Sunday, December 07, 2008

What If Hillary Had Been The Nominee?

As is always the case in the month following the election, I've spent the last 30 days endlessly crunching election return numbers and comparing them to past election cycles. Nearly every state now has absentee ballots counted and added to their totals so the numbers are almost official and final (huge find....with absentee ballots now counted, Obama has overtaken McCain and emerged victorious in Salt Lake County, Utah!).

Overall, it's clear that despite his sweeping national victory, Obama was polarizing in some regions of the country and the unfortunate reality is that the Yellow Dog Democrat strongholds of Appalachia, the southern Midwest, and Deep South that have held strong for the Democrats in the last two decades may now be gone forever. Underscoring this trend was a fascinating national county map posted last month on Swing State Project, comparing Mondale/McCain counties with Dole/Obama counties to show political trendlines of the last two decades. The 1984 Mondale-Reagan election was the first national election that I crunched county information for, standing out as a low-water benchmark for national Democratic performance. Nonetheless, it was striking to see how much territory the Democrats have ceded to the Republicans since 1984, and in many cases since 2000.

That has driven my speculation on how much different the national county map would look if Hillary had been the nominee. At this point, I concede that Hillary would probably have won nationally over McCain, but would have run a traditional Democratic campaign that targeted the usual states and would assuredly have kept Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina red while failing to come within 20 points let alone two points in Montana. Nonetheless, I suspect the Yellow Dog areas, most of which Hillary won by landslide margins in the primaries, would have been onboard this cycle, and there would thus be fewer "Mondale/McCain" counties than there was with Obama as a nominee (albeit with far fewer "Dole/Hillary" counties).

Where would Hillary have done better? Arkansas, for sure. She would have won it....probably comfortably. Compared to Obama's nine county victories in Arkansas, Hillary would have likely scored 40+ county wins. Hillary's ultimate position on coal would have still been a factor, but I'm pretty sure southwestern Pennsylvania would have stayed blue while West Virginia would have returned to the blue column with Hillary as the nominee. Eastern Kentucky would have stayed blue as well, but McCain would still have won statewide in Kentucky. Missouri, on the other hand, would probably have been a slam-dunk win for Hillary. Interestingly, Hillary may even have won a few more counties in southern Illinois, a conservative Democrat region in Obama's home state where she beat him in the primaries.

Obama was probably the only Democrat in the country who could have lost Floyd and Knott Counties in Kentucky, along with West Virginia counties like Logan and Mingo, Arkansas counties like Mississippi and Monroe, and Tennessee counties such as Trousdale and Humphreys. If voters in these parts can get over their childish and delusional grievances about race, Obama's being a "secret Muslim plotting against America", or Obama appointing more blacks to positions of power at the expense of whites after they see his aggressive efforts to dig us out of the economic ditch in the next four years, I wouldn't rule out seeing these areas returning to the Democratic fold in 2012. New Deal economic reforms from the 1930s are what made eastern Kentucky and Middle Tennessee Democratic strongholds in the first place, so Obama's proposed rebirth of such reforms in his economic stimulus platform could prove tremendously appealing to the regions of the country most skeptical about him.

On the other hand, the demographic shift in other "Mondale/McCain" counties has been too dramatic to realistically speculate on their return to the Democratic fold in the foreseeable future. It's striking how many counties that now seem lost forever hung on even through the Gore-Bush election. Is there any Democratic Presidential candidate in America who could have won in places like Colbert County, Alabama; Telfair County, Georgia; Newton County, Texas; Ballard County, Kentucky; or Ottawa County, Oklahoma? Then you have some LONG GONE Mondale counties that even Gore failed to win like Swisher and Orange Counties in Texas, as well as Butts County, Georgia; Edgefield County, South Carolina; and the now exurban GOP strongholds of Dallas County, Iowa, and Chisago County, Minnesota. In none of these counties is any Democrat likely to come within 10 points anytime soon.

By and large, this is much adieu about nothing as the "Mondale/McCain" counties are mostly zero-growth rural areas while the "Dole/Obama" counties are in many cases among the nation's fastest growing. But looking at political science from a historical perspective, and in keeping as many parts of the country as possible competitive for Democrats, it's nonetheless a little discouraging to see that last of the Yellow Dog Democratic counties turn red.

