The key to understanding why we can’t do anything about gun violence is not to do an analysis of the president’s arm-twisting talents. It’s to understand whether senators like Mark Begich of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona are correct that voting for things like universal background checks will cost them their seats. Even in gun-loving states like Alaska and Arizona, the polling indicates that strong majorities support universal background checks, so why do these senators think the bigger risk is in supporting them? First, we need to figure out if they are correct. If they’re not, they can presumably be convinced that they are incorrect. If they are correct, then we either need to change the facts on the ground or convince them to risk their political careers.
The president doesn’t want vulnerable Democratic senators to take suicidal votes on bills that won’t pass anyway. But it’s hard to understand why an amendment that has the support of 90% of the people can be considered risky, even in states that don’t like the president and don’t like gun control. So, job one for people who support efforts to curb gun violence is to really understand the truth about the choice these senators are making. We can’t just hold up favorable poll numbers and stomp our feet. We tried that and it didn’t work.
Well said. I was actually pleasantly shock
Gremlin in my laptop this AM.
I was pleasantly shocked that Mark Kirk voted for background checks. If it’s always about getting reelected he would have to, but I was a bit surprised anyway.
I hate gremlins.
I know! When I called Kirk’s office about the gun safety issue, I had trouble believing that he was actually planning to vote for the gun safety regulation. I was so surprised, in fact, that I reworded my question 3 different ways to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood!
I also think it is a “counter example” to Jeff Flake that might help analyze what happened. What differences are there in going from Flake’s constituents/environment to Kirk’s constituents/environment that flip the vote?
Kirk isn’t up for election until 2016, but had he voted differently his vote could have hurt him seriously in IL and it would not be something the voters would forget and forgive in 2016. Despite a lot of tea party types in extreme burbs and downstate, we are overwhelmingly for legislation on guns in IL.
By contrast, Flake can vote against it and get away with it somehow. I get the feeling that the gun bill polled well in AZ but intensity of local sentiment is not nearly as strong as IL. I don’t know that area well though.
I guess the question is, how many of that seemingly high percentage of voters who say they support expanded background checks will actually turn out to vote and will vote in favor of the candidate who also supports the checks? You can be certain that a very high percentage of those opposed will show up at the polls. And a lot of those in the polling who say they support checks can likely be swayed to vote against the candidate when push comes to shove on election day.
Once the dollars start pouring into states, the negative ads start inundating people on a daily basis and people start hearing the screeching of their family and friends about “the tyranny” that is coming, a lot of people start to get real squishy. The candidates are scared of the people with the torches and pitchforks, because they know that when it comes to voting, people don’t do it rationally. They get swept up in the emotional swill of the far right gun nuts. And when that tribal instinct kicks in, that poll they responded to in the comfort and privacy of their home becomes a very distant memory to them.
It’s a good explanation.
It’s basically saying that “voted with the president” trumps “voted the way I wanted them to.”
And how many citizens know the totality of what their Representative/Senator voted for unless told one way or another? Heck, I saw post that said most people think gun laws are stricter than they really are.
Right. Putting your and Booman’s points another way, when will voting against universal background checks will cost members of Congress their seats? Almost never. While overwhelming majorities of people support universal background checks (and there are no rational arguments against such checks), I think the majority of the public doesn’t see them as having a material effect on the number of gun deaths. A nice to have, rather than a must have, in other words.
This is the key. If you can 1) motivate people to vote for or against based on the issue 2) make it known 3) ENFORCE by VOTING OUT OPPONENTS, you have an issue like guns for the gunsucks. Until the anti-gunsuck side can get people motivated to vote out the gunsuck voters, we will lose on this every single time.
“But it’s hard to understand why an amendment that has the support of 90% of the people can be considered risky … “
Yes it is hard to understand, and there seem to be a lot of such situations these days.
But since it is the case, it must be that we’re overlooking something. What is it that we overlooking?
To answer this you need to understand that the entire gun fetish movement is built on a house of cards – the perception that people don’t support regulation of firearms. And that movement has been quite successful. Many otherwise sane democrats buy into this myth to a startling degree.
No other political movement in the last 50 years has been as successful at manipulating people against their own best interests as the gun lobby. And they’ve done it without persuading anyone to actually support their positions. They have thrown everything they have, for years and years, into convincing people that OTHER PEOPLE don’t support gun regulation.
It’s sort of genius. But it couldn’t last forever. Mark my words, in ten years we will have strict regulation of firearms in this country – probably stricter than Canada. The gun movement is collapsing, slowly, and is tied to many of the same demographic trends as gay marriage. Bitter old white folks can’t sustain any political movement for more than 5-10 years at this point.
