Why I think Christie made a huuuuge mistake

In class on Thursday, Professor Pitney predicted that if Trump becomes the nominee, many Republicans will come out in support of him so that they make the short list for high level positions in a Trump administration.

On Friday, in a move no one saw coming, Christie endorsed Trump.

Here's the conclusion from a Slate article on Christie's endorsement:

"In the end, then, Christie is most likely backing Trump not out of spite toward Rubio (though that is certainly an added benefit), but instead for the same reason politicians on both sides of the aisle make most of their decisions—because it’s in their own self-interest. If Trump really does win the nomination, that’s the same reason we can expect many of those Republican who say they despise Trump today to eventually change their mind."

Though I mostly agree that Christie is acting out of self-interest because he wants a high level position such as Vice President or Attorney General, I cannot fully understand why Christie would risk his political career by being the first mainstream Establishment politician to endorse such a polarizing figure. Assuming that his hatred for Rubio had nothing to do with his decision and that he sincerely believed that this was his best chance to stay relevant in politics, I don't see how he believed that Trump could become the Republican nominee and beat the Democratic nominee in November. Right now, neither of those questions can be answered with any certainty. While I acknowledge that the former may be more likely if Trump wins big on Tuesday, I'd argue that not enough polls demonstrate that Trump could beat Sanders or Clinton in the general election and that this fact alone should make Republicans cautious before endorsing a candidate like Trump.

In my opinion, Christie made an extremely risky bet that is most likely not going to pay off in the long term. Unlike other candidates who can recover from past mistakes, I don't think Christie can recover from this particular one.

Party Organization II

The National Committees

• RNC Videos
• DNC Videos

The Hill Committees

Republican... NRCC NRSC
Democratic.. DCCC* DSCC*

*Chair appointed by party leader

Other national committees

• CRNC
• NFDW and NFRW

The State-Election Committees ARE NOT UNDER FECA

And state campaign finance laws have ... loopholes

RGA

• Republican Governors Association is a 527
• It also has a Super PAC
• And a 501(c)(4)

DGA

• Democratic Governors Association is a 527
• It also has a Super PAC
• And a 501(c)(4)

And the state legislative committees:

• DLCC
• RLCC

But wait ... there's more!

• RSLC
• RAGA and DAGA

Coordinated and independent expenditures

Party Organization I

Outsiderism:  what voters want in a president.

State Party Organizations:

• GOP state parties
• Democratic state parties

Example of state party activity:

"Honest Graft"

Supreme Court decisions curb patronage

The Big Sort

Second Essay, Spring 2016

Pick one:

• Take any significant third party in American history and explain why it failed to attain major-party status.
• Pick any super PAC in the 2016 campaign and appraise its performance to date.  What are its goals?  How well has it achieved these goals?  What accounts for its success or failure?
• Explain one of the following relationships: Donald Trump and the Tea Party, or Bernie Sanders and the Occupy Movement.  To what extent is the candidate the product of the movement?

Essays should reflect an understanding of class readings and discussions. Many resources, including CQ Weekly and Politics in America are at Honnold Library/Databases/CQ Library. You should check other sources as well. See:

• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/elect.htm 
• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/dempub.html

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. 
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Friday, March 11. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

WRITING AND RESEARCH

Left-Wing Outsiderism Through the Ages

Cartoon from the Boston Globe, re-posted on Politico

As Ceaser and Busch pointed out, outsiderism is nothing new in American politics. In many ways, Bernie Sanders is just the latest reiteration of left-leaning outsiderism. However, Sanders is distinguished from recent outsiders like Brown by his significant electoral success, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire. His loss in more demographically diverse Nevada, on the other hand, may signal that Sanders is doomed to follow in the (losing) footsteps of his liberal outsider predecessors. 

Bernie Sanders and the Robin Hood Tax

Bernie Sanders has made it very clear throughout his campaign that he is no friend of Wall Street. His website reads, "Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial decisions while expecting the public to bail it out." Many of Sanders most ardent supporters are drawn to him because they did not see enough discipline imposed on the financial industry by the Obama administration. 

Sanders' anti-Wall Street proposal is to introduce a financial-transaction tax. This tax will make any form of trading- transfers of stocks (taxed at .5%), bonds (taxed at .10%), partnership interests or derivatives (taxed at .005%)-  and ostensibly reduce high frequency and speculative trading, thereby making the market less volatile. Sanders proposes to direct the revenue from this tax to public university systems, making college education free. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this tax will could raise $185 billion over 10 years. This type of tax is not Sanders' invention, and is often referred to as a "Robin Hood Tax."

Unsurprisingly, The Wall Street Journal does not have anything nice to say about this proposal. In an article, What Would Happen if Bernie Sanders Taxed Wall Street, the WSJ rejects the notion that this sort of tax would decrease market volatility and raise revenue. In fact, the article cites studies which show that transaction taxes either have no effect on volatility, or they increase volatility. Though this seems counter-intuitive, "when an activity is taxed, people tend to do less of it." Also, the stock market's value overall will decrease, so the revenue of the tax will decrease accordingly. 

