11:00 A.M. EDT
Real Audio of Briefing
MR. BRAZIER: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. My name is George Brazier, and I'm delighted you could be with us today for this briefing with Thomas Mann on the upcoming Congressional elections. With so much focus on the race for the White House this year, it is important to remember that the makeup of that institution at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue will also be determined on November the 2nd, and with it, the priorities and policies of the U.S. Government in the years ahead.
As the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and someone who has worked on both sides of the Hill, Thomas Mann is well-positioned to assemble at least some of the Congressional tea leaves in this year's cup, or at least tell us which races to watch most closely and why.
Thomas Mann.
MR. MANN: Thank you very much. I bet the Germans here didn't anticipate hearing from Thomas Mann. (Laughter.) If the going gets slow on American politics, I'll do a little recitation from Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann's first and one of my favorite novels.
I have one bottom-line message for you today, which is that we are likely to see very little change in the composition of the House and the Senate, unless something interesting develops in the Presidential race, in which we get, instead of a dead-heat finish, a la 2000, a comfortable victory for Senator Kerry or President Bush.
I think it's possible that one of these candidates could win by two, three or four percentage points of the popular vote, and that could be enough to tip a couple of Senate seats and either produce, in the case of a Kerry victory, a Democratic Senate; or, in the case of a Bush victory, a somewhat larger Republican majority.
As you know, the territory on which Democrats are fighting in the Senate is hostile to their political interests. It's really quite striking, if you really examine these competitive races, you will find that in all of the tossups, Bush won in 2000 in all of those states. Of course, a number of them are clustered in the South -- Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina. There is also the border state of Oklahoma.
But then, the other states potentially up for grabs -- Alaska, Colorado, and importantly, South Dakota -- these are all states in which President Bush did well and did rather comfortably. It is Republican real estate the Democrats are struggling on in hopes of winning this election.
The only other two seats really potentially competitive are Washington and Wisconsin, and both of those were Gore states in 2000. That's Senators Patty Murray and Russ Feingold, and the one seat that is already conceded as a Democratic pickup, Illinois, to Barak Obama, was also a strong Bush -- Gore state in 2000. And the one seat virtually conceded to the Republicans, Zell Miller's open seat in Georgia, again, is a state that went comfortably for George Bush.
So there is a linkage between Presidential and Congressional races that's important -- that's important to keep in mind. Sometimes there's a bit of a lag in talking about political parties in American politics, especially Europeans, who think of our party system as weak and rather insignificant. In fact, in recent years, our parties have become ideologically polarized, internally unified and operating at a rough level of parity, which makes the level of partisanship all the more intense.
Nowadays, voters see the world differently, depending on which partisan lenses they use. Republicans think the war in Iraq is going terrifically. Democrats, of course, think it's chaotic and a disaster. Republicans believe the economy is humming and Democrats believe it's gone to hell in a hand basket. So that partisanship is very important, high level of party voting in Congress, and therefore, even though these seats are Senate seats that are at risk are in Republican Bush territory, to the extent that John Kerry can win the election and win it comfortably, he could help provide the margin of victory in a state like Florida, a state like Colorado, a state like North Carolina, that could ultimately make a difference.
Now, in the House it's a similar story but it's a different story as well. One of the most shameful aspects of American politics, beyond our electoral college, which you all must be amused, bemused or appalled by, is the fact that out of 435 Congressional districts, we're lucky to have three dozen that are actually competitive. This is a function of a number of factors: the natural movement of likeminded people to geographical areas and therefore representation by one party or the other, safe seats; it's also a consequence of rounds of gerrymandering and redrawing district boundaries that produce seats safe for one party or the other and that particularly help incumbents in states where the political control over redistricting is divided between the parties. It's also inequities and access to campaign resources and the like.
When you have only three dozen seats up and one party has a 12-seat advantage, and roughly equal numbers of those competitive seats are now held by Democrats and Republicans, you can imagine it takes almost a clean sweep of all competitive races for the Democrats to have any chance of regaining control. It's not impossible, but I would say it would take more like an incredible Kerry surge in the end, producing more like a 5-point or more, 6-point popular vote victory to put the House in play in any way; otherwise, we're bound to get some marginal changes, leaving the Republicans in the majority with slightly larger or slightly smaller majority.
