Budget Politics and Chicken Game Theory

Think of budget politics as a game of chicken. In chicken, the player most willing to accept the consequence of not veering off is the player who will win -- every time. In other words, the one most willing to destroy themselves is the one most certain to win. In budget politics, this has been Republicans. They've been willing to drive the nation off a cliff rather than accept compromise, while Democrats have been unwilling to let disaster happen. So dems caved to Republicans every time.

The problem for Republicans is that this strategy has burned them once. They have destroyed themselves. Crack up like they did with the debt ceiling and you start to lose your nerve. "All or nothing" doesn't seem as smart after you've learned that the alternative to all is nothing plus a busted nose. Party discipline begins to fray and those who question the wisdom of kamikaze politics begin to break ranks. Meanwhile, the other player becomes emboldened.

Washington Post:

Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households.

Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise.

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Recall Turnout Matters. Where Voters Turn Out Matters More

Here we go. These are likely the final independent polling numbers we'll see for the gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin tomorrow.

Reuters:

Two public opinion polls released on Sunday show Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker with a lead of three and six percentage points two days before the election to recall him because of a new law reducing the power of public sector unions.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm, said Walker was leading 50 percent to 47 percent over Democratic challenger Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in its final survey. Angus Reid polling had Walker ahead 53 percent to 47 percent. Both findings were within the margin of error so the results could be even tighter.

The PPP margin of three percentage points compared with a five-point Walker lead in their survey three weeks ago.

"If the folks who turn out on Tuesday actually matched the 2008 electorate, Barrett would be ahead of Walker by a 50-49 margin," says PPP's Tom Jensen. "It's cliche but this is a race that really is going to completely come down to turnout... This is a close race, closer than it was a couple weeks ago. Scott Walker's still the favorite but Barrett's prospects for an upset look better than they have in a long time."

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In the Wisconsin Recall, It's the GOP Who Are Acting Worried

Embattled Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker knows something that the pundits don't. While everyone else is looking at Walker's single-digit lead in the polls (within the margin of error for most and closing, by the way) and declaring Walker the winner of a contest still a week away, King Scotty is hidden away in his castle. The rabble are much closer to storming the gates than the court seers are willing to admit. His grip on power is as fragile as an egg and must be handled very, very gently.

Politico:

With a slim lead in the polls and just a week to go until the June 5 recall election, Scott Walker isn’t taking any chances.

The Wisconsin governor is running under the radar in an attempt to freeze the race where it stands and limit the chances of a momentum-shifting mistake.

His engagements in public venues have tailed off. Retail events have given way to rallies with supporters at campaign offices. Walker’s passive debate performance Friday, where he seemed more comfortable withstanding rhetorical blows from Democrat Tom Barrett than landing many of his own, offered more signs of his play-it-safe homestretch approach. The governor even passed on asking Barrett a direct question — usually a ripe opportunity to place an opponent on defense for a perceived weakness.

Reading that does not bring to mind the word "confidence."

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'Divide and Conquer' May be Good Politics, But it's a Lousy Way to Govern

The battle of the Wisconsin recall race is a battle over the independents. A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that recall target Gov. Scott Walker leads opponent Tom Barrett 49%-45%. With a margin for error of plus or minus 3.4% that's not so awfully bad for Barrett, but obviously not where he wants to be.

The partisan breakdown is strikingly mirror-like -- 85% of Democrats support Barrett, 88% of Republicans support Walker -- so it's in that narrow middle that the game will be won or lost.

On that count, Barrett leads with independents, 49%-42%. And he slaughters among self-described moderates, 59%-33%. I suppose it's a sign of how stark our political divisions are that the dominance among middle-of-the-roaders makes absolutely no difference at all.

But it does demonstrate just how partisan the support for Walker has become. In ideological terms, he leads only among conservatives and Republicans (mostly redundant, I know).

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In Recall Race, Wisconsinites Just Want to Win

A lot of the commentary on the Wisconsin recall primary seems to be leading to a consensus; that this was a big loss for unions. "It was a very bad night for WEAC and AFSCME," Mark Graul, a GOP political consultant, said. "When a union-backed candidate loses by 20 points in a Democratic primary, you have to question what sway the unions now have, not only in politics, but with their own members."

And other, less partisan observers agree. That Tom Barrett, who didn't have major backing from labor, so soundly beat Kathleen Falk, who did, shows that labor's backing didn't have a lot of influence on voters. Or, if it did, that influence wasn't positive. "This was a major overreach by unions and, frankly, it makes organized labor as a political force look almost like an empty suit," said UW political scientist Mordecai Lee.