The article concludes, "The tax promises a smaller, slower market offering lower returns to investors. For some voters, however, that might be the goal."

It remains to be seen what impact a Robin Hood Tax, if implemented, would have on the American economy overall. It could have a flattening effect wealth inequality, as per Sanders' intentions. Or it could be meaningless: "[The tax will] induce some very clever financial innovation of how to get around it. The cleverness of our financial engineers shouldn't be underestimated," says John Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. 

Sources:
https://berniesanders.com/issues/reforming-wall-street/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-would-happen-if-bernie-sanders-taxed-wall-street-1455359588

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/07/22/bernie-sanders-doesnt-have-a-case-for-a-financial-transactions-tax-it-would-lose-money/2/#75cf42627fd5

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/12/466465333/sanders-favors-a-speculation-tax-on-big-wall-street-firms-what-is-that

Sanders & the African American Vote in South Carolina

South Carolina will be an interesting primary to watch for the Democratic Party because of its relatively large African American population. Despite Bernie Sanders’ wide popularity at the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he has gained weak support and acknowledge among the African American electorate. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans make up nearly 30% of the South Carolina population, and according to exit polls, they made up 55 percent of the electorate in 2008. In South Carolina, it is particularly unique to see the African American/non-white electorate spread across the state, rather than being concentrated in a few urban locations.

Despite Sanders’ endorsements from African American civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, it will be difficult for Sanders to pick up much of the African American vote, especially with Hilary Clinton’s strong ties to this black community (serving in Obama’s administration, connections through Bill Clinton. It is evident that Sanders has been making an effort to gain exposure, by quoting Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s “I Have a Dream speech” in his campaign speeches as well as focusing his instate campaign in heavily black neighborhoods.

“Irby, who moved to the area about two years ago from Detroit, said she doesn't expect her candidate to win South Carolina, or the Kingstree area. “I think he will get creamed,” she said.”

Sources:  http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-11/sanders-still-introducing-himself-in-south-carolina-where-black-vote-is-key

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/45000.html

Parties to the Present Day

Upside Down

Outsiderism and Jefferson, Jackson, Huey Long

     Outside                              Middle                                                Inside

Left	Jerry Brown Tsongas		Harkin Kerrey
Center	Perot	Bill Clinton	George H.W. Bush
Right	Buchanan	Kemp

"Make America first again."

The kind of Democratic ad you don't see anymore:

From exit poll data:

Polarization:

Affective Partisanship

Polarization of House districts:

Hamilton!

And irelation to no one in particular...

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 1: "A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."

Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787: "An influential demagogue will give an impulse to the whole. Demagogues are not always inconsiderable persons. Patricians were frequently demagogues."

Parties to the Present Day

Party Identification shift
Demographics from exit poll

Three Big Changes

1.Regional Shift

• Presidential Elections
• House 
• Senate

2.The Cold War ends.
Defense as a Percentage of GDP



3.  Immigration


Trends Since 1992


Upside Down

Outsiderism and Jefferson, Jackson, Huey Long

     Outside                              Middle                                                Inside

Left	Jerry Brown Tsongas		Harkin Kerrey
Center	Perot	Bill Clinton	George H.W. Bush
Right	Buchanan	Kemp

In the Shadow of FDR

FDR was not above hardball politics:





1948:  The Classic Rowe/Clifford Strategy Memo to Truman



Air conditioning and the GOP

The 1960 election

• A glance at the past
• Harry Belafonte ad
• Jackie Kennedy in Spanish

Race and the vote through 1968

		1952	1956	1960	1964	1968
White	R	57	59	51	41	47
	D	43	41	49	59	38
Nonwhite	R	21	39	32	6	13
	D	79	61	68	94	87

To 2012

		1972	1976	1980	1984	1988	1992	1996	2000	2004	2008	2012
White	R	67	52	56	64	59	40	46	54	58	55	59
	D	31	47	36	35	40	39	43	42	41	43	39
Black	R	18	16	11	9	12	10	12	8	11	4	6
	D	82	83	85	90	86	83	84	90	88	95	93
Hispanic	R	35		35	37	30	25	21	35	44	31	27
	D	63		56	62	69	61	72	62	53	67	71

Finding Unity in the Republican Party

With Obama's new budget on the horizon, House Republicans need to find common ground. Two Politico articles speak to Paul Ryan's need to create conservative unity, not only generally, but also in terms of the budget. As we have discussed in class, the Freedom Caucus continues to divide the GOP legislatively. Below are some excerpts on how the Republican Party needs to be realistic about what it can accomplish:

"We can’t promise that we can repeal Obamacare when a guy with the last name Obama is president," Ryan (R-Wis.) plans to tell the Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit, according to excerpts from his remarks." All that does is set us up for failure . . . and disappointment . . . and recriminations."

“I don’t want to set us up for failure," Ryan plans to say Wednesday morning. "I want to set us up for success. That’s something we all can work on — together. And the way to do that is to unify around a vision. We need to define the horizon we’re aiming for. And then we need to bring the rest of the country with us."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/paul-ryan-conservative-unity-heritage-action-218665#ixzz3zhN8XU00

A separate article on the budget dives further into the division in the party: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/paul-ryan-freedom-caucus-218646. 