That's what Democratic prospects were so ebullient during their convention in Boston when Kerry was up in the polls. That's why they sank in August and September, and now they're risen again following the first Presidential debate. As you probably know if you were to look at the half dozen polls taken right before the first debate, President Bush has slightly larger than 6-point lead. If you look at the six -- now a seventh added -- midmorning polls taken since the debate, that is, regular polls, not the instant polls, you'll see that the President's lead is now about 1.5 percent. And significantly, he is below 50 percent in the percentage of people who say they're going to vote for him, and one of the things we've learned is that that tends to be the high-water mark for incumbent presidents running for reelection; that is, the undecided vote tends to go overwhelmingly to the challenger.
We don't know if that's going to happen, but if you also look at new job approval ratings and some of the right direction, wrong track, market for change and even personal characteristics, you'll see that the race is as close to a dead heat as it gets at this point, with the outcome probably being determined by which candidate succeeds in framing the electoral choice in the last four weeks of the campaign.
Will this, as is traditionally, be a referendum on the President's performance in office, on the economy, on Iraq? If it is, if that's how swing voters see it, I think John Kerry will win the election. If it's alternatively framed around John Kerry and his alleged inconsistencies and unreliability as commander-in-chief, then I think George Bush will win the election. So the debate this evening is important in terms of whether it continues the dynamic put in motion just before the first debate and reinforced in the first debate, that is, to turn attention away from Kerry's voting record and toward the President's record in Iraq and on the economy. Or will Vice President Cheney succeed in returning to the frame that proved so successful for the Republicans in August and the first part of [September].
That, in turn, will influence what happens in the Presidential race, which will, in turn, shape at the margin what happens in the Congressional elections.
Final point: Whoever is elected President is going to face, once again, a closely divided House and Senate. If Bush is elected, I think he will have a Republican House and Senate, but not enough to out-muscle a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and not enough to hold tight reins over restive Republican moderates in the House. If John Kerry is elected, he may have a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate but he will most likely face a Republican majority in the House. He will struggle to try to advance his agenda. It will require a very different coalitional strategy than George Bush adopted in 2001.
Why don't I stop there and respond to your questions.
MR. BRAZIER: In the blue suit here in the middle.
QUESTION: Thank you. Javier Garza from Monitor newspaper in Mexico City. These two questions don't exactly have to do with Congressional, but I wanted to get your take on a couple of things. First is, how important is the Vice Presidential debate? I mean, I know it's the least important of the series of debates, but what's the real significance or the real impact on this?
And second, do you think, or how do you think that this new -- the new offensives that have been going on in Iraq since last week to retake several critical areas could impact the election results, if this is part of some sort of October surprise that could, you know, shift the opinion of the Iraq war, either strengthen for Bush or weaken Bush's position?
MR. MANN: Yeah, on the first point, as best as we can tell, very, very few voters in November base their choice on the relative attractiveness of the Vice Presidential candidate. So the debate is important not in terms of who ends up being more popular, but whether the debate itself reinforces or alters the dynamic of the contest and helps frame the choice for the second and third Presidential debates that will soon follow.
Right now, Senator Kerry has some momentum. Overwhelming sentiment that he won the first debate, he looked Presidential and President Bush was put on the defensive. If that continues in this debate, it's not good news for the incumbent team. If it can be stopped and reversed, then that's very significant. So that's how I would view the debate, only in those terms.
With Iraq, it's getting hard and getting late for sentiments about Iraq to change. As you know, they were probably at the low point during the spurt in killings and casualties in April, and then the Abu Ghraib revelations that kept Iraq on the front pages.
With the transfer of political authority, Iraq moved to the back pages, even when casualties were high and there was -- there were clearly difficulties there, but that has changed. For the last couple of weeks, Iraq is back on the front page. The aggressive action being taken in some of the cities held by insurgents is an action that many people thought would occur right after the election, out of fear that it would produce casualties, both U.S. and Iraqi, that would be politically damaging. But clearly, the Administration and the military have decided to go full force.
If they could retake control, regain control of the cities, including Fallujah, with minimal casualties, in a sense that the Iraqi military force is in better shape than everyone believes, then that could certainly be a good talking point for the President in the remaining weeks of the campaign. Perhaps just as likely is you retake it, but then other violence breaks out, as we've seen in other areas.
