You may have come across a recent poll by EPIC-MRA showing Ralph Nader with 8% of the presidential vote in Michigan, and a narrative that attributes this result to dissatisfaction over the Michigan primary. Here's why that argument is flawed:

1) EPIC-MRA has a track record inaccuracy, most recently ranking dead last in predicting the outcome of the MI GOP primary.
2) EPIC-MRA didn't disclose methodological details like question wording, as firms who release their results to the media ought to do. Most importantly, which candidates were offered as possible choices to respondents?
3) Even if this result were true, without further data it is difficult to claim that the Michigan primary controversy caused people to prefer Nader. Were self-identified Democrats who picked Nader even aware of the Michigan primary issue?

Why talk about the war or the economy when we have such important issues like "Bitter gate" and how Hillary laughs?

From Bruce Timm, Kevin Conroy, and a really talented group of writers. That animation looks stunning.

When thinking about building public support for withdrawal from Iraq, voters fall into three groups: 1) people who favor withdrawal, 2) people who oppose or are ambivalent about withdrawal, but have negative feelings about the war, and 3) people who oppose withdrawal, and have positive feelings about the war. Many voters think the war is going poorly or dislike the war, but aren't convinced that withdrawal is the right solution. Consequently, we've seen many Democratic leaders equivocate on their opposition to the war.

Using the Pew July 2007 Political Survey data, we can view the proportion of the public that falls into each group:

One way to intensify pressure on elected officials to push for a speedy withdrawal is by increasing public support for withdrawal. We have the 54% who support withdrawal on our side, and will have the most difficult time convincing the 27% who both oppose withdrawal and believe that the war is going well (this group is mostly self-identified Republicans). So, in order to build public support for withdrawal, we need to persuade the 19% who currently oppose withdrawal but think the war is going poorly.

This approach raises a couple questions. If these 19% think the war is going poorly, which should imply that the United States isn't currently achieving its political objectives, why don't they want to withdraw? How can we convince this group to support withdrawal? Although we can't use this data to determine what causes people to "move" in favor of withdrawal, here's what I think is going on:

This group's reluctance to support withdrawal may be because their dislike for the war is complicated by Bush's rationales for staying in Iraq: that withdrawal would cause a civil war that would draw the entire region into conflict, and that withdrawal would make Iraq an Al Qaeda stronghold. These assumptions are often repeated uncritically in the media and are probably salient considerations for many people when they form their position on withdrawal.

Here's each group's responses to the question "If the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq over the coming year, would it INCREASE, DECREASE or have no effect on the chances that Iraq would go into a full scale civil war?":

Here's each group's responses to the question "If the U.S. withdraws its troops from Iraq over the coming year, would it INCREASE, DECREASE or have no effect on the chances that al Qaeda would establish terrorist bases in Iraq?":

("Other" was not offered by the interviewers as a possible response for either question)

One might expect the group of 19% to be less open to these rationales, but that isn't the case. People who oppose withdrawal overwhelmingly accept these two rationales regardless of how well they think the war is going, whereas people who support withdrawal do not. For the 19% who oppose withdrawal but think the war is going poorly, these considerations may be stronger than their negative impression of the war, which could be what caused them to articulate that they opposed withdrawal.

The problem with these rationales to oppose withdrawal is that they are wrong, and are justifications to continue a flawed foreign policy. I'll leave it to smarter foreign policy minds to explain why responsible withdrawal from Iraq won't further inflame Shiite-Sunni tensions or leave an Al Qaeda stronghold in the long term.

Ending the war responsibly entails challenging these false assumptions, particularly by fighting the media conventional wisdom that contributes to much of the public believing them. The Bush administration has put forward, and the media has largely accepted, a series of false choices involving worst-case scenarios when it comes to Iraq. They claimed that either we invade Iraq, or Saddam Hussein will use WMDs. Now, they assert that either we stay in Iraq, or the terrorists will come after us here. If we want to build public support for withdrawal, we need to challenge these false choice scenarios that contribute to confused feelings about Iraq.

Disclaimers about the data:

• I used the most recent Pew data available to the public on Iraq, which is from last summer. Given the recent increase in violence, public attitudes on Iraq may have changed since then.

