New Pew
This report is just out. FYI.
By a 50% to 41% margin, more registered voters say they will vote Democratic in this year’s Congressional election. The Democratic advantage stems from the party’s significant lead among independent voters, 51% of whom favor the Democrats, while just 32% favor the Republicans. Among partisans on both sides, more than nine-in-ten say they plan to vote for their own party’s candidate.
That's a nineteen point lead for the Democrats among independents. Nineteen points among independents, nine whole points in the overall generic ballot. Hmm.
The Democratic Party’s current lead is identical to its advantage at a comparable point in the 1998 midterm, an election in which the party nearly gained control of the House. The two parties were in a virtual dead heat in the test ballot at this stage in 2002, an election in which the GOP picked up six House seats, and in 1994, when the Republicans swept into control of Congress. In that historic election, the Republicans did not open up a sizable lead in the congressional ballot until the fall.
Of course, that means that things can still change . . . in the fall. I.e., Before the election. And it's interesting that the last time that the Dems had such a lead, they still failed to take back the House. My guess is that the redistricting after 2000 probably makes retaking the House even more unlikely.
And please, Jesus, save us from this:
More people name Hillary Clinton as the current leader of the Democratic Party than any other major Democratic figure. Presented with a list of ten names, one-in-four (26%) name Sen. Clinton as the person they think of as the party’s leader these days. Bill Clinton (14%) and John Kerry (12%) are also frequently chosen.
There's so much more.
posted by Number Three @ 9:30 PM
8 Comments:
I agree it's unlikely that the Dems will take back the House or the Senate for that matter, but hopefully they'll pick up seats in the face of the Republicans playing the war-on-terror card. Maybe in 2008 they can do it -- and you're right another liberal from the NE would be the nadir of lunacy.
Speaking of playing the war-on-terror card, did you catch Bush's comments yesterday about how “operatives [planned to] hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door.”
This simply is beyond all plausibility. Think about it: if the bomb went off, the hijackers would be killed so they could not hijack the plane, and the plane would probably go down, thus upsetting the very plans Bush claims they had. I'll give his speechwriters credit though -- they understand full well that the facts don't matter, just the emotional appeal.
History lesson extra: Someone in another post repeated a version of the oft-made claim that no two democracies have ever attacked each other. While I can't speak for the modern period, several democratic Greek city-states, usually involving Athens, often attacked each other. At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, for example, Athens sided with Epidamnus, which was oligarchic, against Corcyra, which was democratic, and the Corinthians, who were oligarchic, sided with Corcyra. While similar constitutions usually make for like-minded allies, in the end it always comes down to a question of self-interest. In the Greek world wars were really a game of King on the Mountain -- whenever a particular city-state bestrode the mountain peak and began to commit blatant acts of self-interest (hybris), the others would eventually unite to knock it off, and whichever one ended up on top, soon found herself attacked by the rest, regardless of constitution. I really don't think things have changed. That's why the neocons/Bush administration thumbing their nose at the UN, invading Iraq, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, ignoring WTO rulings, NAFTA rules, Kyoto protocols.... are so dangerous. They will eventually alienate our allies, be they democratic or not (and we have a lot of non-democratic allies) to the point that they will actively work to knock us down a peg or two. That is, in fact, what is happening. Given the neocons' avowed policy of letting no other state ascend the mountain, I believe we're in a very dangerous period.
Corriegendum: In the above post, reverse Epidamnus and Corcyra: Athens supported Corcyra, which was oligarchic, in its attack against Epidamnus, which was democratic.
Paul, this is an awesome post. A history lesson from the classics for our own era. Ever considered a speechwriting job with Sen. Robert Byrd? You could give him some new material.
That really was a neat post. But more correctly stated, I posited a question rather than a claim.
If you will excuse my ignorance regarding history (I was a science major), I'll post another question. Do you really think that the culture and ethos of war in ancient Greece are comparable to world politics today? I would be interested to read about the similarities.
Even assuming that you can support your analogy on cultural grounds, I think it is still lacking from a geographical perspective. The Greek city-states rubbed elbows. Despite advances in technology, we remain relatively isolated for purposes of mounting a large-scale military offensive.
By the by, you had better check Senator Byrd's backround before you take the job. And don't stop with the references listed in his resume (although I hear that his constituents enjoy lovely highways).
