In the Daily Beast, Michael Medved encourages Mitt Romney’s campaign to take steps to avoid the “catastrophe” that would result from “the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.”  He adds, “Mr. Obama could prevail by as much as the 7 percent margin that gave him victory last time, while still losing the Electoral College to Romney.”  This is certainly provocative, but it’s not realistic.

In 2008, John McCain won only one state (Texas) by so much as 500,000 votes and no state by 1 million votes.  Obama won one state by more than 3 million votes (California), another by more than 2 million votes (New York), another by more than 1 million votes (Illinois), and 9 states by at least 500,000 votes apiece (those three plus Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, and Washington).  In other words, Obama posted lopsided margins last time around in large, left-leaning states, yet he still won nationally by only 7 percentage points.  And in the process of winning by 7 points nationally, he won more than two-thirds of the electoral vote.

That’s the way the Electoral College — a product of the Constitutional Convention, a welcome reminder of federalism, and one of the more unsung of the Founders’ many ingenious contributions to our republic — works.  It almost always accentuates the margin of victory, and hence the perceived legitimacy, of the winner.

There is no way that Mitt Romney is going to swing North Carolina (which Obama won by 0.3 points), Indiana (which Obama won by 1 point), Florida (which Obama won by 3 points), Ohio (which Obama won by 5 points), Virginia (which Obama won by 6 points), and at least one state that Obama won by 9 points or more, into the GOP column — which would just barely get Romney above 270 electoral votes — without Romney’s also doing far better than McCain in the popular vote in the process.  And that would be true even if it weren’t the case that a whole host of red states are almost surely to become even redder this time around, which will further buoy Romney’s tally in the popular vote.

In short, there is no way that Obama is going to win big in the popular vote and lose the presidency.  The last thing the Romney people need to worry about is this.

What they need to worry about are the nine states that will likely swing this election — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire — and the four others that could:  Michigan, North Carolina, Minnesota, and New Mexico.  If Romney wins enough of these states to win the election, the popular vote will likely go his way as well.  And if it doesn’t, so be it. 

Tennis players win matches all the time without winning as many games as their opponent.  The Red Sox outscored the Reds over a 7-game stretch in October 1975, yet Boston lost the greatest World Series ever played, 4 games to 3.  The “catastrophe” wouldn’t be for Obama to win the popular vote.  It would be for him to win the election.

Last Wednesday, Jay Cost was on Tom Ashbrook's NPR show On Point to discuss his new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic. Here is the link to the audio, which lasts about 45 minutes.

It was a great conversation, and Ashbrook's questions were tough but fair. Naturally, the NPR audience was more than a tad skeptical of Jay's claim that the Democratic party has stopped being the party of the people and is now the party of special interest carve-outs.

The best line from a caller? "With all due respect to the author, I don't know what's he's smoking!' He thought Jay was nuts!

Also appearing on the show was Marc Heatherington, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and one of the nation's top scholars on political polarization. He offered some smart, skeptical comments. 

And buy Jay's book--Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic--here.

Politicians are notoriously evasive when asked to offer detailed plans of what they would do if elected. But Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who is challenging Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election, goes far beyond typical shiftiness in this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article by Jason Stein: 

Barrett has said he doesn't want to raise taxes beyond the levels they were at when Walker took office. He said he would look at undoing some tax cuts passed by Walker, including the business tax cuts mentioned above, since he says they've been ineffective in creating jobs. He said he would consult with businesses to ensure the changes are not unduly harmful, but he has not said which taxes he might raise.

"I'm going to be very mindful of the cost of these because they explode in the out years," Barrett said of Walker's tax cuts.

Barrett has criticized Walker's property tax caps but has not said whether he would loosen them or by how much. The mayor wants to restore tax credits for low-income families that were eliminated by Walker and Republican lawmakers, saying the governor broke his no tax increase pledge to the neediest families.

He has not said where he would get the money to do that.[...]

Barrett has said that he wants to undo ... changes [to a state health care plan called BadgerCare] before they take effect. But [he] said he doesn't yet know what changes that would take by lawmakers or where he would get the money. [...]

Barrett has said he wants to restore union bargaining for public employees that was repealed by Walker and Republican lawmakers. He said he was focused on that and hadn't considered what to do about cases where the repeal of union bargaining has allowed the state to save on overtime costs or allowed schools to save money by bidding out their health insurance.

This is not a parody. And it actually gets worse. 

Barrett says the central issue in the recall election is job creation (not Walker's now-popular union reforms and spending cuts that balanced the budget and caused the recall). "What we're going to do between June and January is create jobs in the state, and it's our hope in January we'll have a much better handle on what to do to reverse his cuts to education" and health programs, Barrett told the Journal last month. So what is his plan to "create jobs" between June and January in the hopes that there is more revenue to spend on education next year? The Journal reports: 

Barrett said that it would be unlikely that he would make changes in the current budget, which goes through June 2013. But if he succeeded in boosting the economy and tax revenue, he said he would try to increase funding for schools in the next two-year budget that he would submit in February 2013. 

The mayor said that, though he would work immediately on economic development, he didn't expect to seek new legislation on jobs until the Legislature returns in 2013.

Hillary Clinton's favorability with the American people remains near an all-time high, according to Gallup. Sixty-six percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Secretary of State, while only 23 percent view Clinton unfavorably, tied for a record low.