• I included the few people who answered that they didn't know whether they favored withdrawal in the "does not favor withdrawal" category, because withdrawal is the change in the status quo we're interested in, whereas a lack of an opinion is not.
• The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations of the data presented in the post.

I'm at the Take Back America conference, where ten congressional candidates are announcing "A Responsible Plan To End The War In Iraq" (details here). Anytime around 5:30pm, you can watch the announcement streamed live here:

This initiative is important because it offers a concrete plan to leave Iraq, and creates a path politically to make it happen. It aims to achieve an end to the Iraq war in a safe and responsible manner by setting a firm deadline for troop drawdown, removing all residual troops, and engaging the surrounding nations diplomatically to ensure Iraq's long-term stability. It also restores transparency and our constitutional checks and balances so that a similar debacle will never happen again.

Politically, the plan will be effective because it creates political momentum and challenges the fundamental framework that the media uses when discussing the war. Congressional candidates who support this plan will be rewarded by activists (volunteers/fundraising), which is an incentive to sign on. If the initiative is defeated or vetoed now, we can take that to voters as an argument for why we need change in Congress. Most importantly, when these challengers get elected in November 2008, it offers a clear mandate to enact the plan in 2009.

I'd encourage our Congressional challengers to sign on to this plan. More info will be available at ResponsiblePlan.com. I'll also be blogging more about this in the context of Michigan politics in a few days.

I'm at the Take Back America conference in DC with a bunch of local bloggers and others. I'll be twittering it live here.

Watch this space at 5:30... big announcement coming about an important campaign:

Today, I had the opportunity to see a presentation by Cliff Schecter on how to handle media appearances against conservative commentators. Cliff showed some examples of media appearances that are particularly instructive (and entertaining). In each video, the progressive kept their cool, stayed on the attack, displayed a superior knowledge of the facts, and used humor to convey how ridiculous the other side's argument was. Enjoy:

JAN080041 SERENITY BETTER DAYS #1 (OF 3)
JAN080155 BOOSTER GOLD #7
DEC070188 COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #6 (OF 8)
JAN080251 DMZ #29 (MR)
JAN080183 GREEN LANTERN CORPS #22
JAN080193 WONDER WOMAN #18
DEC072175 AVENGERS INITIATIVE #10
JAN082172 NOVA #11

Joe Trippi today:

In 1976 and 1980 we had fights that went to the convention. In 1976 it was Ford and Reagan fighting it out and Jimmy Carter became president. In 1980 it was Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter and Reagan became president. History says you don't want to campaign into the convention, even if McCain will be carrying George Bush's baggage.

J-Ro two days ago:

Since 1972, when a party has let their primary go on until the convention, they have lost 100% of the time. Even when the primary was relatively open on both sides with no incumbent running - as it 1976 and 1988 - the party that let their fight go on until the convention lost.

If you're in DC or planning on being in DC next week, you should register for Take Back America. I think it'll be fun. I'll be there on "Blogger Blvd." with the folks from The Seminal and some others. I heard that a bunch of local bloggers will be there from across the country too, which will be awesome. If not liveblogging, I'll at least be Twittering it (I know, I finally signed up for Twitter, lame).

I've never been before, but here are some highlights from previous years:

I particularly liked Sen. Russ Feingold's comments from 2006:

Anyway, give me a shout if you'll be there.

For the two people who read this blog and care, I'm now a frontpager on Open Left and The Seminal. I'm really excited (and a little terrified) about both opportunities. I'm also now a guest poster at Michigan Liberal, rather than a full time frontpager (which has been true for quite some time). Functionally my relationship hasn't changed with The Seminal or ML.

My posts at The Seminal here, at Open Left here, and at Michigan Liberal here.

Here's what the Congressional Democratic "leadership" is enabling by allowing retroactive immunity to pass:

The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans' telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.

...

it was caused, in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal client data than was requested. (emphasis added)

Aside from the horrifying precedent this creates (and it's clear that the Democratic leadership doesn't care about that), I don't think it makes strategic sense to capitulate on this.

There isn't a lot of opinion data in the public domain on FISA and virtually nothing on retroactive immunity specifically. My sense is that there's little awareness among the public about retroactive immunity, and that most people lack meaningful opinions on FISA. However, we know that when probed after being given context for the issue, most people would oppose retroactive immunity. There is clearly room to define the public's attitudes here.

