The Inevitable Mr. Romney

Nate Silver, the political oracle behind Five Thirty-Eight argues that Mitt Romney is becoming close to the inevitable GOP nominee in 2012—and while Silver notes that Romney certainly can lose, there’s no one else in the field that has the staying power to take him down. Even though the GOP isn’t in love with the idea of a Romney candidacy, no one has been able to mount a serious, long-term challenge to Romney.

The past few months of the 2012 campaign has seen a dynamic between Romney running slow but steady, with a series of putative challengers rising and falling. At first, Michele Bachmann was looking like the anti-Romney, until the GOP electorate realized that she was great as an ideological happy warrior, but has no appeal outside her base. Congresswoman Bachmann is a solid and principled conservative, but she is no the sort of person who can win in a national election. So she peaked early and has not regained momentum since.

Then the GOP electorate moved on to Rick Perry—until Governor Perry opened his mouth and made a fool of himself. One bad debate performance is not necessarily enough to doom a candidacy, but a series of them made it clear that Perry was not remotely ready for prime-time. If Perry can’t win over a friendly audience, he would have zero chance against Obama. What momentum Perry had after announcing was quickly diminished as Perry proved himself unprepared and prone to embarrassing verbal gaffes.

Then came Herman Cain, the next flavor of the week. Cain made some bold policy moves with his “9-9-9? plan. But his bold policies had no chance of working in the real world. Then Cain, like Perry, demonstrated that he was criminally unprepared for the task of running for President. (Yes, Mr. Cain, you should know something about those countries with “-stan” at the end if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate.) Then a drip of scandal turned into a torrent, as numerous women accused Cain of having affairs with them—and while a few anonymous allegations don’t count for much, a flood of them with details do. In the end, Cain was forced to leave the race in relative disgrace.

The last flavor of the week has been Newt Gingrich—who unlike Cain and Perry is an intellectual force to be reckoned with. But as brilliant as Newt may be, he is equally undisciplined. His attack on the judiciary was intended to be red meat for the conservative base, but it was deeply irresponsible and not at all in line with constitutional conservatism. Newt has taken many of the same positions that Romney has, and to call him the conservative alternative to Romney is a joke. Newt may be a great thinker who does well in debates, but he would likely implode long before mounting a challenge to Obama.

The rest of the field also underwhelms. Santorum’s last electoral experience was a double-digit blowout loss, and he has little appeal outside hardcore social conservatives. Jon Huntsman is running in the wrong party’s primary. Ron Paul is, to put it charitably, an isolationist conspiracy-mongering nutball.

By nothing more than default, Mitt Romney is the only candidate left on the field that is not damaged goods in some form or fashion. But the question then becomes, is Romney an acceptable candidate for the GOP nomination in 2012?

The Case For Romney

John Hinderaker at Power Line makes the case for Romney as the 2012 GOP nominee:

In electing a president, we are choosing someone to run the Executive Branch. A leader, to be sure, but not a speechmaker, a bomb-thrower, a quipster, a television personality or an exemplar of ideological purity. At this point in our history, the United States desperately needs a leader who understands the economy, the world of business, and, more generally, how the world works. We have had more than enough of a leader who was good at giving speeches and was ideologically pure, but who had no clue how the economy works or how the federal government can be administered without resort to graft and corruption. It is time for a president who knows what he is doing.

Hinderaker gives four arguments why Romney is the strongest candidate in the race, and the candidate most likely to beat President Obama, including the fact that in a time when the United States is badly in need on a turnaround, who better suited to fix our national problems than someone who has years of experience turning around failing companies?

On the other side, John Hawkins provides 7 reasons why he believes that Romney’s “electability” is a myth.

Hinderaker seems to have the better of the arguments here. What we do know of Romney’s general-election prospects come from early polling—and of the early general-election polls, Romney runs ahead of the rest of the Republican field in key states like Ohio. What candidate has a chance of doing better than Mitt Romney at this point? Gingrich? Paul? Perry? Santorum? Does anyone believe that anyone else in this field has a credible shot at taking on Obama and winning?

Romney’s conservative bona fides are constantly questioned, but Gingrich is no less an “establishment” figure and has departed from conservative orthodoxy just as much as Romney. Romney may not be every conservative’s ideal candidate, but he’s the most conservative candidate with a realistic prayer of winning.

A President Romney is not going to veto a conservative Congress’ budget cuts. A President Romney would not dramatically increase the size and scope of the federal government—certainly not when paired with a conservative Congress. A President Romney is a step forward for the nation—four more years of President Obama would be a disaster at a time when fiscal discipline is no longer optional.

Mitt Romney has a compelling narrative going into 2012: the turnaround artist for a country that faces bankruptcy. While the Republican Party should listen to Hawkin’s arguments against Romney’s electability and start working on contingencies to address them, the fact remains that Romney has the best chance to beat President Obama in 2012. He’s the only candidate that has a realistic chance to beat the President this year and restore some semblance of fiscal sanity to the Executive Branch.

And that is ultimately why I believe than Romney will be the 2012 nominee for the Republican Party. At the end of the day, the one thing that Establishment Republicans and conservative activists all want is to unseat President Obama. Romney is the one that is most likely to do it, and the GOP electorate has run through all the alternatives in the hopes of finding a more conservative challenger. At the end of the day, Romney has survived while others have faltered, and he is the candidate best positioned to take on the President and beat him.

Finally, the next four years will be crucial for the future of this country. While every election is tagged as the “most important” election ever, the stakes continue to get higher and higher for this country. Say what you want about Romney, he has years of experience in the private sector taking failing organizations and turning them into profitable and efficient ones. Taking on the U.S. government will be orders of magnitude more difficult than that, but Romney’s experience is relevant to the challenges ahead. We may not be getting our dream candidate, but we never were going to get that. Romney is conservative enough to be acceptable, is effective enough to run a disciplined campaign, and is smart and tough enough to lead this country. In the end, that is what matters.

Crystal Ball Watch 2011

It’s that time already (where did 2011 go?!)—time to see how my New Year’s predictions faired in the cold, hard light of reality.

Last year’s New Year’s predictions forecasted an unpopular Obama, an unraveling Europe, and a Verizon iPhone. And, surprisingly enough, we had an unpopular Obama, an unraveling Europe, and a Verizon iPhone. On the other hand, Fidel Castro hasn’t yet gone off to his villa in Hell, and the Bush tax cuts aren’t permanent—yet. Let’s see how I did:

Politics

President Obama, increasingly embittered by the political process and the Republican House, retreats from the public eye and rumors swirl that he will not run for a second term.

