On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, PredictIt.com has the probabilities of victory for the candidates as follows. These odds are likely to fluctuate over the next few hours. There is slight share inflation (because of the inconvenience of having money "tied up" on shorting long shots) so prices don't quite add up to 100%.

Iowa Democratic Caucus:

Clinton: .68 (67%)

Sanders: .34 (33%)

Iowa Republican Caucus:

Trump: .66 (62%)

Cruz: .32 (30%)

Rubio: .5 (5%)

Paul: .2 (2%)

Carson: .2 (2%)

The current nomination odds are:

Republican Nomination:

Trump: .47 (42%)

Rubio: .31 (27%)

Cruz: .13 (12%)

Bush: .8 (7%)

Kasich: .5 (4%)

Paul: .4 (4%)

Christie: 2 (2%)

Ryan: .1 (1%)

Carson: .1 (1%)

Romney: .1 (1%)

Democratic Nomination:

Clinton: .72 (69%)

Sanders: .28 (26%)

Biden: .5 (5%)

O'Malley: .1 (1%)

Each individual "market" on PredictIt is a yes/no event; for example, will Julian Castro be the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2016, or will the Republican presidential nominee win at least 370 electoral votes in the 2016 general election. These markets work exactly like a stock market does; users place an offer to buy (or sell) a yes or no a certain number of shares for a given price, and if there is a match for their offer, they end up with a "no" or "yes" share for that event. For example, you can currently buy a yes share of Donald Trump sweeping the first four states (IA, NH, NV, SC) for 49 cents. If he wins all four states, your share is cashed in for a dollar, and if he does not, your share is valueless.

Prediction markets like PredictIt provide an interesting view of the "wisdom of crowds." Nate Silver famously relied on a similar prediction site, InTrade, for his 2008 and 2012 election analysis, particularly in the primaries. You can follow the odds for Iowa and the nominations, as well as hundreds of other markets, most of which are political, at: 

https://www.predictit.org/Browse/Featured

Are Donald Trump Supporters the Modern Day Know-Nothings?

In our reading from Reichley last week, there was a section on a group called the "Know-Nothings," a secret society formed in the 1840s to promote anti-immigration legislation. Lincoln himself was particularly alarmed by the rise of the Know-Nothings, noting that "all men created equal" would change to "all men created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." Reichley writes: 

"Nativism seemed on the verge of carrying the country. The New York Herald gloomily predicted that in 1856 a Know-Nothing would be elected President. Some American party leaders and sympathizers acknowledged that the party's victory in a national election could produce violence."

In 2016, Donald Trump's nativist rhetoric has skyrocketed his popularity and made him the frontrunner in national polls. It seems that many of the sentiments that birthed the Know-Nothing movement are shared by many Donald Trump supporters. In The New Yorker, John Cassidy notes:

"During the early decades of the twentieth century, another big wave of immigration, this one originating predominantly from southern and eastern Europe, produced a fresh burst of anti-immigrant feeling. Something similar has happened in the past couple of decades, following a surge in immigration from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. With demographers projecting that white Americans will be a minority within a generation, nativist sentiment has returned, presenting Trump with his opportunity.
Since his non-campaign in 2012, when he publicly questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States, Trump has sought to fan fears that America is losing its heritage, and that the political establishment is complicit in a betrayal. The image of a big wall across the southern border is central to Trump’s campaign—not just in policy terms but also psychologically. It represents a physical manifestation of the desire to place a large stop sign before the onward march of history."

Beyond the nativist sentiment, Donald Trump's popularity, like the popularity of the Know-Nothings in the 1840s and 1850s, seems to transcend classic geographic, racial and socio-economic dividing lines.  Reichley notes that the Know-Nothings were popular in traditionally Whig states like Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. However, the Know-Nothings also made great inroads into Democratic strongholds in the South, including Texas, Virginia and Alabama.

Similarly, as illustrated in The New York Times's article "Donald Trump's Strongest Supporters: A Certain Type Of Democrat," Trump's supporters are geographically and politically diverse. He has a large following in the Northeast in New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania and in parts of Massachusetts. At the same time, he has a strong fan base in Appalachia, extending from West Virginia and down into the Deep South. 43 percent of Donald Trump supporters are actually registered Democrats. 29 percent of his supports are registered Republicans.

As we go into the Iowa caucuses and important primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, it will be interesting to see if the nativist rhetoric on which Trump relies is enough to generate voter turnout or if he will slowly disappear from political prominence like his Know-Nothing forebears.

Caucuses

The Sanders campaign explains Democratic caucuses:


The Rubio campaign explains Republican caucuses (note some procedural differences between the parties)

Parties and the Road to the Civil War

"A lot of the tea party leaders I’ve met seem to think American politics started with Alexander Hamilton and then skipped, more or less, to Jim DeMint."  -- Matt Bai

It didn't.

