Michael Barone's very bad column
September 29, 2010 9:41 am ET by Jamison Foser
Slate’s David Weigel catches Michael Barone “phoning it in”:
I'm not even sure that Michael Barone woke up before writing this one about "the Democratic party shrinking back to its bicoastal base."
Now we see Barack Obama campaigning at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in Dane County where he won 73 percent of the vote in 2008, chiding students for their apparent apathy. Sen. Russ Feingold, who lives in Middleton, four miles away, was unable to make it -- and it's not the first Obama event in Wisconsin he's skipped.
Actually, Feingold did make it to the rally, announcing his intentions in a Tuesday afternoon tweet and giving a brief speech from the stage. I noticed the mistake in the free print edition of the paper, but it's still online.
Barone’s column contains another flaw that suggests it was thrown together with no more than eight minutes of thought: a reliance on the tired old gimmick of pretending that the GOP’s edge in “land mass represented” is meaningful.
Here's an exercise for some evening when you're curious about big nationwide trends in this year's elections.
Get an outline map showing the 50 states and take a look at the latest poll averages in pollster.com in each race for senator and governor. Color in the percentage (rounded off; no need for tenths) by which either the Republican or Democratic candidate is leading (I use blue for Republicans, red for Democrats) in each state.
The results are revealing, even breathtaking.
The map of the Senate races shows Republicans leading over almost all the landmass of America.
I imagine most readers stopped right there. I mean, who hasn’t read this exact column a couple hundred times over the past decade? (I guess Barone thinks he’s keeping things fresh by switching around the now-standard blue/red indicators. Bold!) Is there anyone who still believes -- actually believes, not just pretends to believe -- that maps that give parties credit for landmass represented are anything other than wildly misleading?
Several paragraphs later, Barone admits this, sort of:
Now, the geography can be a little misleading. The Democrats' Northeast and Pacific Coast bases are heavily populated, and the states where they're leading in Senate races cast 136 electoral votes in 2008. But the states where Republicans are leading cast 274 electoral votes.
A little misleading? No: It can be completely misleading. You know what else is misleading? Using electoral votes as a proxy for population. And Barone is wrong about the electoral vote totals, anyway: States in which Republicans are leading cast 257 electoral votes in 2008, not 274. By using electoral votes, a misleading proxy for population, then inexplicably awarding the GOP a bonus of 17 electoral votes, Barone makes it look like the Republicans have a 2-1 advantage.
If, on the other hand, you look at each state’s population, you find that Republicans lead in states containing a total of about 144 million people, and Democrats in states with a total of about 82 million people. That’s still a sizable gap, but considerably smaller than a 2-1 margin. (And then there’s the fact, not acknowledged by Barone or included in his calculations, that there are two Senate races in New York, both of which Democrats are leading. Include both races, and the gap shrinks to 144-101.)
Long story short: Beware the columnist who misleads you in his disclaimer acknowledging that he misled you earlier.
Or, a birds eye view of my cappuccino.
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IMHO
"Sen. Russ Feingold, who lives in Middleton, four miles away, was unable to make it..."
Where he LIVES is totally irrelevant to whether or not he could attend, since he was in Washington, DC!
Barone makes it look like Feingold wouldn't travel 4 miles to be with Obama!!! That's horrifically dishonest!
By 2012, The National Popular Vote bill could guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. Elections wouldn’t be about winning states. Every vote would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.
The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional amendments.
The bill has been endorsed or voted for by 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado– 68%, Iowa –75%, Michigan– 73%, Missouri– 70%, New Hampshire– 69%, Nevada– 72%, New Mexico– 76%, North Carolina– 74%, Ohio– 70%, Pennsylvania — 78%, Virginia — 74%, and Wisconsin — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska — 70%, DC — 76%, Delaware –75%, Maine — 77%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Rhode Island — 74%, and Vermont — 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas –80%, Kentucky — 80%, Mississippi –77%, Missouri — 70%, North Carolina — 74%, and Virginia — 74%; and in other states polled: California — 70%, Connecticut — 74% , Massachusetts — 73%, Minnesota — 75%, New York — 79%, Washington — 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.
Most voters don’t care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was counted and mattered to their candidate.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), The District of Columbia (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. These six states possess 73 electoral votes — 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com