Has anyone here seen my old friend Emery? Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I take a brief sabbatical from the lunatic dump to protest the lack of koans and kittens and find that – far from improving – things have gotten worse. I mean, did I just have a brain hemorrhage or is everyone’s favorite Ant Prince of Denmark in the house? (For the record, I was present at the ant/people disquisition at the Barking Spider. It happened. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Katzinger’s.)
Emery was once a mighty intellect, a brain unrivaled with debating skills to match – now he presides over a green-hued academic circle jerk. Here, dearest friends, is what passes for disagreement in his new nutso world:
Lefty One: Neocons are insane.
Lefty Two: I disagree. Neocons are incompetent and politically compromised.
Lefty Three: I disagree with both of you. Neocons are insane.
Lefty One: I see your point.
Lefty Two: Well, that was quite a debate. I’m beat.
(pause)
Lefty Two: Let’s go to the local coffee shop and talk political theory.
Lefty Three: Sounds grand.
Lefty One: Hey, I’ve got a political theory joke.
Lefty Three: There is no joking about political theory.
Lefty One: It’s not really a proper joke; it’s a knock-knock thing. You know, like the poor and dumb do sometimes.
Lefty Two: Let’s have it.
Lefty One: Knock Knock.
Lefty Three: (silent)
Lefty Two: Who’s there?
Lefty One: Federalist Fifty.
Lefty Two: Federalist Fifty who?
Lefty One: Federalist Fifty-Two!
Lefty Two: Ah-ha! I pronounce that the wittiest jape of the season.
Lefty Two: Also, I forgot to mention that neocons are inept. To the last man.
Lefty One: I disagree. Neocons are morons.
Lefty Three: I disagree with both of you. They’re inept.
Lefty One: Point well taken.
As a parting note, super-smart Paul Iverson makes a highly technical “correction” of the Stephanerd (whose intellectual toolkit he could not lift) and her perfectly-true-for-two-thousand-years claim about democracies; but I notice a far more recent historical error that he didn’t touch. Germany (as opposed to, I guess, Iraq) was a nation in the minds of its citizens prior to WWII? Really? That sounds right, but isn’t Iverson Mr. Highly-Technical? Because a highly-technical smart guy like him had, say, Stephanie made that point, might have wondered aloud just which Germany the citizens were thinking of “prior to our post WWII efforts.” Was Austria a part of Germany? What about the Sudetenland? Or are we going old school with pre-1871 borders? What about Alsace-Lorraine? In truth, the “German people” have gotten used to a lot of border expanding and retracting in the past 150 years. What Mr. Highly-Technical would have to explain to the naïve Ms. Stephanie is that what we now think of as Germany has only been Germany for about fifteen years now. The 1946-1989 Germany was just about the longest stable territorial Germany there has been.
But he wouldn’t do that because he knows that no one likes a brainy pedant. Well, except other brainy pedants.
Great string. I was just thinking that the only thing missing from this debate was a feces-slinging spider monkey with just enough right-wing snark to elevate the tone. Thanks, CL. You shocked me out of my greenie stupor. Until your helpful reminder that the neo-cons are all super-geeeniuses, I had forgotten that Iraq was all rose pedals, Care Bears, and unicorns. You also reprised my favorite conservative character trait, the self-congratulatory non sequitur:
"Me and my friends are all so smart."
"Yes, we are! Everybody else is a moron!"
"Knock Knock"
"Who's there?"
"Lefty"
"Lefty who?"
"Lefty? I hate lefties, you America-hating, commie prick."
"Ha ha ha. You're right. BTW, don't you think Scalia is so. . . HOT?"
"Mmmmm. . . Ninolicious!!
*****
Feces-slinging aside, it is pretty much settled in the IR "democratic peace" lit that democracies are far less likely to fight than any other regime pair, although there may be anomalies here and there. (For example, how do you code the US Civil War for those studies?) That doesn't necessarily mean that democracies are pacific. They may be as bellicose as any autocracy when dealing with autocracies, and the US certainly has a long history of often aggressive warfare. The question is whether "democratic peace" is the result of (a) the improved mechanisms of international interaction that arise among democracies, which tend to share common values and interests, or (b) the fact that democracies are likely to direct their enmities toward autocracies first, since they are a rival regime type. If the answer is (a), then promoting democracy worldwide is likely to lead to a broad and lasting peace; if (b), then democratic peace is just an historical blip that may end when and if the world becomes broadly democratic.
