I'll bet he's a guy who could teach us all how to keep our powder dry.

and there were no US House races going on in Wisconsin?

There are many things in addition to money that resulted in the limited success of the Wisconsin recalls.

The r's won the gubernatorial election and the r's had historically huge money support. So that means money was THE key? These quick and facile interpretations of the role of money in Wisconsin are just that, quick and facile. The national party, represented by folks like Israel and the DCCC are frightened of Citizens United so they see CU and how it released big money as the only cause of the outcome here.

This election is going to be studied and it's already obvious that a variety of curiosities and asymmetries are going to need to be understood as influential co-factors. In the analytical process of sorting out the importance of the co-variances one of the emerging messages to students of politics will be the detailing of just how badly that flood of money actually underperformed for the r's. No one is talking about that at this time. But much of the money was spent to no good effect.

Understanding just how the big money underperformed is going to be very important to the future of largely underfunded populist movements. All that money, and the gubernatorial race came down to a swing of ~4%. It's pretty apparent that somehow the area of effective influence of the money diminished as the amount of money increased. That suggests the efficiency of that money was being eroded by the volume of the sphere over which it was spread.

I suspect the patient and deliberate analysis of the Wisconsin recalls, together with upcoming elections, is going to reveal that the influence of big money bombs made possible by Citizens United is not at all linear (as in more money always means greater probability of success). Rather it's likely that the influence of big money is going to bend to upper limits imposed by efficiency. It's likely that there is an optimization curve underlying things, but it's also likely that efficiency is going to depend on multiple other factors. It may be that performance of big money will be mostly unique to each election. There isn't data to eliminate such possibilities

The analysis of the Wisconsin recall that might hint at the limits of CU aren't going to be quick or facile.

But they will be much more important, than the current superficial interpretations.

What's currently flying around the blogosphere is just like this crap out of the mouth of DCCC spokesman Steve Israel

which is little more than knee-jerk responses of confirmational bias of pre-existing anxieties regarding CU.

1. They still won.

2. They have lots of money to throw around. My guess is that they know what you are saying in your analysis, but it's worth it. They aren't betting their own house.

However, having said that, there is a case right here in CT that argues against the heedless (and mindless) expenditure of money in TV advertising campaigns and that is the case of Linda McMahon, running for Chris Dodd's Senate seat in 2010. She blanketed the state with tv ads. It is now political lore that the voters of CT despised those commercials. You simply could not get to your remote fast enough to mute them. BUT, she had two other big problems to overcome: running against a VERY popular and visible State A.G. (now our Senator, Dick Blumenthal) and her unseemly business (WWE). Now she's back to run for Joe Lieberman's seat this fall. While she will probably run against a Congressman (Chris Murphy) for the seat, she will probably target her advertising better. And Murphy has a few skeletons himself.

The Democratic Governor's Association and the DNC would have had provenance over the Wisconsin recall effort.

Last edited Thu Jun 7, 2012, 06:45 PM - Edit history (1)

That's what confirmation bias is all about.

A first run at the factorials may have happened now, but none of it's available for publishing yet.

buy some spines and actually stand up against and do something about the criminal activities of the Republicans. Ya think?

Oh, and focus on monitoring elections with our own exit polling, hand recounts to verify voting results in questionable locals.
And while we are at it, kick the DLC and Third way backers, out of the control positions of the Democratic Party. In other words, get the Democratic Party back on course.
I, for one am fed up with having two Republican Parties, drifting ever more to the Right. All I see are more and more crazies in control if we don't.

I live in a red zone of MI. The state party doesn't have the resources to pour into red zones that don't stand a chance of winning, I know this.

Our county party signs up volunteers to do poll watching (we usually manage to get a lawyer at each site). We are all over the county monitoring, taking voters to the polls, making sure there are Dem vote counters there with the Rethugs and on it goes.

We have found taking matters into our own hands to be much more productive than waiting and waiting for resources that don't stretch far enough to reach us.

Just throwing that out there.

Julie

We really don't need Dems who sorta speak for us, sometimes; we need leaders who literally stand with us and side with us.

to do it is have President Obama re-elected and hope that a conservative or two die or retire. At this case I don't care which way they leave--just get rid of them, because their GD ruling is going to hurt millions of people--it already has.

The Democratic Party doesn't have over $1 billion in Citizens United PAC money like the other side does.

Really, I get so fucking sick and tired of Democrats complaining. What do they want us to do about the mismatch in money?

Stop complaining and come up with SOLUTIONS!!