The Return of the Bradley Effect

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I have written here before of the "Bradley effect," but that was in the context of the 2008 presidential election, a time when voters were deciding whether to elect the first black president. That wasn't as inconsequential a decision as you might think now, more than seven years after the fact. After all, Barack Obama has been elected president twice now. Voters face a different kind of decision in 2016.

Simply put, the Bradley effect refers to the 1982 California gubernatorial campaign of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. Bradley was black, and polls prior to the election showed him leading the race. But he lost — narrowly — to Republican George Deukmejian (who won by less than 100,000 votes out of more than 7.5 million).

I suppose it goes without saying that the outcome of that election prompted a lot of soul searching, and the general conclusion that most people seemed to reach was that Bradley fared better in the polls because those who were polled did not wish to appear racist — so even if they were undecided or leaning toward the Republican, they told the pollsters that they would vote for Bradley, thus creating an artificial lead for him.

When they went into the voting booths, though, the voters did not have to concern themselves with what others would think of them, and they pulled the lever for the Republican — regardless of what they may have told the pollsters.

I bring this up because I think we could be seeing a new — and fascinating — twist on that theme in the campaign of Donald Trump. It isn't necessary to say much about Trump. So much has already been said about him, including the seemingly daily assertions that the Trump campaign has peaked, which always seem to be followed by a new poll showing Trump with even more support than he had before. Clearly, this guy is tapping into something, with his rhetoric about Muslims and immigration, but it's something a lot of people don't seem to want to acknowledge.

It's all about perceptions. Thirty–three years ago, a lot of Californians didn't want to appear to be racist. Today, perhaps a lot of people don't want to appear to be supporting a racist. Well, a perceived racist.

In case you haven't heard, a Quinnipiac University poll that was released today suggests that half of Americans would be embarrassed if Trump became the president. Could the same dynamic be at work here?

It reminds me in a way of a congressional campaign in my district in central Arkansas a couple of years after the Bradley election. There was a rather flamboyant sheriff in Pulaski County at the time named Tommy Robinson, who had apparently been angling for higher office with some publicity stunts.

Now, that district was represented for decades by Democrat Wilbur Mills, and he was succeeded by a Democrat when he stepped down, but that Democrat chose to run for the U.S. Senate after serving a single term, and a Republican was elected to the seat. The Republican held the seat for six years, then he, too, chose to run for the Senate, and Tommy Robinson announced he was running for the House seat as a Democrat. Historically, it was the right choice. Until the Republican incumbent was elected, the district hadn't been represented by a Republican since Reconstruction.

I don't remember much about the advertising in the Democratic primary (which Robinson won in a runoff) or the general election, but I do remember one of Robinson's ads. I think he used it in both the primary and the general election. It showed a series of vignettes in which friends were talking and one would say, "Who are you voting for for Congress?" and the other would say something like, "Well, you'll probably be surprised, but I'm voting for Tommy Robinson."

And that opened the door to confront all the negative stories that had been circulating about Robinson for years.

Now, as it turned out, Robinson was a crook who got caught up in the House banking scandal. But that was still several years in the future when Robinson first ran for the House.

And my memory of that campaign is that pollsters were quite certain that Robinson's Republican opponent, Judy Petty (who lost to Mills 10 years earlier), would win. Polls were showing her leading, which wasn't really hard to imagine. Petty was running as a Ronald Reagan Republican in a year when Reagan carried three–fifths of the vote in that district.

But the Gipper's popularity didn't trickle down enough for Petty to prevail. Or perhaps those people who told the pollsters they would vote for Petty actually voted for Robinson instead.

And perhaps Donald Trump, like George Deukmejian and Tommy Robinson, will have the last laugh.

I've Seen That Movie, Too

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On June 9, 1982, I covered Bill Clinton's press conference
the day after his runoff victory in the gubernatorial race.

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That was the name of a somewhat obscure song on Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album nearly 40 years ago.

And, if you don't recognize it, that's understandable. There were several songs on that double album that got a lot more airplay, both at the time and in the years since. In fact, to be honest, I'm not sure I ever heard "I've Seen That Movie, Too" played on the radio. It's something of a favorite among John's fans, not so much for the rest of the mainstream audience.

