"The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology."


Tuesday, February 20, 2007

National Primary Polls

Every day now a national poll of the ‘08 presidential primaries is released for both parties. They are copiously scrutinized, and those within the political commentariat commonly utilize them as bellwethers of the state of the race in both parties.

But I would contend that the probative value and relevance of this data is, at best, minimal, if not nil (never mind the rank absurdity of putting any weight in polling of a presidential campaign still in its nascent stages). A national poll of primary voters is incommensurate to accurately reflecting the race because it is not tailored to the peculiarities of the presidential primary system. Witness the ‘04 Democrat presidential primary, where Sen. Joe Lieberman always topped national polls of Democrat primary voters yet never came close to winning the nomination. When the actual voting occurred in each state he finished a consistent third to fifth place.

The explanation for this is simple. There is no national primary. Each individual state conducts their own primary (or caucus) in much the same way that each state holds an individual presidential contest in the general election.

The difference is that unlike in the general presidential election the individual primary contests do not all occur on the same day. They are held—sometimes individually and apart from the other states, sometimes in a cluster of states held the same day—over weeks and months.

This is crucial. Because momentum plays such a deciding factor in American politics, he (or she) who wins the early contests—specifically Iowa and New Hampshire–generates a wave for themselves which more often than not carries them onto victories in subsequent primaries. This in turn carries them to further victories in the latest of the primaries and eventually into winning the nomination.

It is a rule of thumb in American politics that voters go with a winner, and there is no better way to demonstrate that you are a winner than to actually win.

Accordingly, the polling data from the early primary states serves as a much sounder base from which to make a judgment on the state of a primary campaign. One candidate with national recognition may top the crowd in national surveys, but that will count for little if he does not hold a similar position in Iowa and New Hampshire, both of which possess electorates that do not reflect the national electorate.

This is not to say there have never been exceptions to this general rule. In the ‘76 GOP primary, incumbent President Gerald Ford swept the balance of the early primaries, only to have Ronald Reagan make a late resurgence that would leave the nomination in the air into the second ballot of the party’s convention late that summer. But even here, President Ford eventually did secure the nomination on the strength of his early primary successes, which Reagan came close to but never actually succeeded in overcoming. This ostensible exception is in actuality another example and more evidence of the rule.

It is inescapable that the peculiar nature of the presidential primary system in America inevitably and inalterably frustrates any effort to discern the state of a primary campaign through national polling data. Survey numbers from the early states are the most accurate and most viable agency through which to make this judgment. If you want me to tell you who the frontrunner is the for the nomination I will need you to tell me the polling data from Iowa and New Hampshire, not the national numbers.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Letter to the Editor, THE MAST, for the PLU GOP

When American soldiers are fighting and dying on foreign battlefields thousands of miles away their political leaders in Congress have one of two choices. They must either do everything they can to support the troops and help them accomplish their mission or they must act within their appropriation powers to bring them home. If they lack the will or the courage to do either then at the very least they ought to abstain from any action that could hurt or undermine our men and women in combat.

This Congress conspicuously refuses to follow any of these choices. Majorities in both houses no longer support our mission in Iraq, especially the president’s new escalation strategy, and the preponderance of their rhetoric holds that the United States has no chance of success in Iraq and ought to withdraw "in short order,"as Senator Jim Webb put it.

But instead of enacting the logical action that would extend from this rhetoric, Congress seems intent on taking the politically easy way out by adopting non-binding resolutions which have the effect of expressing disapproval without actually doing anything about it. This is political cowardice in its worst form. As Congressman Dennis Kucinich has correctly opined, "It is simply not credible to maintain that one opposes the war, yet continues to fund it. If you oppose the war, then don’t vote to fund it."

Our troops deserve better than this duplicity. Congress has a clear and unequivocal obligation to make the choice between supporting our troops and their mission or cutting off funding for operations in Iraq and bringing them home. Non-binding resolutions passed in opposition to our mission in Iraq will accomplish little besides sending the message to our troops that their political leaders do not support the mission they are being asked to risk their lives for and that it is doomed to fail. The Congress should not be in the business of cutting our men and women off at the knees at a time when they need the support of their political leaders the most.