Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: US Politics

I'm Not Naive Senator: You're Just Wrong →

These are the words I kept waiting for Barack Obama to say while I listened to Friday night's debate. I lost track of how many times John McCain called Obama naïve, but it seemed like at least a dozen. You can be certain that some Frank Luntz type within the McCain campaign did focus groups and other tests and determined that voters could be persuaded that Obama is "naïve." The Republican logic behind this is understandable. After all, Obama is a skinny 47 year-old who looks younger than his years, has never served in the military and seems to believe that we should take an approach to foreign policy that is less militaristic and confrontational. In McCainland, this makes you naïve.

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What if it Doesn't Come Down to Turnout? →

To some extent describing a campaign as "coming down to turnout" is a polite way for pundits to say they have nothing left to say about an election. More seriously, in every election it is easy to find people from both campaigns predicting record turnout because of an array of reasons. Democratic operatives in 2004 were promising record turnout among the Democratic base for John Kerry, in 2000 for Al Gore and so on. Republican operatives made similar claims for Bush in both those campaigns.

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Why This Election Is So Close →

This ideologically driven and deadlocked electorate means that this election will not just be decided in a handful of swing states, most of which, were also decisive in 2004 and 2000, but that the same types of swing voters in these swing states will determine the next president. While turnout will be important, it will probably be high on both sides due to the closeness of the race and excitement about Obama on the Democratic side and excitement about stopping Obama on the Republican side. This election, which in many respects is like no other in American history, is turning out to look quite a bit like two others, at least in terms of voting patterns and is likely to come down efforts to persuade the same fraction of a fraction of the electorate as in 2000 and 2004.

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Has Sarah Palin Really Shaken Up the Race? →

In the last few weeks the Republican Party has gone back to its base by nominating a right-wing extremist with reactionary views on a range of social policies. They have sought to represent John McCain, of all people, as an agent of change in Washington, tried to build an appeal to voters based on the notion that they are the regular Americans and the Democrats are out of touch elitists, accused Senator Obama of being a sexist for using a common figure of speech and more or less lied about their records and that of their opponents.

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Cynical and Divisive Chutzpah →

You have to give the Republicans credit-if nothing else for sheer chutzpah, albeit a cynical and divisive kind of chutzpah. Facing a tough election campaign with an uninspired base and an uninspiring candidate, John McCain made an extraordinary vice-presidential choice and then rallied the Republican Party to shift their message from experience and character to a nasty campaign that seeks to frame the election, yet again, as being a battle between Americans against elitists.

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Swing Hard in Case You Hit It →

John McCain's decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate indicates that his approach to making this decision falls into the category of "Swing Hard in Case You Hit It." Clearly McCain made this decision based on being taken with the possibility, albeit a somewhat remote one, that Palin be able to somehow change the dynamics of this election and put a fresh, young, female face on what has become an increasingly older, grumpy and male Republican campaign.

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Obama, McCain and Russia's War on Georgia →

While I have lived, worked and frequently visited Georgia since 2002 and have written extensively on Georgian politics, I am not going to address the specifics of the conflict here. Instead, it might be useful to explore some of the questions which the conflict between Georgia and Russia raises for domestic politics in the US. The conflict has, appropriately, led to debate online and elsewhere about the limits, impact and attitudes of American power foreign policy. It has also, again not unsurprisingly, become an issue in the presidential race as Senator McCain has responded with blustery statements stressing Russian aggression and the need to defend Georgia, while Senator Obama has emphasized these points, but also stressed the need for partnership with Europe on this issue.

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This Was Never Going to Be Easy →

During the last week or so it seems like the frustration with Obama's inability to expand his lead in the national polls has spread to pro-Obama quarters where supporters are getting nervous as the election approaches. The election is far from over; and it would be surprising if there are many people left who still think Obama has this wrapped up. However, the news is not all bad. Obama, while unable to move decisively ahead, still leads in most national polls, while the state level data still indicates that Obama will likely win the election.

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McCain's Most Absurd Week Yet →

In the last week the McCain camp has run a strange add attacking Obama for being a celebrity and linking him to the likes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, accused Obama "playing the race card from the bottom of the deck," suggesting that Obama is both a racist and a cheater, because the Democratic nominee suggested, in rather innocent language, that the Republican Party might make try to scare voters away from voting for a Black man, and now run an even stranger advertisement that, as far as I can see, uses faux religious imagery to suggest that Obama believes himself to be some kind of religious figure or savior.

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Will Obama's Trip Have an Impact

The presidential campaign has begun to fall into a recognizable pattern. Every week, Obama seems to begin to appear more presidential and generate good news for his campaign, while McCain seems less able to handle the task of running for president. Each week he seems to make a few more gaffes, get a few more details wrong and generally fail to generate much excitement. Yet, the poll numbers remain stubbornly close. The newest national polls continue to show this race as almost a dead heat while statewide polls show Obama and McCain splitting the likely battleground states. The good news last week for McCain was that he was pulling ahead in Ohio and in a dead heat with Obama in Florida, while Obama had slight leads in key states such as Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado. Obama is still the favorite but the poll numbers seem to be moving a lot more slowly than the campaign narrative.