I wouldn't call myself an Elton John fan — I like some of his albums, don't care for others. But that song has been on my mind lately as I have watched the parade of political primaries in the spring and early summer.

I've seen this movie before, I keep telling myself. And I really think I know how it will end. Of course, I could be wrong. That's the way it is sometimes with remakes — the ending of the remake differs from the ending of the original.

But this plot is so familiar. I just can't imagine a radically different conclusion.

At some point — I can't pinpoint precisely when — 2010 became known as the "anti–incumbent" year. I never really bought that — last month, for example, I speculated that centrists, not necessarily incumbents, were threatened in our polarized political atmosphere.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow apparently has reached the conclusion that the "anti–incumbency" furor is fiction. "[A]ctually all the incumbents are winning," she said Wednesday night.

Now, before I go any farther, let me say that I like Maddow — as a person. Sometimes I agree with what she says. Sometimes I don't.

I don't believe this particular conclusion is correct or incorrect — yet. I believe it is premature. For the most part, the parties have been been standing by their men — or, in the case of Arkansas' Democrats, their women. The real test of the incumbents will be this fall, when all of a state's voters can pass their judgment.

I do think Maddow is right when she suggests that, many times, when the pundits pronounce something, it becomes a self–fulfilling prophecy through sheer repetition — not unlike the "Big Lie" of which Hitler wrote in "Mein Kampf."

This particular fiction, Maddow insists, was decided on by the "Beltway media" — everyone's favorite whipping boy — who "decided that this was going to be anti–incumbency year. The anti–incumbency theme was going to be the story that they told to explain politics this year."

But a funny thing happened on the way to throwing all the bums out, Maddow said. The voters didn't hold up their end of the bargain.

Whoa!

I beg to differ. All the voters haven't been heard from yet.

Now, earlier this week, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who is widely regarded to be a centrist, survived a hotly contested runoff in my home state of Arkansas against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who was considered the liberal in the race. Perhaps that was the last straw, as far as Maddow was concerned.

I admit, I expected Halter to prevail. My Democratic friends who live in Arkansas have their issues with Lincoln, and my impression is that Democrats in general have moved more to the left in recent years. Consequently, I believed that, in a one–on–one confrontation, the more liberal candidate would win the nomination of today's Arkansas Democrats.

Liberals have always been in the distinct minority in Arkansas. Nearly all of the Democrats who have been successful there in general elections in the last 50 years have been centrists. Before that, I suppose, most Arkansas Democrats would be considered conservative by modern standards.

That doesn't mean that Arkansas' Democrats have always nominated centrists in the last half century — and some of those "centrists" haven't been as centrist as they were advertised to be — but the successful ones always managed to balance some liberal views with some conservative ones.

Well, I haven't seen any exit polls or any comparisons of the vote in the May 18 primary to the vote in Tuesday's runoff. But you can only vote in a runoff if you participated in the original primary, and my guess is that a lot of people took it for granted that about 13% of the voters, who originally supported a conservative businessman who ran third in the primary, would support the challenger, so great is the apparent dissatisfaction with Lincoln in Arkansas and with incumbents in general.

I don't know if either candidate benefited from the third candidate's votes to any extent. But turnout was down about 25% for the runoff, and that could easily include everyone who voted for the third candidate plus another 40,000 or so who voted originally for Lincoln or Halter.

So maybe it was simply a matter of Lincoln doing a better job of getting her voters to return to the polls for the runoff than Halter did.

I learned a long time ago that runoffs in Arkansas are strange and wondrous things, and this one seems to have been no different.

Without getting into too much detail,

• I questioned the wisdom of allowing Obama to make a radio commercial for Lincoln just before the May 18 primary.
  
  Obama isn't particularly popular in Arkansas — and, I reasoned, while Obama's support might tip the balance in the race for the Democratic nomination, it might weigh heavily on Lincoln in the fall campaign, when the participants in general are apt to be more conservative.


