Charlie Cook, the keeper of the oft-cited Cook Political Report, is one of the Beltway's favorite pundits, a supposed sage whose general election predictions are commonly held as authoritative by those guards of the status quo like Chris Matthews and Bob Schieffer, to name only two. In short, old media kisses the ground Charlie Cook walks on; if he predicted that the producers of CNN were all going to jump off a bridge in November, they'd probably do it tomorrow--after all, it'd be an inevitability. But, like so many of the other sinecurists whose privilege it is to disseminate the abstraction of American politics into neat, packageable narratives, he's totally full of shit, so you shouldn't fret when he says Democrats are going to forfeit Congress in the fall. Even Cook's own House model should inspire hope for weary Democrats, as you'll read later in this diary.
Follow me after the jump and see why Charlie Cook, and the idea that Democrats are doomed to lose the House in November, is totally bunk.
One of the praising quotes Cook features on his website reads:
Cook is "the Picasso of election analysis."
-Al Hunt, the Wall Street Journal.
In fact, Cook is the Norman Rockwell of election analysis, an arbiter of convention and cliches whose non-threatening political models are bi-annually made to fit prevailing media narratives which he himself helps create. So it should come as no surprise that he too now joins the deafening chorus of those who believe Democrats are going to suffer fatal losses in November, that they're going to lose their enormous House majority, and that they might lose their enormous Senate majority too. It's going to be so brutal, the letter D may very well fall out of common usage with an angry American public, which is just as well, since 'tax cut,' 'anti-incumbent rage,' 'you betcha,' and 'Obama is a Muslim' don't require that Socialist fourth letter of the alphabet anyway.
Now, I don't subscribe to Charlie Cook's newsletter or pay for his premium prognostication services for the same reason I don't pay a meteorologist to follow me around and tell me whether it's presently raining or not. I can readily deduce the weather by standing in it, and I can just as readily deduce that Charlie Cook is full of shit by the limited free content on his website.
Let's start by looking at Mr. Cook's revered House model. As of last night, his breakdown of the 435 House races were as follows (218 needed for a majority):
Solid D: 153
Likely D: 22
Lean D: 30
Toss-Up: 49
Solid R: 162
Likely R: 13
Lean R: 6
Pretending we work for a newspaper or news network, let's assume Cook's model is infallible. Combining the Solids, Likelys, and Leans on either side, that gives us 205 Democrats and 181 Republicans heading to Washington, with those 49 Toss-Up races left to decide the final balance.
Okay, cool, I can get behind that--that means Democrats only need to win 13 of 49 Toss-Ups to eke out a majority and deny Darell Issa his great wet dream of subpoena power. That sounds pretty good, right? After all, consider what the term 'Toss-Up' means; it's up in the air, as a flipped coin, and could go either way, about a 50-50 chance of going Democratic or Republican. So, under Mr. Cook's model, the GOP would need to win AT LEAST 37 of 49 coin flip or 'Toss-Up' races to take the House. That's a tall order, even in a wave year, and it doesn't leave the Republicans with much margin for error; try flipping 49 coins, I bet you can't get 37 of one side. Remember 2008? Of course you do. A huge wave year, with strong presidential coattails and an unprecedented stream of new Democratic voters to boot. And Democrats still didn't win as many House seats as the GOP needs for control this time around. I cannot stress enough: under Charlie Cook's model, the GOP needs to win a whopping 37 of 49, or 3 out of every 4, 'Toss-Ups.'
Now consider some of these 'Toss-Up' districts. Louisiana-2, where Republican incumbent Joseph Cao is almost sure to lose to Dem Cedric Richmond in a heavily Democratic district that only voted Cao in because his predecessor was heinously corrupt. Hawaii-1, where only internecine Democratic fighting in an earlier special election allowed Republican Charles Djou to steal a seat in another overwhelmingly liberal district; Colleen Hanabusa will win in November and flip the seat now that it's only a 2-way race. Putting those two slam dunks into the Dem column (which Charlie Cook is remiss not to do, he knows better), the GOP needs to win 37 of 47 'Toss-Ups,' or roughly 79% of them.
