Just some quick hits here. We’ll grade my prognostication tomorrow.

1) Perry with a better answer on social security. Despite the headlines this week, he’s been slowly backpedaling. Even if his plan is to continue with his line of thinking from the first debate, it will be a much better prepared answer this time. I guess you could retort, “How could it not be?”, but I’ll put the bar even a bit higher than that. He must have spent the last week planning for Bachmann’s obvious but still deadly populist shift on the issue.

2) Bachmann with an all-out assualt on Perry. She has to. And it will start with Social Security. She was marginalized in the last debate, and is in danger of being marginalized for good. Her goal has to be to completely discredit Perry. Or start running for vice-president.

3) Romney with a more subtle assault on Perry. For one, he’ll be the main beneficiary of a Bachmann assault, and without having to attack straight-out. Still, his play right now is obvious: line up the entire GOP money-and-influence establishment behind the idea that Perry is a loose-cannon and an unpredictable candidate. He got the Pawlenty endorsement, he’s got Perry heading toward a corner, now he needs to solidify the media narrative. It really doesn’t matter if this plays Perry right into being more of a conservative darling; this strategy is Romney’s only chance to win, so you take it even if it doesn’t offer great odds.

4) A legitimate split between how people respond to Obama’s jobs bill. This is more of a limb. I don’t think anyone will come close to anything that looks like an endorsement of the bill, but I suspect that the liberals will endorse some pieces of it, while the conservatives will take a stand against it and describe it with things like “more of the same,” “political posturing,” and “new taxes.” I guess it’s possible that the whole field could reject it whole cloth, as they did with the “10 to 1” question on the debt limit, but I think Huntsman and Romney are probably past that now and, especially Romney, have little reason to take such a radical line.

5) Ron Paul and/or Herman Cain off the chain. I thought they both had poor debates last week from a policy perspective. (Paul did ok when he goaded Perry into a confrontation, which is always good for the minor candidates). But it’s getting close to fireworks time for the second-tier; I expect it may begin tonight. Continue reading →

Pretty much everyone and their brother will have the NFL on their TV this Sunday at 1pm. And normally so would I. But this Sunday at 1pm I’ll be watching the USA vs. Ireland in the Rugby World Cup. And you should too.

First off, I should say that the Giants game isn’t until 4pm. If it was at 1, I’d probably tape the rugby. So disregard what I’m about to say if your favorite NFL team plays at 1pm. But if your plan is to watch some random early game that you don’t actually care about, do yourself a favor and watch the rugby game instead. Here’s why. Continue reading →

Music Question: what are the best otherwise-unavailable B-side of all time? That is, what are the best rock songs ever initially released only as the B-side of a single (i.e. not available on the full record). I have eight candidates in mind:

1. Strawberry Fields Forever, The Beatles. This is probably the winner. The Beatles had begun recording for what became Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Capitol records was interested in having a single, stat. So they took the first two tracks recorded for the album — Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever — and put them on what they called “a double A-side.” And then left them off of the new album. It’s amazing to imagine what Sgt. Pepper could have been if you put those two songs on it and, say, dumped Within You, Without You. There are many other Beatles candidates, since they often left singles off their albums. One that comes to mind is  the up-tempo version of Revolution, which appeared originally as the B-side to the Hey Jude single.

2. Yellow Ledbedder, Pearl Jam. I can remember sitting at a friend’s house in like 1993 or 1994 when someone walked in with the Jeremy single on cassette import. This made no sense to me, because I think everyone in the room owned Ten. It was the first time I had consciously encountered a B-side that was not from the LP.

3. Raw Ramp, T. Rex. This is probably my favorite T. Rex song. It’s on the back of the Bang a Gong (Get it On) single off of Electric Warrior. If you buy Electric Warrior now, it’s included as a bonus track.

4. Pink Cadillac, Bruce Springsteen. This was the back of the Dancing in the Dark single in 1984. I don’t think there’s any question that it is the better song on the single. Evidently, it was cut from Born in the U.S.A. to make room for I’m Going Down. I would probably have chucked Working on the Highway.

5. Highway Chile, Jimi Hendrix Experience. The back of the The Wind Cries Mary single.

6. Hey Hey What Can I Do, Led Zeppelin. It really is shocking that this wasn’t put on Led Zeppelin III. It was just the back of the Immigrant Song single. I think it’s in my top 5 favorite Zepp songs.

7. Into the Groove, Madonna. I would guess that most people think this is on the soundtrack to Desperately Seeking Susan. Nope, it’s the back of the Angel single from Like A Virgin.