People are, unfortunately, usually not very concerned about their own privacy. Still, there's some indication that people react strongly against entities that give out their personal information without their permission. If Democrats activate these feelings, they can turn the fight against retroactive immunity into a winning issue.

In the absence of hard data, the strong emotional reaction that people felt toward the initial version of the Facebook "News Feed" is a good case study of this dynamic. For those who don't know/remember, Facebook's first version of their news feed aggregated users' activities on the site and broadcast them to their friends. Although this didn't change anything about how user data was collected or stored, it did fundamentally change the way the data was accessed. People were outraged at the way their behavior was being broadcast, and opposition culminated in negative media attention and a protest group numbering almost 700,000 members. Facebook finally caved into user demands and built more nuanced privacy settings into the News Feed.

Let's think about what happened as it relates to individual notions of privacy. Users were perfectly happy to give away their personal information for Facebook to use as they saw fit. It's only when people lost control of how their data was being distributed, and were conscious that they lost control of this process, that the site raised a gut level red flag.

Given that the telecom companies are flagrantly violating the privacy of their customers, that the public is open to adopting our attitudes on retroactive immunity, and that people get upset when they are conscious that their own privacy is being violated by trusted external entities, an argument against retroactive immunity could be a compelling message to voters.

Yes, there are going to be 30 second campaign commercials attacking Congressional Democrats who stand up on this issue for being godless terrorist lovers. Still, there's an opportunity here to define the framework for this discussion, instead of running scared from ads that are going to be run against us anyway. We've seen that pro-civil liberties candidates can win tough races centered around national security. The "leadership" needs to think hard about finding a more effective way to deal with this issue, instead of continuing to capitulate while behaving in bad faith with activists.

Here's candidate support among Democratic primary voters who cited the Iraq war as their most important issue (from the exit polls):

Now that Obama has been pushing harder against Hillary on her vote to authorize the war, it will be interesting to compare these results to how he performs with the same group of voters tonight. It is imprecise because the dynamics of the race are different in each state, examining Democratic primary voters who cited the war as their top issue is a weak proxy for individuals who are strongly opposed to the war, and we don't have enough states spread across enough dates to get a good sense of what is going on.

We can get a better sense of how things are changing by comparing how Obama performs vs. Clinton with voters who cited the Iraq war as their top issue to how Obama performs vs. Clinton among all voters in each state. In other words, we want to know how Obama has performed with this group relative to how he does with all voters over time (click for larger image):

So far he's not increasing his share of the anti-war vote relative to his overall performance, we'll know if that has changed in a few hours.

We've often heard the argument that because Democratic primary participation is disproportionately higher in a particular state, Democrats stand a chance of performing better in that state in the general election. After Alex Thurston made this argument about the upcoming Oklahoma Senate race, I decided to find out if this claim is actually true.

To validate this argument, we want to compare the percentage Democratic primary turnout (out of the total primary turnout) to the performance of the Democratic presidential candidate in the general election for each state. To account for crossover voters, it makes sense to only consider state primaries that were competitive on both sides. For simplicity's sake I decided to look at the 2000 election, but the 1988 election would work as well. Data and full details on how I selected the states here.

Here are the states with competitive primaries:

Clearly, in 2000 there was a correlation between partisan turnout in competitive primaries and the general election outcome in those states. A linear regression with 2000 Gore performance as the dependent variable has an R-Squared value of .829 and a p-value less than 0.001, which indicates that there is a strong linear relationship.

Given that, this year's primary turnout in states that were competitive on both sides may be a useful input when determining which states are going to be "swing states" in the general election.

Another argument, that Democrats will do better in the upcoming general election because Democratic primary turnout is higher nationally this year than in previous years, is harder to validate. As Matt Stoller pointed out, this is because there have been too few competitive primaries on both sides since the McGovern reforms to begin making that judgment. Once we know the 2008 general election results, we can start to think about this by examining the turnout in competitive primaries in 1988, 2000, and 2008.

...how Hillary's e-mail list would perform for Obama (in terms of both fundraising and "actions" taken) were he to become the nominee. Conversely, I'd be interested in how Obama's e-mail list would perform for Hillary were she to become the nomine.