Mostly Colorblind

Not pictured: "Filing tax returns like Mitt Romney for Dummies" Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan says many things about the state of the campaign. At first glance, one must agree with Nate Silver , it doesn’t seem like a choice a candidate confident in his chances would make. However, the right is elated that Boston picked a certified, card-carrying fiscal conservative – and crowds have grown as the Romney campaign finally has some juice. At the same time, the Ryan pick has the potential to undermine Romney’s key argument. This is that the most important issue is the country’s poor economic performance, which he can change, and nothing else matters. In her book The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns , Lynn Vavreck argues for the primacy of the economy in the general election. Campaigns then, fall into two categories: clarifying and insurgent. A clarifying campaign has the economy on its side. This can be an incumbent party riding an economic wa...

Political scientists will be the first to tell you that campaigns are driven by the fundamentals. The most important variables in an incumbent president’s reelection are if the country is at war and the state of the economy. At the same time, more recent work has found innovative ways that campaigns can induce turnout, cross-pressure voters, and ultimately influence the behavior of voters in a number of ways. But are these two interpretations at odds? A seemingly innocuous Twitter conversation between journalists and political scientists yesterday casted that doubt, calling it “ironic” in a perjorative sense. The prevailing consensus in that thread: it’s not ironic if different political scientists hold different opinions. But the field at large is still plagued by this impression of cognitive dissonance between campaigns determining elections and fundamentals driving the result. So what is it? Structure or Agency? @ symbol overload The easy answer: both. The better que...

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grand Old Party! I’m so glad to have it back. "I heard the 'Gotcha' from back there, it's got to be Sarah, I swear!" It’s been too long. In 2008, the Democrats soaked up all the attention during the primaries, (although the GOP did give us Sarah Palin’s 6 week-long meltdown that was too short) and in 2004, George W. skated through the primaries. But now we’ve got eight Republicans on stage, pandering to the lowest common, most conservative denominator, in all of their glory. The Republicans are all worked up on the national debt. The best moment of the night was when the moderator asked all ten candidates to raise their hands if they would pass a compromise measure to reduce the national debt that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases. There was an awkward moment when they all tried to look at each other’s hands and see what they were doing. Well here’s a WWBBD exclusive: the thought process of eight Repu...