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Take Me Out to the Vice Presidential Nomination →

I try not to be a myopic New Yorker who sees the world entirely through the lens of New York City, but when I saw Rudy Giuliani and John McCain together at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, it occurred to me that McCain could make a lot worse choices for running mate than our former mayor. Giuliani, is a compelling mixture of positives and negatives and would be a risky pick as vice-president. However, lost in all the obvious negatives is that there is a potentially very large upside to putting Giuliani on the ticket.

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Not Getting Late Early Enough →

This presidential election is beginning to have a strange feel to it. All the big picture signals, the weak economy, frustration with the war in Iraq, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Democratic strength in congressional contests across the country indicate that Barack Obama should be able to win, if not in a landslide, than at least decisively.

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Three Mistakes the Democrats Shouldn't Make Again →

In a highly contested political campaign, four months can seem like a lifetime, or it can seem like just a brief moment. Usually it feels like both. There are a lot of things which could happen over which Obama and the Democrats have little control. McCain could suddenly get back some of his old magic and become a strong candidate again. An event could serve as a rallying point for conservative forces who seem unexcited about this year's campaign. Voters could begin to view the surge and the efforts in Iraq as successful and support McCain's argument that somehow this makes him the candidate best able to finish the job in Iraq. While these are all things that are largely out of the control of Obama's campaign, the campaign can make its work a lot easier by learning from, and not repeating, mistakes from their party's very recent past.

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Are They Experienced? →

The question of how we define foreign policy experience, however, is worth examining a little more closely. Currently foreign policy is experience is defined far too narrowly with credit being awarded for only a few conventional accomplishments. Understanding how the US government makes decisions about foreign policy and having detailed knowledge about the perspectives of people outside the US are both valuable components of foreign policy experience, but the former is usually the criteria used for measuring foreign policy experience. The latter, however, for the most part, cannot be gained once somebody is elected to the senate or holds high office in the American government. Congressional delegations, for example, can be used by participants to gain a deeper understanding of a foreign policy issue, or how the leadership of a particular government thinks, but they are not the same as spending time working or living in a foreign country. This kind of experience is best gained before a candidate becomes a famous public figure.

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Charlie Black: Not Just Offensive, but Wrong →

Recent comments by John McCain's advisor Charlie Black regarding the potential impact of future terrorist attacks on McCain's presidential campaign, "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," are not just offensive and inappropriate, but indicate that the McCain campaign is increasingly out of touch with how American voters are feeling this year. Black's comments rested on the notion that somehow Americans, if they feel threatened, will naturally turn to the crusty old Republican veteran rather than the untested, liberal, anti-war Democrat.

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Presidential Politics After the Clintons →

After a period of a few weeks when Hillary Clinton and her husband had receded from the political scene somewhat, they have been back in the news during the last few days. Party insiders claimed that Bill Clinton was a little "miffed" at his treatment by the Obama campaign, while Hillary Clinton returned to the senate for the first time since ending her presidential bid and made her first public campaign appearance in support of Barack Obama. Clinton's return to the senate seemed to go well, but she certainly would have preferred to return as her party's presidential nominee, rather than just the junior senator from New York.

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Can the Republican Party Begin to Look Forward? →

To some extent the Republicans electoral woes can be attributed to an unpopular president winding down his second term while the country is mired in an unpopular war and the economy is struggling. More thoughtful Republicans, however, may begin to realize that something larger than this is going on. In recent decades, the Republican coalition has rested on three core groups: social conservatives, foreign policy hawks, and small government/anti-tax voters. Although this coalition was first forged by Richard Nixon in 1968, it could more accurately be described as the Reagan coalition because nobody held it together as well as Reagan. Through his hawkish views on the Soviet Union, anti-tax rhetoric and conservative social views, Reagan was able to get elected president relatively easily two times. Moreover, he seemed to effortlessly balance the needs of these three often conflicting constituencies. Wealthy voters who were not social conservatives seemed unconvinced that he was really a social conservative, while social conservatives did not seem to mind that he prioritized tax cuts and building up the military over their goals.

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Is America Ready for Another White Male President →

During the Democratic Primaries, when discussing the chances of Obama and Clinton, with some frequency, the person with whom I was talking would lean in towards me and say "Do you really think America is ready for a black/woman president?" Like many people, I found the former question racist and the latter one sexist. As a white man, I also resented the implication that I somehow understood that America wasn't ready, whatever that meant.

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Running Mates and the New Electoral Map →

The campaigns have an unusual opportunity to define the playing field on which they will play because there are a higher number of potential battleground states, spread over more parts of the country than in recent elections. For example, a campaign between an Obama-Strickland ticket and a McCain-Jindal ticket would be decided in the rust belt, but an Obama-Kaine ticket against a McCain-Whitman ticket might make the Republicans competitive in important parts of the Northeast which had previously been Democratic strongholds while making the Democrats competitive in southeastern states that were never in doubt for George W. Bush in his last two elections. An Obama-Salazar ticket would give the Democrats a chance to make real gains in the west.

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Reforming the Nominating System: Maybe There is No Better Way →

In 2008, Hillary Clinton tested the assumptions behind the primary system, refusing to give up, thus prolonging a process long beyond the point when Barack Obama had amassed a prohibitive lead in pledged delegates. Depending on your views, this can be attributed to her perseverance and commitment or to her ambition and selfishness, but in either case she was the first candidate to do this since the McGovern-Fraser reforms created the modern nominating system.

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