More-or-less right: President Obama made a few speeches through the year, but for a politician that was elected based on his oratory, he’s made himself scarce over the past year. As his approval ratings have declined, the President has been trying to sell his unpopular policies to a diminishing office. But he’s made no bones about it: he’s running again.
The GOP won’t have a much better year. Their commitment to fiscal discipline will be continually tested, meaning that there will be plenty of difficult votes on spending in 2011.

Right: Indeed, the Tea Party-backed GOP has been trying to be fiscally-responsible, but have not been able to do much to slow the rapacious growth of government.
Sarah Palin will continue to tease a run for the Republican nomination in 2012, but won’t actually commit to anything.

Wrong: Sarah Palin is, mercifully, not running for President, and while she remains popular with the Republican base, her celebrity is fading.
The Democrats will once again learn the wrong lessons from their 2010 drubbing, and will embrace the far left instead of running to the center.

Correct: Instead of moving to the center, the Democrats have decided that it’s time to stop pretending that they’re anything but a party owned by the left. Their supportive reaction to the Occupy movement and their embrace of populist rhetoric demonstrates foretell their strategy for 2012.
Redistricting battles will end up getting fought in court as the Democrats try to fight to keep as many Democratic seats as they can.

Correct
ObamaCare suits will be appealed, and will eventually end up on the Supreme Court’s docket. But because Congress will end up removing the mandates from the bill, the Supreme Court will declare the issue moot.

Half-Right: The Supreme Court will take up the ObamaCare issue in three days of oral arguments this March. But despite Republican opposition, the GOP just doesn’t have the votes to repeal ObamaCare… yet.

International

The last vestiges of democracy in Venezuela will be cast aside as Hugo Chavez extends his emergency rule into a lifetime dictatorship.

Correct: And even though the Venezuelan dictator is nearly ready to join Osama bin Laden, Mohammar Qadafi, and Kim Jong-Il in Hell, what will happen to the country he has plundered is still very much in the air. But it looks like Chavez will be the Venezuelan dictator for life—what little life he has left.
The conflict in Afghanistan will continue to be bloody and difficult. By the end of the year the conventional wisdom will be that Afghanistan is Obama’s Vietnam, and the future of the US mission there will be in doubt.

Partially Right: As the mission in Iraq winds down, the mission in Afghanistan continues to drag on. But the media, ever faithful to Obama, has avoided turning Afghanistan into another Vietnam. But if the situation there continues to destabilize over the next year, it may become harder to sweep it all under the rug.
North Korea will continue to rattle their saber, but they will stop just short of provoking a full-scale war.

Right: And now that Kim Jong-Il has shuffled off this mortal coil, and his son is (allegedly) in power, all bets are off for the future.
Iraq’s biggest problem in 2011 will be corruption rather than terrorism, and civilian casualties will remain low.

Right, Maybe: So far Iraq has been relatively quiet, although now that the U.S. has pulled out, the country is once again in danger of flying apart. The fact that sectarian tensions are once again bubbling to the surface may mean that Iraq will be a hotspot once again. Let’s all hope the Iraqis will be able to keep a republic.
Fidel Castro will die, and Raul Castro will begin implementing policies similar to the glasnost and perestroika of the old Soviet Union in order to liberalize the Cuban economy and pave the way for a free-market system.

If Only It Were True: Even though Cuba is very slowly liberalizing, it has a very long way to go.

Economics

The US economy will improve, but much too slowly. Unemployment will remain high, only retreating to around 8%.

True: Unemployment has retreated—but much of the decline is due to people leaving the workforce. The endemic level of unemployment is both an economic and a societal disaster that we will be dealing with for a very long time.
The Bush tax cuts will be made permanent, and while President Obama will complain, he will still sign the tax reductions into law.

Wrong: The tax cuts were extended, but have not yet been made permanent. And while Obama campaigns on raising taxes for the rich, he still signed off on extending the Bush tax cuts.
The Eurozone will face collapse as the fiscal crisis in nations like Greece and Portugal tug at the Euro’s foundations. Germany will refuse to bail out European banks and will threaten to leave the Euro.

Right and Wrong: The first sentence was right on the money, as we’ve seen in the last few months. But Germany has (thus far) gone along with bailing out the debts of the countries on the periphery in order to keep the Eurozone afloat—but they will not be willing or able to do that for very long, especially if a large country like Spain or Italy starts failing.
The Chinese economy will begin to slow, stoking fears of another worldwide economic panic.

Not Yet: There are serious concerns about China’s economy, but they haven’t yet manifested themselves as serious worries yet. The world seems more concerned about the situation with the Euro.

Society/Culture/Technology

The iPhone will come to Verizon, and will sell like hotcakes. The next version of the iPad will also come to Verizon, and will be accompanied by a major push by Apple to get the iPad into the business market.

Correct: I got this one right, but it wasn’t that bold a prediction…
The battle between Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS will continue, but the Verizon iPhone will put a serious dent in Android’s growth.

Wrong: Android continues growing like gangbusters. But don’t think that means that Android is “winning.” Apple does not compete based on market share, they compete based on making the best products and making the most money selling them. On that front, Apple remains the key player. Given that Apple is using the 3GS to try and compete in the entry-level market, they are not ceding anything to Google. Android’s growth seems to be more driven by people trading in their dumbphones or featurephones for smartphones—just try and buy a cellphone that isn’t a smartphone these days, it’s not easy. And most of those cut-rate smartphones that the carriers are pushing run some variant of Android.
The SyFy Channel will stop airing real science fiction.

Correct: SyFy has a few decent shows that arguably qualify as science fiction (I’ve heard Warehouse 13 and Eureka are good), but is basically a dumping ground for B-movies, shitty reality shows, and wrestling. NBC/Universal have completed what former channel head Bonnie Hammer started in killing what made the network unique.
Global warming hysteria will officially jump the shark after 2011 sees record cold temperatures.

Correct, Sort Of: Winter 2011 was miserable, and Summer 2011 was not the scorcher that some were predicting. But despite even more leaked emails demonstrating that “climate science” has become an echo chamber, global warming hysteria has not gone away. That’s because global warming is less about science than it is about creating a quasi-religion, complete with all the trappings.
SpaceX will successfully dock a Falcon capsule to the International Space Station and will announce that they will be ready to bring tourists to the ISS before 2016.

Not Yet: But it looks like they will dock with the ISS early in 2012, and that 2016 date might be optimistic, but it’s within the realm of possibility.
The 3D movie trend won’t save Hollywood from declining box office figures and their own creative stagnation.

