What William Jennings Bryan And Demography Could Teach The Democrats About The Future

What William Jennings Bryan and Demography Could Teach The Democrats About The Future

Marco Rubio, the telegenic conservative supernova that some have lined up for a 2016 Presidential bid, recently got himself into a bit of hot water when asked a soft-ball question about the age of the Earth.  Rubio hemmed and hawed a bit, showing a pronounced unwillingness to opine on the subject. He settled for “one of the great mysteries.”

I thought that the approximate age of the Earth was a matter of settled science, but then again, I’m not a Republican Presidential hopeful, nor do I have to otherwise worry about appealing to my base.  But Rubio’s comment reminded me of the climactic cross examination scene in the Inherit The Wind, when Henry Drummond, frustrated by his inability to present testimony on evolution, calls to the stand, as an expert on the Bible, his antagonist (and friend) Matthew Harrison Brady.

Brady’s heart is good and his faith sincere, but Drummond leads him through a maze of contradictions that traverse the space between reality, symbols and belief.  He asks about the age of the Earth, and Brady refers to Bishop Usher’s Biblical calculation that the world was created in 4004 BC.  Drummond asks how long a day was, since the Sun wasn’t visible until the 4^th Day. From there, Brady grows increasingly flummoxed, loses his way and, eventually, the support of his audience.    

“Inherit the Wind” was, of course, based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, Drummond on the great trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and Brady on the three time Presidential candidate (and loser) William Jennings Bryan.

It is a sad irony that Bryan’s last few years seemed to descend into self-parody, because, at his zenith, he spoke for many millions of Americans with an ear so tuned he proudly wore the title “The Great Commoner.” He may have been the best orator of his era, equally at home in a convention hall or a revival tent.  In addition to being a Presidential candidate, he was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, a Congressman from his home state of Nebraska, and Secretary of State in the Wilson Administration, resigning because Wilson was more aggressive than Bryan’s pacifist leanings would allow. He was also a supporter of popular democracy, of the free coinage of silver, and opponent of the big banks and big corporate interests.  And a devout Christian, and ultimately, a prohibitionist, and an fervent opponent of Darwinism.

For those of us who look at the spectrum of political ideas and party identification through a modern prism, Bryan is like the duck-billed platypus, part Tea, part Evangelical, part Progressive.  But he is a quintessentially late 19^th Century man of the West, a distillation of the hard life of the farmer, who had fed the Union armies, provisioned the great post Civil War industrialization, and had been left with three decades of declining commodity prices and land values.  The great political historian Richard Hofstadter said that while other politicians of that era may have sensed the feelings of the people, Bryan embodied them.

So, if Bryan is such an antique to us, so unsuited to either party, what can he possibly tell anyone about the future?  The Republicans aren’t listening. This is the party that would be recognizable to Calvin Coolidge; defiantly pro-business at the expense of everyone else, challenging the very legitimacy of any of the entitlement programs, and strongly Puritanical.  The GOP does have a plan; it’s just one that fantasizes about the Sherriff of Nottingham forming a government with Torquemada. 

The problem for the GOP, of course, is that the nation just had their opportunity to embrace that particular vision, and they rejected it.  One would think that might have chastened them a bit, but after a respectful period of at least ten days of Romney bashing (to regain their bearings) they have picked up where they left off.  The only difference is trying to decide whom to pander to for those last few swing state votes.  They have no desire to appeal to anyone beyond that. 

But, what of the Democrats?  If the GOP is the party of the 1920’s, I’m afraid the Democrats are still enamored of the New Deal 1930s.  Meaning that they may be a decade more sophisticated in their thinking, but still seventy years out of style.  If the Democrats think that the Fiscal Cliff, or the long-term economic health of the nation, can be served merely by raising taxes on the wealthy, they haven’t been paying attention to either reality, nor the most strategically important portion of their voting block, the young.

The economist and investor Jeremy Grantham has written a terrific piece, "On The Road To Zero Growth" , which postulates long term growth of less than one percent per annum, sharply rising prices for basic commodities, a declining birth rate and a reduction in real capital spending as result of a corporate “bonus culture” that emphasizes top dollars for management rather than investing for capacity and market share.

