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The Vice Presidency Is Not A Stepping Stone To The Presidency

by Cliston Brown | May 30, 2020 | Political Commentary

NOT A STEPPING STONE

Contrary to popular belief, the vice presidency is not a great ticket to the Oval Office. Only 29% of vice presidents have gotten there, and nearly two-thirds of those became president due to the previous president dying or resigning.

A vice president who doesn’t succeed to the presidency due to a death or resignation has about a 1-in-10 chance of actually getting there.

Don’t Bank On Biden Bowing Out in 2024

by Cliston Brown | May 10, 2020 | Political Commentary

A popular notion on Twitter these days is that Joe Biden, should he win the presidency this fall, will only serve one term and, therefore, whoever he selects as his vice president will have the inside track on the Democratic nomination, and the presidency, in 2024.

We’ll set aside, for a moment, a discussion of the myth that running for the presidency as a sitting vice president gives anyone a leg up. (History shows that most sitting vice presidents don’t even get nominated for the presidency, much less win; only four ever have, and only one of those since 1836. But that’s another topic that I plan to cover as part of another post soon.)

Today’s post will focus on the widely circulated belief that Biden is running purely to get Trump out of office and, due to his advanced age, will not seek a second term if elected this November.

Well, sure. It’s possible. But it’s highly unlikely.

It must be said: we never know what is in a person’s mind unless they tell us. But Biden hasn’t made any such pledge, so his course of action in 2024, if elected in 2020, can only be guessed at. And there are a lot more reasons to guess that he will seek a second term than there are to expect that he won’t.

The truth is that it takes a certain kind of personality to run for president. It’s a huge job that requires an insane amount of striving to get. It also requires a pretty large ego–anybody who really thinks he or she is the best person to hold the most powerful job in the world must have an extremely high opinion of oneself. Anyone who makes it to the White House has generally has spent a significant part of his adult life building toward that moment. For whatever reason, they want the power and the prestige of the presidency, whether for altruistic reasons or for purely egotistical ones.

People who put so much time, and so much of their heart and soul, for so many years, into becoming president are not likely to step away from their lifelong dream voluntarily. It is no coincidence that so many rulers in other, less democratic countries end up staying on for life. Honestly, where do you go, and what do you do, after you have been the head of state of the most powerful country on earth? What can compare? Do you think Bill Clinton doesn’t wake up every day feeling a little bored and thinking wistfully about the job he once held? (Asked in the early 2000s if he would have sought a third term, had it been constitutional, Clinton responded candidly: “I’d have made y’all throw me out.”)

In America, it became customary for presidents to seek no more than two terms due to the example set by President George Washington. Ultimately, after Franklin Roosevelt broke with this tradition by successfully seeking a third term in 1940 (and a fourth in 1944), Congress and the states enacted the 22nd Amendment codifying the two-term limit into law–although it is instructive that Congress quite pointedly did not apply any term limits to itself. Congressmen like power and prestige, too. They might not mind limiting someone else’s terms, but they’ll gladly hang out in Washington for 40 years if they can, thank you very much.

Since the passage of the 22nd Amendment, only two presidents have voluntarily stepped aside while still eligible to run for reelection. Harry Truman, who was not covered by the amendment due to having already been in office when it passed, chose not to run in 1952. But Truman had already served almost two full terms, taking over the presidency just three months into Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth term in 1945 and then winning the presidency in his own right in 1948. Truman may have had the least ambition for the presidency of anyone who has sought the office in the last century, steadfastly resisting the offer of the vice presidency in 1944 until essentially commanded by Roosevelt to accept for the good of the Democratic Party. So perhaps he would have chosen to step aside in 1952 even if his approval ratings hadn’t sunk to 22%. We’ll never know–but remember, he had essentially already served two full terms, and with the Republican Party set to nominate General Dwight Eisenhower, Truman would have had to be remarkably optimistic–or stupid–to expect that he would win.

Lyndon Johnson, in his sixth year in the Oval Office, withdrew from the 1968 presidential race, claiming that the country needed him to focus on the Vietnam War rather than running another campaign. This self-serving statement of martyrdom by an intensely vain, power-hungry man who would have sold his own mother into slavery to be president doesn’t meet the smell test. Johnson was badly wounded by his support of the unpopular war in Vietnam, and shortly after an obscure anti-war senator won 42% against him in the New Hampshire primary–a shocking testament to his political vulnerability that showed the writing was on the wall–Johnson bowed out. But again, he had served about a term and a half.

You’d have to go all the way back to 1880 to find a president who voluntarily stepped away after only one term. That was Rutherford B. Hayes, a mediocre president who had been elected under the most divisive and frankly shady circumstances in the history of U.S. presidential elections. No president in the last 140 years has voluntarily chosen not to run for reelection after just four years in office.

