From a WaPo discussion about using earthquake models to predict elections:
Seattle, Wash.: I did a similar (much less official) study on when voters pick upheaval over stability. The thing that I stumbled across was third party vote. You mentioned that one of the criteria was the absense of a third party candidate. I came to the opposite conclusion. In the last 17 elections, there have been 5 elections where the incumbent's popularity was less than 45% and 5 elections where a third party got more than 5%. Four elections showed up on both lists. My hypothesis was that this was not a coincidence. People can't quite picture themselves voting for the other party even where their own party has left them severely disenchanted. A third party candidate gives them a middle option. I've discussed this with some people and they seem to think that it was racism and not disenchantment with Democrats that created the 1948 and 1968 third party challenges. However, one has to question why no racist candidacies gained serious vote totals in the other elections of the era. Racism was certainly present throughout the era. My theory is that it was only when southern democrats were disenchanted with the party in general and not quite ready to defect to the Republicans (still associated with Hoover) that they gave into their racist third party urges. The non-racist 1980 Anderson and 1992 Perot elections also fall into this category. If my theory is correct, Bob Barr will get far more votes than any one anticipates. Republicans won't quite be able to defect the whole way to Obama, but they'll be more than happy to expreess their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration. Of course this all relies upon whether or not McCain is able to effectively distance himself from Bush. 1952 was the only time a pres or VP wasn't on the ticket and also the only time a less than 45 percent incumbent didn't lead to a significant third party challenge. Allan Lichtman: I agree that third party campaigns are usually detrimental to the party holding the White House. As you indicate, they are a sign of discontent with the party in power and the thrid party candidate usually goes after the candidate of the incumbent party -- e.g., Perot in 1992. I do not believe Barr will get enough votes to reach the 5 percent criterion. However, like Nader in 2000 he might influence the outcome in individual states.
Seattle, Wash.: I did a similar (much less official) study on when voters pick upheaval over stability. The thing that I stumbled across was third party vote. You mentioned that one of the criteria was the absense of a third party candidate.
I came to the opposite conclusion. In the last 17 elections, there have been 5 elections where the incumbent's popularity was less than 45% and 5 elections where a third party got more than 5%. Four elections showed up on both lists. My hypothesis was that this was not a coincidence.
People can't quite picture themselves voting for the other party even where their own party has left them severely disenchanted. A third party candidate gives them a middle option.
I've discussed this with some people and they seem to think that it was racism and not disenchantment with Democrats that created the 1948 and 1968 third party challenges. However, one has to question why no racist candidacies gained serious vote totals in the other elections of the era. Racism was certainly present throughout the era. My theory is that it was only when southern democrats were disenchanted with the party in general and not quite ready to defect to the Republicans (still associated with Hoover) that they gave into their racist third party urges.
The non-racist 1980 Anderson and 1992 Perot elections also fall into this category.
If my theory is correct, Bob Barr will get far more votes than any one anticipates. Republicans won't quite be able to defect the whole way to Obama, but they'll be more than happy to expreess their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration.
Of course this all relies upon whether or not McCain is able to effectively distance himself from Bush. 1952 was the only time a pres or VP wasn't on the ticket and also the only time a less than 45 percent incumbent didn't lead to a significant third party challenge.
Allan Lichtman: I agree that third party campaigns are usually detrimental to the party holding the White House. As you indicate, they are a sign of discontent with the party in power and the thrid party candidate usually goes after the candidate of the incumbent party -- e.g., Perot in 1992. I do not believe Barr will get enough votes to reach the 5 percent criterion. However, like Nader in 2000 he might influence the outcome in individual states.
I think that this year strongly favors a third-party candidate, namely Bob Barr, causing a lot of problem for John McCain. If he gets even 3% in Florida or Ohio, that's enough to turn the election to Barack's favor. This may sound silly to you, but it would be in our best interest for Barr to do as well as possible, so in that spirit I urge you to donate to his campaign.
Now, however you may feel about liberterians, or about barr specifically. I ask you to put those concerns aside for the greater good. We owe it to our country and to future generations to do everything we can to get Barack elected, and if that means donating $25 to a third party candidate, then so be it.
So please donate: http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
The last 30 years of Republican policies has failed America. They beguiled and swindled the people, led them along the primrose path to a worse quality of life. Sure you can have the big house, an SUV in the driveway and a $3,000 television while earning $25,000 a year (as long as you mortgage your life away and live under a mountain of credit card debt).
But the system was rigged; it was rigged in favor of Big Oil and the plutocrats; it was rigged precisely to keep the average American under that pile of debt; and it was rigged by the most cynical politicians, with the most utter contempt for government in the Western world. They damningly decry as “Socialism” any government program that actually helps Americans—Medicare and social security; they cynically decry as “socialized medicine” any attempt to rend away the massive profits from insurance companies and healthcare providers that they make off the backs of many Americans; and they have the gall to scream “class warfare” at any attempt to denounce the real and great disparity in incomes that exists today in America , because of income tax policies created by the wealthy for the wealthy. But year after year they manage to hoodwink a plurality of the population, and that’s enough—enough to win but not to govern. Year after year the quality of life for most Americans gets worse and worse, the American dream slipping further and further away, and year after year Americans send them right back to Washington.