If Grantham is correct, then, in the long run, the Democrats are faced with two problems the modern GOP simply doesn’t care about.  The rising costs of commodities are irrelevant to the Mitt Romneys of the world.  Whether a gallon of gas is $3 or $30, it’s not changing their lifestyle.  But they will make a huge difference to everyone else, and their quality of life will erode.  As for the declining birth rate (which just hit its lowest level since 1920!) there simply won’t be enough younger people to support a rapidly aging population.  And the young, socially tolerant though they may be, will eventually have to turn to the party who ends or at least substantially curtails the major entitlements.  The young voter may be willing to honor some of the social contract for a period of time, but in the end, no one permanently wants to pay taxes for something they will never benefit from.

And therein lies an uncomfortable truth for the Democrats; they cannot mistake their success in this last election as an endorsement of their plans for the future; the voters do think the rich should pay more, but they are sophisticated enough to realize that’s not the entire battle.   There is a great opportunity to lead here; to be serious and to do good things for the entire nation.  The Republicans won't.  The Democrats could, but they must be both principled, and practical, and that means abandoning the comfort of dogma.

There is a powerful moment in Inherit the Wind, when Drummond and Brady meet, and Brady recalls their past collaborations.  He asks, “Why is it, my old friend, that you've moved so far away from me?”

Drummond’s reply: “All motion is relative, Matt. Maybe it's you who've moved away by standing still.”

Words to think about as we stare at the abyss.

MM

Fiscal Cliff Numerology: GOP Dilemma

Fiscal Cliff Numerology: GOP Dilemma

Now that all the drama (and fun) of the election is past, our leadership in Washington has to do something it generally doesn’t care for--making the hard decisions of actually governing. 

First up, the Fiscal Cliff.  For a little mood music, cue Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. 

What is a “Fiscal Cliff’?  Well, it is a scary planetary confluence due to occur around January 1, where the Bush Tax Cuts expire, the Federal Debt Limit is reached, and Sequesters start to kick in.  Most sane people think it is a Very Bad Thing, and they aren’t wrong; tax increases, severe cuts in domestic and military spending, and a national default aren’t the best way to start a new year. 

The long term solution is also fairly obvious, but unpleasant.  Taxes have to go up, significantly.  Military and domestic spending (including previously sacrosanct entitlement programs) must decrease, significantly.  And we all have to accept the reality that fooling around with the Debt Limit is tantamount to playing Russian Roulette, except misreading the rules and loading five bullets into six chambers.

So, if the solution is so simple, why are we not getting there?   The short answer is that if there are smart deal-makers in both parties (and I think there are) they are hamstrung by both their personal intellectual constructs and their party’s more doctrinaire ideologues.

Let’s start with the GOP.  In trying to gauge where the GOP’s ideological heart and soul is, I include the following numbers:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	30	9	16	11	3	5
5	23	9	8	38	3	5
8	23	11	5	16	1	27
13	28	10	4	10	2	27
40	23	9	8	6	3	N/A
37	28	12	N/A	N/A	18	N/A
12	38	13	N/A	N/A	32	N/A

Confused?  No worries-you would need to be as much of a junkie as I am to be able to fill in the blanks.  The above are the results of the WSJ/NBC Republican Primary polls from July, 2011 through March, 2012.   In an act of kindness, I deleted all references to both Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman.  Both were too rational and too nice to have cracked 6%, so that left the field to:

Date	Gingrich	Romney	Paul	Bachmann	Perry	Santorum	Cain
7/11	8	30	9	16	11	3	5
8/11	5	23	9	8	38	3	5
10/11	8	23	11	5	16	1	27
11/11	13	28	10	4	10	2	27
12/11	40	23	9	8	6	3	N/A
1/12	37	28	12	N/A	N/A	18	N/A
3/12	12	38	13	N/A	N/A	32	N/A

Those are pretty remarkable results that seemingly speak to the awkward embrace of a party with great passion, but no attractive suitors.  Four out of the seven (Romney, Gingrich, Perry and Cain) held the lead at one point, and Santorum led in at least three other respected national polls taken in February, 2012.  Bachmann, the darling of the Tea Party, led in a poll taken by PPP in July, 2011.  As to Ron Paul, well, he is Ron Paul—you have to love the consistency of his support.