And some presidents hung on to their offices even during severe health crises that made it impossible for them to do their jobs properly, or at all. For all the talk about how Biden will probably forego a second term if he has health issues, consider two examples of how presidents will hang on by their fingernails even during the worst health crises.

EXAMPLE 1: Franklin Roosevelt accepted renomination in 1944 even though he was clearly dying of acute congestive heart failure. He had been ordered by his physician not to work more than four hours a day–an extremely light work schedule for a president in the middle of a world war. His condition was so well-known by key insiders that party elders knew the 1944 Democratic convention was selecting two presidents, not one, as documented in the Truman biography by David McCullough.

One response to this observation is that FDR stayed on because the country needed continuity in wartime, but whether he had stood for reelection or not, it was likely that there would be a change in leadership one way or the other. This is, of course, exactly what happened, as FDR died 82 days into his fourth term, months before the war ended. Whether his doctors told him explicitly of his prognosis is not known, but surely Roosevelt knew his condition was grave, having had a type of seizure shortly before accepting his 1944 renomination by radio linkup.

EXAMPLE 2: President Woodrow Wilson, half his body paralyzed after a pair of strokes and an embolism, actively conspired with his wife Edith to deceive Congress and his own cabinet about the seriousness of his condition. After his devastating second stroke in September 1919, Edith Wilson took on the president’s duties while blocking access to the president to obscure his inability to do his job. His physician, Dr. Cary Grayson, blatantly lied, claiming after the first stroke that the president had taken ill with influenza. The country went on like this for the final 18 months of Wilson’s second term.

Ego-driven leaders who have risen to the height of power simply do not part with that power unless they absolutely have to–due to term limits, losing an election, or impending defeat in an upcoming election. Nobody can read Biden’s mind, or know what he would do if hit with a serious health crisis.

But those who are counting on him to serve only one term, and hoping their own preferred candidate will become the heir apparent in 2024, should learn from history that they shouldn’t count on it.

The Myth of Ohio

by Cliston Brown | Apr 25, 2020 | Election Analysis

For decades, the notion that Ohio is a bellwether state that decides the outcome of this nation’s presidential elections has persisted. Even today, many Democrats cling to the notion that their party cannot win an Electoral College victory without claiming Ohio’s electoral votes.

This theory is bunk.

Ohio has gained its unearned reputation as an election-deciding bellwether largely due to sheer luck and the fact that its polls close at 7:30 Eastern time. As a result, it is perfectly positioned to be the state that appears to put the Democrats over the top in the Electoral College, but that is merely a function of Ohio usually being called sometime between 10 and 11 p.m. Eastern time, when one candidate or the other is within striking distance of hitting the magic 270 electoral vote threshold.

But Ohio has as much to do with electing presidents as crowing roosters have to do with causing the sun to rise.

In truth, Ohio has not played a decisive role in the election of any Democratic president since Woodrow Wilson narrowly won reelection in 1916. Even in that election, it was not the tipping-point state; the tipping-point state that decided the election was California. (A “tipping point state” is the closest state that gives the winning candidate an electoral college majority.)

It is an arithmetical fact that every Democrat who has won the presidency in the last 100 years would have won an Electoral College majority even if he had lost Ohio. Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did just that, in 1944 and 1960 respectively.

In fact, Ohio has only been the decisive, tipping-point state in two presidential elections since the Civil War, and in both of those elections (1876 and 2004), Ohio tipped the election to a Republican.

An examination of Ohio’s electoral history demonstrates that Ohio is a Republican-leaning state that almost always votes a few points more Republican than the nation as a whole. Since the Republican Party’s founding in 1854, 41 presidential elections have taken place. Ohio has given Republican presidential candidates greater margins than the national electorate at large has in 33 of those 41 elections, slightly more than 80% of the time. In the 24 presidential elections held in the last century, the Republican margin in Ohio has exceeded the Republican margin in the national popular vote 21 times, exactly 87.5% of the time. In short, Ohio leans to the right of the nation in more than four out of every five presidential elections, and its Republican lean has only become more pronounced with time.

In the 41 elections conducted since the GOP was founded in 1854, Republicans have outperformed their national margin in Ohio by an average of 3.07%. In the last century, the average GOP margin in Ohio has grown to 4.185%. While there are some clear outliers in the data that skew the margin a bit, it is nonetheless clear that Ohio does lean to the right of the national average. In short, if a presidential election is dead-even, or the Democratic nominee wins the national popular vote by roughly a point or less, Ohio will go Republican.

