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Why Senator Heitkamp Voted Against Manchin-Toomey

by Elias Isquith on April 25, 2013

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Loathe as I am to link to POLITICO, this is an interesting report on North Dakota freshman Senator Heidi Heitkamp and why she voted against Manchin-Toomey. If we take Heitkamp at her word (and I know of no reason why not to) it sounds like a textbook example of how the enthusiasm gap plays out in-practice:

Heitkamp said that she may have “disappointed” many, but she heard an outpouring of opposition back home that she couldn’t ignore, forcing her to cast a critical vote against the plan.

Asked about polls showing more than 90 percent of voters supporting expanded background checks, including back home, Heitkamp doubted that was truly indicative of public opinion. She compared the polls to her improbable Senate win showing her down double digits to Republican Rick Berg just weeks before Election Day.

“That wasn’t true either,” she quipped. 

I was skeptical of that poll, too; but mainly because I’m skeptical of any poll result that’s at once so surprising and so obviously prime grist for propaganda. (I’m most assuredly not Nate Silver.)

But even if the poll is flawless and a true representation of North Dakotans’ views of expanded background checks, that number — 90-plus percent — is still a big red flag; when support is that widespread, it’s also usually paper-thin. And, again assuming the poll is correct, it sounds like the 10 percent of North Dakotans’ who opposed Manchin-Toomey were a hell of a lot louder.

That’s the thing about American democracy; it’s not a show of hands, but rather a system through which organized people can enact change. You know that overused saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”? Well, never-ever-ever doubt that a small group of committed Americans can dictate policy. Indeed, it’s the only thing that can.

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The Elephant in the Room

by Elias Isquith on April 20, 2013

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If you haven’t heard, the explanation currently in vogue for why Manchin-Toomey failed is one of scope. The president’s simultaneous push on immigration, gun control and gay rights is too much liberalism for red state Democrats to handle. One senator told the White House he could only tag along for one — two, tops — of the three issues. Fortitude is finite, it appears. And Obama’s asking for too much.

Jonathan Chait may not agree with this reading, but he finds it persuasive on the basic political level. Greg Sargent focuses more on batting-back anonymous appeals to “courage” and argues that Manchin-Toomey and the impending immigration bill are both middle-of-the-road as could be:

[B]acking Toomey-Manchin shouldn’t even have been difficult in the first place: “proponents had bipartisan cover; the key provision was written by two conservatives; and the polls were entirely one-sided.”

…

In the case of Republicans, significantly more of them are expected to embrace immigration reform than supported Manchin-Toomey. But of course, this is only happening because Republicans got slaughtered among Latinos in the last election, and know the party needs to repair relations with Latinos or flirt with demographic doom. It isn’t happening because Senators suddenly decided our broken immigration reform system has gotten so bad that the problem must be solved, so they’re ready to take a tough vote to fix it.

Well, the polling does indeed indicate the background check bill was a no-brainer. But as Sargent knows all too well, public opinion ain’t actually worth too much in the American political system. The NRA would be the absolute poster-child for this; what other lobby better shows that a small group of highly dedicated activists is more powerful than an approval rating, no matter how high? So when senators display political cravenness, pointing to a poll showing support is a mile wide — but an inch deep — they’re not totally bullshitting.

Another thing: while Democratic senators have to strain a bit to make this argument fit, the fact is that even if all the Dems had voted for Manchin-Toomey, it still would’ve fallen short without at least a couple GOP votes. And GOPers have very good reason to be afraid to take that plunge; because even if the gun absolutists are small, their influence in Republican politics and primaries is anything but. Until the White House figures out a way to convince Republicans they need not tremble at the thought of displeasing their base, gun control — as well as immigration reform — will be finished from the start.

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It’s The Base, Stupid

by Elias Isquith on April 25, 2012

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Mark Kleiman thinks the recently announced decision by Gov. Romney to give the commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University is a mistake:

[Romney] needs to convince moderate swing voters that he’s not in fact a wingnut but has merely been playing one on TV

The post is sarcastically titled, “Moving to the center.”

As far as moving leftward goes, this would indeed represent a bizarre and conspicuous blunder by Team Romney. But, again, I must repeat: the election of 2012 will be decided by base turnout, not middle-of-the-road undecided voters. The country is so politically divided and ideologically polarized, few people truly live their political lives in that nebulous middle. What’s more, although there are more registered independents now than ever, data and anecdote suggest that few of these voters are actually independent. (For example: me! I’m a registered independent, and there’s as much chance I vote GOP as Ted Nugent delivering Obama’s second inaugural address.)

More often, independents are quite firmly on one side or the other:

But exactly how independent are the self-styled independents?…Research over the years suggests that most independents are what John Petrocik, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, calls “closet partisans.”

“We talk as though these people are strongly susceptible to the short-term influences of campaigning and the economy, and that they are a massive swing bloc in the electorate,” says Petrocik, whose research helped lay the groundwork for the influential 1992 book The Myth of the Independent Voter.

“For the most part, none of those things are true,” he says.

What’s really important in a close election, then, is making sure your partisans take the time to vote (and, ideally, are engaged and excited enough to do some campaigning on your behalf of their own). Independents aren’t entirely nonexistent, of course, and you will need to be at least palatable to a low-information and non-ideological voter. But that’s icing; if your base isn’t excited, you’ve got no cake.

Considering the profound ambivalence most Republican die-hards feel about Romney, speaking at Liberty U — and his recent, comically paranoid pandering before the NRA — makes more sense. Although anti-Obama animus will be Romney’s best friend in this regard, he still needs to make the right gestures and kiss the right rings. Most undecided voters won’t be paying politics no mind at this point, anyway.

(P.S. I don’t think Kleiman is stupid.)

 

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Mike Bloomberg And The Politics Of Gun Control

by Elias Isquith on February 17, 2012

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Mayor Bloomberg is on a one-man mission to bring gun control back from the 90s and once again into the mainstream political debate (up next he will — like the fearless independent, no-nonsense centrist that he is — challenge the nation: Rachel, Monica, or Phoebe?), so this morning he took to the airwaves with some advice for how gun control advocates can one day become the bizarro-world version of the NRA:

“What you’ve got to do is take a look at your Congressman, your Senator, and say ‘Where are you? I’m not going to worry about everybody else. I’m going to work for your opponent unless you do what’s right to protect my kids and the cops on the corner who are putting their lives on the line to protect me” …

Mr. Bloomberg then made the case that Washington legislators should face scrutiny no matter how bad their opponents are on gun control issues. “I’ll deal with your opponent when I get that man or woman when he gets into office,” he advocated voters tell their representatives.

“Because that’s exactly what the NRA does. You say ‘Oh my opponent’s going to be worse for the NRA than me.’ They say ‘I don’t care, we’re going after you.’”

I have not spent a large amount of time delving into the politics of gun control. It honestly doesn’t interest me that much. In the abstract I would support whatever would make it more difficult for people to get the kind of guns made primarily or solely for the purpose of killing other people while leaving the kind of guns that are used mainly for hunting alone. But it’s just so far down on my list of things to do once I finally become Earth’s version of Xenu.

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