I think this overlooks what has become sort of a theme in this recall cycle -- money and ads don't really matter. For example, a recent Gannett investigation found that 78% of all political ad spending in Wisconsin this season has benefited Republicans, yet all this spending has had zero effect on polling numbers. Walker's numbers haven't budged. One explanation (the one I subscribe to) is that the state is so polarized that changing minds is a lost cause -- and that everyone's mind is made up. There are almost no undecideds. The fact that Walker's ad spending hasn't bumped up the needle suggests he may have reached a very uncomfortable ceiling of less than 50%. Or worse, his numbers seem to be declining.

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WI Recall Primary Shows Dems with Advantage, But No Room for Complacency

One of the great joys of following election night on Twitter is watching low-information voters grab onto incomplete sets of data and run wild with them. It's not unusual to see a post declaring a candidate is "killing!" with only three or four percent of the vote in. It really is pretty funny to see.

Following the Wisconsin recall primary last night, I wasn't disappointed -- my favorite election night dumbness ran rampant. For the early part of the night, Gov. Walker had more votes than the entire Democratic field combined. Not extremely surprising, since small rural districts would get their numbers in faster and those districts would be more conservative on average. In the end, Walker did not beat the combined total of his Democratic rivals -- total 670,278 dems to 626,538 Walker -- but I checked before writing this and the "Walker's beating the combined dems!" tweets are still circulating among the wingnuts. As always, the right finds comforting untruths preferable to liberal reality -- and bothering to check your facts just leads to disappointment. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett took the night, but the big news on the right were old, stale, and no longer accurate numbers showing Walker "killing."

That said, the numbers as they are don't tell us a lot. If Walker had beaten the combined dems, then you'd have something to talk about. But the Republican primary was a race between the governor and an old-style La Follette/Roosevelt Republican who stood no chance at all (although he did slaughter the GOP's fake dem, 19,920 to 4,842), so who knows how representative that number will be of the final numbers in the Big Game. We can swap around protest candidate numbers if you like, but I don't think they make much difference -- who votes for those candidates? Does the confuse-the-voter tactic work or do voters cross party lines to cast mischief votes? Probably a little of both, making it impossible to tell where the votes would've gone if the protest candidates hadn't been in the race. Better to leave those numbers where they are and call it close enough.

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For GOP, Blocking Buffett Rule as Easy as Taking Lunch from a Baby

A few days ago, this happened:

New York Times:

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a move to open debate on the so-called Buffett Rule, ensuring that a measure pressed for months by President Obama and Senate Democrats to ensure that the superrich pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent will not come to a decisive vote.

But the fierce debate preceding the 51-45 vote — the Democrats were nine votes short of the 60 they needed — set off a week of political wrangling over taxes that both parties insist they are already winning.

It seems the GOP believes that the Buffet Rule is a gimmick. It's would account for a fraction of the federal deficit -- so why even bother? They argue President Obama and Democrats are just engaging in more class warfare for cheap political points.

So how much would the Buffet Rule bring in? According to the Ezra Klein, "The Joint Committee on Taxation says the proposal will bring in $47 billion over 10 years. Chuck Schumer, assuming the extension of the Bush tax cuts, says it will bring in $160 billion." Call it $47 bil. to be safe. That's the conservative estimate.

"The White House’s opponents... have largely attacked the Buffett Rule for being too small," Klein says. "The Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso tweets, 'I’m sorry, but if the Buffett Rule is your solution to the deficit problem, you’re not even on the same continent as serious.' His colleague, Phil Klein, produced a chart comparing the Buffett Rule to 'Obama’s deficits': As you might expect, the Buffett Rule is considerably smaller. Tiny, even."

And now we come to all the hypocrisy and evil. When you're dealing with Republican arguments, you can always count on hypocrisy and evil.

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Democrats for Santorum

I have a confession to make; in 2004, I engaged in voter mischief. I didn't vote for the candidate I most wanted to win the Wisconsin primary, but rather to extend the primary season. In my case, I didn't vote for a candidate from the other party, but John Edwards. See, the candidate who best fit my worldview was Dennis Kucinich. But, by the time Wisconsin's primary rolled around, it was pretty clear that Kucinich was a lost cause. I would only be casting a protest vote. I wanted it to count for something.