Arithmetically, Democrats simply do not need to win Ohio to win the presidency. By the time Ohio falls into the Democratic column, the election has already been won in other states (even if their polls haven’t closed yet, or there hasn’t been enough of a count in those states to call them for the Democrat by the time that Ohio, an early-closing state, has been largely tabulated).

The implications are simple: Ohio should only be contested if Democrats have plenty of money to spend in other, more crucial states. History conclusively demonstrates that Ohio has never been the tipping-point state in a Democratic victory. To the degree that it ever has been a tipping-point state, it has tipped the election to the Republicans both times.

This is not to suggest that Democrats should give up entirely on Ohio. As long as its major cities provide a treasure trove of votes to the Democratic Party, there will always be a chance to win it, even if that chance is less than 50/50. And just as history shows us that Democrats can win without Ohio (and have done so), history also shows us that Republicans must win Ohio to win the election. They’ve never won nationally without winning Ohio.

But in the later stages of a close presidential race in which tough decisions must be made about resources, Democrats should pull the plug on Ohio without a moment’s hesitation and turn their focus to more fertile ground. Because to put it bluntly: If Democrats find themselves counting on Ohio to win an election, they’re going to lose.

200 Days Out: Biden A Slight Favorite; Democrats Poised to Flip Senate Narrowly

by Cliston Brown | Apr 17, 2020 | Election Analysis

As of today, there are exactly 200 days until the November elections, and at this moment, my expectation is that former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, rates a slight favorite over Republican President Donald Trump.

Based in part on polling averages at this time, and in part on the fundamentals of the race, I currently expect Biden to win 334 electoral votes, compared to 204 for Trump. I refuse to classify any state as a toss-up, which in my mind is a cop-out, but if I were going to list any states as “toss-ups,” those states would be Florida and North Carolina, which I currently list as “tilt Biden.” 

From a polling perspective, Biden currently has an average lead of about 5.5 percentage points, which is roughly 3.4 points above and beyond Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin over Trump in 2016. Adding 3.4 points to her totals across the board would flip Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin narrowly to Biden, and would turn North Carolina and Arizona into pure toss-ups. I am rating the latter two states as “tilt Biden” for several reasons.

  • First, I expect slightly fewer third-party defections nationally in 2020 as compared to 2016, which to me indicates a probable bump of at least a few tenths of a percentage point for Biden.
  • Second, there are key Senate races in both states:
    • In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly appears to be a clear favorite in his race against incumbent Republican appointee Martha McSally. Given the partisan polarization of the country at this time, I find it hard to imagine there will be very many Kelly voters who will also vote for Trump.
    • In North Carolina, Democrat Cal Cunningham, who is challenging Republican incumbent Thom Tillis for a Senate seat, is remarkably well funded.

I am rating Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as “lean Biden” because adding 3.4 points to the Democrats in those states, compared to 2016, and also expecting fewer third-party defections, would flip those states by close but relatively comfortable margins. However, Michigan appears to be much more solid to flip back to blue than the other two, and Wisconsin much less so. I nearly put Wisconsin in the “tilt Biden” category, but was convinced to move it to “lean Biden” by the landslide win by the Democratic candidate in last week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, despite the obstacles of voting during a pandemic. It appears clear that there is a motivated Democratic electorate in Wisconsin this year. I also considered putting Pennsylvania in the “tilt Biden” category, but moved it to “lean Biden” based on his long history in the state.

Although the margin in Florida was not significantly greater for Trump in 2016 than it was in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin, I am rating Florida “tilt Biden” right now, rather than “lean Biden,” for several reasons:

  • First, there is a lot of unpredictability about how its numerous Latino communities will vote. For example: will Venezuelan-Floridians see Democrats as the party of socialism, as many Cuban-Floridians have for generations?
  • Second, Republicans typically overperform in Florida relative to polling. I typically assume Republicans will do 2 percentage points better than expected in that state.
  • Third, as is the case in most southern states, third parties typically do not do as well there as they do in other parts of the country; third-party defections were less of a factor in Florida to begin with, so Democrats should not expect as significant of a boost from a reduction in “spoiler votes” in Florida as they might in the Rust Belt states.
  • Fourth, Trump’s approval ratings in Florida have been notably better than in many other swing states. So I have significantly less certainty about Biden being a favorite in Florida than I have about him being a slight but solid favorite in the three key Rust Belt states that I am rating “lean Biden” at this time.

In addition to Florida, North Carolina and Arizona, I also rate the 2nd District of Nebraska as “tilt Biden.” It is slightly less Democratic-leaning, on the whole, than the three Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But it is also the kind of urban/suburban area where Trump is not especially popular, and at this point, I would rate Biden a very slight favorite to win it.