• Perhaps Lincoln countered that response by bringing in former President Bill Clinton in the final days. He always has been popular in Arkansas. In more than 40 years, he's the only Democrat (except Jimmy Carter in 1976) to carry Arkansas in a presidential election, and he carried it twice. No Democrat had done that since Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s.
  
  Arkansans elected Clinton their governor five times, usually by impressive margins. They liked him. They had probably heard every rumor about him that could possibly be spread between his first statewide race (for attorney general) in 1976 and his last gubernatorial campaign in 1990, and they knew some of what was said about him was probably true, but they trusted him all the same.
  
  The Democrats of today are the philosophical descendants of the Democrats who nominated Clinton in the 1970s and 1980s — minus those who found themselves at odds with some elements of the party's agenda. There seems to be a great deal of regard for Clinton among today's Arkansas Democrats.


• The problem for Arkansas Democrats is that there aren't as many of them as there used to be. When I was growing up, the candidate who won the Democratic primary for just about anything was, in effect, elected. It isn't that way anymore.
  
  When I was a child, Arkansas had six representatives in Washington as it does today — its two senators and four representatives in the House. For decades, the two senators were John McClellan and Bill Fulbright, and one of the state's congressmen was Wilbur Mills — three men who seldom had to face serious challengers back home — in either party primaries or general elections. Consequently, they accumulated seniority that brought power and prestige — and pork — to their comparatively small state.
  
  But things began to shift in the 1970s.


• To get an idea of that, let's compare this year's Senate race to some high–profile campaigns from the past. Nearly 330,000 people voted in the May 18 primary. Three weeks later, just over 250,000 voted in the runoff. The estimated population of the state in 2008 was a shade under 2.9 million.
  
  In 1974, Fulbright ran for a sixth term in the Senate. He was challenged by Gov. Dale Bumpers, who built a reputation as a political "giant killer" when he was elected governor, coming from virtual anonymity to defeat former Gov. Orval Faubus in the Democratic primary and then incumbent Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller in the general election.
  
  Bumpers was billed as a "new Southern Democrat," a liberal alternative to Fulbright, who, in addition to promoting his share of perks for his state, had opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act along with most of his Southern colleagues — but also had been one of the leading critics of Vietnam policy, which was not exactly in line with the more hawkish positions taken by many Southern Democrats.
  
  Nearly 600,000 Arkansans voted in that primary. Based on the 1970 Census, it is fair to assume the state's population in 1974 was around 2 million, about two–thirds of the estimated 2008 population figure. Yet the turnout in a high–profile Democratic Senate primary (long before cable and 24–hour newscasts) was nearly twice what it was in 2010.


• As exhibit B, consider the Senate Democratic primary of 1978. McClellan died in 1977, about a year before the conclusion of his sixth term, and Gov. David Pryor, in accordance with state law, appointed a caretaker to complete McClellan's term, then ran for the office himself. He was challenged by two congressmen, Jim Guy Tucker (who later became governor) and Ray Thornton (who had achieved a certain amount of national notoriety as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that impeached Richard Nixon in 1974). Their primary campaign drew nearly the same number of voters as the 1974 Bumpers–Fulbright showdown.
  
  So, in the last 36 years, population has gone up while Democratic primary participation has gone down.


• Republican primary participation has never been very impressive in Arkansas. Mostly, it seemed to be the hard–core party activists who participated in Republican primaries at all, and such primaries were seldom necessary because candidates were rarely challenged within their party.
  
  The first truly competitive Republican primary I can recall there was the 1976 presidential race between President Ford and Ronald Reagan. Slightly more than 50,000 people voted in that one.
  
  Even fewer people voted in the 1980 Republican gubernatorial primary. The 1980 Census showed a population of about 2.2 million people in Arkansas, yet less than 10,000 participated in that primary (by comparison, more than 100,000 people voted in the Republican Senate primary last month). Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands voted in the Democratic primary that renominated Clinton for governor by a wide margin over a nondescript, elderly turkey farmer.
  