Let's consider more of these individual races, Lord knows the pundits who keep assuring a Republican landslide never do. In Florida-2 and Ohio-18, Democratic incumbents Allen Boyd and Zack Space have respectively won over 60% of the vote in their previous races, 2 for Space, and over 5 for Boyd. In Illinois-10, Dem Dan Seals has a great shot at picking up the seat Mark Kirk is vacating, in a district that votes heavily Democratic in national elections. In Pennsylvania-8, Patrick Murphy remains a popular incumbent, an Iraq vet who fits the district's character well. In Texas-23, a large Hispanic population spells trouble for GOP pick up hopes. And in TN-8, WI-7, MI-1, CA-11, IA-3, SC-5, WV-1, and AR-1, Democrats have won at least the last 4 House races, including in the GOP wave year of 2002; a few of these may flip because of retiring incumbents, but districts that are historically blue (or red) seldom do, and certainly not en masse, wave or not. And that's not to mention at least 10-15 other 'Toss-Ups' where recent polling and/or electoral history are strongly on the Democrats' side.
In summation, giving Democrats 205 seats prior to 49 'Toss-Ups' (the Cook model as of 9/14) indicates a very favorable outlook for the Left, if all you're interested in is maintaining some kind of majority, which would have to be seen as a huge victory at this point, even if some seats are lost. Democrats can and should be able to win at least 12 of these 49 seats with relative ease--I'd bet on substantially more than that. So take heart, Dems, it's just not as bad as everyone keeps saying; we don't vote with generic Congressional ballots. But back to Charlie Cook being full of shit, if I may. His model, which as I've just elucidated, doesn't seem so bad for Democrats, is accompanied by this blurb from Mr. Cook:
The Cook Political Report's current outlook is for a Republican net gain of at least 40 seats. A turnover of 39 seats would tip majority status into Republican hands. At this point, only 205 House seats are Solid, Likely or Lean Democratic, while 181 seats are Solid, Likely or Lean Republican, and 49 seats are in the Toss Up column.
I'm sorry, did you read that too? Cook says ONLY 205 are Solid, Likely, or Lean Dem, while 181 go Republican. Shouldn't the 'only' be in front of the smaller number? The smaller number by 24, not the one that shows Dems only need 13 more seats for a majority as opposed to 37? That sentence totally betrays the conventional narrative Charlie Cook is pushing in the face of his own numbers. Despite the district by district, localized nature of House elections, pundits are trying to make this into a national referendum on the President, and so, in spite of the facts he himself presents, Charlie Cook is going along with that; Charlie Cook doesn't like to rock the boat, he follows and perpetuates convention. He's full of shit!
The GOP needs to flip 39 seats for a majority so he says they'll win "at least 40." How convenient! You can bet if they needed 29, he'd say they'll win at least 30, because Charlie Cook isn't really offering a predictive model (to use Newt's term), as always, he's offering staid, conventional wisdom and dressing it up in the costume of advanced, insider prognostication. He knows the other insiders in the media, his friends and colleagues, won't be asking any tough questions about his outlook, won't be investigating his logic, will take him at his word, because it's their word too.
We'd all be wise to reflect on Chuck D's famous, ever-prescient words:
"Don't believe the hype!"
Because Charlie Cook, and this whole Democrats-will-cease-to-be narrative is full of shit, it's totally removed from logic, which isn't something pundits tend to traffic in should it be inconvenient. Democrats are still going to vote in November. There happen to be a lot more of us in a lot of these districts. We have a huge majority, and the GOP has almost zero margin for error in their uphill climb to unseat Speaker Pelosi. Will we shed seats? Yes, almost certainly. Will we lose the largest House majority in a generation? To employ a Republican response: No, no, no, no, hell fucking no!
Democrats will maintain a bi-cameral majority, and when they do, those who've been virtually guaranteeing a Republican tsunami all summer, people like Charlie Cook (and Chuck Todd, and Mark Halperin, and Ed Henry, and Joe Scarborough, and Roger Simon, and just about everyone else in front of a TV camera) will be revealed as the spineless lemmings they are, their credibility will be forever damaged, and their very jobs will be in jeopardy for getting it so wrong.
Just Kidding!
Everyone knows there's no accountability in punditry. They'll all keep their cushy jobs like they did after they bought into Weapons of Mass Destruction, they'll continue to write their syndicated columns, and they'll continue to pat each other on the back during their television spots and cocktail parties, probably while they begin to wring their hands and furrow their heavily makeupped brows about Barack Obama's imminent trouble in 2012, or how health reform doesn't have the popular support to reach its inception date. Because once you've been accepted into the punditocracy, once your mainstream media bonafides are secure, you're allowed to be wrong as often and as flagrantly as you please. Just ask Bill Kristol. Or Charlie Cook in 2012, when his outlooks will again be held on high; what a bunch of shit!