In the “lean Trump” category, I include Ohio, Georgia, Iowa and the 2nd District of Maine. A 3.4-percentage point increase in the Democratic totals would not budge any of these jurisdictions out of the Trump column. In fact, a case could be made that Ohio, Iowa and Maine’s 2nd District should be rated “likely Trump.” However, there tends to be a greater tendency toward sharp swings in the Midwest than in other parts of the country, so it is not inconceivable that Biden could compete in either state. The 2nd District of Maine is not only demographically similar to Iowa and rural Ohio, but also prone to large swings.

Understand that I consider the “lean Trump” states to be much more likely to go as I expect than any of the “lean Biden” states are. I think Trump is in a stronger position in Ohio, Georgia, Iowa or Maine’s 2nd District than Biden is in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin.

Moving on to the states rated in the likely category, as a rule, I rated any state that voted for Clinton in 2016 as no worse than “likely Biden.” The states Clinton won by three points or less (Minnesota, Nevada, Maine and New Hampshire) all fall into this category. I expect all of them to be off the board unless there is some sort of significant shift toward Trump nationally, which I do not foresee at this time.

I continue to rate Texas as likely Trump. Despite the ongoing exuberance of many Democrats about Texas, it is too soon to expect Texas to flip in 2020. It may get closer than its nine-point Trump margin in 2016, but not close enough to truly be in play at this time. I expect Biden would need to win nationally by double digits to flip Texas, and I don’t consider that outcome likely.

The remaining states I classify as either “safe Biden” or “safe Trump,” and I doubt very many of those classifications would be considered controversial. I will discuss two of those: Virginia and Colorado, which I rate “safe Biden.” These two states have been consistently moving leftward for a generation, and their demographics (highly urban/suburban, highly educated) do not favor Trump or the Republican Party.

Also rated “safe Biden” are the District of Columbia and the following states: California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Oregon, New Mexico, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Delaware and Vermont.

Rated “safe Trump” are Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

The breakdown, as I see it today, is as follows:

BIDEN 334

  • Safe Biden 210
  • Likely Biden 22
  • Lean Biden 46
  • Tilt Biden 56

TRUMP 204

  • Safe Trump 125
  • Likely Trump 38
  • Lean Trump 41
  • Tilt Trump 0

Moving on to the Senate races, I will state that as a rule of thumb, I do not consider any state likely to vote for a presidential candidate of one party and a Senate candidate of the other party. The correlation between presidential vote and Senate vote over the four presidential elections conducted in the 21st century is around 85%, and in the last presidential election, the same party won the presidential and Senate races in each state which had both races on the ballot.

As a result, at this time, I expect the Democrats to make a net gain of three seats in the Senate, flipping four seats from red to blue and losing the Alabama seat currently held by Democratic Senator Doug Jones. If Biden does, in fact, win the presidency, a +3 Democratic pickup will shift the Senate to Democratic control, with the Democratic vice president breaking the resulting 50-50 tie.

Earlier, I mentioned Democrats Mark Kelly of Arizona and Cal Cunningham of North Carolina as being especially strong candidates, and these are two of the seats I currently expect Democrats to flip. I’m currently rating North Carolina as “tilt Democratic” I also expect Democrat Sara Gideon to defeat incumbent Republican Susan Collins in Maine. In addition to Maine being a likely Biden state, which bodes well for Gideon, Collins’s approval ratings have plummeted as her veneer of supposed moderate has worn off. I currently rate the Arizona and Maine races as “lean Democratic.”

The fourth expected Democratic pickup is also the likeliest one, with Republican Senator Cory Gardner expected to lose in Colorado. As I noted earlier, Colorado is persistently moving left, and the demographics in that state bode poorly for the GOP. Gardner only won his seat narrowly in 2004, running against a Democratic incumbent who ran a poor campaign in a disastrous year for Democrats. Colorado’s continuing leftward shift since then has put Gardner in a decidedly bad position, and I rate Colorado as “likely Democratic.”

Very few other Senate races would not be considered safe at this time for one party or the other. On the Democratic side, I’m rating incumbent Democratic Michigan Senator Gary Peters’ race as “likely Democratic.” On the Republican side, I still rate races in Texas, Montana and Georgia involving GOP incumbents as “likely Republican,” despite the decision by popular Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock to run for the Senate seat in Montana. It is hard to see even a popular Democrat knocking off an incumbent Republican Senator (Steve Daines) while Trump is winning at the top of the ballot in Montana by a wide margin.

I rate two GOP-held seats as “lean Republican,” including Iowa and the seat up for a special election in Georgia. These ratings are the same as the presidential ratings in those states and I expect they will continue to correlate. If either Iowa or Georgia appears to be moving blue at the presidential level, I will adjust the Senate ratings in those states as well.