So, where did these seven, reflecting the various wings of the GOP, stand on TARP, the largest government bail-out, and the Debt Limit?  Romney and Cain, being the only businessmen in the group, supported the no-strings-attached bailout for the banks. Naturally, they also opposed the bailout of Detroit for being insufficiently punitive of the autoworkers.  Gingrich was a “no” on TARP who transitioned into a “reluctant” yes. Perry lobbied for it in 2008, then developed amnesia during the debates.  Paul, Bachmann, and Santorum were all “no’s”.  As to the ultimate Debt Limit increase bill approved by the House, Bachmann, Paul and Cain were against it.  Santorum, who voted five times for an increase when Bush was in office, got religion and said he was opposed.  Gingrich, Perry, and Romney found themselves wiggling-all three found a safe haven by claiming they were for “Cut, Cap, and Balance” instead.  Nothing like being against it before you were for it, or is it being for it and against it at the same time?  When asked what the practical implications of their positions were on the debt limit, they all denounced Obama and fear-mongering. 

So, if the heart of the GOP beats for nihilism and economic chaos, what are the drivers that could cause them to make a deal?

First, big business and the financial services industry have weighed in on the debt ceiling.  They want it raised and taken off the table.  These folk aren’t stupid; they bet heavily on Romney and the GOP in the last election, but at the end of the day, they are practical people who are in the business of making profits, and a default would be bad for business. 

Second, the military sequesters make the GOP crazy; they spent the last three months of the campaign indulging themselves in collective amnesia and outrage.  Sequesters?  Never heard of them. Must have been a sinister Obama plot to drug them all and make them endorse bipartisan sequesters after the failure of the Supercommittee.   Basic to the GOP DNA is robust military spending regardless of whether there is anything of value to spend it on.

And third, and perhaps most precious, are the sainted Bush Tax Cuts, without which the very Republic itself would fall.  They have already rejected an Obama proposal to extend them for everyone making under $250,000 per annum.  Unacceptable; the job creators cannot pay more.  Take it from the old, the infirm, the poor, or just the wretched middle class.

And therein lies the problem for the Republicans. Stick to your political religion, block the increase in the debt ceiling, and your primary source of funds is angry.  Do nothing on the Sequester and on taxes, and the military gets cut and the rich pay more.  That should be enough to send a chill down the staunchest elephant’s neck and maybe (maybe) bring them to the table.

As the great 19^th Century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley once said; “The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

On the other hand, Huxley was an early supporter of Darwin, so what could he possibly know?

MM

Maybe Mitt Wasn't Long Term Material

Maybe Mitt Wasn’t Long Term Material

In the National Gallery in Washington hangs one of my favorite paintings, Gilbert Stuart’s The Skater.  Stuart, who is better known for his “dollar-bill” George Washington, was in London in 1782 when the Scotsman William Grant, later a Member of Parliament and distinguished jurist and politician, visited his studio.  Grant apparently observed that the day was better for skating than sitting, so the two headed off to Hyde Park.  Later that afternoon, they returned to the studio, and Stuart hatched the idea of doing a standing portrait (unusual in that day).  The resulting portrait, with a young, vigorous, red-from-the-cold-faced Grant, his arms crossed and looking sideways over his left shoulder, placed on dull and icy background, jumps off the canvass at you.  The Skater was unsigned, and, a century later, it was exhibited at the Royal Academy, where there was a debate over its authorship.  The Daily Telegraph attributed it to the English painter George Romney (really, life does imitate art), but The Art Journal disagreed “A more graceful and manly figure was surely never painted by an English artist, and if Gainsborough were that artist this would be his masterpiece.”  Eventually, Stuart was properly credited.

The other day, I received an email from a friend and reader that reminded me of The Skater, and set me to wondering about the gender gap.   She mentioned that she was planning a weekend with an old boyfriend, and I asked if it were serious.  No,  she liked him a lot, but “he wasn’t long term material.”

At that point, I thought it wise not to ask whether he was “graceful and manly.”  I’ve seen the Cheerios “Shut up Steve” ad and otherwise been happily married for twenty-five years and generally understand the value of silence. But what she said stuck in my mind, and after Mitt made his now infamous “gift” remarks, I wondered if women just had a better sense of what made Mitt Romney tick, and saw something they didn’t like.  Was Barack Obama better Long Term Material than Mitt Romney?

