Romney's Last Stand?

Michigan holds it's primaries today. On the Democratic side of things, because both Edwards and Obama have had their names removed from the ballet while Clinton has not (all over a dispute on Michigan moving it's primary date earlier than the national committee desired), Clinton is expected to gain the majority of the delegates in a walkover. Supposedly, those delegates won't be counted in the nomination race. Yeah, right.

Because of that, all the interesting going-ons involve the Republican race, where McCain and Romney are essentially neck-and-neck, Huckabee trailing them by a little over 10 points. If McCain were to edge Romney here, the consensus seems to be Romney's campaign would be effectively over.

This seems odd on one level - after all, if Romney runs a close second he would have had a 1st and 3 seconds in the initial primaries, which would be a series of successful results in most endeavors. Given the current allocation of delegates it is very likely a close second by Romney would see him actually leading the totals at the end of the evening, and still be considered a dead candidate.

Of course, logic has nothing to do with a political campaign ... it's all about perception, and finishing second is simply being the first loser. All that seems to matter is actually winning a state, no matter how small the margin. If McCain were to edge Romney out again, after doing the same in New Hampshire, McCain would be perceived as having all the momentum while Romney would be seen as a lost cause after not taking any of the three states in which is heavily invested his efforts.

Some subset of Democrats, led by Markos Moulitsas, have reached the conclusion keeping Romney is the race is good for Democrats, and since the Dem primary has no real meaning this year are advocating progressive voters in Michigan take advantage of the state's open primary laws and vote in the Republican primary instead (someone even created a Democrats for Romney YouTube video). Given how close the polling shows the race to be, a few thousand liberal voters crossing over as a bloc to vote for Romney might be sufficient to push him past McCain.

Primary proposal

Opinion seems to be coalescing around the idea our primary system needs an overhaul, and I think there is good chance it will be for the 2012 race. If it is not, the reason will likely be because agreement can't be reached on what work better - a regional approach, random order, time zones, etc.

For whatever reason I was musing about this the morning of the New Hampshire primaries, and thought up a scheme I haven't seen elsewhere, so I wanted to throw it out for consideration.

Anyhow, the basic notions would be to start with the smaller population states and work up to the larger population ones, combined with spreading the primaries out over a regular period.

Pick a day, say the second Tuesday of January, as the day for our first primary. Take the two smallest states in terms of population and hold their primaries that day. One week later hold primaries for the next two least populated, etc. Continue until all primaries are held.

One complaint I can hear already is we already have two small-population states with undue influence on our nomination process. However, to some extent I want to keep that in play. No matter how much time a candidate spends in California or Texas, there simply is not going to be enough time for voters there to truly get to know the candidates in the same way voters in a smaller state can, given a few months of exposure.

I do think, however, this approach does help water down that influence a bit. Rather than having a flood of primaries one month after the leading ones (as is the case this year), it allows time for a candidate to gradually build up, or to overcome early missteps. The entire process would take 24 weeks from the first pair of primaries to the last, plenty of time for things to develop. On the other hand, having only the two primaries each week, and always a week apart, allows sufficient time for the candidates to get to and spend time in each state if they wish (they may opt to use time elsewhere of course if they wish).

I don't advocate going strictly by population. Shuffling things around a bit to keep paired primaries geographically closer seems like a good idea to me. As an example, the least populated states in reverse order (2000 census) are:

Wyoming (least populous), Vermont, Alaska, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire

Given this list I would suggest the following order for the first five weeks:

Week 1: Wyoming, Montana
Week 2: Vermont, New Hampshire
Week 3: Alaska, Hawaii
Week 4: N. Dakota, S. Dakota
Week 5: Delaware, Rhode Island

And so on.

While the least-populated states allow for voters to get to know candidates more personally, and allow candidates to start building some momentum, the greater mass of the delegates is always late in the process, which would allow for the possibility of late comebacks, voters reacting to events during the campaign, etc.

As I noted before, I haven't seen any proposal along these lines (although they are probably out there somewhere), so it's either inspired or stupid (or both). Feel free to let me know which, and why

It's ... alive!

In the best tradition of zombie movies, Hillary Clinton proved reports of her (political) death were greatly exaggerated, rallying to edge Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary last night. John Edwards was a distant third.

I imagine Liza and Roger were very disappointed with those results. I know I was.

Yesterday morning there was discussion of Obama having double-digit leads in polling, reports of a number of uncommitted Senators being in discussions to declare their support for his campaign, questions about whether Clinton's financing was drying up, discussion of an overhaul of the Clinton campaign staff, even speculation about Clinton ending her campaign if she was decisively defeated for a second time.

I haven't checked the blogosphere yet today, but I would guess there's none of that talk now.

I can't think of anything I read or heard the last two days that anticipated this result. Literally the only item I can recall that pointed in this direction was a one-sentence statement I saw somewhere (and now can't find) indicating that focus groups watching the NH debate tended to see support for Obama move over toward Clinton, but even that was buried in a much longer story discussing the Obama surge.

