Are Liberty-Loving Virginians Really This Foolish?

Democrats seem to have come upon a very successful tactic for winning seemingly unwinnbale elections: Sit back and let the opposition defeat itself. The latest example of this could be the Virginia gubernatorial election, if the race turns out the way polls are indicating it will. The Democratic candidate, former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, leads his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, by nearly eight percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent public polls. Cuccinelli hasn't run a terrible campaign, nor has he made any Akin-esque gaffes to speak of. Rather, his biggest problem is actually another candidate named Robert Sarvis, a lawyer and businessman who's running as the Libertarian candidate for Governor.

 

The latest polls of the race show Sarvis, who ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia State Senate in 2011 but has never held public office, garnering anywhere from 3% to 13% support among "likely" Virginia voters. All those polls also show McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli, but in most of them, the Democrat registers less support than Cucinelli and Sarvis combined, and the poll results that break down voter preferences by party identification show Sarvis drawing more support from Republicans than Democrats. It is hard to believe that Sarvis's candidacy isn't benifitting McAuliffe and hurting Cuccinelli.

 

Virginia's official motto is, "Sic semper tyrannis" ("Thus always to tyrants."), and Virginians have a long history of preferring liberty to tyranny. The conclusive battle of the Revolutionary War was fought and won by the Americans at Yorktown. In the nineteenth century, Virginia resisted federal encroachment on its sovereignty and, along with ten other states, seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy (though fighting to keep slavery legal didn't exactly put them on the side of liberty, either).

History also is replete with examples of how Virginans (like so many others) have seen their liberty eroded when the wrong people have been put in charge. Even after the Civil War, Democrats enacted and implemented segregation and other Jim Crow laws that deprived Negroes of their rights and made it clear to all other Virginians that they weren't living in a free society but rather a society in which the government decided which rights people ought to have. (Sound familiar?)

In recent years, the voting patterns of Virginians have made it difficult to figure out where the voters' sympathies lie. Since the turn of the last century, changing demographics and the growth of the federal government have fueled a Democratic shift at the state, and then the federal, level, particularly in northern Virginia, where a lot of residents are either on the federal payroll or work in industries that depend on government largesse to stay alive. Virginians elected Democratic governors in 2001 and 2005 and traded Republican Sen. George Allen for Democrat Jim Webb in 2006; Democrats won control of the State Senate in 2007; and, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first Democrat to carry Virginia in a presidential election since 1964. (He won the state again, albeit by a narrower margin, in 2012.) Between Obama's election and re-election, however, Virginians appeared to be turning back toward the GOP. Republicans won all three statewide races--for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general--in 2009, ousted three Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House in 2010, and flipped two State Senate seats in 2011 to regain control of that chamber.

Since then, however, it's been mostly bad news for Virginians who favor liberty over big government. In 2012, 51% of voters in Old Dominion supported Obama's re-election, and 53% voted for Democrat Tim Kaine in the U.S. Senate race. Popular Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell is dragging his feet on entering the race for U.S. Senate next year, when Sen. Mark Warner (D), elected in the Democratic wave of 2008, will be up for re-election. As previously mentioned, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is trailing Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for governor.

Whatever the overall mood of the Virginia electorate is at the moment, the fact that the pro-freedom candidates are registering more support in the polls than the anti-freedom candidate suggests that a majority, or at least a plurality, of Virginia voters value liberty more than whatever redeeming qualities big-government hucksters like Terry McAuliffe have to offer, which only worsens the prospective travesty of McAuliffe being elected governor because of his opposition splitting the vote.

Surely Virginians who are smart enough to know better than to vote for Terry McAuliffe are cognizant of the reality that Sarvis is not going to win, but why then would they vote for him instead of Cuccinelli, thereby handing the election to McAuliffe? It doesn't make sense. Maybe it would if Cuccinelli and Sarvis were worlds apart on major issues, but Cuccinelli's record is more in line with the libertarian-leaning wing of the GOP than the hard-line "conservative" wing; he has worked hard fighting Obamacare in court and enjoyed at least one success when the Supreme Court ruled the Medicaid exapnsion mandated by the law unconstitutionally coercive; he has rolled out a fiscally responsible tax plan that slashes the Commonwealth's income tax rates and a sensible energy plan that calls for removing bureaucratic red tape and burdensome regulations to expand energy exploration and production; and he "wants to outmaneuver [school] voucher opponents by giving tax credits to those who donate money to provide private- and parochial-school tuition to poor, middle-class, and disabled students," thus allowing parents greater choice in education. He has also pledged to protect Virginians' 2nd Amendment rights and has criticized his own party for big-government boondoggles such as Medicare Part D, the No Child Left Behind Act and the Wall Street bailouts. His libertarian bona fides were sufficient to secure the endorsement of former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul (R) and a host of liberty-focused advocacy groups. Indeed, one wonders what makes Sarvis so much more appealing to voters who supposedly cherish their liberty than Cuccinelli. Whatever it is, it's enough to make them willing to aid and abet the election of a big-government Democrat while wasting their vote on a candidate sure to finish a distant third. Oh, well. Sic semper fatuis.

EUROUT

Should We "Appreciate" This, Mr. President?

(Composite Photo)

 

Shortly after taking office in 2009, President Obama emulated one of his (presumed) role models by addressing a throng of enthusiastic Germans. In his speech, he declared, "In America, there's afailure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."

I wasn't--and I'm still not--sure what he was referring to, and he didn't cite any specific examples, but America's latest defeat this weekend at the hands of Europe called to mind the President's words in Strasbourg four summers ago.