Larry Sabato, of the University of Virgina’s Center For Politics, analyzed some of the election results in his November 15, 2012 Crystal Ball.  Using New York Times Exit Polling data, he created a chart showing voting by gender going back to 1972, when Richard Nixon crushed George McGovern.  The first two election years, 1972 and 1976, shows no appreciable gender gap.  But, with the nomination in 1980 of Ronald Reagan and the ascendance of the modern conservative movement, men were persistently and quite strikingly more Republican than women.  2012 marked the 9^th consecutive election that the Democratic candidate did not crack 50% among men, and in only two elections (Clinton in 1992 and Obama in 2008) did the Democrat even get a plurality.  By contrast, women have decisively broke Democratic in the last six elections.  In 2012, women supported Obama by 55 to 44, while men went for Romney 52-45.  

Why?  Perhaps women are more turned off by the angry edge to contemporary Republican politics. Women are community builders, and this election, in particular, was ugly, with a lot of dark undercurrents.  The GOP, apparently confident in their victory, and perhaps looking to lay down markers for a mandate, spent so much time telling so many people they didn’t want their support that they might truly have achieved an unwanted success.  People believed them.  And voted Democratic.

So, when Mitt made his charming assertion to his big donors that Obama gave “gifts” to buy the election, he was only reinforcing a point that many Obama supporters already suspected.  Much has been made of Obama’s turnout machine micro-targeting possible voters, but those people were motivated, in part, because Romney and the GOP were so open in their disdain.  When you run off a list of all those folk Romney didn’t feel were his kind (mainly, people less fortunate than him and Latinos) and add in everyone else that the national Republican party didn’t care for (any woman who wanted a say in procreation, gays, people who believe in science, etc.) there were, shall we say, a lot of marketing opportunities. 

Perversely, Romney’s post election gaffe is actually a windfall for the GOP, since it allows party spokesman to quickly and ruthlessly cut Romney out of the herd.  Some of this is strictly self-protection: while many leading Republicans agree completely with the substance of Romney’s comments to his high-rolling contributors, they also recognize that the “class warfare” albatross they tried to hang around Mr. Obama’s neck just didn’t stick.  Some, however, is pure animus.  It is astounding how few Republicans really like Romney.   Long time GOP consultant Ed Rogers, who had spent his summer and early fall extolling Romney, was quoted in the Washington Post: “There is no Romney wing in the party that he needs to address. He never developed an emotional foothold within the GOP so he can exit the stage anytime and no one will mourn.”. 

Romney’s comments did, however, clarify for me something I found puzzling from the beginning of the primaries: Why did Romney run away from his past successes and his past positions? The moderate Massachusetts Governor and Olympics fixer Mitt Romney, I thought, would have had the greatest chance of success against Obama.  Why did he tack right so hard, and so harshly, on so many issues?  I realize that he thought he needed to prove his bona fides, but no one really believed him anyway, and it just gave him the appearance of inconstancy.  Why wasn’t Mitt Mitt?

The answer, I suppose, was implicit in his “gift” comments to his friends.  Mitt was Mitt.  He really belives that America is divided up into two groups; the worthy, meaning people like him and his major contributors, and the inferior, pretty much everyone else.  Ideas and positions, whether they relate to foreign or domestic policy, are merely things to be packaged (and repackaged) to win.  

After the Republican Convention I thought that Ann Romney had done a wonderful job of humanizing her husband, of sending the implicit message that she had done well with Mitt, that, on top of being Presidential and graceful and manly he was also “Long Term Material.”  And, for a time, aided by the first debate, the gender gap essentially disappeared in the polling.

But, in the end, the electorate, led by women voters, decided otherwise, and apparently correctly. They knew something was missing, and maybe that was heart.

Gilbert Stuart’s subject, William Grant, never married. Perhaps that’s because a canvass, no matter how vividly painted, is not a substitute for human feelings.

The same is true with an etch-a-sketch.  When you shake it, all you get is a blank screen. 

MM

 

Cancel The Trip: The Echo Chamber

Cancel The Trip To Canada Part II: The Echo Chamber

We are now in Day 5 of the end of the Romney Presidency, and the post mortems are brutal.