I am not issuing any House ratings at this time, as that landscape will require further study, but I also consider the House outcome to be in less doubt than the outcome of the presidential race or the composition of the Senate. Unless Trump reverses his fortunes in the suburbs in a big way between now and November, the House is all but certain to remain in Democratic hands.

2018 Midterm Forecast: Democrats +43 in U.S. House; No Net Change in Senate

by Cliston Brown | Nov 5, 2018 | Election Analysis

As I sit down to make my final estimates about the 2018 midterm elections, I have no small sense of trepidation. The last time I attempted to forecast an election, I got it badly wrong. My failure to see what, in retrospect, I feel I should have seen coming in 2016 has made me consider whether my own partisan preferences and/or overconfidence in my own acumen blinded me to the fundamentals of that election.

I resolved after that election to go back to basics, to pay less attention to polls and to do what I have typically done best: to focus on the fundamentals and what I know about the socio-political makeup of each Congressional district and each state.

There are two key fundamentals I have been keeping in mind over the two years of the current cycle:

  1. Fundamentally, midterms are always a referendum on the president, and typically, when a president is hovering well under 50% approval ratings, his party loses badly.
  2. Special elections during a two-year cycle usually give a very solid indication how the next election will end up.

With that in mind, I think it is clear that Democrats will make major gains on Tuesday. I think it is extremely likely that they will win the U.S. House of Representatives, a large number of governorships currently held by Republicans, and a significant number of state legislative chambers. The U.S. Senate has always been an uphill climb for Democrats this cycle, simply because so many Democratic-held seats (26) and so few Republican-held seats (9) are on the ballot, providing minimal pickup opportunities for Democrats and putting Team Blue on defense all over the map.

So the easiest call of this cycle is that Republicans are likely to retain the U.S. Senate. I see Democratic pickups in Nevada and Arizona, and Republican pickups in North Dakota and Missouri. I will say that my confidence about Arizona and Missouri is slim: Arizona, fundamentally, is still a Republican state, and Missouri’s Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill, has a history of surviving tough races. But I feel extremely confident about the outcomes in Nevada and North Dakota. I expect when the votes are in, the makeup of the Senate will remain 51 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and two independent Senators aligned with the Democrats.

This means that I expect several endangered Democratic Senators will hold on, including Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.); Jon Tester (D-Mont.); Bill Nelson (D-Fla.); Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.); and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). It looks like Nelson and Donnelly have opened a slight edge at the end. Democrats are sending out alarms about the troubled Menendez, but it is difficult to see how he loses when Democrats are poised to pick up 3-4 of the five Republican House seats in New Jersey (more on that later). I expect Democratic voters in New Jersey to hold their nose and vote for Menendez, if for no other reason than the Garden State’s disdain for Donald Trump.

In governorships, I expect Democrats to have a big night. It is a slam-dunk that they will flip governorships in Illinois, Michigan and New Mexico. After that, it is a question of who has momentum and enthusiasm. All the signs out of the Midwest is that Democrats will do well there Tuesday, so I expect governorships in Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin to flip from red to blue as well.

Andrew Gillum, despite recent revelations that are causing his camp heartburn, has the momentum in Florida, and I expect him to prevail to become the first Democratic governor of Florida since 1998.

I expect the governorships of Maine and Nevada to flip, with slightly higher confidence about Nevada.

Now, on to the heavier lifts for Democrats. Republicans in Kansas are sounding alarms about their governor’s race, but the last time they were in peril (four years ago) in the gubernatorial and Senate races, they pulled it out by larger margins than expected. Of course, this isn’t 2014, but the presence of a third-party candidate in the governor’s race leads me to believe that the GOP will narrowly hold on. I also expect that South Dakota is too Trumpy a state to elect a Democratic governor for the first time since 1974, and that Oklahoma is too Trumpy to anoint a Democrat as well.

I also expect that Alaska will flip from independent to Republican, narrowly. Despite independent governor Bill Walker’s decision to drop out in favor of the Democrat, former Senator Mark Begich, Walker will still inevitably win a small percentage of the vote, and that should probably be enough to prevent Begich from winning.

In all, it adds up to a net gain of nine governorships for the Democrats, and a net loss of eight governorships for the Republicans, leaving the states split at 25-25. But watch the following states: the aforementioned Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota, as well as New Hampshire. And if you want a real long-shot sleeper, keep an eye on Idaho, where Democrat Paulette Jordan appears to be an excellent candidate, but in a state that is very deep Republican red.

State legislatures are not given much attention in the horse race coverage, but based on the current trends and historical performance, I expect the following nine legislative chambers to flip from Republican control to Democratic, narrowing the Republican advantage in legislative chambers controlled from 66-33 to 57-42.