 

In the most recent example of European dominance of the Obama-led United States, a team of European LPGA golfers beat their American counterparts at Colorado Golf Club to win the coveted Solheim Cup. It was the first time Europe had won the Cup on U.S. soil and the first time the European team had won back-to-back Solheim Cups in the tournament's 23-year history. The Europeans' 18-10 rout was also the most lopsided win by either side since America's 13-7 victory in 1994. Caroline Hedwall of Sweden became the first player in Solheim Cup history to win five out of five matches.

 

It's fitting that this crushing blow (or, more accurately, series of painful blows) to the U.S. was dealt in Colorado, a state that Obama twice carried in the Electoral College. Perhaps some good could come from this if enough Coloradans who voted for Obama witnessed this travesty, connected the dots, realized the error of their ways and learned from their (and Obama's) mistakes. (But don't count on it.)

Normally I leave it to sportsfan to cover sports news, but the embarrassment of this unprecedented fiasco made my blood boil. It's not just that the best of America lost to the best of Europe; the LPGA has become yet another area in which the U.S. has ceded leadership under President Obama. As the AP’s Doug Ferguson pointed out, "The Americans are without the Solheim Cup, the Ryder Cup, the Walker Cup and the Curtis Cup, the four biggest team events between both sides of the Atlantic."

This is also an uncharacteristic reaction to defeat for me. When the Cowboys, the Rangers, the Mavericks or my Baylor Bears lose, I get depressed. I got really depressed after last year's elections. But I reacted to this loss with anger. I'm not sure why, but I know who to be angry at.

Adios, Mo' Fo.

Yesterday, Gov. Rick Perry (R) confirmed what a lot of us who are attuned to the Texas political scene had been expecting: he won't seek re-election next year.

 

Perry, 63, has been governor of the Lone Star State since December 21, 2000, when he succeeded to the governorship upon the resignation of then-President-Elect George W. Bush. He had been elected lieutenant governor in 1998. To those outside the state, he may be best known for either his ill-fated presidential bid in the last election cycle or his cameo in the 2005 comedy Man of the House.

 

His retirement is significant because it means that, among other things, next year's gubernatorial race will be the first one in Texas without a sitting governor since 1990 (which, coincidentally, was the last time Texans elected a Democratic governor).

 

Right now, the odds-on favorite to succeed Perry is Greg Abbott, who is currently serving his third term as state attorney general. Should he decide to run, his biggest obstacle(s) to victory would likely come in the primary. In a state where every statewide elected office is held by a Republican, Democrats are challenged by a paucity of viable candidates and a brand problem not unlike what the GOP is burdened with in some other states.

 

I've never been a fan of Rick Perry, even when he's right. He reminds me a lot of Bill Clinton: a good politician but not so good a leader. You can try and claim that Clinton was/is more erudite and well-spoken than the notoriously malapropism-prone Perry, but if I concede that point, then you must admit that the Gov has Slick Willie beat in the "honor & courage" category, having been an Eagle Scout and served in the U.S. Air Force.

 

A lot of pundits and political junkies now want to speculate on whether Perry will try and run for president again; I'm not the least bit interested. His official announcement that he wouldn't seek another term as governor piqued my interest because I'm looking forward to Texas finally getting a new chief executive. Expect us to pay special attention to this 2014 race, as it may well shape up to be one of the most exciting primaries in any gubernatorial or senatorial election this cycle.

Once Again, Paul Ryan Speaks My Mind

(Photo: The Christian Post/Napp Nazworth)

 



This is one of the problems with blogging as a hobby, as opposed to a full-time gig. I don't publish my thoughts as soon as I have them.

 

Once again, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) demonstrates why his visage belongs on the banner atop this blog (and our parent web site). From the Christian Post:

With references to some of the recent government scandals, such as the Internal Revenue Service's harassment of pro-life groups, Ryan said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority 2013" conference, "big government is bad enough in theory, look what we see in practice."

Ryan's words were an abbreviated version of the sentiment he expressed last month on Fox News Sunday, when he said of President Obama's agenda., "Now, we're seeing big government in practice. Now, we're seeing the arrogance. We're seeing the cronyism in practice in this second term, and that is even uglier than big government in theory."

He added that he and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney "had a challenge in the campaign against empty rhetoric," but "now the country is seeing what this kind of big unlimited government does in practice," which "is not a pretty picture."

 

Before I had heard/seen Ryan's remarks, I told someone that one reason the left-wing media was so desperate to downplay/bury the IRS scandal was that it manifestly exposed a critical flaw in their ideology's policy agenda. The malfeasance at the IRS (and the incompetence in other parts of the government that allowed this malfeasance to continue, unabated, for two straight years) was not an anomaly. Rather, it was an example of something that is inevitable when government grows as big as the federal government has gotten. There's no such thing as big government without a trace of incompetence or corruption.

 

It's good when someone with Paul Ryan's stature says what needs to be said, and it's even better when people listen. Whenever I feel I have an important contribution to make on topic of public interest, I try to find the time to churn out a blog post or YouTube upload. If someone has a similar thought, then I would hope he/she expresses it, especially if that person happens to be articulate and easy on the eyes and has a large audience.

The GOP Won’t “Overplay its Hand” on the Obama IRS scandal...Because it Can't

It’s only been a couple weeks since news broke that the IRS unconstitutionally targeted conservative groups/organizations for additional scrutiny and harassment in the run-up to the 2012 election, and already, President Obama’s most ardent apologists are acknowledging the severity of this problem, calling the White House out on its arrogant mendacity and joining Republicans in their efforts to uncover the truth and bring all culpable parties to justice.

 

Yeah, right.

 

Actually, many on the Left have been trying to shift the focus from what is clearly a serious scandal involving unconstitutional acts by the government to...the GOP. But how? Republicans, whose role in this sordid affair (if any) is limited to that of victims, are rightly incensed by what in all likelihood was a calculated political efforts to boost the electoral prospects of the president and other Democrats by hamstringing conservative groups and individuals.