  

• Source for the anti-Adams ad: volume: Religion and the American Presidency, edited by Gastón Espinosa
• Source for the anti-Jefferson ad: Connecticut Courant, September 26, 1800.
• Additional sources here.

Aftermath of 1800

• The election of 1800 leads to the 12th Amendment.
• The Federalists fade.
• Burr kills Hamilton (see Reichley, p. 58)
• Jefferson pays lip service to bipartisanship: "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."

Mass elections begin

1824:  The election goes to the House
1828:  Jackson the Outsider

• Not an outsider to office, 
• Crazy person, 
• Ethnic cleanser
• True story of the big block of cheese

1832:  First national conventions
1836:  Van Buren, last sitting VP to win until George H.W. Bush  in 1988
1840:  Whigs win with Harrison

Mass parties, GOTV, and Lincoln's perfect list

On 1848, Rep. Abraham Lincoln (Whig-Illinois) described Zachary Taylor as the ultimate pro-choice candidate:

Now this is the whole matter. In substance, it is this: The people say to Gen: Taylor ``If you are elected, shall we have a national bank?'' He answers ``Your will, gentlemen, not mine'' ``What about the Tariff?'' ``Say yourselves.'' ``Shall our rivers and harbours be improved?'' ``Just as you please'' ``If you desire a bank, an alteration of the tariff, internal improvements, any, or all, I will not hinder you; if you do not desire them, I will not attempt to force them on you'' ``Send up your members of congress from the va[rious] districts, with opinions according to your own; and if they are for these measures, or any of them, I shall have nothing to oppose; if they are not for them, I shall not, by any appliances whatever, attempt to dragoon them into their adoption[.]'' Now, can there be any difficulty in understanding this? To you democrats, it may not seem like principle; but surely you can not fail to perceive the position plainly enough. The distinction between it, and the position of your candidate is broad and obvious; and I admit, you have a clear right to show it is wrong if you can; but you have no right to pretend you can not see it at all. We see it; and to us it appears like principle, and the best sort of principle at that---the principle of allowing the people to do as they please with their own business.

In the background:

• Territorial expansion
• Immigration
• Development of pro-slavery ideology:  Calhoun renounces Jefferson

Do endorsements from party elites no longer matter?

A Politico article titled "Senate GOP grieves over Trump, Cruz as nominee," highlights the complete lack of support from Republican Senators for either of the top two candidates for the Republican nomination, Trump and Cruz:

 "Collectively, the Senate Republican Conference is undergoing the five stages of grief as it grapples with the growing possibility of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz at the top of the GOP ticket — a predicament many members believe would result in sweeping losses for their party in November. Not a single senator has endorsed either candidate, and the universe of potential Cruz or Trump supporters in the chamber can be counted, at this point, on one hand."

If this website is correct, Cruz currently has 17 endorsements from House Republicans and none from senators and governors. Jeb Bush had the endorsement of 26 representatives and 5 senators. Marco Rubio, 23 representatives and 4 senators. Trump has zero endorsements. 

Why do such endorsements matter? According to this New York Times article that cites a book titled The Party Decides, "since 1980, the single best predictor of a party's nominee is the number of endorsements from party elites -- elected officials and prominent past party leaders -- in the months before primaries begin." 

It is a big question whether this will be true in the 2016 election. As we've discussed previously in class, there is no magic wand party leaders can wave to ensure their favored candidate is the nominee. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn put it this way: "I don't think I have the ability, even if I wanted to, to influence who the next nominee is going to be."

The Politico article reports that some senators are still in denial about the rise of Trump and Cruz, with a few saying Jeb Bush can still win. Can the power of endorsements from party elites still triumph? 

Excerpts from "The Republican Party May Be Failing" by Nate Silver

In a FiveThirtyEight article published a few days ago, Nate Silver offers his own analysis the 2008 book "The Party Decides" and its application to the 2016 election. He discusses how the Republican Party has responded to Trump's candidacy, what party elites can do to influence the invisible primary, and why the GOP hasn't stopped Trump. The link to the full article is here.

Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

What power does the party really have?
In the context of presidential nominations, the analogy to “hard power” is rule-setting authority plus control over scarce resources. Modern political parties do have some of this. They control the rules by which delegates are chosen, for example, though attempts to rig the rules in favor of the elites’ preferred candidate can backfire. They would have quite a bit of power in the (unlikely) event of a contested convention. Party elites also have access to financial resources, though not a monopoly on them. The party may own quite a bit of data, an increasingly important resource.

For the most part, however, “The Party Decides” seems to think that party elites possess “soft power”: the power of persuasion. It assumes that party elites have largely the same goals as rank-and-file voters, but are more informed about which candidates to support, leaving the electorate “open to suggestion”:

All of which leads us to reason as follows: An electorate that is usually not very interested, not very well informed, and attracted to candidates in significant part because they are doing well is probably an electorate open to suggestion about whom to support. If, as we know to be the case, many primary and caucus voters are also strong partisans, what they want in a candidate may be exactly what party insiders want: someone who can unite the party and win in November.