I’m not sure of the similarity between the gay marriage issue and guns. I think they are two totally different animals and are coming from different directions within the political universe.
As for your prediction of strict regulation of firearms in this country within ten years……….let’s just say, if I was Mitt Romney I’d be asking you for that $10,000 bet right now.
Do we really know that large numbers of young (say, under 40) gun nuts haven’t been created or aren’t currently being created? I never saw gun-nuttery portrayed as a bitter old man demographic or issue. America’s white ladies luvs their guns, too, as far as I can tell.
Under your theory we’d start to see (non-urban) candidates start advocating for gun control and against our insane gun mayhem. I’ll believe it when I start to see that.
For Red State Repubs, the polls are meaningless, as is the sensibility of the policy. They know that their Red State citizens wouldn’t dream of holding them accountable for causing gun control to flounder. Far more important that the despised Obammy be defeated everywhere and accomplish nothing—that is always Job One. Party over country, always.
For Red or Purple State Dems, I’d say they just don’t believe the polls and suspect that votin’ against gun rights is ALWAYS more risky than voting for sanity, no exceptions. Of course, one thing that could be done is having the crackerjack media simply ask some of them why they voted against something that (supposedly) large majorities of even Red Staters support. Who knows what they might say?
Finally, on the irritating turd front, why exactly did the Heroic Baucus vote against cloture on all these gun amendments when he’s now decided to retire? Thanks, Maxie B, a useless turd to the end! Risk averse voting when you aren’t even running? Jeebus…
I know it’s better to have a republican senator than a democrat, but damn if I wasn’t elated when I read that Baucus is retiring. So happy, in fact, that I reverted to a retort from my childhood: good riddance to bad rubbish.
Baucus has hurt us in so many ways.
I do get tired of seeing political reporters, who really should know better, blaming the president for the failures of Congress.
On the other hand, since everyone is basically calling on him to push the limits of executive power, how much could he get away with? We’ve even got Republicans calling on him to shred the Constitution when it comes to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and of course this Congress might force him to act autocratically before it’s done. If they refuse to raise the debt ceiling, for instance, I hope he’ll keep paying the nation’s bills anyway.
So I’m starting to think I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more overreach from Obama than we’ve seen so far. It’s not about persuading Congress, but what could he do with laws that are already on the books? Designating the NRA as a terrorist organization might be going too far, but then again it might not.
Sometimes I wonder if they are just trying to lure the President into taking an action that will lead to attempts to impeach.
I think it’s two things:
First, the NRA was the rooster taking credit for the dawn in 1994. That election was the culmination of the re-alignment of the South to the GOP. The NRA therefore has created an aura of invincibility that is completely unearned.
Secondly, this leads into a stupid CW that you can’t buck the NRA, and people like Pryor and Landrieu are voracious consumers of stupid CW.
The key will be if GOP members like Toomey or Collins survive a challenge. That will tell us something about the real strength of the NRA.
Gotta keep pressuring them. Jeff Flake, for example, was caught lying to a mother of an Aurora, CO shooting victim: “…strengthening background checks is something we agree on.“
So what? Will he lose his seat?
Not anytime soon. He was just elected in 2012.
The median citizen isn’t the median eligible voter.
The median eligible voter isn’t the median registered voter.
The median eligible voter isn’t the median low-turnout, mid-term voter.
The median low-turnout, mid-term voter isn’t the median influence — people who spend money, and give time.
Each step takes you further and further away from that 90%.
This is easy to understand.
It’s the easiest political calculation there is.
There are 2 sides, pro-control and anti-control. In 1994, the anti-control flexed its muscle and threw 60 D out of office, including the Speaker of the House at that time. Getting a Speaker voted out is pretty hard. So the anti-control side can say “Vote for controls, we will vote you out of office.”
What can the pro-control side say? “No, you can’t”. We KNOW that the anti-control side has done this.
To win this argument, the pro-control side will have to show that you can get thrown out of office if you are not voting pro-control. They need to
There is NO cost to being anti-control. There is a cost to being pro-control. Result: anti-control forces get stronger.
To win a political battle, you must flex political muscle for your position. Nothing else is successful.
It’s politics 101.
I think that greatly misconstrues what happened in ’94. The rural, Southern representatives that had been Blue Dogs were replaced by full fledged Republicans. There were numerous scandals surrounding guys like Foley and Rostenkowski and there was a large tax hike in the midst of a recession.
And the NRA took credit for all of that.
About 35-40% of the Democratic losses in the House were in districts where the incumbent retired or ran for another office. In other words, where there was no incumbent.
They were retiring for any number of reasons, but guns was not the singular reason.
You know, the other thing is simply Mitch McConnell wouldn’t allow a resolution in favor of Christmas, puppies and motherhood to come to a vote either.