  But that year clearly showed me that primary results can be deceiving. The Republican defeated Clinton that November. Maybe he rode Ronald Reagan's coattails to victory. It was, after all, a narrow win — but it was a win, nevertheless.

Like this year is expected to be, 1980 was a bad year for incumbents — but not in their party primaries. A dozen incumbent Democratic senators went down to defeat that year, but only three were rejected by their own party. Nine — including a former presidential nominee — were beaten in November. And both Clinton and President Carter, who had won Democratic primaries handily in late May, lost in Arkansas in November.

I understand Maddow's frustration. And I believe she is right when she says anti–incumbency hasn't played a major role in the primaries.

But I never thought it would.

For most incumbents, Judgment Day will be on November 2. And, as much as things have changed, there are still a few truisms in American politics that are valid.

One of which is ...

The same party seldom enjoys success in three consecutive election cycles.

And the Democrats were the big winners in 2006 and 2008.

History says the pendulum is swinging back the other way.

The Peril of Power

Today, Arkansas has four members in its delegation in the House of Representatives, same as it did when I was growing up there.

Representation in the House is based on the most recent census report. Thus, a delegation can grow or shrink, depending upon what the state's population did in the preceding decade. Arkansas is 32nd in population, so its delegation is one of the smallest. Its delegation was larger in the decades before I was born, but it has remained constant since the 1960 Census.

In spite of the fact that Arkansas' congressional representation was small, the state accumulated legislative power through seniority in the middle of the 20th century. The same two men, John McClellan and Bill Fulbright, represented the state in the Senate from the 1940s until the 1970s and served as chairmen of powerful Senate committees (McClellan in Appropriations, Fulbright in Foreign Relations) near the end of their careers.

And, for nearly four decades, from the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt until the election of Jimmy Carter, the central Arkansas district where I grew up was represented by Wilbur Mills, who would have been 100 years old today. He rose to become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, wielding considerable power — which may have prevented him from recognizing certain facts that might have spared him some embarrassment in his later years.

In 1972, for example, Mills was persuaded by many of his supporters in Arkansas and his colleagues in Washington to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mills did enter a few primaries that year and tried to position himself as the friend of the senior citizens by supporting the automatic Cost Of Living Adjustment to Social Security.

But Mills wasn't a very effective vote–getter, which may have been due to his experience — or absence of it. He had a lot of experience as a lawmaker, of course, but he seldom faced opposition back home so his electoral experience was lacking. That was a handicap in a field that included several charismatic candidates like Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie, eventual nominee George McGovern and, for a time, George Wallace.

Two years later, in what turned out to be his final campaign, Mills had to fight for his seat against a little–known Republican named Judy Petty. His dismal performance in presidential politics had nothing to do with it, but, again, his lack of experience as a campaigner may have played a role in the outcome.

Until about a month before the election, Mills seemed invincible — but then he was found, cut and bleeding, in the Washington Tidal Basin with a stripper named Annabelle Battistella, better known by her stage name of Fanne Fox ("the Argentine Firecracker").

Mills came back to Arkansas and, for the first time in voters' memories, really had to campaign to keep his seat. He won re–election — but, in the decidedly Democratic year of 1974, he could only manage 59% of the vote. Not long after the election, Mills announced that he was an alcoholic and would seek treatment. He gave up his chairmanship, and his congressional career was, effectively, over.

I guess Mills' story is a cautionary tale about the arrogance of power. It is a story that powerful people still need to learn, although I have heard it argued that the mindset that led to Mills' downfall was an aberration, a peculiarity of his generation.

But I believe it is a human flaw that is not confined to a generation.

And political success can be so seductive that some still fail to recognize when the waves of history have left them high and dry (Dick Cheney comes to mind), and present recipients of its largesse must be sensitive to shifts in the electorate, whether it is a call to increase support for same–sex marriage or legalize marijuana or anything else, if they wish to remain in its good graces (take note, Barack Obama).

While she did not defeat Mills, Petty's words during the 1974 campaign are worth remembering: "The most beautiful words in the Constitution are not 'he's the chairman' or 'he's the powerful,' " she said. "It's 'we the people.' "