Aside to CL: German identity has/had little to do with particular geographic/political boundaries. Like the Kurds, Germans have a strong sense of common identity irrespective of whether they possess a particular political jurisdiction of their own. Why was it so important for West Germany to take on all the difficulties of reunification? There hasn't been much upside on that for the former West Germany--huge costs, horrible unemployment, dramatically slowed economic growth--but that underlying sense of nationhood demanded it.
Meanwhile the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shiites in southern Iraq don't speak the same language, practice very different versions of their faith, and have completely different views of the relationship between religion and government. Postwar Germany provides almost no useful comparisons to post invastion Iraq.
But here I am just being pedantic, trying to argue the merits rather than engaging in personal attacks. And nobody likes that, right?
I watched the Olympics last night [see review in Emery's thread above], so I did not check back until this morning, hence the tardy response. Plus I wanted to give it some thought. Well, first of all, Stephanie, I apologise for mischaracterising your comment as a statement rather than a question. As for Senator Byrd, he's got a valid point about the need to jealously guard a Republic so that it doesn't slip into a Principate, but at times it seems he really believes in the idea that we're the new Roman Empire and hence should run our empire like them, as long as it remains a Republic. Thus he's the one pushing to ignore the WTO ruling against the US on fining foreign companies for something -- was it dumping? -- and giving the fine money to US companies.
As for your new question about whether the culture and ethos of war in Greece were the same as today, I would say "yes" and "no". Before I address that, let me say that the whole issue of whether history provides useful parallels is almost universally held, it's just that people disagree over what lessons we should draw. Thus for instance, in the field of Greek History you get a guy like Victor Davis Hansen, who is a darling of the neoconservatives for his take on Greek history. On the other hand, someone like Judith Hallett -- a colleague of Frances at the University of Maryland -- is a card-carrying democrat and has a quite different take on neoconservative ideas [interesting aside here: several year's ago before the Bush era, Hallett actually contacted the FBI and gave them Hansen's name as the possible Unabomer (I never figured out why unabomer was spelled without a 'b') and after Ted Kacynski was caught she then bragged of it in a public forum].
I would say the core argument of the neoconservatives is the same one made by various politicians and pro-war groups throughout the ages and that is: "We're good and righteous and our cause is good and righteous, so if you don't do what we say, we're going to preemptively attack you and make you righteous too, or at least do what your told!". So while they might agree with a view of history that regards hubris as an act that can lead to defeat, they always think that their own cause is right, and that their preemptive use of force is justified, and their loss, if it comes, was a failure in some strategy. Thus we are losing in Iraq because we disbanded the army, or we didn't get enough electricity up and running, or we didn't have enough soldiers...not because the entire idea of a preemptive strike on a weaker enemy with a different culture in order to control oil supply and impose a new political order is an act of hubris bound to fail. [Note that I am not talking about Afghanistan, which might have had a chance of succeeding had not the US attacked Iraq].
There have been many such politicians and groups throughout the ages. At Athens, the most famous was Kleon. Kleon argued that Athens could only keep her empire together by being more ruthless, and furthermore he argued that such ruthlessness was justified, and while he railed that "Democracy is incapable of empire", Athens by and large followed his policies and yet in the end lost. I'm sure Kleon would disagree -- he would say that Athens only lost because she failed to make all the right military moves he advocated, while both Thucydides and Aristophanes said Athens failed or was bound to fail because of the ruthlessness and hubris of Kleon and those of his ilk. Likewise, the father of History, Herodotus also argued that the Persians failed in their attempts to subdue Greece, not because of faulty military tactics and the like, but because the "gods turn a jealous eye upon anything that vaunts itself, and they chop it down." So, two of the earliest Historians and one comedian, while differing markedly in temperament and methods, all had a similar view of history which we might call the tragic vision of life: hubris [which I'll define as a repeated preemptive acts of violence to get your way] fails in the end no matter the tactics. I happen to agree with it, although if you’re ruthless enough, you can get by for decades.
So it is with that in mind that I said "yes". In other words, the motivations and reasons for war have essentially stayed the same (i.e., self-determination, control of resources, cultural clashes...). Some might find the last one on the list surprising in Greece, but each Greek city-state had its own peculiar dialect, alphabet/spelling, religious calendar, civil calendar and the like. Even today in Greece and Italy and the rest of Europe local dialects and traditions/identity still prevail to a much greater degree than in America. The only real pan-Hellenic institutions/sanctuaries were at Delphi and Olympia, and both were manipulated by the ruling powers, especially Sparta, Corinth, Thebes and Athens, and hence lost their luster over time [note: US is doing same thing right now with UN, Geneva Conventions, WTO, NAFTA, IAEA...].