  • Maine Senate
  • New Hampshire House
  • New Hampshire Senate
  • Connecticut Senate (from tied to Democratic)
  • New York Senate
  • Wisconsin Senate
  • Minnesota House
  • Iowa Senate
  • Colorado Senate

If these gubernatorial and legislative forecasts are correct, Democrats would go from full control of eight states to full control of 14 states; Republicans would go from full control of 26 states to full control of 21 states; and 15 states would have split control, as compared to 16 currently.

That brings us to the U.S. House of Representatives, which is the hardest body to forecast. It really comes down to whether one believes the Democrats will continue to overperform as they have in special and off-year elections since 2016, and how much Republican gerrymandering will blunt any wave. Working from east to west, here is where I see changes:

  • New York: Democrats net 4 seats.
  • New Jersey: Democrats net 4 seats.
  • Pennsylvania: Democrats net 3 seats.
  • Virginia: Democrats net 3 seats.
  • North Carolina: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Florida: Democrats net 3 seats.
  • Kentucky: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Ohio: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Michigan: Democrats net 4 seats.
  • Illinois: Democrats net 2 seats.
  • Iowa: Democrats net 2 seats.
  • Kansas: Democrats net 2 seats.
  • Texas: Democrats net 2 seats.
  • New Mexico: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Colorado: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Arizona: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Utah: Democrats net 1 seat.
  • Washington: Democrats net 2 seats.
  • California: Democrats net 5 seats.

Going on the state-by-state, race-by-race calls, that puts Democrats at +43, giving them a 238-197 majority in the House.

However, keep in mind that this is an EXTREMELY conservative estimate. I have left a lot of potential Democratic pickups in the Republican column. If Tuesday night is really good for the Democrats, the number of gains could surpass 50. That said, one has to keep in mind the impact of Republican gerrymandering and the fact that even a wave leaves some survivors in the party on the wrong end of the wave. On the flip side, there are always some districts that surprise everybody. To wit: Don Young could lose in Alaska and somebody like Elise Stefanik could get taken out in New York. On the whole, I feel pretty comfortable predicting Democrats +43 in the House. A lot would have to go right for them on Tuesday to exceed that number.

My past results in Congressional elections, dating back to 2006, are within 1.5 seats in the Senate and 4.5 seats in the House. Using my own error margins, that could mean anything from a 51-49 Democratic majority to a 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate, and anything from a 233-202 Democratic House majority to 243-192.

 

Vignettes and Vendettas

by Cliston Brown | Oct 10, 2017 | Political Commentary

Returning home to California from a recent business trip in Pittsburgh, I needed some reading material to keep me occupied for several hours of flying, so I picked up “What Happened,” Hillary Clinton’s election postmortem that had been drawing mixed reviews in the media. I was interested to see whether Clinton could shed any insight into how things went so terribly wrong for a campaign that was supposed to be the surest “sure thing” since the Reagan era.

I managed to consume most of the book as my plane traversed the vast swathes of middle America where Clinton had gotten clobbered, where I grew up and lived most of my life, which many of us white-collar coastal types sneeringly refer to as “flyover country.” (A helpful suggestion: my fellow native Midwesterners don’t like that. Stop it.)

As I plunged deeper and deeper into Clinton’s retelling, it struck me that it neatly mirrored the backward-looking party she recently led: stuck in the past, alternately nursing old grievances and happier times, with no useful answer to the most important question of all: What now?

Before I go too far down that path, I should present some important disclaimers. As my regular readers already know, I am a Democrat. I supported Hillary Clinton, both in the primaries and certainly in the general election. I think she would have been a good president. And frankly, I think she got the shaft, particularly from the national political media, which—as Clinton rightly and quite bitterly notes in her book—focused so much attention on an absolutely stupid story (the ridiculous e-mail kerfuffle) as to drown out all other issues. Nobody in American public life since Richard Nixon has gotten the consistently lousy treatment from the media that Hillary Clinton has received for the last 25 years. The difference is that Nixon earned it.

So know going in that my natural inclination is to be sympathetic to Clinton, a fact which in retrospect may have colored my expectations about how the 2016 election would turn out.

That said, her book disappointed me. Although she paid lip service to taking responsibility for her own mistakes, much of the book was an exercise in settling scores: with Donald Trump, with James Comey, with the media, and even with a few individual members of Congress.

When Clinton wasn’t sniping at those who had wronged her—which, in fairness, was completely understandable given the bad treatment she received from them—she spent much of the rest of the book telling tedious anecdotes. It’s nice that she and her staff celebrated birthdays together, but I didn’t buy her book to read all the details about the candles and the cakes.