So my general view is never expect an October surprise because that's the thing about surprises, you can't anticipate them or expect them or they're not surprises. If it occurs, it seems to me there are three more realistic. One is a really surprising jobs report this Friday, either very disappointing or very, very upbeat. It won't be upbeat enough to undo the net loss of jobs over the four years by the payroll measure, but they are revising 2003 based on larger household surveys, and that could produce a reversal in looking back over time, and if instead of 150,000 jobs, they get 350,000, this is going to be a boost. Whether it turns what is now a slight negative on the overall economy into a positive for the President remains to be seen, but it could at least help neutralize the issue.
The second would be the capture of Usama. And the third would be a terrorist strike, either at home or in one of countries of one of our neighbors or allies. Again, how that would play is uncertain in the short term, helping the Commander-in-Chief. If it proves to be subject to political manipulation by other side, it could backfire.
MR. BRAZIER: Please, right here on this side.
QUESTION: (New York) Iliya Tuechter, Rheinpfalz newspaper of Germany. I have a question about campaign finance (inaudible) campaign for Congress. For the Presidential contest, we're seeing a concentration of resources on these states, the swing states, and you're telling us there's only a couple of -- relatively a small number of contested seats for both Senate and the House. At the same time, though, (inaudible) added costs of the campaign for House seats went up to a million dollars.
MR. MANN: That's a -- yeah.
QUESTION: How does that figure -- how can you explain that figure, given the idea that probably the parties could be pooling resources on certain -- these seats, rather than them spreading?
MR. MANN: What happens now is that all incumbents, even in safe seats, raise money because they can do it, and because it's there in case they need it, and because it tends to discourage challengers, so that they are raising this money even in instances where there is no competitor in sight. I mean, you know, I have said to candidates, "You know, why are you raising $1 million dollars or $2 million? You don't even have an opponent."
And they'll say, "That's what worries me. We'll let our guard down and next election we'll get a serious opponent." So a lot of this is preventative maintenance.
The other thing is that in the highly contested seats you're seeing $3 million, $4 million, $5 million, even $6 million budgets for some of these candidates, so that increases the average across all these races.
The other thing that is going on, though, is as safe incumbents raise a lot of money, they are redistributing it to the contested seats. Both parties now tax their safe incumbents and one of the features of campaign finance law is that candidates are able to give unlimited amounts of -- transfer unlimited amounts of money from their campaigns to the political parties, and the parties then can spend a certain amount in coordinated expenditures but then they can also set up independent expenditure operations and spend unlimited sums as long as it's all hard money regulated by federal law. So that's what's going on.
Also, the contribution limit, individual contribution limit, was set in the 1974 law and never adjusted for inflation so that $1,000 became worth about $300 in today's money. By increasing that limit to $2,000, or $600 in 1974 terms, you've made it a bit easier for candidates to raise more money and they have done so.
Also, the stakes are high. The margins are narrow, the stakes are high, the parties fundamentally differ and the partisan bitterness is unlike anything I've seen in my 35 years in Washington.
MR. BRAZIER: Second row over here.
QUESTION: Jyri Raivio, Helsingin Sanomat, Finland. Can I continue about money?
MR. MANN: Sure.
QUESTION: How much money is involved in this Congressional races compared to the Presidential ones and compared to the mid-term elections three years ago?
MR. MANN: Yeah, well, listen, nothing approaching what is being spent in the Presidential race. I mean, the Presidential race this time is without precedent because both major party candidates opted out of the voluntary public financing system in the primaries and ended up raising extraordinary amounts of money. John Kerry raised, before the Democratic Convention, $240 million. The previous high was about $35 million by Al Gore. Okay? That gives you a sense of the dimensions. And George Bush raised about $260 million.
Then, in addition to that, the parties, who some critics said would suffer egregiously under the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law have thrived. They have discovered a way to raise money in smaller denominations, hard money, and particularly the use of the Internet with attracting small contributions. Then we've had outside groups, which have always been active in our elections; 527s were not created in 2004, they were very active in 2000 and 2002, but even more money has gone there, although substantially less than the parties and candidates have raised.
But, I mean, we are talking here of well over a billion dollars that will be spent on the Presidential elections.
On the Congressional side, if you add up the 34 Senate races and 435 House districts, and by the way, there are a substantial number of those in which there is only one major party candidate just completely uncontested, you might see spending in the House of $400 million roughly totally across those districts, but lumpy with the three dozen hotly contested races, those 30 races maybe accounting for 150 million of that.
