Chess, Not Checkers
I’ve hesitated to do this post, partly because I think excessive conservative attention gets paid to short-term political horse race issues. But here’s something practical and urgent that I think everybody on the Right – from rabid Sarah Palin fans to Andrew Sullivan – should agree on: all available resources should be diverted from the McCain campaign to a handful of close Senate races.
Here’s why from the point of view of McCain / Palin supporters:
McCain has been an underdog throughout this race. According to InTrade, he’s spent 214 of the past 220 days as a less than even-money bet. His chances have collapsed within the past month. The betting line on him as I write this is about 6-1 against. Such long-shots do come in sometimes, but it is very unlikely that McCain will be president. Unless somebody has information that is unavailable to the public markets, this estimate should guide allocation of resources.
Further, Democrats are literally 10-1 to 100-1 favorites to control each house of congress. It’s time to accept all this.
The exact size of the majority in the House is not as crucial as it is in the Senate, where a key point is reached right around 60 seats for Democrats, which, in theory, allows them to prevent a filibuster. Given that the marginal Democrats and marginal Republicans are not reliable party-line voters, getting very close to 60 will prevent some filibusters, hitting 60 will prevent a lot, and getting even slightly past 60 will prevent yet a lot more.
Where this will end up is very much up in the air. According to 538, Democrats have an even-money chance of getting at least 58 seats, a 30% chance of getting at least 60 seats, and only a 10% chance of getting at least 62 seats. There is a probability cliff right around this critical point. This is the fulcrum that will determine the balance of political power for the next two years.
Subject to the constraint that the world doesn’t end on November 5th, and therefore long-term party-building is a material good, it sure seems to me that, for those who strongly oppose Obama, the highest ideological return per dollar of spending right now is in exactly the handful of marginal Senate races. Determining how to accomplish this is a job for political professionals – for all I know the most effective way to help in these Senate races is to make McCain more competitive – but the goal should be maximizing Senate wins. Some pretty partisan observers already promoting this idea.
This is a bitter pill to swallow if you passionately believe that Barrack Obama should not be the next president, but we are called upon to confront with the world as it is, not the world as we wish it might be.
From the perspective of “reform” conservatives, this should be easier to accept. Even if you have the point of view that, for whatever reason, you think Obama is a better choice for president than McCain, you should want to see some restraint and check on the authority of a combined Obama / Pelosi / Reid political leadership in enacting an agenda that extends far beyond what Obama has proposed. It seems to me that this national interest should trump even whatever specific preference that you have in these Senate races considered in isolation.
We should all get used to working together again, as it looks like it’s going to be necessary for some time.
Firewall!
I remember back to Spring 2005 – when the Republicans were so confident in a permanent majority that they wanted to ‘nuclear option’ away the Senate filibuster. Why would they need it? Also the flack the Gang of 14 took to prevent that. Who knew that 4 years later the numbers would be inversed? Smart call by McCain, in retrospect.
— rortybomb · Oct 20, 04:53 PM · #
By what voodoo is Andrew Sullivan still considered a man of the Right?
— Phil · Oct 20, 04:57 PM · #
This is, of course, the downside of running a presidential campaign that relies heavily on arguing that the opponent is the most terrible person on Earth. Manzi’s advice to conservatives is good, but because of the GOP/McCain effort to vilify Obama, it is likely that the advice will fall on deaf ears.
The end result will be far worse for the GOP than it had to be, and eventually the right will learn that sometimes it is in their own interest to push back against the leadership when it goes too far instead of just tarring the opposition as anti-American. This has, in fact, been the problem with the right for the entire Bush term, and it doesn’t appear to be going away.
— Lev · Oct 20, 04:58 PM · #
Phil:
I was trying to make the point provocatively that one can take a very broad defnition of “Right”, and still get logical agreement on this point. For the record, I consider Andrew Sullivan to be a man of the Right.