 

Well, as gifted as the Left is at creating alternate realities, even they can’t inculpate the GOP in this mess, it’s pushing a different narrative: Republicans are eagerly ginning up controversy and trying to capitalize on these so-called "scandals", but they're so blinded by their utter contempt and disdain for the president that they're already overreaching and blowing these things way out of proportion, oblivious to the pitfalls of ganging up on a president who's still a lot more popular than they are.

 

Charlie Cook, an idiot, has been pushing this narrative with the utmost vigor in National Journal. Last week, he wrote that “Republicans Should Go Easy on Obama.” (I tried to find where Cook had written the same or something similar about Democrats and President Bush, but I could find no such case.) On Tuesday, he claimed that Republicans are so blinded by their “hatred of Obama” that “they can’t see how little impact the 'scandals' have had on public opinion.” (Yes, he actually put "scandals" in quotation marks.) 

 

“The simple fact is that although the Republican sharks are circling,” Cook wrote, “there isn’t a trace of blood in the water.” He based this on an out-of-context quote from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the results of two polls (one of which was an outlier that pegged Obama’s job-approval rating at 53%, five percentage points higher than the current RCP average, and the other being Gallup, which as we know nailed President Romney’s margin of victory in the 2012 election).

 

Cook recites these polls in his latest article, in which he likens the bipartisan investigation into to the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton that proved to hurt Republicans more than the president: “The current situation is reminding many folks of the impeachment controversy in 1998” he says, raising the question of how many “folks” Cook talks to who don’t think exactly like him. “Blinded by their hatred for President Clinton, Republicans made irrational decisions then, and they are making the same mistakes today.”

 

Another National Journal contributor, Ron Fournier (who is not an idiot but is pretty obtuse) yesterday accused RNC Chairman Reince Priebus of “demonizing, politicizing and overreaching just enough to jeopardize his cause.” This is the same Ron Fournier who earlier this week expressly stated that the White House “has demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to tell the full truth about the IRS scandal and a spate of other controversies.” Either Fournier is suffering from some kind of bipolar disorder or he believes that the Obama White House’s serial dishonesty is just as consistent with innocence as culpability. 
 

Stuart Rothenberg, who is usually more astute, couldn’t resist the same faulty comparison Cook made. In a blog post entitled, “Will Republicans Screw Up Again? Some Are Already Overreaching,” Rothenberg mused:  

Republicans failed to capitalize on President Bill Clinton’s inappropriate conduct by over-playing their hand and pushing impeachment. Not only did they fail to drive him from office, the GOP ended up losing a handful of House seats in the 1998 midterms instead of adding seats as initially expected.

Republicans allowed themselves to look as if they were primarily interested in scoring political points and overturning the results of the 1996 election, even if it meant paralyzing the government.

That same danger exists once again for the GOP.

With fundraising playing such a huge part in our politics, some conservative groups will be tempted to use the trifecta of controversies to play to their bases to boost anger and fundraising.

This, in turn, will make the issues appear more and more partisan, giving the president the same opportunity that Clinton used when he sought to rise above “politics” and called for members of both parties to address public policy challenges.

He then undermined his own argument by describing some of the differences between 1998 and 2013 that make any comparisons of the two situations sound ridiculous.

 

I’ll spare you excerpts from the ramblings of ditsy hacks like Joan Walsh, Greg Sargent and Michael Tomasky; let it suffice to say that they've been even more defensive in their commentary on these affairs.

 

The logical rebuttal to these warnings of Republican “overreach” is simple. Republicans won’t overreach on—and won’t overblow—these scandals, esp. the IRS scandal, because they can’t. Yes, you could conceivably say something that exaggerates the magnitude of any one particular scandal (though I’ve yet to hear any such thing from a Republican to date), but the cumulation of these things—from the abject incompetence of the ill-conceived (and even more poorly executed) "Fast & Furious" operation to administration’s repeated prevarication about Benghazi to the possible unconstitutionality of the Justice Dept. preying on reporters and the definite unconstitutionality of the IRS’s treatment of conservatives—is far greater than any scandal or combination of scandals involving a U.S. president and his administration.

 

Sure, other presidents have done terrible and inexcusable things. Andrew Jackson forced thousands of Cherokee (including my great-great-great-great grandparents) to take leave of their homes in the southeastern U.S. and trudge miles westward in a journey that killed thousands of them and injured countless others. L.B.J. and his administration repeatedly misled Americans about the Vietnam war and continued to send American soldiers, many of whom were drafted, to die and/or suffer serious bodily harm in the jungles of southeast Asia after it became clear they were fighting a losing battle. Richard Nixon...well, we know what he did. And, don’t get me started on F.D.R.

 

Whether or not these or other nefarious deeds by part presidents fit the definition of “scandal” is a discussion for another time. I’m not saying the pain and suffering caused by the Obama Administration’s actions is worse than the Trail of Tears, but unlike Obama, Jackson had the legal authority to do what he did.

 

In addition to the unconstitutionality of the IRS’s actions, there’s another compelling reason why the gravity of that particular scandal can’t be overstated. As I explained in a YouTube video yesterday, the effects of the IRS’s misdeeds were, among other things, to unfairly hamstring conservative efforts in the 2012 campaign. Libertarian/Republican candidates and causes were deprived of much-needed capital during a critical election cycle. Who knows how many races would have turned out differently had the playing field been level?

 

I don’t mean to invite people to reconsider what has already come to pass, and I certainly don’t want to dwell on what might have been. This much is undeniable, however: as long as even one politician elected in a close race in 2012, the outcome of which might have been different had the IRS not engaged in these unconstitutional practices, is still in office, we are still living with the consequences of what the IRS did, and that means this scandal still has legs. In that sense, nobody is “overreaching” just by pulling out all the stops to make sure that the truth will come out and all complicit parties will be exposed and brought to justice.