On the Senate side you really get extensive races when you have hot contests in California, in New York and in Texas. We don't have such hot contests and therefore we're not going to have sort of mega-budgets there. On the other hand, South Dakota, one of the smallest, most sparsely populated states in the country, has mega-budgets because Daschle, the incumbent, a Democratic leader in the Senate running against Thune, who's garnering support from the National Republican Party and many allied groups, you know, may each spend over $20 million themselves.
So it's hard to say what the number will be when you add it all up because, as I said, only a dozen -- in only a dozen seats is there serious spending by both sides going on. The other incumbents are largely keeping their money in their pocket. But it will be, I presume, something of the order that's being spent in the House together. So that gives you a rough sense. Budgets will range from $1 million where there's no competition at all and someone is just doing, you know, doing the footwork to maybe, in North Carolina, in South Dakota and others, where you could get $40 to $50 million spent between the two candidates.
QUESTION: Rick Winkel, Financiele Dageblat of Amsterdam. How common is it for Americans to split their votes, and is it a practice that is more common among undecided voters?
MR. MANN: We noticed an increasing pattern of split-ticket voting starting in the late '60s and early '70s. This party reflected divisions within the Democratic Party in the wake of the cultural revolution and Vietnam. It partly reflected the growing advantages of Congressional incumbents and running as individuals apart from their party.
But what has happened over the last few election cycles is that the level of split ticket has declined substantially, much stronger party-line voting. Mind you, it still exists; otherwise, Daschle and Johnson wouldn't get elected in South Dakota, and North Dakota wouldn't elect Democratic Senators.
Obviously, there's still enough room, enough play in certain states where candidates, including, say, some Democrats in Southern states, have managed to portray themselves as ideologically compatible with their more conservative constituents. So it exists, but there's less of it today than before and party-line voting predominates in American elections.
The thing about swing voters is that they can't be voters who have less information, weaker partisan attachments, and, therefore, who are almost by chance more likely to split their ballot than to vote straight party tickets.
MR. BRAZIER: Right here in the -- with the black shirt. Thank you.
QUESTION: Jose Lopez, NOTIMEX News Agency. I would like to get your (inaudible) as to how would a Bush presidency or Kerry presidency would deal with an issue that is very polarizing, both in the country and especially in Congress, immigration reform. Would you say the Bush presidency have more of a chance to try to forge an alliance with, you know, Republicans, other Republicans, and Democrats to (inaudible) immigration reform or Kerry?
MR. MANN: That's an excellent question. I think neither would have a particularly easy time of it. The combination of more difficult economic times and concerns about terrorism and security have complicated the issue.
On the other hand, unions have shifted on this and have become allies of those pursuing immigration reform, and, therefore, you could imagine Kerry trying to do something about this. The President spoke ambitiously about immigration reform early on, but after 9/11, and after seeing the strong opposition within his own party, decided to put it on the back burner.
Therefore, my bottom line is neither would have any strong comparative advantage in passing this. I think we -- both would try to make some incremental reforms, but it will take a broader change in the overall context for them to have real success.
MR. BRAZIER: Yes, sir, in the purple shirt.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) Liberation newspaper, France. I just have a general question of the dynamic of power between the relations (inaudible). Do you think that the Congressional (inaudible) weakened in the last couple of years? And do you see that in the tradition, do you think the Americans see the power in Washington (inaudible) before?
MR. MANN: I think the Congress has weakened itself. The Congress has abdicated its institutional power and responsibility in large part because of a freshness of a unified Republican government, the first since the Eisenhower years.
The Speaker of the House, the first officer of the United States Government mentioned in the Constitution, Dennis Hastert, when asked at a conference on the Speakership what his primary responsibility was, said, "To pass the President's program." That's really quite an amazing statement.
Of course, the Speaker is also party leader and works with his President, but the Speaker usually internalizes institutional responsibilities, and what we have seen over the last couple of years is such a sort of partisan divide in Congress in which a narrow Republican majority has used every tool at its disposal to try to advance the President's agenda, oftentimes by dispensing with regular order, eliminating any semblance of deliberation, much less negotiation and compromise with the minority party, but that has given the Republicans an edge in their negotiations with the Senate.
They have been very inactive in oversight, particularly of the intelligence community of the broader war on terrorism, on the war against Iraq. The only oasis of oversight during the lead up to and the aftermath of the Iraq war was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Dick Lugar, the Chairman, Chuck Hagel and Joseph Biden, the Ranking Democratic, asked the kind of pointed questions that if the Administration has been forced to confront ahead of time, many have avoided many of the pitfalls that they ultimately encountered.