And as long as Americans were fat and happy it wasn’t a problem. The Republicans would have offered everyone the moon if they thought it would give them another term in office. But the complete failure of Republican policies over the last 30 years has caught-up with all of us. The reality-based community is calling in all of our IOUs. There is a reason that gas prices are at all time high. There is a reason that we are massively indebted to the Chinese and there is a reason that a middle class family can barely afford to send their children to college or pay for healthcare. This lapse in the American dream doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not a cyclical blip in the economy. It’s the result of decades of Republican policies geared to comfort the comfortable at the expense of everyone else, and the people these policies affect the most go right back into the voting booth with a smile on their face; “Yes sir! May I have another?” the say.
Given all this it is very refreshing that Obama chose an attack dog for the working class in Joe Biden. Because we truly can no longer elect politicians who govern like it is still 1984, instead of 2008; politicians who act as if they can buy off voters by raging against abortion like they’ve been doing since the ‘70s, meanwhile selling them out to China and the Oil and insurance companies. This cannot stand if America is to remain the shining city on the hill.
That was the title of a story by Judy Rudoren, née Wilgoren, published in the NY Times on June 21, 2004. In it she breaks down the cost of certain items of Kerry's Father's Day weekend in 2004. She mentions the cost of some scallops at a restaurant ($36); the cost of kite-surfing equipment ($2,500); the size of his campaign plane, etc. To what end, you say. She compares Kerry's Nantucket weekend with Bush's Crawford TX ranch:
"It was reminiscent of President Bill Clinton's vacations in borrowed houses on nearby Martha's Vineyard, and a sharp contrast to President Bush's frequent brush-clearing forays on his sweltering ranch in Crawford, Tex."
This from a writer who grew up in a tony suburb of Boston, attended Yale, and worked in a cushy big-city newspaper job in Chicago. and who I'm sure lives in a house worth more than the 1.4 mil mentioned as the average price of a house in Nantucket. Who has to be so different that she combined her and her husband's surnames, and whom, I have no doubt, shops at Whole Foods.
Today, almost four years later, another NY Times writer puts out a piece on how the Democratic candidate is rich and belongs to the moneyed class. Maureen Dowd, who I'm certain, is no stranger to Louis Vuitton and Prada, and lives in a multi-million dollar Georgetown townhome in DC, wrote what amounts to a 'why-doesn't-Obama-eat-Velveeta-and-Hamburger-Helper-like-those-Rubes-in-the-sticks-do' piece. Here's the passage that is most representative of this offense:
"At Joe’s Junction gas station in Indianapolis, Obama did his best to shoo away the pesky elitist label. Accused by an Indianapolis reporter of looking like a GQ cover, he said he has only four pairs of shoes and buys 'five of the same suit and then I patch them up and wear them repeatedly.' But his campaign refused to reveal the brand, presumably because it’s not J. C. Penney."
What is it with these well-off Ivy League educated reporters and labeling Democrats who've been successful in life as elitist? Where do they get off exactly? Thanks Ms. I-plunk-down-5-large-for-a-designer-dress Dowd, for letting us know that Barak doesn't shop at JCPenny (I think she meant Wal-Mart, as even JCPenny is getting too expensive for most Americans).
I should hope Barack doesn't shop at JCPenny. Here you have, in Barack, a guy who grew up in a single-parent household, who’s mother was on food stamps at one point, and who’s become a successful upper-middle class individual, who's written a couple of best-selling books, and you're telling me Ms. I-own-a-luxury-townhouse-in-the-most-expensive-neighborhood-in-DC Dowd, that he's not allowed to wear an expensive suit. Isn’t he the very embodiment of the American dream, the kind of person who most Americans hope their own children become. I wonder if Ms Dowd even knows how to spell foreclosure, something many Americans are acquainting themselves with.
What do her working-class-Irish-by-proxy roots tell her about that? "But if they don't have homes, where will they park their Priuses, which I'm sure every working-class American owns."
Yet she doesn't mention how McCain, an Admiral's son, got into the Naval Academy, or that his wife is very rich, and that he doesn't exactly wear JCPenny suits either. No doubt she's waiting until the nomination is over so she can write her McCain hagiography, and how he's all salt-of-the-Earth.
What is it with these people. You'd think they, of all people, would be backing the progressive candidate. But I guess these reporters are rich snobs first, and Liberals second, and really they're financially better off under Republicans anyway, am I right.
"A measure of racism: 15 percent? <politico.com>
Is the failure to caputure the "lunch-pail" crowd due to racism in America. From personal experience I know that working-class construction types, here in NYC at least, can be heard to say the odd deragatory euphamism for Black person. No doubt the same applies all accross the rust-belt. It makes no sense, I know. They continually vote for candidates who stroke the lesser devils of their nature, but who serve the CEO's and the establishment. Election after election this happens, so when will they learn. Clinton is following this playbook to the T.Who will she serve if she were president.
Barack's "gaffe"?!? in San Francisco, when put into context, expounds on this somewhat. He is aware that people of a certain cultural background have a hard time voting for a person of color, and one offering change no less. And certainly I have felt for some time that this is why he has failed to capture their votes. I mean what's more likely, they won't vote for him because he fails to were a fifty-cent piece of metal on his jacket, or because he's Black. I wonder...
In any case these are the same people that voted for Bush in the double-oughts and '04. I hear pundits talk about this group as the back-bone of the Democratic party, but didn't they go for Bush in '04. Wouldn't they also support the Republican in this instance, especially if Hillary was facing him. In 2004, John Kerry only won Pennsylvania by 51%. Furthermore, he won only those counties in which Barack was strongest on Tuesday. If anything the mainstream of the democratic party: liberal activists, union members and urban folk, have flocked to Barack.