While war was supposed to have been suspended during sacred months for such festivals and sanctuaries, the rules were often broken. For instance, Thebes attacked Plataea in the Spring of 431 (probably on or a little before April 7), which was a day or two before one of Plataea's large month-long religious festivals was to begin (probably the Daidala festival to Hera). The Plataeans and Thebans were both Boeotians [similar dialect, calendars...], but in or around 519 BC the Plataeans got tired of Theban interference and joined in league with Athens. Thebes thought that Boeotian Confederacy territory should extend all the way to Plataea and the Asopos river, and they deeply resented Athenian influence in the area, so they made a surprise attack on Plataea to bring her back into the fold. This attack by Thebes on Boeotia is marked by Thucydides as the opening of the Peloponnesian War. While the Plataeans repelled the first assault, eventually in 427 the Spartans and Thebans captured the city and the Thebans completely destroyed it -- all its surviving inhabitants moved to Athens [eventually both Sparta and Thebes get their comeuppance too, not disproving my point]. So the fact that the Thebans and Plataeans and other Greeks often spoke dialects of the same language, had essentially the same culture and religion, and often the same constitutions did not completely mitigate the causas belli. It is fair to say that in general the different tribes of the Dorians (Sparta), Ionians (Athens) and Aeolians (Asia Minor Greeks) were able to get along better with members of their own group, but not always. Likewise in the world today, English-speaking countries such as England, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and America tend to get along better, but when it comes to self-determination, we've often had to fight wars with each other to draw the lines.
What has united us most, has really been some new threat that came along [Germany, Russia], but there still are limits to this cohesion. Right now the leaders of England, the US and Australia are fairly close on the Iraq and Al Qaeda questions [we'll see about the new prime minister of Canada, Harper], but a majority of their populations resents a lot of US policies and we should not take these countries' support for granted. In fact, the EU has been formed, not because the Germans, French, Greeks, Italians, Spanish... get along so well and want to be political partners, but because they're willing and feel it necessary to set aside their vast differences in order to counter-balance American might in the areas of economics, culture and military. To keep my previous metaphor, the EU has formed, including talks of adding a separate military force distinct from NATO, not because of the Russians or Muslims or any other group, but because they want to share the summit with America. That is why Chirac talks about a "multi-polar" world. If we don’t share, they’ll become our adversaries. Meanwhile with the fall of the USSR, NATO is an alliance in need of an enemy, and Al Qaeda won’t do. If one doesn’t present itself or we don’t invent one soon, NATO is dead. Like in ancient Greece, then, self-interest often makes for strange bed-fellows, regardless of some cultural differences or constitutions. As in Greece, however, some cultural differences are harder to bridge than others -- Turkey's admission to the "Christian Club" is one such instance.
Aside on distances: modern means of transportation mean that the entire world is closer than Athens and Sparta were (2-3 days march), so yes Ancient Greece provides a useful comparandum to the current geopolitical situation. Plataea and Thebes are about 8 miles apart, but if you have to march in heavy hoplite amour in the mud, on a moonless night without night vision goggles, that will take you a good six hours. This is probably far less time than a plane taking off from an aircraft carrier to hit Baghdad.
Now for my other point as to why some things are different from Ancient Greece, or the "no". I would say the biggest reason why warfare was different in Ancient Greece is not because of changed political institutions or human nature, rather it has more to do with the combination of technology (i.e. nuclear weapons) and media coverage. Nuclear weapons make open warfare amongst large states almost unthinkable. That is why the US and Russian did not square off after WWII. Media coverage makes ruthlessness also more difficult to hide or justify over time. Finally, American imperialism also has a similar advantage to that the Romans held -- we have a citizenship body open to many ethnicities, or at least we did. This last advantage, however, is fading as Americans close their doors more and more and this will have a profound impact on how the rest of the world views us.
In short, I think the ancient world does have lessons for us, including the canard that no two democracies have not attacked each other because they are democracies. Palestine and Israel will soon put that theory to rest in the graveyard of ideas where it belongs. Or to put it another way, it's not that lex curat, rather it's bonas leges curiemus.
Speaking of curat lex, I think Frances handled his über-post.
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