The Obama-Nixon Comparison Is Indeed Appropriate

Steve Chapman, the Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial writer whose semiweekly musings range from the sentient to the delusional, has convinced me that the comparison of Obama to the late President Nixon is not only justified but apt. How? Well, take a look at this from his latest column:  

In recent days, those people have triumphantly likened Barack Obama to Richard Nixon, particularly on the misuse of the Internal Revenue Service for political advantage. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon because, among other reasons, he tried to cause "income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner."

This, of course, is exactly what the IRS now admits doing when it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny. The Treasury Department's Inspector General found, "The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions."

The misconduct happened under the current president. Therefore, Obama = Nixon.

Makes sense to me, except for that "Obama = Nixon” part. The two presidents may be guilty of similar acts, but they’re not the same man. (I recently tweeted my displeasure at the profligate comparisons of Obama to Nixon; people shouldn’t speak so ill of the dead.)

 

Chapman then explains that he was just setting up a straw man. Equating the two “is like concluding that babies are like poisonous snakes because some of them have rattles." Nice one, Steve, and were that hackneyed quip the worst part of your column, I wouldn’t have been moved to write this post, but then you say, "Maybe information will someday emerge to confirm the conservative suspicion that Obama thuggishly subverted the IRS to win re-election, but so far, it falls in the realm of make-believe."

 

I’d say it falls in the category of “undiscovered evidence,” the kind that warrants a dedicated, persistent and earnest congressional investigation and the appointment of an independent counsel. Chapman did at least review the history of how Nixon used tax agents as political operatives, but then he went way out on a limb with his assertion that, in "the case of Obama, there is no evidence that he or his Treasury Secretary was aware of the mistreatment of conservative groups -- much less that either of them requested it."

 

Well, here's what we do know: According to The Associated Press: 

Many conservative groups complained during the 2012 election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires.
 
The forms, which the groups have made available, sought information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.
 
In some cases, the IRS acknowledged, agents inappropriately asked for lists of donors.
 
There has been a surge of politically active groups claiming tax-exempt status in recent elections -- conservative and liberal. Among the highest profile are Republican Karl Rove's group Crossroads GPS and the liberal Moveon.org.
 
These groups claim tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which is for social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities, but their primary activity must be social welfare.
 
That determination is up to the IRS.
 
The number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

The IRS agents in Cincinnati reportedly came up with a list of things to look for in an application, including the words "tea party" and "patriot." Donors to conservative groups and Republican candidates were harassed, audited and elderly. (Their age is not the IRS's fault, but it is a common trait I've noticed among the conservative/Republican victims of the Obama Administration's witch hunt.) 

Lois Lerner, who runs the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, knew about the targeting of Tea Party groups as early as June 29, 2011, according to the Inspector General's draft report released last week. On Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS's Rulings & Agreements office "held a meeting with chief counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue." This raises the question of whether then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman perjured himself at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight on March 22, 2012, when he testified, "There's absolutely no targeting." (This was in response to Rep. Charles Boustany's question, "Can you give us assurances that the IRS is not targeting particular groups based on political leanings?") Yesterday, Shulman testified before the Senate Finance Committee that he learned “sometime in the spring of 2012″ that “there was a list that was being used” to identify political groups for further review and that the term “tea party” was on the list. That may have also been a lie, but assuming for the moment it was true, Shulman did not immediately (or even shortly thereafter) notify the subcommittee of this. Rather, he left a false impression with Congress and the public until this month, when he finally corrected the record. However, if "everyone" means "everyone," then it means that Shulman was clued into the targeting well before he testified to the contrary. Not surprisingly, Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself today in a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight. 

   

As for whether the president and his Treasury Secretary personally knew about this misconduct, here's some "evidence" for Steve Chapman. The White House coordinated with the Treasury Department over "how the IRS would disclose its targeting of conservative groups." And, the White House was caught in another lie on Monday, when Jay Carney acknowledged that, contrary to what he had previously told the press corps, Senior legal Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was told on April 24 about the IRS audit that showed tax officials unfairly targeted Tea Party groups and that she then told White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough "and other senior officials" about the investigation.

So, Steve is wrong about there being "no evidence" that the Secretary of the Treasury knew about the mistreatment of conservative groups, but the rest of that sentence is correct--if by "evidence" he actually means direct evidence that has come out. Circumstantial evidence of the president's culpability in this affair is mounting every day. Let's not forget that it took a considerable while after the Watergate burglary in June 1972 for evidence of Nixon's personal involvement in the cover-up to surface. The fallout from this particular scandal is still in its larval stage. If there's any talk on this subject that falls "in the realm of make-believe," then it's coming from those who are scoffing at and deriding the notion that President Obama's hands are clean in all this. Stay tuned.

A Disturbing New Twist on the Bradley Effect

The defeat of Rep. Allen West (R., Fla.) means that, come January, the United States Congress will have just one black Republican member, Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina. West's loss came as a surprise to a number of people, especially considering that every public poll of his race had shown the freshman congressman leading his Democratic opponent, Patrick Murphy. Yet, on Tuesday morning, it was West who conceded to Murphy after a two-week recount confirmed that the incumbent had fallen more than 2,000 votes short of winning a second term.

The race in West’s congressional district wasn't the only one where the outcome defied multiple polls: In Utah's newly-created 4th District, Rep. Jim Matheson, the lone Democrat in the Beehive State's congressional delegation, eked out a victory over Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love (R). Less than a week before Election Day, a Mason-Dixon poll showed the six-term incumbent trailing Love by an eye-popping twelve percentage points. About a month earlier, the Deseret News/KSL poll pegged Love's lead at six points, 49% to 43%, but that was a huge shift from their previous poll of the race, conducted in June, which had Matheson up by a healthy fifteen-point margin, 53% to 38%. Despite this apparent momentum toward Love and a huge voter turnout in a state that went for Mitt Romney by a wider margin than any other, Matheson managed to win with 49% of the vote to 48% for his Republican challenger.