Thoughts on the Auto Industry Bailout

Like most people, I have conflicting thoughts on the prospect of a bailout for the hapless American auto companies. At one level, the chickens have finally come home to roost after decades of almost unimaginably awful business decisions have come to fruition. Whether it be fighting for decades against the very national health insurance plan that would now be saving them or fighting for decades against the very reduced emission standards that would have helped them avoid forfeiting the car market to the imports, Detroit has gotten it disastrously wrong nearly every step of the way. With that said, the pros outweigh the cons of bailing them out.

Many solid arguments have been made about the security danger and economic shortsightedness of forfeiting our manufacturing capacity to foreign nations and companies, which has been going on for the last three decades and seems inevitable with the current course of the global economy. More solid arguments have been made regarding the fact that bankruptcy by these companies would further diminish sales of their vehicles and drive them completely out of business, as opposed to past bankruptcies by the airlines which, because of the nature of their service, did not significantly curtail consumer demand. But there have been considerably fewer solid arguments made regarding the perils of Detroit's allegedly "corporate white knight" Japanese competitors or those much-reviled union workers and their mythological $75 an hour earnings.

Let's start with the Japanese automakers, particularly those with plants in the United States, who by the way only employ a fraction of what Ford, GM, and Chrysler employ here at home. Notice how every plant they build is in the nation's most conservative enclaves. That in itself makes for rather curious bedfellows between the producers and consumers of Toyotas and Hondas. Every "green" or "progressive" who believes they're saving the planet by buying an imported hybrid is really empowering regions of the country that elect Jim Inhofe and Jeff Sessions to the Senate and where "lib'ruls" are considered the scum of the Earth. Outside of actually campaigning for right-wing elected officials, there is no more tangible way for a consumer to empower the conservative movement than to opt for the purchase of a Toyota or Honda over a Chevy or Ford, whose employees are active agents for progressive policies in American government.

And perhaps the most underreported story regarding the sainted Japanese automakers is that they are far from operating within the confines of the marketplace. Whether we're discussing their plants in Japan, Europe, or America, every plant that Toyota, Honda, and Nissan builds is financed almost exclusively by taxpayers. Unless you live in a state willing that can afford to shower $400 million in giveaways upon the Japanese automakers, they won't be building a plant in your state. Bottom line: the Japanese automakers HAVE ALREADY GOTTEN THEIR TAXPAYER BAILOUTS.

Most saddening is the how workers at Ford, GM, and Chrysler are being scapegoated as the true villians in this calamity, often with patently false rhetoric served up on a platter by union-busting political leaders and echoed ad nauseum by a complicit media. The only people making $75 an hour at a General Motors plant are in management. And the automakers have ALREADY shed most of their "legacy costs" after foisting retiree health care costs to the UAW in the last contract agreement, yet all we hear about is that Detroit's real problem is greedy workers who have the audacity to expect a pension plan that was guaranteed to them and that they've been counting on their entire working lives. Furthermore, in the same contract negotiation the shed most of the Big Three's legacy costs, more concessions cut the starting rate of pay for a U.S. auto worker to $14 an hour. As angry as it makes me to hear pundits from across the spectrum point the finger at "overpaid workers" as the source of the Big Three's dilemma, I can't even imagine how angry it must make $14 an hour employees barely surviving today yet looking at even bleaker times ahead.

There's always been a perverse mindset in this country that takes delight when working people who earn a decent living get knocked down by the man. Not only is this the case among Republican politicians, conservative ideologues, and their corporate overlords, it also gets a receptive response among alleged liberals in the media and the white-collar middle class. Even as we generally discuss the need for expanding access to health care and growing the middle class, many of us still can't resist getting our digs in about the desperate need for Detroit to slash labor costs and benefits, ignoring the facts that indicate they've already been slashed to the bone. The first instinct of so many of us is to point our finger straight at the first person we see with a blue collar and carrying a lunch bucket and say "This is all your fault!"

As far as I'm concerned, every perceived gain that has been made by progressives in the last two years will be undone--and then some--if we allow the erasure of unionized American auto manufacturing to be cannibalized by the Sam Walton business model of their Japanese competitors. Any hope of reversing the decline of the middle class, as so many millions of Americans voted for last month, will be lost forever.