American Government works best when both branches are very strong, and, in fact, the Congress has been weak and supine and that has reinforced the tendency of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney to believe this is an executive-centered government. They make Alexander Hamilton, the original champion of the Executive Branch, look like a wuss. They strongly believe in executive prerogatives, executive leadership, and no one has come forward in the Congress to challenge them until most recently.
Ironically, Congress eventually turned outside itself to a 9/11 Commission to get the job done because they weren't institutionally capable of doing it themselves.
I seem to remember there was a second part to your question, but I went on so long I forgot it.
QUESTION: (Off mike.)
MR. MANN: Yeah, I don't think the public thinks a lot about this. If anything, the public seems to show some appreciation for divided party government; that is, a belief that you want one branch to kind of check the other to avoid extremes or impulsive action of one kind or another. In that sense, this Republican majority would be disappointing to them because, frankly, they believe strongly the President should not commit American military forces without Congressional authorization as well as without authorization by the broader international community, in this case as represented by the UN.
So to the extent the Congress doesn't assert that responsibility, then I think, on balance, the public would be disappointed.
MR. BRAZIER: Up here in the first row, and then we'll go to the back.
QUESTION: (Inaudible.) I'm with TV in Poland and I would like to go back to Presidential race and especially the debate. We've seen what the first debate did for Kerry. Do you think that the debates themselves are so important that they can determine the outcome of the elections?
MR. MANN: I believe elections are driven by fundamentals. I believe that 95, 96, 97, 98 percent of the vote is driven by two things: one, the partisan identification/orientation/ loyalties of the citizenry and; two, the broader context, the conditions operating, how well the economy has done, how well the country has performed on a variety of indicators at home and then internationally how well -- how secure we are, what the rest of the world thinks about us, whether we think the President has enhanced or diminished our security. That is, I believe that elections like this with an incumbent running for reelections are referendums on his performance played out over a highly partisan environment.
Now, what debates, like campaigns more generally, are about are either invoking, bringing to the view of voters those broad forces. In the case of the partisans, it's charging them up and getting them to turn out, registered and voting; that's the ground game. In the case of referendum, it's making those factors, and to the extent it's a positive referendum, it's the President sort of saying, "It's morning again in America," as Ronald Reagan did, America is standing tall and proud; or, if things aren't going so well, it's the President trying to turn attention away from the referendum to something else. That's what the campaigns and debates are all about.
Now, what we saw happen is that I think the President and his aides correctly believed in the early summer that if this were strictly a referendum on the country's performance, he would lose reelection, and therefore he shifted the focus of the campaign to, one, make Kerry unacceptable as an alternative and to try to use the concern about terrorism to basically override the other dimensions of the economy and Iraq.
He did that successfully in the month of August at the convention and in early September, and that's why you saw a shift. I think it wasn't as great as some of the polls suggested, but it was real. It went from a small Kerry lead to a small Bush lead, and I think the first debate turned the frame back to the referendum. In that sense, the debate is very important but it's not a personality contest, it's really a matter -- voters have to decide whether the guy they don't know is acceptable in the White House, and Kerry was suffering before the debate on that score but seemed to have a Presidential bearing, and in that sense it's important.
Now, if the President -- and the Vice President – can turn that focus back again to Kerry, then the subsequent debates could make a difference. But it's only in that limited way that I think they do.
MR. BRAZIER: Way in the back. Please, the gentleman right there.
QUESTION: I'm Ignasi Abad from Catalonia Radio in Spain. Since both parties are energizing the race to get more voters to register to vote, how can you expect the participation levels of this Presidential election comparing to others?
And then, if the election is as close as it appears now, can we expect other controversial recounts in Florida or anywhere else?
And finally, what do you think about the referendum in Colorado about the changing of the proportional system? Can this affect the Presidential race?
MR. MANN: Okay, lots of questions. First of all, on the turnout, everyone outside this country, as well as a lot of people in it, like to point to low turnout rates in American elections. It's true. We're right down there with the Swiss in terms of low rates of voting turnout. Some have suggested it's because, like the Swiss, we have so many damn elections that are going on constantly, hundreds of thousands of elections.
