinbeck

    October 8, 2013 at 12:12 pm

    @? Martin:
    It is and has been all about The Boehner. I have no idea what motivates him, but from day one it’s been a question of what it takes to make him bring up a clean vote. Same with the debt ceiling. Only his veto as Speaker has allowed the Republican caucus to appear united.

  27. 27.

    Zifnab25

    October 8, 2013 at 12:13 pm

    if Republicans do open the door to the Democrats in the House, it’s not going to be the “Ted Cruz Republicans” who will pay the price. Rather, it’s the House Republicans in marginal districts who could see their ranks decimated, just like the House Democratic moderates whose anti-Obamacare votes couldn’t save them in 2010.

    Why is this surprising? The math should be simple. Moderates tend to occupy swing districts, because a district with a neat 50/50 split in voter registration requires candidates to appeal to voters from across the aisle to win.

    Voters in swing districts don’t really care how moderate their individual candidates are, when the party as a whole is doing radical stuff. After all, a vote for a Republican is inevitably a vote for Speaker Boehner and a vote for a Democrat is for Speaker Pelosi. And the Speakers get a hell of a lot more media coverage than the individual Congressmen.

    When a party loses face, plenty of the moderate swing voters shift. That’s going to impact the closer races more obviously than the lopsided 70/30 races in some place like West Texas or Manhattan Island.

    Of course, radicals – particularly in the House – still have a strong reason to defend moderates (when they’re smart). Moderates bring the votes to the House that elect the Speaker. And the Speaker wields immense power. So you want a Speaker that is friendly to your cause. Radicals need moderates to legitimize their legislative agendas. The fact that the Tea Party caucus in the GOP has forgotten this illustrates that they have no idea how Congress works.

  28. 28.

    burnspbesq

    October 8, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    This headline, I respectfully submit, is the greatest thing Andrew Sullivan has ever written. Allayou front-pagers have some catching up to do. Gauntlet, thrown down.

  29. 29.

    Keith G

    October 8, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    @Zam: This is important.

    Many of the the most intellectually stunted voters that I know are quite proud to announce their status as “independents”. More that a few of them are very fiscally conservative and were made uncomfortable by the social wars, but in reality, few of them would ever vote for a Democrat more moderate than Sam Nunn.

  30. 30.

    Gex

    October 8, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    It seems to me that more and more “independents” are Republicans who are too ashamed to say they are Republicans.

  31. 31.

    IowaOldLady

    October 8, 2013 at 12:17 pm

    People assume that Independents are between the two parties, but they’re just as likely to be on either extreme.

  32. 32.

    Richard Mayhew

    October 8, 2013 at 12:17 pm

    @cmorenc: yep, but MacIntyre and the remaining 5 Dem no votes on PPACA are special snowflakes who suffer from survivorship bias. They believe that their ability to dance is what has saved them so far.

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    October 8, 2013 at 12:18 pm

    @burnspbesq: I dunno, I like Fournier Transform from Jonathan Bernstein the other day.

  34. 34.

    Paulk

    October 8, 2013 at 12:19 pm

    Mathison is my Rep, and there are a number of factors that contribute to his continued presence. The most significant is name recognition since his father (a former governor) is still very positively thought of. But it’s also the fact that Republicans continually run either insane nutjobs or entirely milquetoast figures who are first-time politicians. (One of those, who came closest to unseating him until this most recent election, was John Swallow, the current Utah AG, who is under both state and federal investigation and likely on his way out.)

    We put up with Mathison, but to be honest, I’d vote him out in a heartbeat if given the chance.

  35. 35.

    dmsilev

    October 8, 2013 at 12:21 pm

    So, the Intertubes are telling me that Obama called Boehner apparently for the express purpose of giving him the middle finger (“no negotiations until Congress, and specifically the House, does its damn job”). It’s just past noon in DC now; how many drinks do we think Boehner has had today?

  36. 36.

    Mike in NC

    October 8, 2013 at 12:25 pm

    @cmorenc:

    He will sooner or later lose to either a primary challenger from the true moderate center, or to a true tea-party asshole, because to most dems, he’s a DINO, and to most right-leaning independents and GOPers he’s not to be trusted either.

    It’ll be interesting to see what McIntyre does in 2014. Most likely the Republicans will – predictably – decide that running a state senator who bragged that his mentor was Jesse Helms just wasn’t quite extreme enough for them. I won’t shed a tear when Mike decides to spend more time with his family (read: become a full-time lobbyist).

  37. 37.

    Anoniminous

    October 8, 2013 at 12:26 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    What motivates Boehner?

    Cheap whiskey.

  38. 38.

    burnspbesq

    October 8, 2013 at 12:27 pm

    how many drinks do we think Boehner has had today?

    I can’t count that high without a computer.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    October 8, 2013 at 12:29 pm

    @dmsilev:
    My guess is, “not enough”.