This is a plausible story in some respects. In particular, it coincides with the finding that polls are not very predictive until quite late in the nomination race and even then can undergo dramatic shifts in the span of weeks or days. Voters usually like several of their party’s candidates; it may not take all that much to nudge them from one candidate to another. There are also reasons to be skeptical, however. For example — perhaps especially in the Republican Party — there has been an erosion of trust between party elites and rank-and-file voters.

Party elites haven’t been doing much to stop Trump
One explanation could be that party elites are misinformed or confused about Trump. “The Party Decides” tends to assume that party elites are highly sophisticated — able to see past the spin, the non-predictive early polls and the media talking points of the day. But perhaps this isn’t the case. Party elites often have relatively little communication with rank-and-file voters and may not understand the reasons for Trump’s popularity because they don’t encounter very many Trump supporters. At the same time, they exist within the political echo chamber and are inundated with constant media chatter about Trump’s polls and momentum. The party elites may even be engaged in a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: Because everyone thinks that Trump is impervious to attack, no one is bothering to attack him.

American Parties Begin

Overview of the party system's evolution: a cinematic map

In a 1793 letter to Madison, Jefferson lays out the battle lines on France, but really describes the embryonic first party system:

The line is now drawing so clearly as to shew, on one side, 1. the fashionable circles of Phila., N. York, Boston and Charleston (natural aristocrats), 2. merchants trading on British capitals. 3. paper men, (all the old tories are found in some one of these three descriptions).

On the other side are 1. merchants trading on their own capitals. 2. Irish merchants, 3. tradesmen, mechanics, farmers and every other possible description of our citizens.

 
Adams did not actually fire Hamilton, who had left the government before Adams took office.  But Hamilton did eventually attack Adams.

For a drunken version of what Reichley writes about on p. 43-45



Though Hamilton backed the Federalists in the general election, he switched his support to Jefferson when the election went to the House.  The lyrics track closely with what Hamilton wrote:

Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government – Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself – thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement – and will be content with nothing short of permanent power [struck: and] in his own hands – No compact, that he should make with any [struck: other] passion in his [struck: own] breast except [struck: his] Ambition, could be relied upon by himself – How then should we be able to rely upon any agreement with him?  Mr. Jefferson, I suspect will not dare much Mr. Burr will [inserted in margin: dare every thing in the sanguine hope of effecting every thing –]

Party "Elders" and Marco Rubio

In our discussion and readings, there is a focus on the role of parties in elections. This election cycle, the GOP network has a large field from which to choose, and the establishment Republicans in particular are struggling to decide what do to with the support their network can provide. While Marco Rubio is the "establishment" candidate who consistently polls the best nationally, most establishment Republicans are hesitant to give him a public endorsement. In this Politico article, Burgess Everett writes:

"Republican Party elders in Congress have nothing but nice things to say about Marco Rubio, but the Florida senator is encountering a nagging problem — they’re not ready to coalesce around him as the man to stop Donald Trump or Ted Cruz from marching to the nomination.

While Rubio racked up a string of lawmaker endorsements this fall to rival Jeb Bush's roster of congressional backers, his momentum on Capitol Hill has since stalled. His performance in the endorsement game, on the cusp of primary season, certainly isn’t fatal given Congress’ dismal ratings. But it does point to a struggle to be anointed the establishment candidate of choice."

This excerpt highlights how flawed it is to think that the party can simply ordain the candidate they prefer, proving that a party is much more like a network than a hierarchy. It will be interesting to see how the establishment Republicans proceed, considering as of Friday, January 22, FOX News has Marco Rubio polling at 11 percent while Jeb Bush, despite being an establishment favorite, struggles to stay above water at three percent. 

A Proposal about Super PACs

In The Washington Monthly, Nick Warshaw (CMC `09) has an innovative idea:

The private sector can and should counter the influence of Super PACs on our electoral system. To add costs to Super PAC spending, we must apply an old business model, insurance, to a new market vertical, Super PACs. Insurance in the Super PAC market, what would be called “Level PAC,” can protect insured candidates from Super PAC expenditures, reduce the influence of money and politics, and produce a return for investors.

Level PAC’s central goal is to deter third-party outside spenders by adding costs to their spending decisions, creating mutually assured destruction in campaign finance. If a Super PAC decides to spend against an insured candidate, Level PAC will respond with an independent expenditure of its own, attacking the preferred candidate of the Super PAC. Adopting General Colin Powell’s “Powell Doctrine” of using overwhelming force, Level PAC would respond with an expenditure two to three times as large as the outside Super PAC’s.

An Appropriate Way to Start the Class: The Trump Version of Dr. Seuss