The reason I chose Edwards was a strategic one. I really didn't care much whether it was Edwards or Kerry in the end; both were fine with me, if not ideal (we didn't know what we know now). But I'd noticed that President Bush was dropping in the polls. Edwards and Kerry weren't spending much time attacking each other, but were instead engaged in a contest for the status as the one who thought Bush sucked more. Bush was the one taking the beating in the Democratic primary, not the candidates. Kerry was ahead in the delegate count, so Edwards was the logical choice. Bush didn't win by much in 2004 and I still believe to this day that had that Democratic primary gone on longer, Bush would not have been reelected -- assuming the primary had stayed so Bush-negative. In the end Wisconsin was a close one, but my single, strategically placed vote wasn't enough. Kerry extended his delegate count lead, effectively shortening the nomination process. And you know the tragic end to this story.

I say I was engaging in voter mischief because I didn't vote for the person I thought was best suited for the job. I didn't even vote for the man I thought had the best chance of beating George W. Bush (I thought it was about equal), I voted for the man most likely to keep the Democratic primaries going. It wasn't what the Athenians had in mind when they invented democracy and it probably wasn't what the founders intended either. My vote was based on math. But it was my vote, protected and defended by over two hundred years of heated debate and cold bloodshed, and I felt I could do whatever the hell I wanted with my tiny shred of responsibility in American government. I still do.

Of course, the problem with voter mischief is that it very rarely works. This is because -- unlike in my situation -- it requires you to vote for someone you absolutely do not want to win. Which means someone from the opposing party.

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Wisconsin Budget Kabuki and a Regularly Scheduled 'Crisis'

It's my opinion that the words "budget crisis" should be banned from political conversation in Wisconsin. This state, like many states, has a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, so whenever it's time for a new budget, we're facing a "budget crisis." Every time, without fail. Both parties use the term to bludgeon the other party into submission -- "Gah! It's a budget crisis! Why aren't you helping us save Wisconsin?" -- and the media always plays into it. Face it, "Budget Crisis!" makes for better headlines than "Same Kabuki BS That Happens Every Two Years is Happening Again." If the biennial budget constitutes a "budget crisis," then Wisconsin has had over a century of incredible luck in resolving these crises. We're always on the verge of... I don't know, being a failed state I guess... and every time, we manage to be pulled back from the brink of certain doom.

This is why I don't give Gov. Scott Walker a lot of credit for solving the "budget crisis" with his union-busting and his attacks on the middle and lower classes. Walker has managed to do what every single governor before him has done (some of them less burdened by the weight of intelligence than even Scott, by the way), making this less of a towering achievement and more of just a routine. Scott Walker merely managed to avoid what every governor has managed to avoid. This isn't some singular triumph of leadership. In fact, it may be that in the history of this clockwork crisis, few governors have handled it as poorly.

And with that little rant, I herald in deadline day -- the day the petitions to recall Scott Walker must be turned in. The heroic Walker won't be there to watch them roll in.

Chicago Tribune:

Supporters of an unprecedented effort to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office said they will turn in more than enough signatures Tuesday to force the Republican into a recall election barely a year into his first term.

Walker, however, has no plans to be anywhere near the Capitol when recall organizers turn in the signatures by Tuesday's deadline. The governor is scheduled to be in New York when organizers say they will be unloading the stacks of petitions, weighing a ton, from a truck and hauling them into the state election board's offices.

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Walker's Legislative Steamroller Not Quite So Formidable Now

Tomorrow's the big day. After months of signature collection, petitions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker must be turned in by Tuesday. The call to wrap things up actually came last week, indicating the kind of comfortable buffer petitioners have achieved. There were no urgent pleas to keep signing until the very last second, no big final push, just the message that it was time to fold up shop, to make sure all your petitions are signed and dated, and to turn that paperwork in on time.

Of course, this is the second round of recalls in Wisconsin, sparked by Republican overreach and a union-busting law. The first was toward the end of summer last year, when Democrats took two seats in the state Senate. Republicans, after launching a counter-recall, gained no seats. Democrats had come within one seat of taking the Senate majority, while Republicans had fallen from one seat to three seats from taking a quorum-proof super-majority.

Somehow, this got spun into a win for Republicans. The Democratic goal, after all, had been to take the majority in the Senate. Democrats had gained two seats and lost no ground, Republicans had lost two seats and gained no ground, therefore Republicans had won. "Tonight’s results demonstrate that responsible budgeting measures and job creating policies can prevail over mountains of liberal special interest money from those fighting to maintain the unsustainable status quo," said Chris Jankowski, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. "This tremendous victory is a significant step toward returning government to the people and protecting the hard-working American family and businessperson. By beating back countless liberal special interest dollars and paid supporters, the strength of responsible Republican ideals is obvious and foreshadows continued Republican victories in 2011, 2012 and beyond."