Earlier this week, we talked about Romney’s early misstep on immigration, but that’s apparently been solved.  In one of the truly Hallmark moments that are talismans of the upcoming holiday season, several prominent conservatives, including the redoubtable Sean Hannity, declared themselves great admirers of Latino culture.  Antonio Banderas, Ricky Martin (he’s gay as well!!!), Hernando Cortez.  Big tent, Latino vote in 2016?  Done.

Still, that leaves us with 2012.  What happened?   People are asking questions. 

The (really) big donors are wondering what became of their money; many are accusing the Romney team of being incompetent.   If you are wealthy or a large corporation, you might try charitable endeavors and give eight figures to a museum, a hospital or university and get some warm feelings and your name on the marquee.  But a political contribution is an investment, pure and simple, and finding out you spent badly is galling. No one wants to mark to market a losing bet.  There has to be someone to fire here. 

Speaking of firing people, Donald Trump has tweeted urging the aggrieved to rise up, march on Washington, and take back their country from the usurper.  Mr. Trump is apparently still clinging to the delusion that Obama lost the popular vote.

Darrell Issa is demanding an investigation of the “alleged hurricane”.   First witness, the actor hired to play Chris Christie (the original having been sent to an internment camp for the insufficiently loyal and overly ambitious.)

Sarah Palin is perplexed.

And, this priceless gem: “Obama voters chose dependency over Liberty” (Steve King, R, Iowa)

But finally, there is Karl Rove, whose prime time Fox News meltdown is being studied by Method Actors the world over. 

Fear not for Karl.  Plenty of cash, a major gig on Fox, a regular “Opinion” piece in the Wall Street Journal, and an industry all to himself.  Life may be very bad right now, but Karl, it gets better. 

So, why did Karl blow?  Well, losing clearly hurts-particularly when you expect to win.  There were a lot of people measuring the drapes in the White House, and themselves for made-to-measure formalwear.  Karl himself had reeled in and spent $300 Million Dollars, and sat at the very top of the punditocracy as well.  He managed to find himself in a position not unlike Silvio Berlusconi, both making and commenting on the news. 

So, what went wrong?   Well, those few minutes of drama on Fox probably tell you more than stories about ORCA, and the Obama turnout machine, and Todd Akin, and John Sununu and all the other links that made up the chain of the President’s re-election.

Karl Rove was the secret canary in the coalmine.  It’s election night, and the man with his finger in every pie, with access to every bit of exit-polling data, with his vast network of contacts, disclosed and undisclosed, cannot believe Obama is winning.  It’s simply not possible. And Karl is sure of it.

He was not alone.  The Denver Post compiled a map of predictions from 8 conservative commentators, all of who predicted a Romney victory.   Rove had it a fairly close 279/259, but four of the eight (Dick Morris, George Will, Michael Barone, and Dean Chambers) had Romney over 310.  Interestingly enough, the tightest race (275/263 Romney) was Leslie Sanchez’ call. 

Add in folk like Newt (“Romney will dominate with over 300 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote”), Glenn Beck (321-217), Larry Kudlow (330 with a “sweep of the Midwest”), Alex Castellanos (about 300) and Bill Bennett (305).

Some didn’t do numbers, but as the campaign waned, they all closed ranks.  The red meat guys like Krauthammer and Jim McTague of Barron’s slashed away at Obama, while people like Michael Gerson, Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan talked up Mitt’s Presidential demeanor and Obama’s purported smallness.

A few of these folk aren’t experts, and some were just parroting the party line, but most of them believed.  They all repeated the same talking points: the public polling data was inherently untrustworthy because the mainstream media were in the tank for Obama, the weightings were skewed towards the Democrats, Obama could never get the same minority turnout as he did in 2008, Independents were overwhelmingly pro Romney.   

The electorate demonstrated, rather decisively, that they were all wrong.  But why?  It is clear that they didn’t trust anyone outside their own circle.  Selected “reporters” were given diffuse data points by Neil Newhouse, the Romney pollster.  Gallup was rejected when it showed an early Obama lead, and then embraced when it showed Romney with a good margin.  Many relied only on Rasmussen, the public polling organization that mysteriously comes up with positive numbers for the GOP is every election. McTauge dug up a retired Republican pollster to come up with his forecast.  Dick Morris simply added roughly six points to Romney’s totals in each state and declared him the landslide winner.  None of them, for a moment, could step outside the echo chamber to take note of anything contrary. 

