Maybe parties don't matter?

Larry Bartels writes:

Considering America’s Depression-era politics in comparative perspective reinforces the impression that there may have been a good deal less real policy content to “throwing the bums out” than meets the eye. In the U.S., voters replaced Republicans with Democrats and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning funny-money party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer-lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased dominated politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems farfetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply-and simple-mindedly-rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better.

Presidential vote and House seats, by state

Something I did for my own curiosity.

The relationship between Republican presidential vote and the % of a state's House delegation being Republican:

More "swooning" over Sarah...

Mike Murphy, writing for Time's website, doesn't like her either:

What I don’t like is the effect I think Palin will ultimately have on the ticket. With all her charm, she is still a pick aimed squarely at the Republican base. In a high turnout Presidential year, I am not worried about turning out the base. I’m worried about everybody else we need to win and I fear that among those voters, Sarah Palin will be a dud.

I know, I know, she’s a “hockey mom” and through the magic of identity politics she is going to make female voters swarm across party lines in numbers that Gerry Ferraro never dreamed of since this identity politics hokum is only a good idea that is certain to work when, um, we Republicans try to do it.

More here

The idiocy of the Palin pick

Froma Harron on how Sarah Palin is a big turnoff for independents:

Until now, one could counter the Democrats' argument that a McCain presidency would amount to a third term for Bush. After all, McCain is a deficit hawk. He cares about the environment. Many pro-choice voters were willing to overlook McCain's generally anti-abortion stance on the belief that he didn't really care about the issue. And the widespread concern regarding McCain's age could have been assuaged by the choice of a competent vice president.

Then who does McCain pick for VP? A 44-year-old who parades her dysfunctional family as a poster-child for conservative values. Who has virtually no foreign policy experience. Who as mayor of an Alaskan town of 6,700 hired lobbyists to reel in $27 million in federal pork. That's $4,030 of the U.S. taxpayers' money per resident. We thought McCain wanted to close down the trough.

More here

Predicting the popular vote, part I

	Popular vote
Model	1	2	3	4
July popularity	0.189**	0.322**	0.315**	0.269**
	-3.59	-5.09	-4.56	-5.08
GNP change	1.523**
	-3.22
In-party Terms	-4.151**
	-3.28
Leading indicators			0.11
			-0.34
GDP growth				0.293
				-1.81
Incumbent dummy				3.832*
				-2.79
Constant	42.569**	36.899**	37.122**	36.167**
	-16.17	-11.63	-11.09	-14.33
Observations	15	15	15	15
R-squared	0.87	0.67	0.67	0.83
Absolute value of t statistics in parentheses
* significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%

The Economist on McCain 2.0

Mr McCain used to be a passionate believer in limited government and sound public finances; a man with some distaste for conservative Republicanism and its obsession with reproductive matters. On the stump, though, he has offered big tax cuts for business and the rich that he is unable to pay for, and he is much more polite to the religious right, whom he once called “agents of intolerance”. He has engaged in pretty naked populism, too, for instance in calling for a “gas-tax holiday”. If this is all just a gimmick to keep his party’s right wing happy, it may disappear again. But that is quite a gamble to take.

Two months remain before the election, more than enough time for Mr McCain to allay some of these worries. He needs to spend less time reassuring evangelicals that he agrees with them about abortion and gay marriage, and more time having another look at his tax plans. The old John McCain attacked Mr Bush for his tax cuts, which he said were unaffordable. The new John McCain not only wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but wants to add to them by virtually eliminating estate tax (something that would benefit a tiny number of very rich families, like his own). He also proposes to slash corporation tax. People on middle incomes would see little benefit. Independent analysts agree that Mr McCain’s plans would increase an already huge deficit.

Hawkish foreign policy, irresponsible tax cuts, more talk about religion and abortion: all this sounds too much like Bush Three, the label the Democrats are trying to hang around the Republican’s neck. We preferred McCain One.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12009710

I have two words for David Brooks...

What the Palin Pick Says

"The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff."

...and those words are "Keating Five."

Obama's "bounce"