Lieberman and (Reverse?) Anti-Semitism

Jonathan Chait suggests that Joe Lieberman, much evidence to the contrary, is not really vindictive. Rather, he's just kinda dumb, which explains why he makes lots of claims that are totally unfounded or self-contradicting. The key, though, as Chait explains, is that the media treat Lieberman as intelligent because he's Jewish. A gentile making the same claims would be criticized as stupid.

This is a fun explanation, but I don't think it's true. John McCain is treated as an expert on many budgetary issues despite having no clear understanding of them. Olympia Snowe doesn't strike me as dim, but she's often treated as having some high principles of moderation even though she pretty much just wants to split the difference between the two parties. Bob Kerrey famously wandered around the Capitol deciding whether to vote for Clinton's first budget and was heralded as a sage for it. You don't need to be a Jew to get an undeserved reputation as a wise thinker in Washington. Being a centrist or a maverick is often enough. Lieberman fits this media narrative nicely.

My first book review

And it's a good one! By Matt Levendusky, forthcoming from Public Opinion Quarterly.

Colorado voter registration

Fred Brown had a column in yesterday's Denver Post arguing that Democrats are still looking good in Colorado.

Despite their president's many problems, despite the angry town hall meetings, the poisonous partisanship in Congress, the Tea Party movement and the "birther" billboards, Democrats continue to gain numbers in Colorado.

Since August, in fact — the month of those town hall near-riots — Colorado Democrats have managed to gain slightly each month. There are currently about 10,000 more of them than Republicans.

Let's look at the numbers, shall we? If you look at the total number of registered voters, there's remarkable stability over the past few months. And yes, the Democrats are maintaining a marginal advantage, although unaffiliated voters outnumber those of both parties.

But look at the breakdown among active voters (defined as those who voted in the most recent November election):

Most notable is the dropoff in December. This is due to the re-calculation of "active" status after November's election. Far fewer people voted this November than last November. What's also notable is that Republicans have maintained an advantage among active voters, even coming off 2008. And that advantage grew after last month's election, demonstrating that far more Republicans than Democrats turned out last month.

I don't know how incredibly meaningful any of this is. If voter registration determined electoral victories, Democrats nationwide would have held the presidency from 1932 to the present day. (Indeed, Brown reminds us that Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 165,000 voters in November of 2006, the month that the Democrats took over the governor's mansion.) Meanwhile, within Colorado, the number of unaffiliated active voters is roughly 25 times the size of the difference between the two major parties' active registrants. So these stats shouldn't be particularly comforting to either party.

But let me quibble with one of Brown's claims:

In such an evenly split political environment, candidates are wise to avoid the "wedge" issues. Strong positions on abortion, immigration, guns and gay marriage might fire up the fervid bases, right and left, but they turn off the moderate middle.

I think there's a misunderstanding of wedge issues here. Brown seems to be describing wedge issues as stances that your base likes but moderate voters detest. But that's not really what they are. As Sunshine Hillygus and Todd Shields explain in The Persuadable Voter, a wedge issue is one that keeps your coalition together but pulls over a few voters from the other side. And sometimes campaigns approach these issues in a very targeted manner. An evenly split political environment is precisely the environment in which wedge issues are employed. These issues won't work as well in an environment (like 2008) in which everyone is focused on just one issue (the economy), but when different groups of voters care about different sets of issues, it's possible for a campaign to pick apart the opposing campaign's coalition through the use of wedge issues.

Can one get a low-cost espresso machine that works?

I'm thinking of getting a new espresso machine, although I want to go cheap on this since I won't use it every day. In her indispensable holiday foodie gift guide, Megan McArdle says that's a mistake:

If you're not willing to pay upwards of $500 for something that can consistently deliver 15 bars of pressure, don't do it. You're essentially making very strong coffee, which is more cheaply and conveniently done by doubling the amount of coffee in your normal coffee machine.

And yet the reviews for this $40 machine are quite positive. Anyone have any experience in this area?

Compost Lieberman

I try to be mindful of the idea that we should not take politicians' statements at face value in the middle of negotiations. I have also long been a defender of Democratic leaders' efforts to keep Joe Lieberman in the Democratic fold despite his obnoxious behavior. But now he has promised to filibuster health care reform even after concessions have been made to keep him from filibustering health care reform. It seems to me that he is simply not negotiating in good faith. I don't particularly care whether his motivations are sincere (he has simply become much more conservative in recent years), self-serving (he likes being the center of attention), or vengeful (he just wants to deal liberals a loss) -- the result seems to be the same.

I might suggest that there is no longer any point in trying to appease him. Democrats should stop trying to keep him in the fold and should instead just cut a deal with Ben Nelson, Susan Collins and/or Olympia Snowe. My dream scenario at this point is that Harry Reid tells Lieberman the following offer:

My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the public option, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.

And then dumps Lieberman as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, replacing him with Snowe in exchange for her vote on health care reform. Yeah, it's a breach of protocol for a Democratic majority leader to appoint a Republican committee chair, but I'd frankly trust Snowe on national security a lot more than I'd trust Lieberman at this point. I'd also trust her more to follow through on a deal.

Any government that lasts for 1,000 generations is a successful one

Jonathan Bernstein jumps into an interesting disagreement between Matt Yglesias and Jamelle on the possibility of a successful galactic government. Jamelle is more or less saying that the kind of cruelty demonstrated by Palpatine was necessary for government to succeed:

I'm not so certain that the operating philosophy behind the Galactic Empire — that despotism is necessary to maintaining the peaceful cohesion of a galaxy-spanning empire –is entirely wrong...[T]he Galactic Republic — collapsed largely because it was too large to be effective. The Republic didn’t even possess the strength or legitimacy to handle a trade dispute on a minor core world, much less an existential threat like the Clone Wars.

Bernstein responds:

Surely, that's completely wrong. The Republic wasn't defeated because it couldn't handle a trade dispute or the Clone Wars; it fell because it was the victim of a monstrous conspiracy by Palpatine.... [T]he trade dispute, the clone wars, even the petty infighting and jealousy -- were all just part of Palpatine's plan.

Bernstein is quite correct on this, and also in noting that the Old Republic lasted for 1,000 generations while the Empire didn't even survive one. And it's hard to think of a governmental system that could have withstood Palpatine's treachery. He was an enemy (Sith) that the Jedi thought were extinct and that they couldn't even detect when he was right in their presence. It would be like if America suddenly had a president who was secretly a Communist... no, wait.

But it is worth noting that the Old Republic's successes came at a price. Near as I can tell from the films*, the Republic stayed intact largely by ignoring divisive issues like slavery. They mostly abandoned Outer Rim systems like Tatooine, leaving the local mafiosi in charge. And for a democratic republic, they seemed to place a great deal of authority in royalty. Okay, sure, Padmé was elected, but as a teenager, and for all her courage and beauty, she didn't appear to be a particularly skilled queen or legislator.

*Like Bernstein, I have not read the books, nor would I admit to doing so if I had.

More music - A Very Hatch Hanukkah

Enjoy "Eight Days of Hanukkah," sung by Rasheeda Azar and written by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who apparently wears a mezuzah around his neck. No, I am not comforted by that.

(h/t Dara Strolovitch)