  40. 40.

    mdblanche

    October 8, 2013 at 12:31 pm

    Doesn’t the logic why moderate Dems are standing firm also apply in reverse? Any alleged moderate Republican who breaks ranks now won’t successfully save himself from the voters’ wrath if the GOP shits the bed, so they might as well stand firm with their own party rather than piss them off too.

  41. 41.

    Botsplainer

    October 8, 2013 at 12:32 pm

    @Anoniminous:

    Cheap whiskey.

    Actually, he always strikes me as a MacAllan 18 man.

    Nothing cheap about that.

  42. 42.

    Gex

    October 8, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    I’m just pissed off that the Tea Party gets referred to the way they are. The media has completely enabled the GOP in their attempts to protect the brand using that deflection.

    Well fine. Since we can’t get the legislators or the media to call them Republicans, let’s take them at their word and install Nancy Pelosi as Speaker because hey, the GOP doesn’t hold a majority.

  43. 43.

    John O

    October 8, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    @burnspbesq:

    I had the same reaction. It was a funny post.

  44. 44.

    kindness

    October 8, 2013 at 12:33 pm

    I will go out on a limb here and state that many of the people who identify themselves as ‘independent’ aren’t. They are Republicans whom for whatever the reason do not like to announce they are Republicans. So they lie.

  45. 45.

    gnomedad

    October 8, 2013 at 12:35 pm

    Sorry, OT: what up with the “chaplains will be arrested for saying Mass on military bases” thing? I suspect the reality is that furloughed employees are not permitted on bases, but I have no idea and can’t find any information from non-wingnut sources. Anyone know?

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 8, 2013 at 12:40 pm

    @dmsilev:

    It’s just past noon in DC now; how many drinks do we think Boehner has had today?

    Boner himself lost count at 10, because he’s too smashed to take his shoes off to continue the count.

  47. 47.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 8, 2013 at 12:41 pm

    @gnomedad:

    Probably totally fabricated, if from wingnut sources. They lie like a dog carrying a battalion of fleas.

  48. 48.

    Jay C

    October 8, 2013 at 12:41 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    Actually, he always strikes me as a MacAllan 18 man.

    Since Boehner was born and raised in the Confederate section of Ohio, I would guess more of a bourbon/”upscale” blended-Scotch type: though by this point, he’s probably eyeing the cleaning fluids and anti-freeze…..

  49. 49.

    catclub

    October 8, 2013 at 12:43 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: From the xkcd:

    “Henry Clay, by skillfully negotiating compromises, is said to have singlehandedly held off the Civil War for 40 years. … John C Calhoun, with his fiery arguments that white slaveowners are the real oppressed minority, helped insure it eventually happened.”

  50. 50.

    gnomedad

    October 8, 2013 at 12:44 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    I found an answer at Snopes; it’s roughly what I thought.

    http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/shutdown.asp

  51. 51.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    October 8, 2013 at 12:44 pm

    @gnomedad: Snopes to the rescue

  52. 52.

    Anoniminous

    October 8, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    Are you factoring in his volume discount?

    But enough of this nastiness. Let us come together in a spirit of bi-partisanship. To start negotiation I will offer this compromise: he buys expensive whiskey, cheaply.

  53. 53.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 8, 2013 at 12:48 pm

    @gnomedad:

    My point stands. It’s totally fabricated. Snopes is being disingenuous here…the issue isn’t mass at all. The issue is the shutdown and paying contracted parties for services…of any kind, be it mopping floors or saying mass. “Saying mass” isn’t being targeted by the Islamoatheist Kenyan.

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    October 8, 2013 at 12:50 pm

    @catclub:

    John C Calhoun, with his fiery arguments that white slaveowners are the real oppressed minority,

    Wow, this sure sounds familiar. The poor oppressed white male Christian straights in this country…

  55. 55.

    gnomedad

    October 8, 2013 at 12:52 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    To clarify, I quite agree with your point.

    Bonus: video of the presidential limo running over a patriot attempting to pray.

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
    Thanks!

  56. 56.

    karen marie

    October 8, 2013 at 1:05 pm

    Every time I call my rep, David Schweikert of Arizona, my blood pressure goes through the roof. His staff does nothing but repeat Fox News talking points instead of listening to what I have to say and conveying the message. I think one reason the Repubs think they have so much support is their staff dismiss any opposing viewpoints.

  57. 57.

    Redshirt

    October 8, 2013 at 1:11 pm

    I haven’t read the thread, but most Independents are really Republicans too embarrassed to admit it publicly.

  58. 58.

    catclub

    October 8, 2013 at 1:12 pm

    @Jay C: “though by this point”

    Did you mean ‘pint’?

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    October 8, 2013 at 1:38 pm

    Redacted.

    Memo to self: always read farther in the comments.

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