They all wanted it in their gut, and they all engaged in magical thinking to get there.  The Obama who bungled the first round of debt ceiling negotiations, and the first debate, was the only thing they could focus on.  Unqualified, mean-spirited, unpatriotic, socialist, weak, etc.  It was inconceivable to any of them that any thinking person not on the dole could possibly consider voting for Obama. 

And so they stayed within the zone, parroting each other’s columns, quoting each other as authoritative, sourcing only from the Romney-friendly.  They closed their eyes to everything else, and, in the words of Peggy Noonan “I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled."

But Karl Rove is different.  The man doesn’t sleep.  He’s not a man of faith, he’s pure operator.  It was his ground game that pushed Bush over the top in 2000 and particularly in 2004, where potential irregularities in Ohio (where Kerry won the exit polls by 4%, but Bush somehow won the state) went uninvestigated.  And when Karl Rove went nuts, and started babbling about how he had people in Ohio on the phone and you couldn’t call the election, a little ice went through my heart.  The Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, has been at the forefront of using any means possible, legal or extra legal, to insure a Romney victory.  Husted had been tinkering with the rules, and the voter tabulation software, literally up to the day before the election. Rove also had friends in Florida (not then called) where Governor Scott was known to engage in some partisan electoral activities.  In other battleground states, Republicans controlled the voting apparatus.  Romney had four planes stocked with campaign workers and lawyers ready to take off.  Karl Rove knew something, and it didn’t jive with what he was seeing on his screens.  Maybe it was too late in the process, maybe there were too many votes already counted and reported, maybe key operatives, for whatever reason, couldn’t pull the trigger.  Maybe it was just shock.  And maybe Obama’s team was just a little too tough, and a little too smart, and had a little too much turnout already public to make it a bridge too far for even Rove’s people.  We are just never going to know for sure.

The echo chamber kept the GOP victory soundtrack going, even in the face of late deterioration in Romney’s numbers.  But Karl Rove knew better.  He wasn’t counting on dreams. 

Karl’s Edvard Munch moment; was it despair, or disbelief? 

MM

Cancel The Trip To Canda: The Butterfly Effect

Cancel The Trip To Canada Part I: The Butterfly Effect

In case anyone took the last several days off for that annual Pismo Beach Beer, Brat and Origami Festival you couldn’t miss, it is my duty to share with you we have (finally) had an election.

Habemus Praeses.  Wolf Blitzer appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the white smoke appeared from beneath his beard, and we have a President.  

I happen to be one of those people who can be extremely skeptical when things look too good.  On Election Night, Romney was refusing to concede.  I imagined his people were on the phone to Rick Scott in Florida and Jon Husted in Ohio telling them to launch the embedded software codes and so I took a stroll to clear my mind.  As if by some unseen hand, I found myself on East 67^th Street, in front of Fox Studios.  As I approached, I saw the flags being lowered to half-mast. 

So, it was over, and a great nation had once again roused itself, marched to the polls, and exercised its unique franchise in a way that confounded many experts.  The skinny but tough guy with the big ears had been reelected.

Since there is an enormous amount to talk about and a lot of information still coming in (such as the fate of Florida, which, to no one’s surprise, is not ready for prime time) and I’m still too keyed up to write completely coherently, I am going to take this in pieces.

I start with the Butterfly Effect.  A butterfly flaps its wings and, months later, and half a world away, a typhoon blows.

Mitt Romney flapped twice, and changed the course of his candidacy, and the Obama’s.