What I want to tell you is that our turnout rate isn't as low as it seem. That is, in the last Presidential election it was reported as between 50 and 51 percent. The problem was the denominator, what people use as a census figure for age-eligible population, 18 years and older. The problem is that includes non-citizens. Our census counts everyone, including non-citizens, and non-citizens are not eligible to vote in federal elections. It also includes felons who are ineligible to vote in some states and people institutionalized. If you correct the denominator, our turnout in the last couple of elections has been about 5 to 6 points higher, so instead of 50, more like 55. Still low comparatively, but the decline over time has not been as great.
Now, what do we expect this time? A lot of people have been saying there's going to be a huge surge in turnout because the stakes are high, there have been great mobilization efforts by both parties. But here's the problem: that is going on only in battleground states, 15 states; in the other 35, give or take a few, nothing is happening. In fact, a scholar at Brookings has gone through the voter registration figures to date. They're not absolutely up to date, but what he has suggests that while almost all the battleground states have seen a substantial increase in the number of registered voters, there's been a decline in most of the battleground states where there have been no "get out the vote" registration efforts, of course, there's no stakes, and where you have the natural purging of records because of people moving.
What that could mean is we'll actually see a decline in the non-battleground states but a substantial increase in the battleground states, neutralizing one another. Could still have an important political impact on the outcome of the election. The action is in the battleground states, and if one party does better than the other in lining up new voters and getting them to the polls, then that could turn the outcome. So it's politically important, but instead of getting a huge jump nationally we may get either no jump at all or only a slight increase, but that's because these two worlds will cancel one another out.
Yes, we could have a very close election and it will be a disaster for us if we do. I am praying for a decisive outcome. If the electoral votes of individual states could, on their own, determine the outcome of the race and if the popular vote in those states is close enough to occasion a recount and legal challenges, we could have a repeat of 2000.
My own personal view is that it's going to break one way or another. That has been the pattern for elections where an incumbent President is running for a second term. And I expect that. Maybe it's wishful thinking, because it's going to be a mess. And this time we've got thousands of lawyers on both sides already positioned in precincts and battleground states. And you've heard of "America the Litigious Society." You ain't seen nothing yet!
The final question was Colorado, their initiative to alter the way in which the electoral vote is allocated. As you know, the states decide how they will allocate their electoral votes. The Constitution has given this power to state legislatures. Forty-eight of 50 states use the winner take all, the plurality winner of the popular vote gets all of the electoral votes. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, have a system where the winner of each Congressional district gets that electoral vote and then the winner of the statewide vote gets the two electoral votes that come from the two senators. But neither Maine nor Nebraska, under these rules, has produced anything other than winner take all.
Colorado has a proposal to have proportional allocation of electoral votes. If that had been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have been President. Moreover, the initiative calls for a retroactive application. It's on the November ballot and they're saying it would go into effect immediately if it passes. It is being challenged, but the formal challenges have to await the outcome of the election to see if the initiative passes, and then each side has to see how they would be affected by it. I know you think all of these legal challenges are waged strictly on the basis of the merits of the argument and the constitutionality of the matter, but, in fact, I think Republican and Democrats will hold their fire until they see if it makes a difference. And it could.
MR. BRAZIER: We have a few minutes left. The lady in the very back has been waiting patiently. Thank you.
QUESTION: Edith Gruenwald, Austria Press Agency. I have two questions. First is, if Barak Obama in Illinois wins his race, and regarding all the other possible or not so possible outcomes of the other Senate races, will Obama be the only black member in the Senate?
And the second question is do you see any -- is it -- do you see any movement in the U.S. in the political or in the political-scientific community in lobbying organizations, any serious movement that the whole election system could be changed in a way that the popular vote decides who is the President? Maybe if --
MR. BRAZIER: We have an upcoming briefing on the electoral college as well.
MR. MANN: Exactly. Barak Obama will be elected. Alan Keyes is running right about 17 percent of the popular vote. I mean, the story of Illinois is amazing. One, they had a very, very strong Democratic candidate in what had been a Republican seat. But the collapse of the Republican opposition and the need to parachute someone in from my home state of Illinois is really quite extraordinary. And that is as safe a seat as exists on election day, and he will be the sole African American in the Senate.
As for the prospects for a major restructuring of our electoral system, and in particular the direct popular election of the President, I think it will take another 2000, but this one affecting adversely the other party, the Republican Party, to build the political momentum to actually achieve this success.
You see, the problem is small states have an advantage in both the Senate, where their advantage is huge, but also in the electoral college, where they get additional electoral votes simply based on each state having two senators. And they tend to be very skeptical of eliminating the electoral college. They also feel they'll just be ignored in campaigns and lose their leverage in close elections.
