Obama’s 20 Percent Solution

Let us step into the way back machine for a moment, shall we?  Imagine you are back in the halcyon days of November 2007.  Pretty scary, isn't it?  Remember how you had more hair back then?  And, those clothes we used to wear?  What were we thinking, right?

Ah, the memories.

Do you also remember the picture being painted in the press about the political situation going into the 2008 Presidential primary season?  Well, it was pretty dire for the Republican's I can tell you.  There was no clear idea about who the nominee would be, which underscored just how weak and divided the GOP was.  In fact, there was open speculation that this weakness could result in no candidate securing the nomination until very late in the process.  Maybe even resulting in a brokered convention!  Yep, all of those things pointed to the unquestioned weakness of the Republican party, especially when compared to the Democratic party of the day who were all set behind a well funded front runner.  All of this, the press somberly assured us, bodes ill for the GOP in November 2008.  Some proclaimed it a prelude to electoral disaster.

Let us say someone from November 2007 were to jump into a way forward machine and set the dial to May 2008.  What a different world they would find!  Still no flying cars, but , look! Just as predicted, one party has settled upon a nominee early, while the other is still slogging it out going into mid-May.  However, it isn't the Republicans who are still up in the air, its the Democrats.  And, look, the Democrats are so divided it is now impossible for either of their remaining candidates to secure their nomination via electoral means (Obama can do no better than 1805 pledged delegates of the 2025 needed).  The nomination will have to be decided by party insiders.  The Dems may not wait until the convention to do the back room deals, but there is little doubt that we are witnessing a brokered nomination.

And lo! the media has looked upon this mess and declared it a disaster…for Republicans.

You see, the way forward machine you jumped into was also a portal to a bizarre land where having your party become so divided that you need to have your candidate selected by non-democratic means is a good thing.  Indeed, the inability of a candidate, any candidate, to inspire the party to get behind them is also seen as desirable.  Democrats are not divided, we are told, they are energized!  It turns out the most important thing for a political party to do is make sure you do NOT settle upon a candidate early.  What were the Republicans thinking?

Conventional political wisdom would look at the current state of play in the Democratic party and call it a fiasco. Conventional political wisdom would be right.  It has become a fiasco because of the polarizing racial politics employed by the Barack Obama campaign.  Obama's campaign has, from quite early on I believe, been working under an electoral strategy I call the "20 Percent Solution".  The premise is simple mathematics.  For example, lets take a hypothetical state whose demographics would result in 20% of the Democratic primary vote being black, and thus 80% non-black.  Were Obama to win the black vote 95%-5%, and lose everyone else to Clinton by 20 points (Clinton 60% to Obama 40%), it is Obama who would win the state 51%-49%.  Were Obama only able to carry 90% of the black vote it would result in a 50-50 toss up.  Obviously, in states where the black vote makes up an even larger percentage of he Democratic electorate Obama would have even more wiggle room.  However, in general, the rule is simple: More than 20% of the vote being black should equal an Obama win, less than 20% should result in a loss.

A key to this strategy therefore is to make Obama the racial candidate, while at the same time positioning yourself solidly to the left of Clinton to secure the "activist" base.  This explains the ease with which the Obama campaign (or their media surrogates) could charge the Clinton campaign as being racists. (Think of Bill's supposed post South Carolina "outrage", or the character assassination of Geraldine Ferraro.)  This also helps explain why Obama felt little need to separate himself from the views of Rev. Wright when they first became generally known last year or when they first began making waves online 6-8 weeks ago.  It was only when there became an open question as to whether he could keep within 20% of Clinton among non-blacks that Obama, in the least convincing performance since Ishtar, finally "found" them outrageous. 

Let's look at the post Super Tuesday primaries (except for Missouri which I put in because it's supposed to be a "bell wether") and see how this has played out.  (I got all the results from Real Clear Politics, and the exit poll crosstabs from CNN.)  The "20% Solution" predicts an Obama vote via the equation:  Obama Vote = (BV * 0.9) + ((1-BV) * 0.4), where BV stands for the percentage of the black vote in a given Democratic primary.  The following graph summarizes the data, including some predicted values for the contests in West Virginia and Kentucky using data from the 2004 general election numbers.

The first thing I noticed was the predicted value for Indiana.  Despite the protests from the press that we should have expected Clinton to win by at least double digits, it seems clear that we should have expected a very close contest.  (This is confirmed by looking at the data from the 2004 general election, where the black vote made up 7% of the vote in the general election.  It makes sense that the black vote would make up a larger proportion of the Democratic primary vote there, and with Obama being a near "favorite son" you could more than double that original 7% starting point.)  Therefore, the implication that the Indiana result can be used to pressure Clinton to withdraw because of a supposed "poor performance" seems misplaced, at best. 

It also seems that Clinton has advantages in West Virginia and Kentucky, although I'm predicting that Kentucky should be relatively close.  Thus, Obama's repeated claim that Clinton should destroy him in Kentucky seems like an attempt to saddle her with unreasonably high expectations.

I am not claiming that race is the only factor that could possibly help explain the election results this season.  Obviously, places like Wisconsin and Vermont which voted for Obama without having large blocks of African-American voters, point to the importance of factors like ideology in certain locales.  However, the other results seem to support my basic contention of the "20% Solution". 

The most important long term consequence will only become apparent during the general election cycle.  The "20% Solution" is a perfectly good strategy for securing the Democratic nomination, particularly as it takes advantage of the manner in which the Democratic nomination scheme is in no way related to the political reality of the Electoral College.  That being said, it is clear that the "20% Solution" will not work as a general election strategy, as the states where black voters will make up 20% or more of voters are few and far between.  It is also unclear if after going down the road of racial polarization during the nomination process one can go back again.  I mean it is one thing to call Clinton and her supporters racists when they are on the downside, but why should those Clinton supporters vote for you after such comments are made?  And what claim does one make to moderates after such tactics are employed?  And how can this result in anything other than a more motivated Republican base?  It seems unlikely that Obama can backtrack down the road he has for so long traveled.

The Obama campaign is now the most divisive factor we have seen in American politics since the days of the candidacy of George Wallace.  The sad fact is the irony of this will be lost to the vast majority of Obama supporters.

Oh well, I'll update this as things progress.

Who’s Paying For All This?

Why, you and I are, of course. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the way the Federal government subsidizes energy production in the United States. It's appalling.

Some clarity comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent federal agency that tried to quantify government spending on energy production in 2007. The agency reports that the total taxpayer bill was $16.6 billion in direct subsidies, tax breaks, loan guarantees and the like. That's double in real dollars from eight years earlier, as you'd expect given all the money Congress is throwing at "renewables." Even more subsidies are set to pass this year.

An even better way to tell the story is by how much taxpayer money is dispensed per unit of energy, so the costs are standardized. For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and "clean coal" $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.

This is our tax money being glad handed away by Washington. The numbers for biofuels are equally bad:

The same study also looked at federal subsidies for non-electrical energy production, such as for fuel. It found that ethanol and biofuels receive $5.72 per British thermal unit of energy produced. That compares to $2.82 for solar and $1.35 for refined coal, but only three cents per BTU for natural gas and other petroleum liquids.

If the subsidies for all sources of energy were taken away, which technologies would survive? That should be obvious. This isn't even taking into account the fact that fossil plants have to back up wind and solar power and be ready to take up the load when those sources drop offline suddenly. This was illustrated last February in Texas.