The surprising losses of these two prominent black candidates--and the poll numbers that turned out to be so wrong--bring to mind the so-called "Bradley Effect," a phenomenon in which polls of races with one African-American candidate tend to overestimate his/her support or underestimate the support for his/her opponent, or both. The term arose out of another surprising election result, in the 1982 race for governor of California. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (D) was poised to become the Golden State's first African-American governor. He went into Election Day with a healthy lead over his Republican opponent, then-Attorney General George Deukmejian, in all the polls. Even the exit poll results indicated a big Democratic win. Much to the Bradley campaign's chagrin, however, Deukmejian triumphed, winning the election by less than 100,000 votes out of nearly 8 million cast.

The following year, in the race for mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, an African-American congressman from Illinois's 1st congressional district, defeated his caucasian opponent, former State Rep. Bernard Epton (R), by about 47,500 votes (less than four percentage points). Multiple polls conducted in the run-up to Election Day indicated it would be a rout for Washington. Three separate polls taken in the final weeks of the campaign showed Washington with a fourteen-point lead.

The obvious discrepancies between the pre-election polling and the actual results of these two high-profile races seemed to cry out for an explanation. Arguably, racial tensions between blacks and whites were stronger, or at least more overt, 30 years ago than they are today, so naturally race was floated as a possible factor in Bradley's loss and Washington's unexpectedly narrow win. (Veteran California pollster Mervin Field was quoted two days after the 1982 election as saying that "race was a factor in the Bradley loss.") While it was clear that these elections had turned out much differently than the polls had foretold, the notion that races between a black candidate and a white candidate presented a special problem for pollsters did not gain widespread acceptance until after a couple of elections with history-making black candidates at the end of the decade.

In 1989, a U.S. Attorney named Rudy Giuliani made his first run for mayor of New York City. Just before the election, two different polls showed him trailing his African-American opponent, Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins, by double digits: Dinkins led Giuliani by fourteen points in the ABC/New York Daily News tracking survey of the race, fifteen points according to Gallup, and by eighteen points in a poll conducted by the New York Observer. Even the exit polls overestimated Dinkins's eventual two-point margin of victory.

The more infamous race that year took place in Virginia. I'll let Scott Keeter and Nilanthi Samaranayake of the Pew Research Center explain:

Virginia Democrat and African American Douglas Wilder edged white Republican Marshall Coleman by less than one percentage point to become the nation's first elected black governor. But two of three polls conducted just days before the election showed Wilder leading by double-digits; a third poll had him 4 points ahead.

The exit poll results from the Virginia governor's race were particularly jarring; according to Pew, "an exit poll conducted on Election Day showed Wilder winning by 10 points, while accurately tallying the vote in the other two statewide races." This indicated that some voters must not have been honest with poll-takers. Keeter and Samaranayake noted that, unlike other exit polls that used an anonymous written ballot to collect voters' responses, "this one had interviewers asking voters face-to-face how they voted, a situation that might increase the pressure to provide a socially desirable response."

It didn't take long for major media outfits to trumpet explanations for why the polls in these two particular elections were so far off. Two days after Election Day, the New York Times ran an article about the "broad disparities" between the polls and election results in New York and Virginia: 

In Virginia, Mason-Dixon Opinion Research Inc. acknowledged making a fundamental error in the way it conducted its Election Day polling. Its workers stopped voters outside polling places and asked them face to face how they had voted, rather than following the more widely accepted practice of having them fill out ''secret ballots'' and drop them in a box. All the New York polls used this method.

Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon's president, said that in hindsight he thought some voters might have been reluctant to admit to a poll taker that they had not voted for the black candidate, L. Douglas Wilder. The organization's Election Day polls gave a 10-point lead to Mr. Wilder, the Democrat, and at least three television stations reported the figures right after the polls closed and declared Mr. Wilder the winner. Today it appears that Mr. Wilder did defeat J. Marshall Coleman, the Republican, but by only one quarter of a percentage point.

''I'm a big supporter of pre-election polls and exit polls,'' said Peter D. Hart, a leading Democratic poll taker here, ''but only for figuring out the dynamics of an election and not who is going to win. What bothers me about yesterday is that the exit polls are obscuring the news, setting up incorrect expectations and leaving everyone talking about 'Oops, what happened?' rather than the historic story of the elections of Wilder and Dinkins.''

Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato was even more blatant in his analysis. ''Whites tell pollsters ahead of time that they are voting for the black candidate,'' he said, ''and then they go into the voting booth and can't quite pull down that lever.'' And, a Richmond Times-Dispatch article that ran the same day quoted Coker as saying, "Virginians were put on the spot: If we don't vote for Wilder, [then] we're going to be perceived of as racist." Whatever the reason was, the gap between poll results and election results in races between a black candidate and a white candidate was becoming a recurring problem.

For Wilder, it wasn't the first time his poll numbers had foretold a different election result. In 1985, he was elected lieutenant governor by three precentage points, but pre-election polls had pegged his lead at anywhere from nine to 22 points. The same polls were much more accurate with regard to the governor's race that year. In part because Wilder's experiences provided stronger evidence (and more of it) that voters lied to pollsters about voting for the black candidate than did Tom Bradley's 1982 campaign, some individuals prefer the term "Wilder Effect" to "Bradley Effect". 

