Fascinating

Breakdown of the Bush v. Kerry trial heat

I've said this several times before, but the biggest problem the Democratic party has had over the last 20 years is their inability to retain the votes of white men. Clinton was able to mitigate this to some extent. In 2000, Gore lost to Bush 42-53 among men, and 42-54 among whites. The March 8th Washington Post/ABC poll has heartwarming news for Democrats. Among men, Bush still wins, but only by 47-49. Bush and Kerry are tied for the white vote at 49-49. This is incredibly good news for Kerry.

The most stunning number, to me though, is this one: "Who do you trust to do a better job handling - Taxes - George W. Bush or John Kerry?". Kerry wins, 51-43. That's right, the public overwhelmingly believes that the Bush tax cuts have bankrupted the government and are a giveaway to the rich. All Kerry has to do is come out and say "health care for millions, instead of tax cuts for millionaires", have a realistic deficit reduction plan, point out that the tax cuts haven't created any jobs, and he has neutralized Bush on tax issues.

The number that befuddles me is the number for Gen Y. Kerry holds only a 2 point lead among voters age 18-29. That either means that all the young liberals haven't registered or voted (since they knew Clinton would win in 1996, and were turned off by Gore in 2000), or there is in fact a growing backlash to college activism (which is largely liberal). Since minorities and women overwhelmingly support Kerry, this means that Bush has something like 60% or more of the young white male vote. Who are these people?

Other interesting numbers indicate that Kerry's opposition to the death penalty will not matter (80% of the public is willing to vote for someone with whom they disagree on the death penalty; remember, 60-70% of Americans favor the death penalty). Bush's "honest and trustworthy" number is 54-45, and Kerry hasn't even started running attack ads on this number. Bush is doing fairly well for a Republican on "understands the problems of people like me", which suggests all his NASCAR-dad, rodeo BS is working.

A professor at the university of Houston has an incredibly intricate model for the left-right spectrum. If you are curious about mathematical modeling of politics, this is cool stuff.

However, he makes some (perhaps) unrealistic assumptions. The most unrealistic is that members of congress take a fixed position over the course of their career. So, having seen all this, I'm not sure what to make of it.

That being said, there are a number of amusing things to note:

"Baghdad Jim" McDermot (D-WA) represents my congressional district, and is perhaps the most liberal congressman. That's right, he is more liberal than Dennis Kucinich. He battles for this title with Maxine Waters (D-CA, some part of LA), John Conyers (D-MI, Detroit), Bob Filner (D-CA, CA/AZ/Mexico border), and Pete Stark (D-CA, Oakland). Just to be clear, he represents a largely (70-80%) white city with very little in the way of crime wrries and a relatively high income, and ends in the same bucket as the vegan, snowboarding, Hawaii-visiting Kucinich, three congresspersons who all represent an inner city (or part of an inner city), and one congressman who represents our country's border.

To a certain degree, this is strategic. After all, the odds that McDermot would ever lose his seat are quite low; Seattle is a very socially liberal district on everything except perhaps race relations. And while the state hates taxes, I don't think the city does. So McDermot serves the useful purpose of gadfly for issues more mainstream Democrats might be hesitant to raise.

Barbara Boxer, public enemy number one for the Republican party, is perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate. This suggests that a moderate Republican holds a decent chance of defeating her in the upcoming election, though since it is also a presidential election year it may be hard to counteract the Democratic pull of the rest of the state.

John McCain (R-AZ) has apparently lost his mind. After being one of the more moderate Republicans over the past 6 years, he's now one most conservative senators in the 108th congress. This may be due to the Republican co-opting of the medicare overhaul, and being in lock-step on tax cuts, so we may see his location on this spectrum change in the coming year. For instance, McCain broke ranks on several gun control amendments.

Zell Miller (D-GA) is the only senator to cross over into the realm of moderate Republicans. In the 108th congress he seems to be moving further right.

If you're a Democrat, you should be very scared of the alternative budget being proposed by Don Nickels (D-OK). Nickels is one of the top 5 most conservative Senators. His proposals include accelerating the repeal of the "death tax" and increasing federal revenue by cracking down fraud in the EITC (the EITC is a tax credit for the working poor. You only qualify if you make less than $33,000 in wages a year), which has to be the least efficient way of getting money into federal hands I can think of. Thankfully, he's also retiring this year.

Can we please have a return to sanity on the "death tax"? The estate tax--or, as Republicans like to call it when they're denigrating it, the "death tax"-- is a hefty tax collected on your assets after you die. Let me make this clear, the government takes your money after you are no longer alive to use it. Now, certainly, you might want to give your money to your children. But if you're going to do that, you should have done that before you died. I've heard that the "death tax" affects family farms; fine, don't start applying the estate tax until your estate is worth more than $3 million or $5 million. But taking half the assets of the Hilton family is perfectly reasonable; Paris and Nikki can still go shopping all they want with the remaining hundreds of millions of dollars. By the way, lumniaries like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates Sr. (and probably John Kerry) favor the estate tax.

Senator Kerry (D-MA) is smack in the middle of the Democratic party. If he's going to pick a senate member as a running mate, it's going to be someone more conservative, and someone from a red state or a light blue state. That leaves options like Murray and Cantwell (WA), Daschle (SD), Wyden (OR), Graham and Nelson (FL), Bingaman (NM), Kohl (WI), Carnahan (MO), Bayh (IN, and my personal favorite in this race), Landrieu (LA), Lincoln and Pryor (AR), or Max Cleland (GA).

Last updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 05:28 16 February 2005
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