Sprinkled in amidst all the touching but boring vignettes were the occasional nuggets of gold. For example, Clinton rightly calls out the national political media for focusing on garbage stories—e-mails and the “horse race”—rather than real issues, which is not a new complaint and is certainly a valid one. For what it’s worth, this columnist was as guilty of focusing on the horse race as anyone else, and I have had my share of disquieting moments when I have pondered whether my rosy predictions might have given some readers the mistaken idea that the election was in the bag. I will say this: her assertions that the media played a role, wittingly or not, in elevating Trump to the presidency have real merit, and her takedown of NBC’s Matt Lauer on that score was almost worth the sale price of the book by itself.

And I really did admire the honesty with which she wrote. Whether you agree or disagree with her statements, it is pretty clear that she wrote what she was really thinking and feeling.

On the whole, however, I thought the book fell short. I got the impression that she was still trying to convince people that she was a “normal” and “likeable” human being, but in relating anecdote after anecdote about all the famous elites she knows, this was a hard sell. It read as if she was still trying to fight against the caricature painted of her by her enemies, and I had to wonder why. At this point, to borrow a phrase she herself famously used, “what difference does it make?”

I suppose the thing that lost me the most was it read very much like a book written by someone who is still running. No, I don’t think Hillary Clinton will seek the presidency again, and I certainly hope she doesn’t after losing a slam-dunk race against the least-qualified, most buffoonish major-party nominee to seek the presidency in the history of the republic. That ship has sailed and I expect she understands that.

But in every story about some particular voter she met on the campaign trail, it struck me over and over again that Clinton, in her book, was still campaigning. Maybe it isn’t a habit that is easily broken, but in those moments, it read like the kind of book that candidates write when they are getting ready to run.

In the end, even with her political career clearly over, the key takeaway from “What Happened” is that Hillary Clinton just can’t stop running—not for president this time, but for understanding and vindication. I suppose that’s fine and well, and given what she’s been through, I don’t begrudge her a bit of self-indulgence and self-care.

But if you are looking for answers about what future candidates, or we as citizens, can do differently, you’ll have to infer them on your own. “What Happened,” as its title would suggest, fights the battles of the past, not the future—much like a Democratic Party that is still tearing itself asunder over whether the “Hillary wing” or the “Bernie wing” should inherit the shattered dreams of the glass ceiling that Clinton ultimately couldn’t break. It may be useful to look back, but only if we can apply the lessons of the past to the challenges of the future. Neither Clinton’s book, nor her party—my party—seem prepared to do that just yet.

On This Labor Day, Let’s Start Respecting Laborers

by Cliston Brown | Sep 4, 2017 | Political Commentary

Since I began writing for the Observer a little over two years ago, I have done very little posting here on my own site. It seemed to me to be superfluous to write here for free when I could get paid for my writing.

However, on occasion, I stumble upon a topic that perhaps is better suited to my blog than for professional publication. And on this Labor Day, I would like to share an experience I had yesterday that seems to be a very appropriate topic for this holiday.

Recently, I moved to a new community in order to be closer to my day job, as my company is moving here in a few weeks, and I wanted to spare myself a dreary 45-minute car commute each way. I have been in the process of getting to know my new neighborhood. Part of that process, naturally, involves finding a good place to get breakfast on a Sunday morning, so I walked over to a little diner not far from my new home and sat at the counter, where a friendly young woman took my order.

The server was engaged in conversation with another customer, a middle-aged, white, male businessman, and she mentioned that when she had left work the previous day, she had forgotten to take her paycheck with her.

The businessman responded: “When you get into the professional world, there is this thing called direct deposit.”

I’m sure he meant nothing untoward by it and was oblivious to the many notions packed into such a statement. For those of us who are tremendously privileged, as he and I are, it is often easy to say things like that without thinking twice about it.

I don’t know the man’s background, but I do know mine. I grew up among union steelworkers, secretaries and servers. And I have never known any of them who are not in “the professional world.” They are engaged in professions for which they get paid; ergo, they are professionals.

But this man’s statement spoke volumes about how those of us in the white-collar world think about those who aren’t. It was dismissive. It carried the idea that if you wait tables, mop floors, drive nails (or paint nails), or do anything that doesn’t involve sitting in an office, you are less than a professional. You are less than.

His statement also carried the weight of the presumption that blue-collar jobs are just a weigh station in life until the “smart ones” find their way into the “professional world.” This is the exact sentiment that fuels opposition to a living minimum wage. “Oh, why should we pay McDonald’s workers $15 an hour? They’re just kids working their way through school.” This, of course, flies in the face of data showing that the average age of a food-service worker is nearly 30 years old.