Whatever you call it, the concept that the effect was attributable to white voters who were reluctant to tell poll takers they were not voting for a black candidate gained steam following the '89 elections. In 1993, ahead of Mayor Dinkins's rematch wth Giuliani, the New York Times reported on a study by Larry Hugick, the director of political and media surveys at Princeton Survey Research Associates, who concluded that, in general elections that pitted a black Democrat against a white Republican, polls consistently overestimated the black candidate's strength. Said the Times:

[Mr. Hugick] concluded that white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters were more likely than blacks to be undecided, torn between their allegiance to political party and to race. These ambivalent voters told interviewers conducting polls that they were undecided, but overwhelmingly supported the white candidate in the voting booth.

Mr. Hugick speculated that some of these voters were genuinely undecided, while others were reluctant to admit they were voting against a black Democrat, perhaps worried they would be perceived as racially biased.

"To some extent, these voters are torn between party and doubts about the ability of black candidates to do a good job," he said. "It's racial stereotyping. It's a way race affects us in this country. We've understood racial intolerance is highly unacceptable, but that doesn't mean that people have internalized tolerance."

After Giuliani defeated Dinkins in another close race, Hugick sent out a memo to his clients and friends, detailing his findings and asserting that the 1993 New York mayoral election "again demonstrated that late polls in biracial general elections overstate the black candidate's vote-getting ability." Following that election, however, the Wilder/Bradley effect appeared to be waning. African-American candidates who waged multiple campaigns provided a good "control" group with which to examine whether the Bradley/Wilder effect still occurred. Polls showed Mayor Dinkins's 1993 rematch with Giuliani, for example, to be a real dead heat. Giuliani, of course, won the race by a margin comparable to Dinkins's narrow 1989 victory.

In 1990, former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, an African-American Democrat, challenged longtime Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC). Two of three independent polls conducted just before the election showed Gantt leading Helms, but none showed the controversial  senator with a lead of six percentage points, his eventual margin of victory. Six years later, when Helms again fended off a challenge from Gantt, the polls were much more accurate; the incumbent's 53%-46% win was consistent with polling that gave him a modest lead.

Similarly, when Carol Moseley Braun became the first (and, to date, only) African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, the election results were much closer than polls had suggested. Braun defeated Republican Richard Williamson by a ten-point margin, but polls taken just days before the election showed her with a lead ranging from 17 to 20 points. (Notably, all of these polls pegged Braun's level of support at less than the 53% of the vote she ultimately received, so it's certainly possible that everyone who claimed to be voting for Braun did actually vote for her, but if these polls were accurate, then it would mean that Williamson won nearly all of the late deciders.) Six years later, Braun lost her bid for re-election by less than 100,000 votes, or three percentage points, to Peter Fitzgerald, a wealthy state senator from the Chicago suburbs. It could have been a lot worse; pre-election polls gave Fitzgerald a lead of three to ten points. A strong turnout among Illinois's black voters may have boosted Braun.
 
The cases of Gantt and Braun suggest that, to the extent that polls significantly overstate a black candidate's support and/or undertell his/her white opponent's strength in the black candidate's first run for statewide office, this phenomenon does not repeat itself when the same black politician runs again for the same office. Tom Bradley himself got creamed by Deukmejian in their 1986 rematch, but at least the mayor wasn't misled by poll numbers that showed him to be ahead. Prior to the election, all public polls had Bradley trailing the incumbent by double digits. Though Deukmejian won re-election by a larger margin than the polls indicated he would, none greatly overtold Bradley's level of support.
 
The paucity of competitive general-election match-ups between a white candidate and a black candidate in 2000, 2002 and 2004 made it difficult to gauge whether the Bradley effect was still waning. There was the race for governor of  New York in 2002, in which incumbent Gov. George E. Pataki (R) crushed his opponents to win a third term. Pataki won 48%, finishing well ahead of the state's African-American Comptroller, H. Carl McCall (D), who took 32%, and a slew of other candidates who weren't black. Pataki had led McCall by eleven points in a survey taken in late September. 

In 2004, two members of the U.S. House of Representatives from the Atlanta area squared off against each other for the Senate seat being vacated by Georgia Democrat Zell Miller. Rep. Johnny Isakson, a white Republican, defeated Rep. Denise Majette, an African-American Democrat, winning 58% of the vote to Majette's 40%. The weekend before the election, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the results of a poll that had Isakson leading Majette by thirteen points, 49% to 36%. 
  
Then came 2008. There wasn't a single black candidate, Republican or Democrat, in a highly competitive gubernatorial or senatorial contest that year, but the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama revived talk about the Bradley/Wilder effect. Other than Obama's surprise loss to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, however, there were no conspicuous gaps between Obama's poll numbers and share of the vote he actually received in the 2008 Democratic primaries. In the general election, Obama experienced a fate similar to that of Washington, Wilder and Dinkins: he won, but some polls overtold hs eventual margin of victory. A lot of polls underestimated voter support for the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, both nationally and at the state level, but very few overestimated Obama's support. This could simply have meant that late deciders broke for McCain. Whether that's true or not, there was not a single battleground state in which all the polls were way off. Obama did not experience the Wilder effect in November.

Even before the 2008 election, there was a growing consensus among analysts who examined the data that the Wilder effect was a thing of the past. Daniel J. Hopkins, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, conducted the most extensive study and analysis I've seen of the phenomenon and concluded that "there was indeed a Wilder effect" in elections during the 1980s and early 1990s but that "this effect subsequently disappeared."

To what, then, should we attribute the salient discrepancy between the poll and election results in Utah and Florida this year? Regardless of the cause(s), this much is clear: The Wilder Effect still exists, but with a twist; the effect seems to only manifest itself in races between a black Republican and a white Democrat.