It began with his decision to take the hard and punitive line on immigration during the Republican primaries.  I am not sure what Romney actually believes on immigration, but in public, he was harsh.  He torched Rick Perry over Texas’s allowing the children of illegal immigrants to go to state universities on in-state tuition--even though the very conservative Texas State Legislature voted overwhelmingly for it.  He gave his love to Arizona’s immigration laws.  He offered no real avenues to legal residency, much less citizenship.  And he coined the phrase “self-deport”.  While he was at it, he tossed out a gratuitous slap at the selection of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice.  Tactically, it may have been the smart thing to do.  The Tea Party, which is virulently anti-immigrant in both a physical and cultural way, plays such a large role in picking GOP nominees.  Once in the general election, Romney stayed consistent, finding time to blast Obama in June when the President suspended, by Executive Order, deportations of children of illegal immigrants.  I did find it curious that, given how much tacking to the middle Mitt did on other issues, he and his brain trust never, in any substantive way, revisited that baseline decision they made on immigration, even as to tone.  My hunch is that Romney’s team felt this was a hot-button issue that played well across the political spectrum of blue-collar voters, especially in swing states, and that sticking with it would yield electoral dividends.  It was the wrong choice.  He alienated a large swath of Latino voters, who not only went for Obama by almost 3-1, but also turned out in larger numbers than anticipated.  That proved fatal in Nevada, Colorado, and (likely) Florida.

The second flap of the wings is a little more counterintuitive:  choosing Paul Ryan as the Vice Presidential nominee.  This is by no means a knock on Ryan, who showed himself to be good on the stump, very popular with the base, and credible on policy.  He is well positioned to be a player both in the coming budget negotiations and even as a future Presidential candidate.   But, in this election, he might have been the wrong choice, for three reasons: demography, geography, and policy.

The demography argument is simple.  Ryan is no Jeb Bush, and certainly not Marco Rubio or New Mexico’s Governor Susanna Martinez.  Bush wasn’t going to take the job, but Martinez (although she denied having interest) and Rubio would have.  Identity politics is something that Republicans love to scorn, however, it’s more than reasonable to assume that the selection of either Martinez or Rubio would have scrambled Obama’s winning coalition.  Martinez may never have been a serious contender (one could put her in Mitt’s “binders” of possible women running mates). Rubio supposedly was.  For reasons that are not completely clear, but might have to do with personal chemistry, Rubio didn’t make the “final four” (Jindal, Pawlenty, Portman, and Ryan).  Instead Mitt made the safe and even popular choice within his party, but missed the chance to send a broader message of inclusion. And un-flap the wings.

Geography is also obvious.  Ryan was thought to have significant appeal in the Midwest, but wasn’t even able deliver his home state.  On the other hand, Portman and Rubio might well have swung Ohio and Florida, and Martinez was popular in New Mexico and well known in adjoining Colorado.  While there was a path for Obama to be re-elected without both Florida and Ohio (leaving him with 285 electoral votes) forcing him to fight harder for Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico would have been a distraction from places like Virginia.

And Ryan, for Romney, was the wrong nominee on policy.  I realize that’s counterintuitive; you pick someone for the ticket because he reflects your party’s core positions and is some other way additive.  But Ryan has more than positions.  Ryan has a “Plan”.  That Plan not only eliminated almost all discretionary domestic spending, but also made deep cuts in both Medicare and Medicaid.  That left Romney in an unexpected and unspoken bind when it came to policy. Romney wanted to appear more moderate, but too often, whether it was on taxes, social issues, or entitlements, the Romney/Ryan message was “I can’t give you details, but it will work, and it’s not Ryan’s Plan.”  While that was mostly effective with seniors, who believed Romney’s stated promise not to touch their entitlements, it led to mushiness elsewhere.

Perhaps as a result, Romney never did fill in the blanks on much of anything, and it contributed to the appearance of chronic flip-flopping.  More importantly, I think the electorate was looking for someone to fix the economy and reduce deficits, not to engage in a theoretical economic experiment. Ryan’s Plan was a physical manifestation of that experiment, and Romney, by implicitly rejecting key parts of it without offering his own specifics, took away some of the seriousness of his own approach.  A more substantial, less ideological running mate, perhaps one of the Governors, or better yet Portman, would have allowed Romney to be more positive about his own plans, and amplify his reputation as the experienced grown-up in the world.  It’s fascinating that the exit polling data gave Romney only a thin lead over Obama on the question of who would handle the economy better.   Romney should have done far better.

But, as George said in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” that’s all blood under the bridge.  It is now 48 hours since the networks called the election for Mr. Obama.  The second-guessing is well underway, the speculation for potential 2016 candidates ramping up, and, most importantly, Karl Rove himself has weighed in.

Mr. Rove believes that the President “succeeded by suppressing the vote.”

I think I feel another post coming, but I’ve exceeded my word limit for today.

Next time, with a nod to Karl, “The Echo Chamber.”

MM