Correct: Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy knows no ends: now they’re re-releasing the same old crap, but this time in 3D! Kids, the extra D in the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I is for an extra dose of disappointment…

Wrapping Up

So, I didn’t do too badly on my predictions, although a lot of them were fairly obvious even back then. What I didn’t predict is notable: I wouldn’t have thought that this year would have seen the deaths of Osama bin Laden, Mohammar Qadafi, and Kim Jong-Il. I would not have imagined that the self-immolation of a Tunisian fruit dealer would lead to a wave of revolution that would remake the Middle East. I wouldn’t have imagined in December 2010 that Newt Gingrich would have been a front-runner for the 2012 GOP nomination (albeit briefly).

And sadly, I wouldn’t have predicted that Steve Jobs would leave us, even though it wasn’t that great a surprise. Genius is often fleeting.

What a long, strange year it has been—and who knows what 2012 may bring… but that won’t stop me from making another set of predictions for the next year…

Can The Iraqis Hold It Together?

Rare is the day that I find that Thomas Friedman has written something actually worth reading, but he manages to deliver an even-handed and even insightful look into the end of the war in Iraq. Of course, he cannot resist putting in a few digs at President Bush, but overall his message is true: the future of Iraq will be decided by whether the Iraqi people can pull their country together.

Friedman writes:

Iraq had its strategic benefits: the removal of a genocidal dictator; the defeat of Al Qaeda there, which diminished its capacity to attack us; the intimidation of Libya, which prompted its dictator to surrender his nuclear program (and helped expose the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear network); the birth in Kurdistan of an island of civility and free markets and the birth in Iraq of a diverse free press. But Iraq will only be transformational if it truly becomes a model where Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the secular and religious, Muslims and non-Muslims, can live together and share power.

As you can see in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain, this is the issue that will determine the fate of all the Arab awakenings. Can the Arab world develop pluralistic, consensual politics, with regular rotations in power, where people can live as citizens and not feel that their tribe, sect or party has to rule or die? This will not happen overnight in Iraq, but if it happens over time it would be transformational, because it is the necessary condition for democracy to take root in that region. Without it, the Arab world will be a dangerous boiling pot for a long, long time.

Friedman thinks that Iraq was a war where the U.S. and Iraq both paid too high a price, but he’s right in pointing out that the war had its benefits. Without the invasion of Iraq, we would not have seen the wave of revolutions across the Arab world that we’re seeing now. The visions of Iraqis going to the polls and choosing their own leaders left an indelible mark on the region. From Tunis to Tehran others in the Arab and Muslim world saw Iraq hold peaceful elections and wondered “why can’t I do this?” It took years to come to fruition, and it is far too early to see whether the Arab Spring will lead to a victory for Islamists or a real democratic movement (or some combination of both). But in the end, one thing was right: the invasion of Iraq marked a turning point.

That’s where the critics of the war in Iraq kept getting it wrong: they assumed that the U.S. and its allies went to war for one reason and one reason only: weapons of mass destruction. But wars are never that simple: and while WMDs were chosen as the primary causus belli for the war, that wasn’t the only one. The war in Iraq was intended to be a transformational moment for the region. It was, but it happened on a far longer timetable than the planners of the war perhaps thought.

I also take issue with the idea that the war was waged “incompetently.” The fact is that we took out Saddam Hussein in a matter of days. Yes, we made plenty of mistakes in the post-war period. But that’s not because the U.S. was incompetent. It’s because the U.S. has not done anything like what it had to do in Iraq before in its history. The U.S. had never engaged in nation building on a scale like it had in Iraq. The analogies to the Marshall Plan ignore the fact that while Europe was devastated by World War II, it has had a tradition of democracy and civil society that has barely existed in Iraq. Of course we were going to screw things up: the most important thing was that we adapted to the situation as it happened. Sadly, the Bush Administration was slower to adapt than it should have, but the fact was that Bush’s embrace of the “surge” (against the political conventional wisdom) was the right choice, which even Friedman now admits.

If we had done what John Kerry would have had us do: abandon Iraq early and leave it to al-Qaeda and Iran, who knows what the Middle East would look like today. Iraq would have been ripped apart by a combination of al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias.

The planners of the surge were right in separating Iraq’s Sunnis from al-Qaeda. Once al-Qaeda in Iraq was destroyed by the joint U.S.-Iraqi forces, Iraq’s Shi’ites no longer felt the need to rally around groups like Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Instead of trying to force a “political solution” without changing the reality on the ground, President Bush and the U.S. military set the groundwork for a political solution to happen on its own: something that could have only happened once al-Qaeda was defeated.

Now it’s ultimately up to the Iraqis to decide their own fate. The U.S. has left Iraq, and while leaving so completely without at least establishing basing rights in Iraq was an utter failure of the Obama Administration, the mission in Iraq was going to have to transition to Iraqi control at some point. We could not provide a security umbrella in Iraq—otherwise the Iraqis would have had no incentive to develop their own security umbrella.

But there is still a problem: President Obama got his wish. We’re out of Iraq now. And now President Obama will basically ignore Iraq—not that any of the Republican candidates care to engage there either. But right now, as Friedman notes, Iraq is in a state of transition that could either lead to a chance at a lasting democracy or a renewed civil war, At the very least we should be active in getting both sides to negotiate rather than start to rearm sectarian militias.

Right now, Iraq’s future is in grave trouble: the Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused Iraq’s Sunni Vice President of being involved in terrorism and is threatening to upset the delicate political balance that has kept the peace in Iraq. The arrest warrant for Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi threatens to split off the Sunni Iraqiya bloc, and since al-Hasmemi fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, it may lead to tension with the Kurds as well. If that happens, then Iraq could all too easily fall into civil war once again.

If President Bush were President, there would be extensive shuttle diplomacy going on to cool these tensions: but President Obama seems blithely uninterested in the long-term peace in Iraq. That mistake threatens to undo everything that more than 4,000 brave Americans fought and died to achieve.

We did pay a high price to bring a hope for democracy to Iraq, but what was achieved there could be transformative for the region and for the world. But if we neglect Iraq, we risk losing everything. It may be ultimately up to the Iraqis to shape their own future, but we cannot pretend that we’re not interested in the results, and we should not abandon them when we could help them create and maintain a stable and civil society.