— Jim Manzi · Oct 20, 05:09 PM · #
Phil: he’s sure not a man of the left. I mean, he opposes progressive taxation fer Chrissakes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (/seinfeld), but it sure doesn’t make you a liberal.
— Dan Miller · Oct 20, 05:40 PM · #
Lev:
1.) The efforts on the Right to vilify Obama arise not from some Rovian political calculus, but because they believe he deserves vilification. That this may be detrimental to the conservative movement at large, as Jim attests, is worth pointing out. But the tenor of your post suggests that conservatives don’t even have grounds for vilification, or that it is all a figment of the GOP Overmind. I and= others= would disagree. But the point is, you can’t say “They say bad things about my guy” and expect that to reflect badly on the other side without addressing the bad things that are being said. I don’t see this terribly often.
2.) And the flip side: In what sense have the Obama campaign and Democrats and large not been involved in the sort of vilification you ascribe as unique to the GOP? From McCain to Palin to invoking the spectre of Bush, Democrats are not angels on this stuff.
— Blar · Oct 20, 05:43 PM · #
Blar~
You may have said more than you intended in your post. Do you really believe that comparing a presidential candidate of the same party to a sitting president is vilification?
— Steven Donegal · Oct 20, 05:55 PM · #
Jim: I’m generally opposed to “the worse the better” type of thinking, so I’m not going to argue that we need to be cleansed by an all-consuming fire rather than try to save this or that twig. But given that the world doesn’t end on November 5th regardless of who wins which race, how big is the difference, really, between 59 and 61 in the Senate? Not just over the next two years, but over a longer term?
Supreme Court nominees: The 60th Democrat could well be Musgrove from Mississippi or Lunsford from Kentucky. Neither is going to be a gimme vote for a very liberal nominee. And Republicans like Specter and Collins are unlikely to vote to support a filibuster against such a nominee. So I’m not sure 60 is really the magic number here. Anyway, I have a very hard time seeing the huge case for keeping a given Senate seat to make sure that Justice Stevens’ replacement is marginally less liberal than would otherwise be the case.
Card check: This is probably the best conservative policy case for trying to keep 41 seats in the Senate. Politically, it’s a bit more muddled. Is it better for the GOP’s long-term prospects to filibuster this on a party-line basis, or to force the Democrats to hold 100% of their caucus to pass it without GOP votes? How much pressure do you want to put on George Voinovich to vote against cloture, as opposed to making the Democrats put pressure on Blanche Lincoln to vote in favor?
Health care: The Democrats have very good political reasons to want a bi-partisan bill regardless of whether they have the votes to pass a partisan one. I don’t see 60 as a magic number here.
Carbon emissions: This is one where, assuming you oppose the kinds of plans Obama has proposed, national and party interest pretty clearly diverge. I think you could hold together the GOP caucus to fight a new carbon tax, even to filibuster it. It might even be good politics to do so. But not as good as forcing Democrats to hold their whole caucus together on a cloture vote for a whole new category of tax that raises energy prices in a recession.
But, really, regardless of the specter of united and unstoppable Democratic governance, it really is difficult to work up any enthusiasm for saving GOP seats when one is hard-pressed to find anything the GOP affirmatively stands for that is worth saving. Even if the main Democratic priorities are wrong-headed (and I don’t think so – I think they are a mixed bag) the GOP really does appear to have nothing useful to say at this juncture. Hard to reward that, you know?
— Noah Millman · Oct 20, 06:50 PM · #
Steve: Clever! But let me clarify. I meant that raising the spectre of Bush necessarily involves the vilification of Bush. I said “McCain, Palin, Bush” as three separate targets of vilification this election season. I did not mean that comparing Bush to McCain is always vilification, though if Bush is slandered, tying that slander to McCain is also slander.
— Blar · Oct 20, 07:04 PM · #
The base problem with your appeal, Jim, is that some moderates have left the building, and the bulk of the rest of us are unpersuadable in the face of continued blind rabid support for McCain/Palin and GOP.