Hillary Clinton's Political Machine

I was reading an article titled, "Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Have Defeated Hillary Clinton's Political Machine" in the Huffington Post this evening and thought these few lines were particularly interesting:

Hillary Clinton's political machine, which runs on a peculiar form of "honest graft,"as stated by Walter Russell Mead, has been undermined by a political revolution within the Democratic Party, and within American politics.

In class, we read about political machines such as Tammany Hall that controlled the political process in major cities by helping new immigrants in America. I thought the use of the word "Political Machine" to describe an individual person was an interesting take on the topic.

Below is an excerpt of what Mead means when he says "Hillary Clinton's Political Machine":

The Clintons stand where money, influence, and celebrity form a nexus. When Hillary Clinton was running the State Department and Bill Clinton was shaking down contributors to the Foundation, the donors knew, or thought they knew, what they were getting. Now that Hillary is running for President, the donors have an even better idea of what good things might come to them—or what problems and complications could develop if they cut the Clintons off.

I don’t say that the Clintons are breaking the law, at least as far as the basic principles of the machine go. As Tammany Hall’s George Washington Plunkett once said, there is such a thing as “honest graft.” In the old fashioned political machine, that meant that you only take money from the group you had already decided on legitimate grounds would get the contract. The new machine offers even more opportunities for honest graft than the old kind.

The machine gathers the cash that provides perches and incomes to Clinton loyalists; the loyalists keep the publicity machine pumping, keep the networks of contacts and patronage refreshed throughout the vast Clinton network, and staff what amounts to a permanent campaign. This is what party machines used to do: provide incomes for the army of operatives who would jump into action to make sure the machine stayed in office.

But the cash doesn’t come from a system of payoffs that go all the way from the cop on the beat up to the Board of Aldermen and the Mayor. The cash comes from donations and speaking fees. When the husband of the Secretary of State or potential next President calls about a special charity project, most people, even if they happen to be CEOs of major companies or senior government officials, take the call. More than that, there will be times when government and corporate officials will reach out and make the call themselves, rather than waiting passively to hear that the Clinton machine has an ask.

World Wars, World Crises

From Reichley, p. 194:

...........................................Intervention........Isolation
National Interest.................TR......................Lodge
International Altruism........Wilson...............LaFollette

An actual realignment:

Presidential elections
Congressional party divisions

The New Deal Party System

FDR Inaugural:

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. ... Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. 

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
....
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors. 

.... This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. 

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. 

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption. 

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

Gene Healy on Gabriel Over the White House from Cato Institute on Vimeo.

(Sorry, offensive word in the credits for the clip below.)

Mrs. Roosevelt for JFK

First Essay, Spring 2016

Pick one:

• See the Beinart and Judis articles on the syllabus.  Which one is right?
• Read the analysis of "outsiderism" in Ceaser and Busch. Compare and contrast Sanders and Trump to the "outsiders" of 1992.  How has "outsiderism" changed in the past 24 years?  How has it remained the same?
• Pick any chapter in the Reichley book.  Write an update, taking account of developments during the 21st century, as well the perspective that an additional 16 years provides.  In light of what we now know, do any of his observations require revision?

Essays should reflect an understanding of class readings and discussions. Many resources, including CQ Weekly and Politics in America are at Honnold Library/Databases/CQ Library. You should check other sources as well. See:

• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/elect.htm 
• http://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/dempub.html

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. 
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 5 PM, Friday, February 19. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

WRITING AND RESEARCH

An Example of a Campaign Appeal

Thanks to Hannah Hummelberg:

Maggie Hassan is the Democratic governor of New Hampshire, running for the Senate against incumbent Kelly Ayotte.  What is she doing with this Instagram post?  To whom is she appealing?

"A Dozen Guys"

Jonah Goldberg writes:

My old boss, the late Ben Wattenberg, was a conservative Democrat who worked for decades to keep his party from drifting leftward. In the end, he failed. But he fought a valiant fight. He helped found the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, which was a kind of precursor to the Democratic Leadership Council, the “New Democrat” organization that helped Bill Clinton burnish his image as a more conservative, “different kind of Democrat.”

I remember asking Ben on more than one occasion why the Democratic Party would allow this or that thing to happen. He’d always respond pretty much the same way. “What Democratic Party? The Democratic Party is a dozen people with fax machines.”

Ben’s point was that the image of the Democratic Party as some formidable organization with legions of political henchmen and bosses capable of imposing their will on the rank-and-file was a leftover from a bygone era.

I think about my conversations with Ben a lot these days. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, who isn’t even a member of the Democratic Party, is the runaway favorite of the party’s liberal base. Donald Trump, an ideologically unmoored billionaire who has changed his party registration five times since 1987 and donated substantial sums to Democrats, has been the Republican front-runner since this summer.

From the Civil War to World War I

Iowa results

Lincoln: "I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men." (See Reichley, p. 103).  Meaning?











1892 and the Populists

Free Silver