Obama’s Dangerous Deception In The Middle East

Martin Peretz has a powerful article in The New Republic on why Obama’s Middle East policies are in utter tatters. Peretz observes the rise of a new fundamentalism in Turkey, one of the most important countries in the region and once a strong U.S. ally. But thanks to President Erdogan, Turkey appears to be moving away from the U.S. and the West and towards becoming a hegemonic Islamic state.

The reason why President Obama appears to be so blind to Turkey’s new ambitions is that Obama is making the same mistake that many others have made in assessing the Middle East: thinking that the Israel/Palestine situation actually matters. Israel is the excuse given in the Middle East (and throughout the Muslim world) for a whole host of sins, as though the mere existence of Israel gave reason for Syria to murder its own people, Saudi Arabia to embrace the 14th Century, or Iran to destabilize its neighbors. But ultimately the Palestinian issue is a sideshow, a distraction from larger concerns. What is sad is that the West consistently plays into the Israel delusion, and Obama has embraced that delusion with full force. As Peretz puts it:

This conundrum of a non-negotiated state for the Palestinians appeals to the ardent déclarateurs. It ignores the fact that free and responsible politics has never been a habit in the Arab world. Read me right: never. There is nothing in Palestinian history to have made the Arabs of Palestine an exception to this stubborn commonplace now being played out again in virtually every country in the region. A commitment is never a commitment. A border is never a border. A peace is never long-lasting. Turkey has now added its serious mischief to the scenario. Erdogan himself will now unravel Cairo’s peace with Jerusalem, as Erdogan has already locked the PA into phantom international politics.

Poor Barack Obama. His adoring view of Erdogan has stimulated the Turkish regime to be a force not for stability in Cairo or reason in Ramallah. What’s more, Obama’s Palestinian initiatives have all collapsed. But the most striking collapse of his Arab politics has been in Syria where he posited that there were sensible and dependable men with whom Israel could make peace. Of course, that would entail giving up the Golan Heights (which are not the Great Plains) to Dr. Assad. The administration courted the family tyranny and its epigones. Responsible, reasonable, reserved. Two smart-assed Jewish boys were dispatched to play computer games with the Damascus elite. They were also enthused by the possibilities. I know that none of these people pulled the triggers on any of the thousands who are now dead. They just encouraged the clan to think they will get away with murder forever.

In the last few years, the Middle East has been at a crossroads. The democratic revolutions throughout North Africa could have spread into a full-on wave of democratization across the region. But that was not going to happen without the support of the West in picking the side of democracy. Instead, we have sat on the sidelines, content to let things play out as they may. The problem with that is that democracy in a delicate flower, and it can all too easily be crushed in the treads of a tank. Right now, Libya could easily become another enclave for al-Qaead, Egypt is a de facto military dictatorship, and the Syrian regime feels free to kill without fear of anything other than a few choice words.

Meanwhile, President Obama is playing the same old fool’s game of trying to negotiate a settlement between the most democratic state in the region and a loose-knit confederation of cast-offs who would like to see nothing more than the destruction of their democratic neighbor. There will be no solution to the Israel/Palestine problem until the Palestinians truly recognize the right of Israel to exist. Only then can the conditions for a lasting piece and Palestinian statehood exist. President Barack Obama is not going to talk them into that, no matter how much he thinks of his oratorical skills.

While the world occupies itself with the prospect of the UN recognizing a Palestinian state, the Middle East becomes increasingly dangerous after years of hope. Turkey’s sudden turn towards becoming a regional Islamic hegemon, Syria’s continued brutalization of its own people, and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons are all more important than playing into the Palestinian mythos. Until the U.S. and other world powers stop playing into the idea that Palestine is the be-all-end-all of Middle Eastern affairs, the Middle East will not change for the better. What is sad is that Peretz is right—Obama thoroughly misunderstands the Middle East, and it will cost us in the long run.

Stimulus II: High-Speed Rail Bugaloo

As the old saying goes, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that definition, President Barack Obama is frigging bugnuts.

This evening, President Obama called on Congress to pass the “American Jobs Act,” which is little more than another round of the same failed stimulus that was passed back in 2009. Since then, unemployment has hovered near double-digit levels, the economy has been limping, and our national debt has skyrocketed.

Instead of admitting what the majority of Americans can see with their own eyes, President Obama decided to double-down with more of the same. It was the same plans for “shovel-ready jobs” and high-speed rail, all to be paid with tax increases on the “rich,” of course.

Take the bizarre fascination with “high-speed rail.” It has been tried over and over again and it has never worked. It has always cost more than planned, required massive subsidies to work, and ended up being little more than a massive white elephant. emulating China’s failures is not the way to the future. Yet politicians keep pretending like the way to improve American infrastructure is to create a bunch of expensive high-speed rail lines. And even if China’s high-speed rail network makes sense for China, it doesn’t make sense in the slightest for the United States.

And then there’s the usual blather about “shovel ready jobs” and how if we just build a bunch of roads and bridges we can employ the millions of Americans who are just sitting idle. Now, I know that the President and most of the political elites know virtually nothing about manual labor, but if one is going to propose a jobs plan, it might be a good idea to learn about jobs.

President Obama needs to learn that not all “construction workers” are monolithic drones who can do anything that remotely resembles putting things together. You can’t take an unemployed sheet rocker or house framer and tell them to grab a shovel and build a bridge. Even in construction, the basic concept of division of labor still applies. There’s something vaguely condescending about the idea that all manual labor is basically interchangeable.

And finally, there’s the idea that taxing the “rich” will magically pay for all of this. Someone needs to inform the President (provided he would listen) about the concept of deadweight loss. It works like this:

Let’s say you take a million dollars from Warren Buffet. Had you not done that, Warren Buffet would have invested that million dollars in the hope of earning a nice return on his money. That million dollars would go to different companies, where it would pay for capital improvements, wages, new factories and offices, etc.

But that didn’t happen. The government took that million dollars. But that million dollars doesn’t get pumped directly into the economy. Instead part of it pays the salary of the government apparatchiks that process all the paperwork necessary to take the money, distribute it to the right agencies, and so on. Now, some will say that those salaries help the economy, and they do, but only to a point. Those bureaucrats don’t actually produce anything—they just push paper. That’s in contrast to someone who could take that money and invest it in something that would add value along the way. And it’s not just one layer of bureaucracy that the money has to get filtered through, it’s dozens or even hundreds. And each time, some of that million dollars gets lost.

And not only that, but the government does not spend money on what the best investment is. The government allocates money based on what the most politically well-connected want. When then happens is that money gets shoveled into politically-connected firms that quickly go best when the government turns the money spigots off. The failure of President Obama’s pet “green jobs” generator Solyndra is just one example of how government allocation of assets is not the way to build an economy.