The young server at the diner yesterday may well be waiting the counter now while she pursues an education that will enable her to enter into a white-collar career. Or she may not. She appeared to be about college age. She almost certainly was not a high-school kid waiting tables on the weekend, because she had an intricate tattoo on her upper arm, and California, like most states, does not allow individuals younger than 18 to be tattooed without parental consent. At any rate, this may or may not be a temporary career endeavor for her. It is possible that she will work this job or another service job for the bulk of her life. And if that is her choice, it deserves better than to be implicitly and thoughtlessly disrespected by someone who looks down his nose at what she does.

A lot has been said and written in recent months about the feeling of alienation that blue-collar people feel in our society. I think that to a great degree, this sentiment has been overused for the purpose of excusing or overlooking the blatant racism and sexism that helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency. That said, the disconnect between the white-collar and blue-collar worlds is palpable, as is the disdain that the former too often holds for the latter.

In America, we too often judge people to be successful based on whether they work with their hands or not. If you’ve gone to college and landed an office job, you are thought to be smart and successful. If not, you are often considered to have failed, or to be stupid. Well let me tell you something: the guy who fixes my car is not stupid. The older woman who cuts my hair has worked hard for years to perfect her craft. The server who keeps multiple orders straight while dealing with her share of difficult customers is quite talented. And the people who build the roads and the bridges and the trains we use to get to our comfortable offices know what they’re doing. They work hard every day to keep this country running. They do vital jobs. But we treat them with tremendous disrespect.

If we want to bridge the chasm between the white-collar world and the much larger blue-collar America—where the overwhelming majority do not earn bachelor’s degrees—it starts with those of us in the white collars respecting every person and every profession equally. If we can’t do that, we shouldn’t be surprised when they manifest their resentment in the most inconvenient places—such as the voting booth.

Final 2016 Predictions: Clinton Wins, GOP Keeps House, Senate Barely Flips to Dems

by Cliston Brown | Nov 8, 2016 | Election Analysis

I’m getting in under the wire before the polls close. My final predictions are as follows:

Hillary Clinton will become the first woman president, taking the Electoral College vote 322-215, with one elector in Washington state pledging not to vote for her. I ultimately called Ohio and Arizona for Donald Trump, but if I am wrong, I suspect it will be in one or both of these states. I predict Clinton will win the remaining swing states except for Iowa, where Trump has a clear lead.

I see the Democrats picking up a net of 14 seats in the House of Representatives, but Republicans will still hold a commanding 233-202 advantage.

And I see the Democrats picking up a net of four Senate seats to tie the chamber 50-50. Vice President-Elect Tim Kaine will have the tiebreaking vote once he is sworn in on January 20, 2017. Kaine’s vacant Senate seat will be filled by a Democrat, as Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, has the authority to appoint his replacement until the 2017 off-year elections in Virginia. Watch for that seat to flip to the GOP, giving Republicans a 51-49 advantage heading into the 2018 midterms.

In elections dating back to 2006, I have come within 3.8 seats in the House and 1.4 in the Senate, and in 2014, I missed the House by two seats and the Senate by one. We’ll see how it goes this year. I could see the Senate going 51-49 in either direction, but it is very difficult to see either party getting to 52 seats. At any rate, a 50-50 or 51-49 Senate is going to be essentially paralyzed due to the filibuster rules, so the final tally is of little significance except as to which party’s leaders get the better titles. Congress’s accomplishments for the next two years will be limited largely to naming post offices.

The Silliest Criticism Ever

by Cliston Brown | Oct 8, 2016 | Political Commentary

Over the last quarter of a century, there have been countless allegations and criticisms hurled at Hillary Clinton. Some of them have had merit. Others have been silly. Not a small number have been outlandish. (“She murdered Vince Foster,” for example.)

But by far the most ridiculous criticism ever leveled at Clinton is that she may, on occasion, have said some nasty things about the women who went to bed with her husband. This bit of foolishness is rearing its head again today, as Donald Trump apologists attempt to draw a parallel between his outrageously sexist and porcine statements, revealed this weekend, and how Bill Clinton has behaved with women over the years. Inevitably, Clinton supporters counter that Bill Clinton, unlike Trump, is not running for office, and that Hillary Clinton is not to blame for his behavior. And Trump’s remaining apologists counter, “Yes, but she degraded the women her husband preyed on.”

First, Bill Clinton didn’t prey on anybody, despite Republicans’ repeated insistence over the years that he somehow tricked or pressured impressionable young women into bed. He committed adultery with consenting adults who, like him, should have known better.

Second, and this is an important point, wouldn’t anybody whose spouse cheated have some negative things to say about the person or people he/she cheated with?

Seriously, if you find yourself criticizing Hillary Clinton for voicing a poor opinion of her husband’s mistresses, do yourself and everyone else a favor and just stop talking. You’re being ridiculous.