Only in the bass-ackward mind of a Republican is losing two seats winning. And not just winning, a "tremendous victory." Why, it was a landslide! A few more "victories" like that and there won't be any Republicans in the Senate at all.

And now we see what their "win" has brought them.

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GOP Sees All Their Hard Work Pay Off at Ballot Box

Last night was not a good night to be a Republican. Off-year elections in several states went terribly wrong for them, as GOP policies -- when to put a vote -- were rejected again and again.

L.A. Times:

Ohio voters overturned a controversial law that would have weakened public employee unions and Mississippians rejected an antiabortion "personhood" initiative in elections Tuesday that suggested at least a pause in the strong conservative Republican trend that swept Democrats from office in 2010.

In the marquee fight of the day, a successful push by organized labor resulted in the repeal of Ohio's new law that would have sharply curbed collective bargaining rights for 350,000 government workers. The restrictive labor measure had been passed by the Republican Legislature and signed by newly elected Republican Gov. John Kasich, who led the unsuccessful effort to defend the law.

In Maine, a bill that would've ended same-day voter registration was defeated -- by a healthy margin. Russell Pearce, the man behind Arizona's anti-immigrant law, lost a historic recall. Incumbent Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear sailed to reelection. In Iowa, Democrat Liz Mathis won a special election that -- had she lost -- would've given control of the state Senate to Republicans.

Kind of seems like the wind is shifting, huh?

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GOP Disaster Relief Hostage Scheme Backfires

It's all but official; the House Republican Caucus is in a state of leaderless chaos.

The Hill:

The House stunned Republican leaders Wednesday by rejecting a temporary spending bill that would have funded the government through Nov. 18.

The vote failed, 195-230, after Democrats pulled their support for the bill and Republican leaders were forced to scramble for enough votes entirely within their own ranks. Four dozen conservatives voted against the bill because it left spending levels for 2012 higher than the cap set in the House GOP budget.

The defeat hands leverage to congressional Democrats in a dispute over federal disaster funding. Democratic leaders objected to a GOP provision cutting funding from a Department of Energy manufacturing loan program to offset additional money for disaster relief.

The House and Senate must pass a spending bill by Sept. 30 to keep the government running into the next fiscal year. Both chambers are scheduled to be out on recess next week.

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Wisconsin Summer Recall Wrap-Up: Republicans Call This "Winning"

I have to admit, I was prepared to be disappointed last night. After the last wave of Wisconsin recall elections, I was ready for at least one poll to be wrong and for dems to lose at least one seat. Turns out, all my preparations were for naught -- both Jim Holperin and Bob Wirch sailed to easy and comfortable wins. I'm not going to complain.

It's important to remember the rationale behind the recalls. For Republicans, it was their support of Gov. Walker's union-busting. But for Democrats, the recalls were about leaving the state to prevent a quorum for that union-busting. Wisconsin residents were supposed to be outraged that dems had gone "fleebagger" -- by conservatives' argument, leaving the state rather than doing their jobs. So, of the two rationales, one proved weak. After the smoke had cleared, not a single Democrat had been recalled.

While losing is being cast as winning by Republicans and the punditry (the GOP keeps their senate majority, albeit barely), it's important to note that this represents a shift in reasoning; a fact that's not lost on Wisconsin native John Nichols.

Wisconsin Democrats have won the last two of nine state Senate recall elections held over the course of the summer, meaning that the opponents of Governor Scott Walker's attacks on collective-bargaining rights have prevailed in the majority of recall elections and claimed the majority of votes cast in what many saw as a statewide referendum on Walker's policies.

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Voter ID Solves Nothing

In the recall elections last night, Wisconsin Democrats came one seat short of their goal of taking the state senate from Republicans. As the night dragged on, it looked like a real possibility, but in the last hour or so, deja vu set in -- everyone was waiting for result from Waukesha County and that county's clerk, Kathy Nikolaus. At that point, the Democrat Sandy Pasch was in the lead -- by better than ten points -- and then a conservative county's results came in and turned it all around. It looked bad, given Nikolaus's recent history. The leader of the state Democratic Party issued an angry statement accusing the clerk of vote tampering, but later walked that back.