There were 20.5 million college students in 2006. How many of those students will be voting for Obama?
Unless the Palinbots at NRO can admit Palin is a horrorshow, I think you have worse problems than the next 2 or 4 years in congress.
The GOP is being branded as the party of retards and bigots.
And they are doing it to themselves.
— matoko_chan · Oct 21, 11:11 AM · #
Oh….pardon.
I sometimes use words here that are outside your cultural deme. That would be the Urban Dictionary of retard—
-Usually used to label someone as stupid.
-Not commonly used to make fun of the disability.
— matoko_chan · Oct 21, 11:23 AM · #
And…the main reason that “conservatives” aren’t going to support your proposal, Jim, is that it is a STRATEGY, not a TACTIC.
The GOP is all tactics right now.
We have another saying Out Here in the West that applies to the GOP.
All hat and no cattle.
— matoko_chan · Oct 21, 12:25 PM · #
Okfine….I am frankly ashamed to be a registered republican after this,
Lowry can’t even bring himself to acknowledge that Palin is a salient reason for Powell’s endorsement of Obama.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/powells_lame_case_for_obama.html
I’m pretty goshdarn sick of Palinbot apologists saying we don’t get her because she embodies some “frontiersman” ethos. My greatgrandfather was a conductor on the narrowgauge. Coming from frontier stock doesn’t mean that you are born pithed.
NRO seems determined to ride Palin right into the ground on this election.
Here’s another folk aphorism from Out Here in the West.
You can’t sell a foundered horse.
— matoko_chan · Oct 21, 01:40 PM · #
Gee, if being a man of the right means thinking that courts should implement gay marriage, that we should pull out of Iraq immediately, and that Sarah Palin pretended to bear her daughter’s baby and MUST RELEASE HER GYNECOLOGICAL RECORDS IMEDIATELY, and voting for Kerry and Obama, then I am not a man of the right.
Therefore, I have no interest in Manzi’s advice. If he wants to lie down with dogs, he can have fun scratching his fleas.
— y81 · Oct 22, 03:29 PM · #
Jim, I’m late to this discussion, but I respectfully disagree with you when you write:
I haven’t had time to fully explore every nook and cranny of your argument, but two immediate, interrelated objections spring to mind (disclosure: I strongly dislike Congressional Democratic leadership, but I will vote for Obama for President).
One, I buy into the Feiler Faster Thesis, and I think Barone’s observation that real politics is played between the 52 and 48 yard lines is right on. Not only does the “swing” vote remain fluid right up to the end, it’s also particularly sensitive (vulnerable) to last minute media-saturation campaigns, especially when the propaganda blitz tends to confirm a worrisome narrative of one candidate or the other.
And my second reason amplifies the first: 60 is the magic number for filibustering, as you say, if the game is exclusively played in Congress. However, if you posit McCain in the White House wielding the President’s veto power, the real magic number would be 67 in the Senate and 290 in the House, a much better bet for Republicans (for the reasons Noah mentions). Therefore, if the point is 1) “the highest ideological return per dollar spending” and 2) a restraint on the worst tendencies of Pelosi and Reid, then it seems to me conservatives should use all their pennies to put McCain in the White House, rather than concede it to Obama and put all their eggs in the basket of the filibuster.
— JA · Oct 22, 07:19 PM · #
But JA you are ignoring Jim’s substantial and irrefutable point—That the probability of a McCain win is approaching limit(negative infinity).
(j/k). ;)
You must compute the Bayesian probability of maximizing(republican influence) given the apriori condition that Obama==President.
— matoko_chan · Oct 22, 09:13 PM · #
all conservatives,christians and all who believe in our constitution must go our vote for John McCain next tuesday. no one can sit home, we must come our in mass. our nation cannot afford to have such an evil man as obama be our president
— charlie · Oct 27, 10:06 AM · #