As in Iowa, voters turned out in record numbers, and as in Iowa far more votes were cast in the Democratic primary than the Republican one. ABC news found about 40% of the voters in each primary were Independents, and ultimately this likely cost Obama - Clinton has consistently drawn more support from established Democratic voters, while Obama beats her decisively among the unaffiliated. With McCain also drawing heavy support among Independents, it appears he may have attracted enough of them to vote in the Republican primary to condemn Obama to second in the Democratic one.

Clinton will get more help in a week when she wins Michigan in a walkover. Yes, I know the DNC has said the state's delegates won't be counted at the convention, but you don't really believe that, do you?

I do believe Obama and his campaign did a very poor job of managing expectations in New Hampshire in the few days between Iowa and yesterday. Just as Iowa is in his backyard, New Hampshire is the same for Clinton. She should have do well there, and polls for months had shown her with a massive lead. Handled correctly, finishing within 8,000 votes and 3% of her would have been viewed as a victory. Instead, it's being viewed as a defeat ... and I am afraid this defeat hurts Obama far more than losing Iowa hurt Clinton.

Edwards can't be under any illusions at this point, he knows he will not garner the nomination. Still, with neither Clinton or Obama looking inevitable now, it's entirely possible for Edwards to earn enough delegates to play a substantial role in determining which of the other two does win the primary, and that likely is worth staying in for the long haul. I would think he would be far more likely to align with Obama than Clinton when the time comes ... but last night's results have already shown what can happen to expectations.

Expected form did hold on the Republican side, where McCain comfortably defeated Romney, everyone else being much further back. For whatever reason, voters there really like him, and that carried him through despite New England being Romney's "home region" and dropping big sums of money into the state.

No matter how you slice it, Romney is now in trouble. He had been counting on winning one of Iowa or New Hampshire to indicate viability and open up the money spigots. However, with Huckabee cutting into his religious votes and McCain the independent ones, Romney is looking increasingly like a candidate with just enough support to stay in the race, but not quite enough to win.

Sooner or later, you figure he's got to decide he can't keep throwing his own money into the ravenous maw that is a Presidential campaign. I saw somewhere yesterday he's up to $53 million so far. Maybe Bloomberg has some spare change lying around he could pitch in.

Agent of CHANGE?

"Change" was the new mantra for the Domcratic party presidential candidates in the recent New Hampshire debate over the weekend. X4mr already touched on some of the reasons for this in his post last night, but anyone who didn't watch the debate missed how overwhelming a theme it was - at times it seemed the candidates felt the need to stress "change" the same way Giuliani reflexively spits out "9/11" in every other sentence.

Apparently the lesson Clinton took from Iowa was the message of "change" promoted by the Obama and Edwards campaigns trumped her message of "expertise" there, and she immediately set about putting that lesson to use. Whether it's good use or not remains to be seen.

Being cynical about such things, I have a hard time believing Clinton, who has unquestionably been running the most cautious campaign among the Democrats, who clearly has the closest ties to the party institutions and apparatchiks, truly embraces the concept the same way many of the Iowa voters did.

Don't get me wrong - should Clinton win nomination, and subsequently the Presidency, there will be changes from the way the country has been run the past seven years, and (in my opinion) many of those changes would be for the better. However, they would also be incremental, small change, changes within the existing structure.

If Clinton wins, things may change, but they won't CHANGE. If Democratic voters really hope to break out of the current structure and promote some form of seismic change, changes which will truly alter the political discussion in long-term ways, then they need to look to Obama or Edwards. Electing either is not a sufficient condition to create such change, but it is a necessary one.

This Justice isn't blind ...

... at least not that I am aware of, but I don't think much of his reasoning abilities.

I found this recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling interesting not just for the case itself (although it's interesting in its own right), but for the stupidity of the judge quoted at the end of the article.

Synopsis: a man agreed to be a sperm donor for his ex-girlfriend on the grounds he would have no responsibility for child support (and also no visitation rights). The girlfriend subsequently reneged on the agreement and requested support. The lower court ruled in her favor, awarding $1,500 a month in support as well as ordering the man to find $66,000 in back support.

Now, if I were in his shoes I might have begrudgingly agreed to pay the monthly support. I'd probably have felt screwed, since we did, after all, have a contract on the matter, but I probably would have come around to doing it for the sake of the children involved.

However, asking for $66,000 more on top of that, money we specifically agreed I was not liable for, would have driven me to outrage ... and to court.

The state Supreme Court did overturn the award, on the basis that if the original contract was not honored it would threaten the entire sperm donation system. After all, who would ever willingly contribute if they could then be held liable for child support years after the fact, in spite of a contract both parties willingly entered into?

One judge dissented, from the article:

Justice J. Michael Eakin, in a dissent, said a parent cannot bargain away a child's right to support. "The children point and say, 'That is our father. He should support us,'" Eakin wrote. "What are we to reply? 'No! He made a contract to conceive you through a clinic, so your father need not support you.' I find this unreasonable at best."