On the other hand, if there's a crisis of legitimacy because, say, two elections in a row the winner of the popular vote failed to enter the White House, then I could imagine a movement developing that would have a chance of overcoming the substantial political obstacles. This really is a remnant of a time when it, the electoral college, was imagined as a very, very different institution. The framers certainly didn't have in mind the way in which it's now being applied in an era of popular election, and it is really very said that 60 percent of the potential electorate is not engaged in the campaign because they're irrelevant to it because of the nature of the electoral college. So I hope it changes, but as true of much political reform, it takes a crisis for it to happen.
MR. BRAZIER: One more. The lady back there.
QUESTION: (Off mike.)
MR. MANN: Members of Congress are doing with Iraq what they always do, which is to embrace a position that they feel is compatible with their local constituency. Now, in most cases, that means Democrats holding to and embracing John Kerry's position and Republicans defending the President's action. But in the case of both parties, there is a significant number of members who find themselves, by virtue of their own constituencies and in some cases their own personal views, to separate themselves from their candidate.
For example, Brad Carson, a Native American, moderate Democrat running for the Senate in Oklahoma, has parted company with Kerry and defended the President on Iraq. You will see that in a number of southern states and competitive House and in Senate races. But similarly, you will see some Republicans in Democratic territory putting a little distance between themselves and Administration policy.
This Supreme Court is the longest serving intact court in American history. It's been a long time since we had a resignation or a departure and the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice. The actuarial tables are beginning to work against that continuity. The Chief Justice celebrated his 80th birthday last week. Justice Stevens is substantially older than the Chief. A number have suffered serious health problems. It seem very likely that the next President in the four-year term will make at least one appointment and potentially two or three. So yes, that's one of the many high stakes matters associated with this election.
MR. BRAZIER: We don't want to keep you too long. Do you have time for another question?
MR. MANN: One more.
MR. BRAZIER: One more. Someone who hasn't asked a question. We'll go back here.
QUESTION: Yes, I have a local question. Is it going to take another 2,000 years before the poor citizens of this city [Washington, D.C.] have a vote in the election?
MR. MANN: Dream on. This city is overwhelmingly Democratic. The current President and the majorities in the House and the Senate will see to it that no such change is made as far as voting representation in the House and the Senate.
As you know, the District does participate in the Presidential election. They have electoral votes but it's part of a given. It's right up there with Idaho, as firmly in one camp or another.
There have been serious moves in the past, but in the old days when Democrats were in control there were enough Southern Democrats in their party to prevent this from moving ahead. I think it would take substantial majorities in the House and the Senate, Democratic majorities with a Democratic President, for it to happen. I don't see it happening anytime soon.
MR. BRAZIER: And if I could just ask, what would be the two races you would watch on both sides, the House and the Senate, as the hottest and most interesting?
MR. MANN: Well, in my view, the most exciting and important race in the Senate is South Dakota. Daschle, along with his three Democratic colleagues, has managed to survive in overwhelmingly Republican territory by being a local representative, a kind of friends and neighbors, operating more like a House member than a Senator. In the past, Daschle's leadership positions have further enhanced his reputation as someone who can deliver for the local constituency. But now, the Republicans are accusing him of being obstructionist and frustrating the President's program and trying to set him at odds with the President.
So we also have a very strong candidate running against him, someone who has run statewide, as everyone does for several offices in South Dakota. There is only one at-large seat in the House for South Dakota. There is lots of money involved, and the polls are jumping back and forth. There are huge, effective "get out the vote" operations. Last time that state had a Senate race in 2002, Kim Johnson won with, as I recall, less than 500 votes. In fact, I think the margin was smaller there than it was confirmed to be in Florida, finally, in the Presidential race. So that's the one I'd want to watch there.
In the House, I think what's really significant -- because this isn't a single race but it's a category of races – is that Republican strategists are saying they think they can get through the election without losing a single incumbent. Democrats are saying there are a dozen Republican incumbents who now are polling less than 50 percent of the vote in the horse races, which is always a sign of trouble. If this is going to be a banner day four weeks from now for the Republicans, you're going to see them protecting their incumbents overwhelmingly, if not unanimously. If it's to be a surprising day for the Democrats, it's going to happen because they have managed to unseat a number of the Republican House incumbents. So that's the category I'd keep my eye on.
MR. BRAZIER: Excellent. Thank you, Tom.
