Michael Barone used to be a respected political analyst once upon a time. As editor of the Almanac of American Politics and a ubiquitous presence inside the Beltway, his was a prime shaper of narratives. But over the last decade and a half, Barone’s sharp lurch to the right has slowly destroyed his credibility, as Mark Schmitt ably documents in this terrific takedown.
But DC being what it is, Barone still gets listened to – which means he’s still a worthy target of our derision. Thankfully, he makes the task very, very easy. Dave Weigel has helpfully dug up a true Barone gem from just four years ago – and I really do mean gem. Almost every sentence in the piece was either wrong when it was written or quickly became wrong soon after. To give you a sense, here’s the sentence Weigel pulled his quote from:
[T]he 2004 presidential election results tell us that Republicans are in even stronger shape than their 55-45 and 232-203 Senate and House margins suggest.
When you see a line like that, you just have to click the link because you know the whole piece is going to be awesome. And it is. The piece just gets better and better. The next graf:
Start with the Senate. George W. Bush carried 31 states that elect 62 senators. There are nine Republican senators from Kerry states and 16 Democratic senators from Bush states. Many of these are from states that were close in the presidential election. But there are 11 Democrats and only three Republicans from states where their presidential nominee got less than 47 percent of the vote. There are more Democrats with political incentives to vote with Bush than there are Republicans with incentives to vote against him.
Didn’t quite work out that way, did it?
As for the House, we now know which presidential candidate carried each of the 435 congressional districts, thanks to Polidata, which crunched the numbers for National Journal and the Almanac of American Politics (of which I am co-author). These numbers surprised even some political pros. Bush carried 255 districts and John Kerry only 180. In all, 41 Democrats represent Bush districts and 18 Republicans represent Kerry districts. Eliminating the districts where the House member’s presidential candidate won 47 percent or more, we find only five Republicans in strong Kerry districts but 30 Democrats in strong Bush districts.
What a disaster that turned out to be for Dems! But here’s the real money shot:
The implications? In the long run, Republicans are well positioned to increase their numbers in both the Senate and the House. Some Democrats hold seats because of personal popularity or moderate voting records. But when they retire, Republicans may well succeed them. In the short run, very few Republicans run great political risks by supporting Bush. Significantly more Democrats run great political risks by opposing him. Obstruction doesn’t work well for Democrats in Bush seats: Just ask former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. And at the moment, on Social Security, as Democrats Stan Greenberg and James Carville wrote last month, “Voters are looking for reform, change and new ideas, but Democrats seem stuck in concrete.”
I started to put various chortle-worthy parts of this paragraph in boldface but I had stop because the whole thing was becoming a mess of HTML tags. In any event, we should be quite glad that the Republicans listened to Barone and the Dems ignored Carville. (To show you how stupidly off-base the concern trolling was over Democrats’ “position” on Social Security in 2005, read this article and enjoy a laugh.)
Sadly, as I said at the outset, some people still take this bungler seriously. But fortunately, it’s fewer every year. And so I bring Barone’s column to you and the world as a public service – a reminder that if you aren’t busy tuning him out, at the very least, believe the opposite of whatever he says.
“Why has the public not taken out their anger on the congressional Republicans and the president?”
I remember posting this very quote at the time at either Kos or MyDD and pointing out there hadn’t been any elections yet.
Those 18 Kerry districts converted to Democrats quite nicely. I count no more than six using the Presidential vote by CD on SSP for 2004: Delaware (Castle), IL-10 (Kirk), LA-2 (Cao), PA-6 (Gerlach), PA-15 (Dent, a 50-50 district), and WA-8 (Reichert). If 2/3 of the Obama districts represented by a Republican turn blue in the next 4 years we’ll be picking up a lot of seats.
Barone is using the election of 2004 as a base. It turns out that this election was the high water mark for Republicans since the election of 1928 when they elected Herbert Hoover and even larger majorities in the House and Senate. That lasted practically for less than a year until the stock market crash in October 1929. Four years later, “Happy Days Are Here, Again.” Sound familiar. Hoover. Bush. Four years to total meltdown and a Democratic trifecta.
Buy I buy his almanac every two years. As far as I know it’s the best one out there for the stats. I usually don’t read his comical commentary. Does anyone know of an alternative to Barone’s almanac? I hate having to buy his.
Schmitt’s article is basically focused on the editorial intro:
I’ve used the Almanac for years to research specific districts and I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me to read the intro. Barone’s personal beliefs are news to me.
So my question is, do the ideological biases of the editor discount the value of the actual content?
I’ve always tried to maintain a certain amount of regard for Barone as (a) I’m more or less addicted to the Almanac (though I’ve recently decided I prefer CQ’s Politics in America), and (b) I was babysat in his house as a small child.
I used to think Barone was one of the top political writers out there, but he has really become a nasty political hack in the last couple years. Some of the stuff he has written about Obama is ridiculous, and most of all disappointing since Barone used to be such an insightful force. Perhaps that has come from being a Fox News analyst.
I still think the Almanac is a great resource, and keep a copy next to my bed, but I have much less respect for Michael Barone than I used to. Honestly, it’s sad.
Says it all. Their new evening lineup is now beyond ridiculous – Hume, Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity. Fair and Balanced? Yup.
I wrote a 10-graph response to a column that Michael Barone wrote on Aug. 24, 2008 that libeled Barack Obama because of his alleged friendship with William Ayers. The column also said the “media will shape the post-convention narrative via liberal bias.”
The last graph in my response said “Please stick to the work you do for The Almanac of American Politics. Every time you write one of your slanderous, nonsensical columns, you destroy the credibility of your nonpartisan work.”
Barone just says stuff without evidence in his political columns. This makes me very skeptical about his analysis in his “almanac.”
Shalom,
ZWrite
He’s become a complete right-wing hack. I enjoyed the pain in his voice at the prospect of Obama winning when he appeared on Fox in the runup to the election. When none of the rightwing attacks were sticking to Obama, he started a full-blown Bill Ayers smear on his blog. Guess what, that one didn’t stick either.
“Reynolds seems like to try and defeat Higgins in 2006”
“Cochola seems to be in strong shape in this district”
hm