Of course, without that contract, the children would never have existed in the first place, and the donor wouldn't be paying child support ... so really, which is better for the children? Exist and no child support or don't exist and no child support?

I find the judge to be a moron.

Market analysis

I've written about prediction markets before, and with the start of the primary season officially upon us, and the race on the Democratic side expected to be tight, I couldn't resist revisiting Intrade to see what the speculators think will happen in the Iowa primaries.

As I write this, the market is trading Obama shares at 66.1, meaning the feeling is there is just about a 2/3 chance Obama wins tonight. Clinton shares are at 19.3, Edwards at 15.0. Also interesting is the change just today - Obama closed last night at 56, so he's up 10.1 points. Most of that has come at the expense of Clinton, who is down 9.2 from yesterday's close, while Edwards is down 2.1

I suspect the fairly steep change is in reaction to a Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll which shows Obama moving out to a four-point lead over Edwards, with Clinton another three points back. Looking at the history, Obama shares were down to about 30 as recently as Dec. 31, meaning traders are extremely bullish about his chances.

Obama's had some good news this week, particularly in light of the Reuters poll and Des Moines Register poll yesterday which also showed him taking the lead. Still, that's a huge surge in Obama confidence, and seems much more "reactive" than I would have expected from a predictions market.

It's also worth noting that investors have far less confidence in Edwards than his polling results would seem to merit. He might be a good investment, if anyone is so inclined.

On the Republican side, investors are heavily backing Huckabee, who is trading at 70.1, up 11.1 today and also the beneficiary of a large surge in confidence over the past five days or so. Romney shares are at 29.7 (down 8.3 today) and no one else is given a chance - McCain is third favorite at 0.9, and looks like good value at that price, to be honest.

Looking ahead at upcoming primaries, I see shares of Fred Thompson winning in Nevada are currently trading at 8.9. I suggest you sell, quickly.

Modern Earls of Warwick

Over the long weekend I read a book about the Wars of the Roses, the struggle in the latter half of the 15th century between the houses of York and Lancaster for the English throne, a struggle which eventually saw Henry Tudor, a distant Lancaster claimant, found the dynasty bearing his name.

Among the leading figures of the era was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who earned the sobriquet 'Warwick the Kingmaker' by first providing the military support needed to place Edward IV, son of the Duke of York on the throne in 1461 in place of the Lancastrian King Henry VI and later, when his influence with Edward waned, helping overthrow Edward in 1470 to briefly restore Henry to the kingship.

This last success proved short-lived, however, as Edward didn't take his exile in Burgundy lightly, returning to England the following year, where he gathered an army and defeated Warwick at Barnet, with the Earl among the dead. Edward consolidated his victory by defeating another Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury the following month, and secured his throne until his death in 1483.

If not for the machinations of his brother Richard and the entire affair of the Princes in the Tower, it would likely have been the House of York, not the House of Tudor, which dominated the next 125 years. All-in-all, one of the more interesting eras of English history.

Which leads us an interesting date of our own, tomorrow night in the state of Iowa, where the caucuses will officially kick off the presidential nomination season, which, while not officially over when Super Tuesday arrives on Feb. 5, will most likely be over in any practical sense. A year or more of posturing and politicking, millions of dollars of campaign expenditures, all get compressed into this next month-plus, and that month begins tomorrow.

Polling of both parties in the last month has shown very tight races, and no one really knows what to expect - historically, accurate polling of the caucuses has been hard to come by. However, the latest set of data from the Des Moines Register shows Huckabee has overtaken Romney on the Republican side, which McCain a distant third, while on the Democratic side Obama has opened a gap on both Clinton and Edwards.

Considering the difficulty of accurate polling and margins of error, it's still a three-way race on the Democratic side, and it won't be a shock should any of the three win. The race will likely be determined not by the supporters of those candidates themselves, but rather by supporters of the other candidates: Richardson, Biden, Dodd and Kucinich.

In the caucuses, voters will initially group up by what candidate they support. However, any candidate who does not reach at least 15% support of all the voters at that caucus meeting (of which there was 1,781 around the state) is declared "not viable". At this point, supporters of viable candidates get 30 minutes to lobby these new free agents and attempt to garner their support. Once this period ends, supporters of non-viable candidates now get a chance to switch their preference.

All of which makes the polling difficult - what matters is often not just who a voter's first preference is, but their second preference as well.

The Register poll shows three "viable" candidates, then Richardson tied with Uncommitted (6%), Biden (4%), Dodd (2%) and Kucinich (1%). Given the closeness of the tally among the "big three" it's entirely possible for some combination of these candidates (or even Richardson alone, depending on how uncommitted voters split) to tip the final result to any of Clinton/Edwards/Obama by encouraging their supporters as to whom to support as a second choice.

Kucinich has already expressed his preference in the matter, encouraging his backers to move to Obama if his candidacy doesn't meet the 15% standard. However, it's Richardson and Biden who are the big guns here, and either might be able to extract some meaningful commitment in exchange for encouraging their supporters on who to back as a "plan B".

It will be interesting to see if either one has designs on becoming the new Warwick.