So, by taking more money from Warren Buffet, the money has gone to government bureaucrats and the politically well-connected, but hasn’t produced any additional value. Had the government not taken the money from Warren Buffet, that money would have been invested prudently, and everyone would have been better off.

That’s why the idea of a Keynesian multiplier is a myth—government spending $1.00 does not magically produce $2.00 of value. But investing $1.00 in Apple in 1997 would produce way more than $2.00 today. The question is not whether the Keynesian multiplier exceeds 1, it’s whether it exceeds zero.

It may well be that building roads and bridges is a good idea—there are certainly valuable and needed infrastructure projects that constitute real public goods. (For example, the Stillwater Lift Bridge here in Minnesota is near collapse and serves thousands of motorists each day.) But why does it make sense to tax someone in California, send the money through Washington D.C. and then distribute it to local governments in Minnesota? That’s the problem of deadweight loss—government is not free, and while there are some projects that make sense to be done by government, those are few and far between.

President Obama’s speech tonight laid out yet another tired argument for “stimulus” spending that will fare no better than the already-tired arguments that he trotted out in 2009. Since then, the economy has suffered, leaving millions of Americans without the hope they were promised in 2008.

We need to change directions, and instead of empowering Washington D.C., we need to empower the American entrepreneur. We need to unleash America’s creative impulses and make it easier for Americans to start their own business and live their dreams. More of the same will not produce any different results. It is time for the President to end the madness and change direction.

Obama’s War

The Washington Examiner has an interesting article on how President Obama used parliamentary trickery to talk Congress into approving a Libyan no-fly zone. It’s as though we have traveled into some bizarre parallel universe: President Obama, the peace candidate, has now fully embraced the the doctrine of preemptive military action. President Obama, who in 2007 said that “the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation” has unilaterally authorized a military attack on a nation that posed no imminent threat to this country.

President Obama speaks in Cairo

Not to mention the fact that President Obama has now endorsed military tribunals at Guantanamo for al-Qaeda detainees…

Exactly what is the difference between President Obama’s military policy and President Bush’s?

If You Strike At The King…

Of course, Obama’s supporters will argue that the difference between Obama’s wars and Bush’s is that Obama is supposedly more competent as a Commander in Chief. But the evidence suggests otherwise. What is our goal for military action in Libya? Are we trying to bring the rebels into power—without knowing who they really are? That hardly seems like a smart strategy. Is it to overturn Qaddafi? If that’s the goal, then why is President Obama denying any intention to assassinate the dictator? There is no clear goal, and the President’s desire to fight only a limited, bloodless war… or “kinetic military action” is in contradiction to the reality of war.

If our goal is to get rid of the Qaddafi regime, then the goal should be to blown Mohammar Qaddafi straight to hell. No questions asked. If we want to support the rebels, we should be doing what we did in Afghanistan—sending CIA teams to work directly with them in getting rid of the regime. (Which, admittedly, may already be happening.) We should not be fighting a war with half measures.

And worse of all, we may not be winning. We have committed to this fight, and once this nation commits to a fight, we should see it through. What message would Qaddafi’s continued rule over Libya send to the rest of the world. Al-Qaeda has always played off the Arab psychology of the “strong horse” versus the “weak horse,” and if Qaddafi hangs on, America (and the rest of its allies) will undoubtedly look weak.

Following In Bush’s Footsteps

So what should President Obama do? It’s clear that he faces a skeptical public and a restive Congress. (George W. Bush must be feeling at least some schadenfreude at this turn of events.) Plus, time may be running out. The Libyan rebellion cannot hold out forever, unless they are resupplied and rearmed from outside.

The President needs to admit that Qaddafi’s regime must be destroyed. We have committed to that end, and we have to see the task through. That means more than just engaging in limited and sporadic military action. That means decapitating Qaddafi’s military, cutting their supply lines, and killing them before they can kill civilians or the rebels. It is messy, it is bloody, and for all our technological advancement, it can’t be done effectively from 30,000 feet in the air.

But in the end, President Obama is right about one thing—even if inadvertently. For too long we have tolerated Arab dictators who have systematically oppressed their people, and the result has been the growth of groups like al-Qaeda. These dictators have systematically tried to suppress the normal civil society of a functioning state and replace it with cults of personality, pan-Arab nationalism, or sectarian intimidation. But what has happened is to create a situation in which the only groups that dare speak out, that give the people some escape valve, have been the religious fanatics.

President Bush seemed to instinctively understand this. President Obama does not, except in a deeply attenuated way. But ultimately, President Obama has stumbled into following the path of his predecessor. He has embraced everything that Candidate Obama railed against just a few short years ago: preemptive war, indefinite detention, all the sins of the Bush Administration. Next thing you know, he’ll be mispronouncing “nuclear.”

But the problem is that if President Obama is going to follow this path, he should do it boldly. If President Obama wants to be a champion of democracy in the Arab world, he should do so consistently. But sadly, this does not seem likely. Instead, President Obama is only taking action in Libya because the rest of the world has endorsed it. There is no “Obama Doctrine,” no grand strategy other than the hope that Qaddafi will fall and everything will be alright. Just as the Bush Administration (and some of its supporters) naively hoped that the fall of Saddam would lead to a flourishing of Iraqi democracy.

What is sad about this state of affairs is that not only is President Obama emulating many of President Bush’s strategies, he is emulating many of President Bush’s mistakes.

After Egypt’s Revolution

This weekend, the government of Egypt began to collapse. After a week of unrest, last Friday saw the beginning of the end for the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Following in the footsteps of the revolution in Tunisia, the Egyptian people have risen up and kicked out their incompetent and autocratic leadership.

This may sound like a wonderful thing on the surface, but the trust is far more complicated. The likely winner of a free Egyptian election won’t be liberal democrats, but the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Barry Rubin looks at the likely outcomes of the Lotus Revolution and finds that the radicals have the upper edge. Remember, Egypt is the birthplace of radical Islam. Sayid Qutb, the man who inspired the modern Islamist ideology, was an Egyptian. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The number two man in al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was Egyptian, So too was Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 attacks. Egypt has long been a hotbed of radicalism, and polling shows that many Egyptians are largely sympathetic to Islamist ideology.