8. Sweetest Thing, U2. The back of the Where the Streets Have No Name single. Probably a good thing it was left off The Joshua Tree; it doesn’t really sound like the rest of that album.

Other candidates? Continue reading →

You hear the following (or similar) almost constantly from some segments of the middle-brow chattering class:

Why is candidate X  still running for President? He is polling at 2% and has no chance.

There is a simple answer: there are lots of reasons to run for President of the United States, and only one of them is to become President of the United States. Here is a partial list of such reasons:

* to become President of the United States

* to get picked Vice President of the United States

* to raise awareness for an issue

* to represent a regional and/or radical ideology

* to become a Secretary in the next President’s cabinet

* to join the list of potential candidates four years later

* to expand your network of fundraising

* to challenge your party’s orthodoxy on one or more issues

* to increase your private sector market value as a commentator or author

All of this also ignores one of the most common reasons — trying to catch lightning in a bottle and hit that 80 to 1 longshot. And a certain level of self-delusion that can convince a campaign that a 10,000 to 1 longshot is actually a 50 to 1 longshot. But leave that aside.

The bottom line is that you can’t assume all candidates are in the race for the purpose of winning the race. For some reason, people see this as obvious when you talk about 3rd party candidates (i.e. Nader), but fail to grasp that the same dynamics are at play in major party primaries. And I think people often underestimate the effects. Without getting all Overton Window-y here, I think it’s pretty sound logic that the inclusion of wider ideologies within party debates can not only alter the preferences of the primary/general electorate, but can also reshape the public perception of the more popular candidates, thus contributing strongly to the outcomes. Again, for some reason this all seems obvious when a major party co-opts the popular plank of a third party candidate, but not as obvious when the challenge comes during the primary and from within the major party.

So, if there’s still enough money to keep the lights on at campaign headquarters, there are lots of reasons to stay in the race, at least until the advantages of dropping out and endorsing another candidate outweigh those reasons.

All of this reminds me of another, similar issue on Capitol Hill: why do Members of Congress introduce so many bills that have no chance of even being considered, nevermind passed? Again, simple answer: there are lots of reasons to introduce a bill: to signal preferences, to appease interests, to put down a marker in a policy debate, to show effort, to enhance bargaining position, to build public support, to gain media attention, and so forth. Throw on that it’s relatively cheap (both in money and time) to write a bill, and the big surprise is not how many are introduced, but that more aren’t. Continue reading →

There’s a long and well-known literature in political science that say Members of Congress have three goals: re-election, increasing their internal power within their chamber, and making good public policy for your constituents (For example, see Fenno). In general, the re-election goals takes primacy, because without it, the other two become unattainable. And contrary to what your cynical uncle says, that’s probably a good thing: if Members did not concern themselves with getting re-elected, both the theoretical and practical underpinings of republican representation tend to fall apart.

This is not the kind of political science that is much up for debate; at this point it’s more or less self-evident to everyone. So what becomes interesting in public choice situations is when the three goals come into conflict: when increasing your power in the chamber means casting votes that hurt your re-election chances; when making good public policy for your constituents goes against their own perception of their interests (and thus your re-election chances); and when increasing your power in the chamber necessitates accepting bad public policy. How Members make decisions when these goals come into conflict is perhaps the most interesting aspect of congressional behavior.

One expansion of this line of thinking is to consider the goals of political parties, which are in essence aggregate collections of Members. There are differences, however. Continue reading →

Warning: history and political science geekery ahead.

Got into an interesting discussion at APSA this past weekend about books that have had large contemporaneous political impacts. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, came up. So did Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. The hands-down winner, of course, was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Setting aside Lincoln’s famous (and probably apocryphal) quote implying that the book started the war, it is without question the most politically influential book in American history. It’s the best selling book of the 19th century save the Bible, and it’s an overtly political tract, despite being fiction (it’s main target, however, is not exactly slavery per se; the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is more narrowly in its cross-hairs, and despite being an obvious abolitionist piece in its sentimentality and tone, from the post-war received perspective the book kinda identifies more with the growing anti-slavery ideology of the early 1850’s than the (still then) radical abolitionist movement. Remember, the book was written prior to the Kansas-Nebraska Act).

But there’s another book published in the 1850’s that, while probably not known by 1 out of a 1000 people, also had a huge impact on the late-decade descent into war. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Strasmas, Safeco Field, and little league pitch count limits. Continue reading →

Places a kid raised in the 80’s thought he’d never be: on Twitter. I’ll be writing regularly. @mattglassman312.