I first noticed this correlation between the presence/absence of a Bradley/Wilder effect and the political affiliations of the candidates in 2006. That year saw more competitive races for statewide office between a black candidate and a white candidate than any other election cycle I can remember. The U.S. Senate races in Tennessee and Maryland provided data for a good comparative analysis. Both featured a charismatic, energetic black politician vying against an older, duller white politician for an open U.S. Senate seat. (In Mississippi, State Rep. Erik R. Fleming, a black Democrat, challenged Sen. Trent Lott, a white Republican, for his Senate seat, but that race was not considered competitive, and Lott won re-election by a decisive margin.) 

In Tennessee, Democrats nominated Harold Ford, Jr., a five-term congressman from Memphis, to run for the seat of then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R), who was retiring. Ford and his Republican opponent, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, traded the lead in the polls back and forth until October, when Corker appeared to be pulling away. Heading into Election Day, independent polls put Corker's lead at anywhere from three to twelve points. The only public polls that showed Ford leading were conducted by partisan Democratic pollsters. Corker did end up winning, but only by about 50,000 votes (less than three percentage points). There had been no Wilder effect in the Tennessee Senate race.

In Maryland, it was a different story. Perhaps no U.S. Senate candidate in 2006 garnered as much enthusiasm as Michael Steele. Four years after becoming Maryland's first African-American lieutenant governor, Steele appeared to be on the verge of beating the odds to win a U.S. Senate seat in a state where 55% of voters were registered Democrats. He had fought the Democratic candidate, ten-term Rep. Ben Cardin, to a draw in the polls. There was even talk of a "Reverse Wilder Effect" in the race.

“With Steele sporting a 7-point lead among white voters,” pondered RealClearPolitics’s John McIntyre just days before the election, “what happens to Cardin's lead if Steele's 12% of the black vote goes to 20% or 25%?” We found out: Steele managed to take 25% of the black vote, according to exit polls, but lost to Cardin by a 54%-44% margin.  

Having followed the 2004 elections as closely as I did, I knew how pollsters could sometimes get it wrong (This was before I looked into the history of the "Bradley Effect" and discovered just how wrong.), but the results of the Maryland Senate race had left a particularly bad taste in my mouth because (1) I had gotten my hopes up, based on what appeared to be momentum towards Steele in the final weeks of the campaign, and (2) I couldn't find another comparably high-profile race that cycle in which so many polls had been so far off.

I should mention that, in the three 2006 gubernatorial contests between a black candidate and a white candidate, there was no such disparity between the polls and the outcome. In Ohio, Republican Ken Blackwell, an African-American who had served as mayor of Cincinnati, state Treasurer and Ohio Secretary of State, lost in a rout to Ted Strickland, a white Democratic congressman from Lucasville. Strickland's 900,000-vote margin of victory accorded with polls that put him ahead of Blackwell by about 20 points. Next door, in Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) held off a challenge from businessman and former Pittsburgh Steelers Wide Receiver Lynn Swann (R) to win a second term. Swann actually outperformed his standing in most polls, winning 40% of the vote to Rendell's 60%.

In Massachusetts, Deval Patrick (D) was elected the Bay State's first black governor by a 56%-35% margin. Some polls had shown him leading his opponent, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R) by more, but every poll of the race had understated Healey's support. Thus, much like the 2008 presidential election, it appears that most undecided voters in the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania gubernatorial races ended up supporting the Republican. Race made no difference.

In light of this data, I was inclined to write off Steele's discouraging loss as a fluke. Then, in 2010, I was again bemused by the results of an election that did not comport with the polling. This time, it was in Colorado. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D), an aging, white pol from Golden, faced a tough challenge from Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier (R), an ebullient young African-American. Things seemed to be going Frazier's way: the left leaning Denver Post endorsed him, and a desperate-looking Perlmutter actually smacked him at a debate in October. Even more encouraging, the only public poll of the race showed Frazier leading Perlmutter, 40%-39%. While a one-point lead is no cause for ecstasy, an incumbent polling at 39% is generally not considered to be in good shape. So you can imagine how disappointed I was to learn that Perlmutter won re-election. It wasn't even close; the incumbent won by nearly 25,000 votes, taking 53% of the vote to Frazier's 42%. Ouch.

Now, the losses of Love and West, belied by multiple polls, add to this pattern of black Republicans who lost elections despite poll results that showed them tied or leading their white Democratic opponents. What could explain this 21st-century version of the Wilder Effect? Are large numbers of white voters reluctant to unequivocally declare their support for a black candidate's opponent? If so, then why did Ford, Blackwell, Swann, Patrick and Obama not experience the Wilder effect? It's certainly possible that the polls in Utah and Florida, like many other polls this cycle, underestimated Democratic turnout and/or overestimated Republican turnout, but then what accounts for the unexpectedly lopsided defeats of Frazier and Steele? I will not endeavor to answer these questions in this post; my only point is that the Bradley/Wilder effect still occurs but (for whatever reason) only in races between a white Democrat and a black Republican. (Take note, Herman Cain.)

One Reason NOT To Check My E-mail Every Five Minutes

I've gotten burned before for being less than diligent about checking my inbox, but something happened on election night that made me glad I wasn't furiously refreshing my e-mail as often as I was the live election results from the Ohio and Colorado Secretaries' of State web sites. At 8:04 p.m. (according to the time stamp on the message), an email with the following subject appeared in my Yahoo! Mail inbox: 

WSJ NEWS ALERT: Romney Wins Michigan

The error wasn't limited to the subject line, either; the message read, in part: "Mitt Romney wins Michigan, the Associated Press reports." Of course, Mitt Romney did not win Michigan, and the AP did not project that he had. This message was followed by another at 8:10 with the subject, "WSJ NEWS ALERT: CORRECTION: Obama Wins Michigan".

I won't fault the Wall Street Journal for this mistake, but I hope there weren't too many Romney supporters who were made to feel false (if temporary) joy and crushing disappointment because of it.