Protesters in front of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum

What was even more distressing was the risk of Egypt falling into anarchy. Some of world’s greatest treasures are contained in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. The museum is next to the headquarters of Mubarak’s political party, the NDP. Already, two priceless Egyptian mummies were vandalized in the chaos. But the Egyptian people took the security of their ancient past into their own hands: a human chain of Cairenes protected the museum and arrested looters until the Army could arrive and secure the building. Many in Egypt have long learned that the only way to keep the peace has been to band together into neighborhood associations: the police would not or could protect protect them. Those ad hoc organizations have helped to save lives and keep order during the revolution.

Who Will FIll The Vacuum?

It appears clear that the Mubarak regime will not survive for very long. The Egyptian people have spoken, and if the Army continues to support the protests, Mubarak will have no choice to flee or die. But the question then becomes about how will fill the power vacuum?

Nobel laureate Mohammad El-Baradei appears the most likely front-runner. El-Baradei was the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and a well-known figure. He is also closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. If El-Baradei gains power, the Muslim Brotherhood gains power right with him. At worst, this would make Egypt like Gaza: a radicalized hotbed of Islamist that would pose a serious threat to the stability of the region, and could spark a war with Israel. At best, the Muslim Brotherhood has to compromise and support democratic reform. But given the attitudes of the Egyptian people, a secular government seems unlikely.

The big question is how the military will react. The military is the most widely respected institution in Egyptian society. If they throw in with the Islamists, then Egypt could look like another Gaza. But if the military decides to enforce democratic norms, Egypt could look much more like democratic Turkey. The Egyptian military, thankfully, tends to be less Islamist and more nationalist. A military government, strangely enough, could be more democratic than a populist government led by someone like El-Baradei.

Ultimately, the question is up in the air. There is even the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood and the military will end up fighting for dominance, leading to civil war. This outcome seems unlikely know, but the idea that the Mubarak regime would suddenly collapse in a popular revolution didn’t seem very likely just a few weeks ago.

President Obama: Voting ‘Present’ Again

Here in America, this crisis has exposed just how weak American foreign policy has become under President Obama. The lack of a coordinated response from the Obama Administration was inexcusable. First we had Vice President Biden saying that Mubarak was not a dictator and should not step down—a statement that was both irresponsible and idiotic. For one, Mubarak most certainly is a dictator, if an American one. Second, it signaled to the Egyptian people that the American government was in bed with the regime they were dying to overturn. The damage that statement caused was severe, and may have ripple effects for years.

President Obama was hardly better. There was a time when American leaders were unabashedly and unapologetically in favor of democracy worldwide. While President Obama’s statements on Friday night gave lip service to universal human right, the US government has done little to show support for the people of Egypt. Already, there are comparisons between Obama’s handling of Egypt and Jimmy Carter’s handling of Iran in 1979. The feckless response to the Lotus Revolution demonstrates American weakness abroad at a crucial time in the Middle East. Democratic movements across the region know that America will do little to protect them: Islamist ideologues know that America will do little to stop them. It is a recipe for disaster.

The Future of the Middle East Is Being Written Now

The revolutionary fervor that began in Tunisia is beginning to spread: there have been protests in Jordan and Yemen as well. But these revolutionary movements aren’t all democratic: many are Islamist movements seeking to further isolate the region from Western democratic influence. What we are seeing could be a flowering of democracy or a regional descent into radicalism. And we are sitting on the sidelines.

American policy should be clear: we will not directly intervene in the region without being asked, but we are not neutral. We support democratic movements over Islamist ones, and we will no longer prop up convenient autocrats like Hosni Mubarak.

When Mubarak first came to power, supporting the Egyptian regime made sense: they were willing to support peace with Israel and prevent the outbreak of another regional war. But the dynamics of the region have changed: autocracy feeds Islamism.

Before this revolution, the only place where an Egyptian could speak against the regime was in the mosques. The Muslim Brotherhood was the only group that could stand against the Mubarak regime. If Egypt is to democratize, it must develop civil society where there has been virtually none. That will not happen within a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years. Democracy is a process, not an event, and it will take generations for a democratic culture to develop in Egypt.

That is why sitting back and doing nothing is not an option. If democracy is to flower, it has to be supported, both internally and externally. That means the United States must be willing to engage with Egyptian pro-democracy activists and work to support civil society across Egypt and the region. But if all we are going to do is sit around and wait to see how things shake out, we will miss opportunities to shape events in favor of democracy and human rights.

President Obama said all the right words on Friday, but the right words are not enough. If we want a free and peaceful Middle East we have to support those who will make the Middle East more free and more peaceful. That means becoming more, not less, involved in the region. We don’t have to be heavyhanded in our treatment of the region, but benign neglect will not help anyone.

Right now, Egypt is at a turning point. The future of the region is being written now, and if Egypt tilts towards democracy and pluralism, it could continue to spill over across the region. But if Egypt becomes another Islamist theocracy, the democratic dreams of people from Beirut to Tehran could be crushed. As a believer in liberal democracy, I would like to think that democracy will win out. But pragmatically, I know that democracy is a rarity in human history: the human condition is much more likely to be in bondage to autocrats or tyrants than consensual governments.

But ultimately, the fate of Egypt will be written by the Egyptian people themselves. And they have shown that they will not live with the autocratic regimes that were once common across the region. The rest of the world can either recognize the new reality of the Middle East or be steamrolled by it.

Yet Another State Of The Union

President Obama delivered yet another State of the Union address tonight. (The full text of the address is here.) As is typical of these speeches, it offered about as much substance as meat from Taco Bell. It was yet another predictable stream of cliches in a setting that’s become as stylized and predictable as Kabuki theater.

More of the Same

The essential problem with this State of the Union address was that it ignores the spirit of the time. The President’s party just got its asses handed to it in a major electoral loss. The American people are angry at the state of government. They are being forced by the poor economy to constantly cut back their expenses—but they see their government continuing to spend with the reckless abandon of a drunken sailor. They see a President who promised a more accountable, transparent, and efficient government and failed to deliver on those promises. They see a political class that is utterly and completely out of touch with the average American.

And what did the President offer tonight? More of the same tired rhetoric.

No, the path to economic prosperity is not going to be through government “investing” in pie-in-the-sky schemes like “green energy” or high-speed rail networks. No, the problem isn’t that we don’t have enough teachers, it’s that our educational system doesn’t work well enough with the teachers that it has. Everything in this speech was predictable, right down to the applause lines.

Of course, just about every solution that the President mentioned involved growing the size and the scope of government. Yes, he threw a few bones to the right about reducing government bureaucracy and freezing spending—and all of that is well and good. But President Obama’s speech tonight was all about the typical laundry list of goodies that every President promises in just about every State of the Union speech.