I've encapsulated that moment in history for a reason. Republicans argue that their new voter ID law, which wasn't in full effect in last night's elections, is necessary in "protecting the integrity of elections in Wisconsin." If people aren't sure that some voters are actually legally entitled to vote, then the people won't have faith in their elected officials, because they won't be sure those officials were lawfully elected. Never mind that not once in Wisconsin history has a wave of illegal voters thrown an election. Not even close.

Still, Wisconsinites have good reason to doubt the legitimacy of their elections. As Kathy Nikolaus demonstrates so well, the sheer incompetence of one county clerk can throw an election into question. Today, there are no shortage of people who believe that incumbent Alberta Darling didn't win that race and, rightly or wrongly, question the legitimacy of that election. And in all that questioning, you won't hear the words "voter fraud" once. The worry is vote tampering. And more.

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Wisconsin Recall Update

We have a few hard numbers now on the Wisconsin recall races and, while the news is good, it's not anything we didn't already know. Jmartin4s at DailyKos got hold of some polling from Insider Michigan Politics which finds that Democrats are clear leaders in three races that they're widely expected to win. What's telling here is just how large those leads are:

State Senate District 12-Incumbent Jim Holperin (D)
46.3% Simac (R) 53.7% Holperin (D)
State Senate District 18-Incumbent Randy Hopper (R)
45.3% Hopper (R) 54.7% King (D)
State Senate District 32-Incumbent Dan Kapanke (R)
43.0% Kapanke (R) 57.0% Shilling (D)

Two strong wins and one landslide. One Republican incumbent who was expected to win finds herself in a much tighter race than anyone had expected. Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling recently told constituents she couldn't guarantee she'd be reelected. Asked at a Q & A if she was sure she'd win, Darling answered, "I'm not sure. It's going to be about turnout."

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You Can't Win a Fight by Avoiding It

Last week, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that made the rounds of lefty blogs. Titled Why Voters Tune Out Democrats, Greenberg made the case that Democrats need to make a push to transform both Americans' perception of government and to eliminate campaign finance laws that favor Republicans.

Those are, of course, the broad strokes; his actual suggestions are more detailed. But the core argument -- or, at least, what I took as the core argument -- was this (emphasis mine):

In analyzing these polls in the United States, I see clearly that voters feel ever more estranged from government -- and that they associate Democrats with government. If Democrats are going to be encumbered by that link, they need to change voters' feelings about government. They can recite their good plans as a mantra and raise their voices as if they had not been heard, but voters will not listen to them if government is disreputable.

Oddly, many voters prefer the policies of Democrats to the policies of Republicans. They just don't trust the Democrats to carry out those promises.

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Giving the Center Finger to Centrism

Paul Krugman identifies a problem around which many other problems orbit. I hesitate to call it a "philosophy," because it's too reactionary to really qualify. But the correct word escapes me, so "philosophy" it is. It's the philosophy of those who believe with all their little hearts that the grass is always literally greener on the other side of the fence. It's a philosophy born of wishful thinking.

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis -- a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences -- it's increasingly obvious that what we're looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don't mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.

No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.

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Note to GOP Voters: You're Being Played for Suckers

There is no more perfect example of just how off-kilter -- morally and economically -- the Republican Party has become than yesterday's floor statement by Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Huffington Post:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against beginning debate on a measure that would have the Senate declare the rich should share the pain of debt reduction Thursday, a day after arguing that it's the poor and middle class who need to do more.

"I hear how they're so caring for the poor and so forth," Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. "The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility."

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The Worst Possible Deal?

Let's start with a look at the real world.

Reuters:

More consumers had trouble making payments on credit cards and other debts during the first three months of the year due to higher food and gas prices, an industry report said on Thursday.

The American Bankers Association said the data showed a downturn from prior quarters and described the most recent quarter as a "soft patch."

"Consumers are feeling insecure about the economy and whether their financial resources can carry them through until conditions improve," ABA chief economist James Chessen said in a statement.

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In Recall, Fake Democrats are at Wisconsin Taxpayers' Expense

This is what's known as "fiscal responsibility" among Republicans.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A Republican effort to stall recall elections by forcing Democratic primaries to be held will cost taxpayers at least tens of thousands of dollars, a check of local election clerks shows.

Meanwhile, the top Senate Republican said Tuesday that all GOP recall targets were familiar with the plan to delay the recall elections by fielding fake Democrats in primaries. Earlier, some of those recall targets claimed they didn't know about the plan.

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