Obama Wins; Investors Lose (Billions)

Following, an optimism-fueled Election Day rally on Tuesday, the stock market plunged on Wednesday after Pres. Barack Obama defeated former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney to win a second term. FOX Business Network's Adam Samson reports:

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 313 points, or 2.4%, to 12933, the S&P 500 slid 33.9 points, or 2.4%, to 1395 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 74.6 points, or 2.5%, to 2937.

The selloff was broad, with every major sector falling at least 1%. Leading the way lower were financial and energy stocks. The Dow closed below the 13000 mark for the first time since August 2.

In contrast to most one-day selloffs that are followed by a surge the next day, Wednesday's decline continued yesterday, with the Dow sinking another 121.41 points, for a combined 3.3% drop over the last two days. The S&P 500 fell by 17.02 to close at 1,377.51 (it's lowest close since August), and the Nasdaq composite index gave back another 41.71 points.

Is this the beginning of a bear market or just a correction? Whichever is the case, not all of it can fairly be attributed to the president's re-election, but the billions of dollars investors lost this week will be sand off a beach if this country goes off the fiscal cliff. Judging from the tone of President Obama's speech today, he's willing to let that happen.

Debunking Juan Williams’s Debunking of the “GOP’s false narratives about the Benghazi attack”

Ahead of Monday night's debate, Juan Williams, one of the few calm voices of reason on the American left, endeavored to, in his words, "make three corrections to the record about the campaign’s most controversial foreign policy topic: the murder of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya." (There were also three other Americans who were murdered; let's not forget them.) He put out this column, in which he articulated three "false narratives" about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi and purported to correct each one. After reading his corrections, however, I felt the need to make some corrections of my own. 

Juan first attempts to correct  "the charge that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice lied to the American people in the days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi." I'm not going to delve into the what constitutes a "lie", but as I have explained, Ambassador Rice did make statements that were later proven to be false. In trying to exculpate her, Williams goes beyond the approved Democratic talking point--that Rice's statements, while factually inacurrate, were based on what the intelligence community told her--and tries to claim that the ambassador was actually telling the truth! 

The "simple fact," according to Williams, is that the "Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper has confirmed that Rice told the truth in describing the assessment of the intelligence community at the time of her remarks." That is a fact, but it is not so simple. Clapper's office did put out a statement on September 28 that said, in part: 

In the immediate aftermath [of the attack], there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

The problem is that Rice and other administration officials went beyond simply "describing the assessment of the intelligence community at the time"; on September 14th, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told the press corps, "We have no information to suggest that [this] was a pre-planned ... attack." Secretary Clinton herself said this was in response to a video. Rice and others weren’t just relaying the assessment of the intelligence community; they were telling the country that the administration had no information that the attack was pre-planned or premeditated, and that was false. 

The second "false" narrative Williams attempts to correct is actually twofold, as he presents it: 

It is being charged that requests for extra security in Benghazi were denied by the administration.

The suggestion is that the attack would have been stopped, and the ambassador still alive, if the requests had been granted.

Notice that the first sentence is a factual statement, while the second is merely an inference. I actually haven't heard any Republican charge "that requests for extra security in Benghazi were denied"; there were requests for added security in Tripoli, as Williams points out in his article, not Benghazi. Maybe he's heard something I haven't. Regardless, I'll not take issue with the contrary inference(s) he draws from the indisputable fact that the administration denied requests for security reinforcements in Libya, but then Williams offers up his own opinions about this charge:

There is an air of hypocrisy about this second charge from Republican critics.

House Republicans voted to cut nearly $300 million in funding from Embassy Security as part of their most recent budget.

That is true; however, that budget never became law, so these cuts were never made, and Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, testified under oath earler this month that budget considerations played no role the decision not to increase security.

Williams's "third and final correction comes in response to the charge that the attack on Benghazi is evidence that al Qaeda is resurgent." Williams says this "attack" comes from the Romney campaign, who he accuses of arguing that, "notwithstanding the Obama administration’s claims, the threat from al Qaeda has not significantly diminished despite the death of Osama bin Laden."

I've not seen/heard anyone on the Romney campaign make this claim; what I have seen and heard is Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, tell CBS News that "al Qaida has come back." Williams curiously doesn't mention this; instead, he argues that "missions authorized by the Obama administration have killed the top commanders of the terrorist group, including bin Laden," and that "President Obama’s drone strikes targeting al Qaeda members have decimated the remaining members of the group."

In support of this proposition, Williams quotes National Secretary Council spokesman Tommy Vietor as saying that “Our assessment that we have decimated al Qaeda leadership is unchanged. Dozens of their senior leadership have been taken off the battlefield as a result of the president's anti-terror policies.”

If the statements by Allen and Vietor can be reconciled, then it's probably because "decimat[ing] al Qaeda leadership" hasn't translated into quelling the threat this vast terrorist network poses to us and the rest of the civilized world. The claim (which again, I haven't seen anyone on the Romney campaign make) that the attack on our consulate in Benghazi evinces a resurgence on the part of al Qaeda might be better "debunked" by pointing out that we're not sure al Qaeda had anything to do with the attack, but Williams doesn't even try to argue this point. Instead, he offers a flimsy argument that doesn't even rebut the straw man he created. 

Williams concludes his piece by accusing the GOP of a "political strategy that is based on deliberate misinformation about the Benghazi assault," a very serious charge. As you can see, however, none of the three specific memes Juan attributes to the GOP contains "deliberate misinformation". 

This is serious business. A U.S. consulate was beset by terrorists who took the lives of four Americans. The Obama administration has not been straight with us about what they knew and when they knew it. If the best defense our president's supporters can put forward consists of hair-splitting and straw-man arguments, then maybe. well...our president's actions were pretty untenable.