A Conflict of Visions

The President spoke extensively about American exceptionalism—but he doesn’t really seem to understand the source of America’s strength. Our political class sees our entrepreneurial class and thinks how great our government is for producing such things. Our entrepreneurial class sees our political class and thinks about how much they keep getting in the way. All the pablum about green energy and high-speed rail sounds great to the political class: but the rest of the country sees it as more expensive boondoggles.

America is an exceptional nation. And it is an exceptional nation because we have a government that, for the most part, gets the hell out of people’s way. The more intrusive and powerful government becomes, the more it slows the pace of American innovation. We can’t out-innovate and out-build nations like India and China from the top down. The spirit of American innovation is being crushed by a sea of red tape, and the President only gave lip service to changing that.

The most important issue for the future of this country is spending: and the President failed to lead on this issue. We cannot continue to spend like we have in years past. We cannot continue to assume that government can grow year after year as it has. The President doesn’t really seem to get this. The State of the Union made the right overtures on fiscal discipline, but it was just that: an overture.

While Rep. Ryan had the unenviable task of responding to the State of the Union, at least he understands the issue. The American people are worried about the pace of spending. And while Rep. Ryan wasn’t the orator that the President was, he cut directly to the key issue. We cannot continue to spend as we have, and the political class should know it.

Ultimately, this State of the Union was forgettable. There was no grand themes, no memorable lines. It was all formula: a grab-bag of new government initiatives wrapped in a few token exhortations to fiscal discipline and slathered liberally with grand-sounding but ultimately empty rhetoric.

The state of our union may be strong, but the state of our political class is abysmal.

Crystal Ball Watch 2010

Every year I make a bunch of predictions for the coming year, and each subsequent year I note just how far off I was. And this year is no exception.

Last year’s predictions ranged from politics to technology and everywhere in between. It’s hard to believe that last year at this time the iPad was just a rumor, Democrats were crowing about the popularity of their health care plans, and 3D movies weren’t yet an overused gimmick.

Let’s see how my prognostications actually matched the reality of the past
year:

Politics

Prediction: President Obama’s popularity will remain mired below 50% throughout most of the year.

Verdict: Correct. The health care debate and the BP oil spill sapped Obama’s popularity, and he never really recovered from either. Obama’s approval rating went underwater right along with the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, and his low popularity contributed to the GOP gains in November.

Prediction:The Democrats will lose more the 40 seats, putting the GOP in control of the House.

Verdict: Correct. The GOP gained over 60 seats in November, which was more than they gained in the 1994 cycle. The GOP’s gains in the House were substantial, and bigger than I would have predicted.

Prediction: In the Senate, Democrats will not fare much better. Majority Leader Reid will lose his seat, following in the footsteps of Tom Daschle. Chris Dodd also loses his seat to a GOP upstart. Same with Blanche Lincoln.

Verdict: Not quite. Harry Reid kept his seat, thanks to Sharron Angle being an even worse alternative in the eyes of Nevada voters. Chris Dodd resigned before his inevitable loss, and once again the Tea Party nominated a candidate that was simply not electable. On the other hand, Blanche Lincoln lost handily, along with several other Democratic incumbents. But the GOP didn’t take the Senate, even in a year that gave them a clear opportunity to do so. You can have a fire breathing conservative candidate who can win—see Rand Paul. But being a fire-breathing Tea Party candidate is not in itself enough, and it certainly doesn’t make up for being a complete and utter basket case—see Christine O’Donnell.

Prediction: The health care bill will be signed into law, and will be a major albatross around the necks of Democrats.

Verdict: Absolutely correct.

Prediction: The Democrats, rather than moving towards the center, will lurch left as the “netroots” convinces many in the party that the reason for the 2010 defeat was because the party was insufficiently “progressive.” The Democrats will end up in the same position the Republicans were in a year ago.

Verdict: Partially correct. The Democrats wisely divorced themselves from their own positions of the past 10 months and tried to run as centrists. But many “progressives” wanted them to run to the far left—convinced that the reason why health care was so unpopular was because it was insufficiently socialist instead of too much so. Now even Barack Obama’s positions are becoming indistinguishable from his predecessor, and the “netroots” are not happy with it.

Prediction: But Republicans should be wary as well. They will have won not on their own laurels, but because of disgust with the current Congress.

Verdict: Again correct. The GOP had better not get cocky in 2011.

Prediction: Cap and trade will be DOA as Congress gets increasingly worried about the political backlash.

Verdict: Again, correct. Cap and trade was even more politically poisonous than health care, and for good reason.

International

Prediction: The protests in Iran continue in fits and starts, weakening the foundations of the regime. The Iranian government continues to brutalize its own people, while the West does little of consequence to stop them.

Verdict: Iran has been much quieter than I would have expected: the regime has brutalized the opposition to the point where widespread protests aren’t gaining traction. Every year I predict that the regime in Iran will be weakened to near collapse—and every year it is less a prediction than a hope for something better for the Iranian people.

Prediction: President Obama launches further military action in Yemen to try to remove al-Qaeda.

Verdict: Covertly, this may be happening. But the conflict in Afghanistan is continuing to be the major flashpoint in the world.

Prediction: A major economic collapse in the EU shakes the foundation of the Euro.

Verdict: The Greek fiscal crisis fits the bill, and the contagion continues to spread across the Eurozone. The once unthinkable idea of a collapse of the Euro remains a distant possibility, but it gets closer as more and more countries in the Eurozone continue to see their economies decline.

Prediction: Gordon Brown faces a vote of no-confidence in Parliament, causing the him to call new elections in the UK.

Verdict: Indeed, Gordon Brown was defeated by the charismatic Conservative David Cameron in May. But the Tories fell short of a majority, leading to the first hung Parliament since 1974 and eventually to a coalition government.

Prediction: The situation in Afghanistan remains unsettled, but the addition of U.S. troops helps calm some of the tensions.

Verdict: This year has been the bloodiest year in Afghanistan for US and coalition troops and the country remains unstable. The addition of more troops does not seem to have substantially calmed the country, and it’s uncertain whether the Obama Administration will have the political will to continue to try and stabilize the country over the long term.

Prediction: Iran will come closer to testing a nuclear weapon, and will likely have the capability of doing so by the end of 2010.

Verdict: Had it not been for the Stuxnet worm—which was almost certainly the product of Israeil or Western sabotage—Iran might have been much closer to a working nuclear weapon. But Stuxnet actually appears to have worked in slowing down Tehran’s progress. It sounds like the plot of a bad thriller novel, but Stuxnet was probably one of the most ingenuous covert weapons ever used. Whoever came up with it deserves a medal.

