Mark Schmitt: Grading the Election Theories
The long election cycle featured as many theories about how the election would turn out as there were presidential candidates in those first debates in 2007. Let's give some of the theories a post-final-exam assessment:
Emerging Democratic Majority: A-.
Let's start with an easy one. After the 2000 election, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published a book arguing that Democrats would build a majority based on nonwhite and Hispanic voters, shifts in the suburbs, and strength among professionals concentrated in "ideopolises" like the Research Triangle in North Carolina. They were quiet this year (although Ruy produced a superb series of demographic analyses of the country and various states), but their predictions were close to an exact map of the Obama demographic. So why not a solid A? There has to be a little penalty for being ahead of the curve.
Whistle Past Dixie: B.
TAP contributor Tom Schaller wrote a book in 2006 arguing Democrats could and should ignore the South for purposes of winning the presidency. And of course, he was literally right: Obama easily collected enough electoral votes to win without any Southern states. But that Senate seat in North Carolina sure is useful for the new president to have, and those Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida victories certainly reduce the sense of civil war. Tom's corollary was that Democrats should concentrate on the Mountain West instead of the South, but it turned out there was no tradeoff -- Obama won all the viable states in the Rockies, even giving McCain a brief scare in Arizona, while still taking three states of the Confederacy.
Wine-Track/Beautiful Losers: D.
Candidates like Obama -- brainy, detached, attractive to educated well-off liberals -- never win. Journalist Ron Brownstein and historians Sean Wilentz and David Greenberg all reeled off the list of "wine track" candidates, beginning with Adlai Stevenson and continuing with Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and of course Barack Obama -- "beautiful losers," Wilentz called them. They make us feel smart, but they can never seal the deal with the "beer track" voters of the white working class. Why not a solid "F" for this theory? Well, for over a half-century, it has been right more often than it's been wrong. But it should have been obvious that Obama was playing at a different level than Paul Tsongas, and that as soon as Obama succeeded in adding African Americans to the Bordeaux-guzzling base, the equation was completely upended.
Economic Determinism: B.
Some political scientists and economists like to remind us that for all the Palin jokes and PUMAs and debate gaffes, elections are pretty simple -- a good economy benefits the party in power; a bad economy creates a change election. There are various models that, ignoring all polls, aggregate and weight economic data to predict the outcome. The best known model is that of Yale's Ray Fair, which predicted an Obama victory with 51.9 percent of the vote, off by just a percentage point. Other models were also accurate. So why just a "B"? Because it's no fun without the melodrama. Plus, that's what Fair gave me as a freshman in his introductory macroeconomics course, so I'm returning the favor....
Read entire article at American Prospect
Emerging Democratic Majority: A-.
Let's start with an easy one. After the 2000 election, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published a book arguing that Democrats would build a majority based on nonwhite and Hispanic voters, shifts in the suburbs, and strength among professionals concentrated in "ideopolises" like the Research Triangle in North Carolina. They were quiet this year (although Ruy produced a superb series of demographic analyses of the country and various states), but their predictions were close to an exact map of the Obama demographic. So why not a solid A? There has to be a little penalty for being ahead of the curve.
Whistle Past Dixie: B.
TAP contributor Tom Schaller wrote a book in 2006 arguing Democrats could and should ignore the South for purposes of winning the presidency. And of course, he was literally right: Obama easily collected enough electoral votes to win without any Southern states. But that Senate seat in North Carolina sure is useful for the new president to have, and those Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida victories certainly reduce the sense of civil war. Tom's corollary was that Democrats should concentrate on the Mountain West instead of the South, but it turned out there was no tradeoff -- Obama won all the viable states in the Rockies, even giving McCain a brief scare in Arizona, while still taking three states of the Confederacy.
Wine-Track/Beautiful Losers: D.
Candidates like Obama -- brainy, detached, attractive to educated well-off liberals -- never win. Journalist Ron Brownstein and historians Sean Wilentz and David Greenberg all reeled off the list of "wine track" candidates, beginning with Adlai Stevenson and continuing with Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and of course Barack Obama -- "beautiful losers," Wilentz called them. They make us feel smart, but they can never seal the deal with the "beer track" voters of the white working class. Why not a solid "F" for this theory? Well, for over a half-century, it has been right more often than it's been wrong. But it should have been obvious that Obama was playing at a different level than Paul Tsongas, and that as soon as Obama succeeded in adding African Americans to the Bordeaux-guzzling base, the equation was completely upended.
Economic Determinism: B.
Some political scientists and economists like to remind us that for all the Palin jokes and PUMAs and debate gaffes, elections are pretty simple -- a good economy benefits the party in power; a bad economy creates a change election. There are various models that, ignoring all polls, aggregate and weight economic data to predict the outcome. The best known model is that of Yale's Ray Fair, which predicted an Obama victory with 51.9 percent of the vote, off by just a percentage point. Other models were also accurate. So why just a "B"? Because it's no fun without the melodrama. Plus, that's what Fair gave me as a freshman in his introductory macroeconomics course, so I'm returning the favor....