Economics

Prediction: Unemployment will remain high throughout the year as discouraged workers reenter the workforce. This will be a huge political problem for the Democrats in the 2010 cycle.

Verdict: Indeed, this was true. Unemployment continues to flirt with double-digit levels, and may not go down that much in 2011. Not only was this a political problem for the Democrats in 2010, but the human cost of this kind of endemic unemployment is far too high.

Prediction: The price of gold and other hard assets will continue to skyrocket on inflation fears, leading to a mini-bubble in asset prices.

Verdict: I keep hearing all those advertisements telling people to buy gold: consider me a skeptic. Perhaps gold and other asset prices will continue to climb at a steady rates, but the risk of a bubble is still very real.

Prediction: The government will continue with bailouts of major companies, despite President Obama’s focus on debt reduction.

Verdict: The bailout culture didn’t reach the fever pitch of 2009, but it was still alive and well in 2010.

Prediction: The national deficit will continue to skyrocket as Congress is unable to restrain spending.

Verdict: Predicting this was as obvious as predicting that the sun would rise in the east…

Society/Culture/Technology

Prediction: Apple will announce their tablet in early 2010, with a 10-inch touch screen and optional 3G wireless through Verizon rather than AT&T. The tablet (probably not called the iSlate) will have a major effect on the e-reader market, although Amazon will counter by making Kindle content available on the new device. Critics will complain that the price point is too high, but the device will sell like hotcakes anyway.

Verdict: Of course, Apple announced the iPad in early 2010, with a 9.7 inch screen and 3G wireless through AT&T. But Verizon is already selling the iPad, and it’s likely that a version with built-in Verizon 3G will be coming in 2011. And Amazon has been selling Kindles like hotcakes, along with selling books on their Kindle app for the iPad. The iPad is the hit device of the year, and for good reason—Apple priced it very competitively and helped to define the market.

Prediction: E-Books will begin to outsell physical book copies.

Verdict: Not quite true yet, but within a few years this could be a real possibility.

Prediction: The reality TV show craze will finally, mercifully die off as people get sick of the them.

Verdict: If only…

Prediction: Web series will continue to take off from being largely low-budget affairs to being more like regular TV shows. Shows akin to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog will receive much critical acclaim and will begin to supplant conventional TV.

Verdict: Not quite yet, although there are web series like SyFy’s Sanctuary that crossed over from web series to cable TV. But there isn’t an online show that’s been a true widespread hit… at least not in 2010.

Prediction: “Steampunk” will go from a small subculture to the next major popular phenomenon. Things like home canning, writing letters on fine stationery, and Victorian styles will become increasingly popular.

Verdict: No, not even close. The “steampunk” subculture remains just that.

Prediction: The death of the newspaper industry will not stop, even though many papers start
reconciling themselves with the digital world.

Verdict: Newspapers continue to struggle with the digital world, and traditional newsprint is still in deep trouble.

The Final Word

Once again, there were some hits and some misses in my predictions last year, Many of my predictions were fairly obvious even back in December: the Democrats’ political misfortunes were widely predicted even a year ago. The rumors of an Apple tablet were rampant. And my usual predictions on Iran were once again not quite as prescient as I would have hoped.

But all in all, not a bad set of predictions, even if there were some stinkers there. Shortly I’ll be posting some predictions for 2011, and a year from now we’ll see if my crystal ball remains clear or is stuffed with crap…

A Wave Or A Tsunami

The inestimable Michael Barone, the dean of American politics, predicts that this election cycle could be a repeat of ’94…1894:

For months, people have been asking me if this year looks like ’94. My response is that the poll numbers suggest it looks like 1994, when Republicans gained 52 seats in a House of 435 seats. Or perhaps somewhat better for Republicans and worse for Democrats. The Gallup high turnout and low turnout numbers suggest it looks like 1894, when Republicans gained more than 100 seats in a House of approximately 350 seats.

Now, a gain of 100 seats is probably out of the question. Not impossible, but close enough. But this election is not like other election cycles where the President’s party loses 20-25 House seats in a midterm election. This is looking at least like 1994, where the Democrats lost 54 House seats. It could even be bigger.

We can see proof of just how panicked the Democratic Party really is. Despite Vice President Biden’s bombastic claims that the Democrats will keep the House, every indication shows that the Democrats are counting on huge losses. Here’s the evidence: The Hotline reports that Democrats are trying to build a firewall in what should be arguably safe Democratic seats.

Take the example of Rep. Phil Hare, of Illinois’ 17th Congressional district. That district was gerrymandered to be Democratic, and Hare was unopposed in 2008. But now Bobby Schilling, his Republican challenger has raised an impressive amount of cash, and not only that Schilling has gotten the endorsement of The Chicago Tribune. Hare isn’t the only Democrat who should, in a normal election cycle, be utterly safe. But this isn’t a normal election cycle, and the number of safe Democratic seats is getting increasingly small.

Even the Democrats have started realizing that they’ve lost independent voters and are trying to consolidate their base:

Assuming that many independents are out of reach, White House strategists are counting on Mr. Obama to energize, cajole, wheedle and even shame the left into matching the Tea Party momentum that has propelled Republicans this year.

As he holds rallies aimed at college students and minority groups, sends e-mail to his old list of campaign supporters and prepares to host a town hall-style meeting on MTV, the president essentially is appealing to his liberal base to put aside its disappointment in him. Without offering regrets for policy choices that have angered liberals, Mr. Obama argues that the Republican alternative is far worse.

At best, that will only stem their losses. It was the independent vote shifting decidedly to the Democrats that led Obama to his substantial win in 2008. Without those independent voters, the Democrats have little chance of holding on to the House. President Obama’s retreat into the comfortable world of deep-blue America isn’t going to help his foundering presidency or his party’s chances.

Every analysis points to this being a major GOP year, on the scale of a 40 House seat gain. But there’s a good chance this will be a year like 1994, with a 50 seat gain, And in politics, sometimes the bottom falls out—a candidate that’s behind on Election Day sees their support drop as voters figure that it’s over and either stay home or vote for the winning candidate. That dynamic could push Democratic losses even higher if the GOP retains its significant lead through this month.

At the very least, this election is looking like a substantial wave election, and the Democrats are acting in accordance with that theory. But this could be something bigger—a tsunami election that leads to Republican gains much bigger than what’s been commonly predicted.