So here's yet more cause for Vice President Joe Biden to be getting ever more nervous about his future on the ticket with Barack Obama. This new poll might help confirm for the president the wisdom of the advice offered by the boss in his editorial this week, where he notes that Biden does nothing to help the Obama campaign and often serves as a source of embarrassment for the administration:

Who should replace Biden? Everyone knows the answer. Hillary Clinton received nearly 18 million votes in the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Her rating in a Washington Post survey a couple of weeks ago was 65 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable. Biden hurts Obama. She would help him. 

What’s more, she’d help with precisely the undecided voters Obama needs in November. Many of them are white, working- and middle-class Americans who supported her in the 2008 primaries. They overcame their disappointment at Clinton’s defeat to vote for Obama that November. But many became disillusioned and voted Republican in 2010, producing that year’s GOP landslide. Barack Obama needs to win back as many of them as possible in 2012. They voted for Hillary Clinton once. Surely they’d be more likely to return to Obama if given the opportunity to vote for her again as part of the ticket.

Read the whole thing here.

Way back in May of 2009, when President Obama was still selling himself to the nation as a post-partisan healer-in-chief, he was awarded an honorary degree and delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. The decision by the most famous Catholic university in America to honor a staunchly pro-abortion president was met with some protest. Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon declined to receive an award from Notre Dame and share the stage with Obama that day. She noted that the U.S. Catholic bishops had formally declared in 2004 that Catholic institutions "should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." The university responded by saying that bringing Obama to campus was a "good thing for the president and for the causes we care about." 

Obama seemed to relish the controversy. It was an opportunity to speak to a bloc of swing voters (Catholics) in one of the reddest states that swung to Obama in 2008 (Indiana) about how we can work together despite out differences (the kind of rhetoric that launched his political stardom at the 2004 Democratic National Convention). "We must find a way to live together as one human family," Obama said to the 2009 graduates. He told the story of an anti-abortion doctor who had voted for him in the 2004 Illinois Senate primary but was upset that Obama's campaign website characterized abortion opponents as "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose."

"I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words," the doctor wrote to Obama. "After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me," Obama said. 

Fast forward three years to May of 2012, and the University of Notre Dame has gone from honoring President Obama to suing his administration for violating the most basic liberties protected under the First Amendment. In 2009, Obama spoke about the need to debate issues without "reducing those with differing views to caricature." Now, his campaign claims that opponents of his mandate are waging a "war on women" and want to force women to get a “permission slip” from their employers to “access birth control pills, intrauterine devices, or any other type of contraception.”

In its brief filed in federal court today, Notre Dame rebuts the Obama campaign's demagoguery:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz last December called for promoting the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including the Saudi kingdom, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman, into a unified body, which has been described as a “super-state.” The Saudis and the other GCC members are currently engaged in discussions intended to bring closer coordination, if not fusion, within the council.

Regional ambitions by Shia Iran and the chaos in Syria are the main stimuli for such an enhanced Gulf relationship and possible complete unification. All six GCC members except Oman, the largest aside from Saudi Arabia, are ruled in the name of Sunni Islam. Oman is unique in following Ibadhi Islam, an interpretation that is distinct from Sunnism and Shiism.

Syrian aggression has spread intermittently across the border into Lebanon, with Syrian irregular militia accused of kidnapping Shia inhabitants of the neighboring state, and Syrian military reported shooting over the frontier, killing several people. Armed conflict has reappeared in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city, between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Forty Syrian Sunnis allegedly have been kidnapped as a reprisal for the abduction of three Lebanese Shias. The UAE recalled its ambassador from Iran last month when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the Gulf island of Abu Musa, claimed by Iran and the Emirates. Saudi authorities have repressed the Shia minority among their citizens, as the Sunni sovereigns of Bahrain have their Shia majority, and Sunni dominance in Bahrain has been enforced by the Saudi-led GCC occupation forces. Abuses against Shias in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have fed Iranian propaganda around the world.

Notwithstanding the threat of a wider Syrian-Lebanese upheaval, with Iranian intrigue behind the scenes, proposals for greater GCC integration have been nebulous. But most significantly, they include full merger of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – which Bahraini prime minister Prince Khalifa Bin Salman Al-Khalifa described in Riyadh on May 12 as “imperative.”

In the overall national poll, Obama was favored over Romney by double-digits on three fronts: handling living standards for the poor, the concentration of wealth and the cost of a college education. Romney was favored over Obama by double-digits on three fronts: dealing with the deficit and debt, the financial performance of savings and retirement investments, and economic growth.—Susan Page, USA Today

Hardly anyone would dispute the assertion that the issue driving the elections this year will be “the economy.” But what, exactly, do voters mean when they talk about “the economy.” The answer, in ordinary times, would be fairly straightforward. To know how they feel about the economy, most voters ask themselves a simple question: “How am I doing?”

If the answer lies anywhere between “pretty good” and “great,” then the incumbent can take the afternoon off. “Poor” to “awful,” means he and his team of spinners need to work on changing the subject.

“Did you know my challenger once went honky tonking in Memphis with a woman who was not his wife?  It’s true he wasn’t married at the time. He was just a college kid, in fact. But he did use a phony ID to buy beer. And 40 years only seems like a long time ago.”

The president and his team, along with various units of the mainstream media, are doing their best on this front. But it is hard to imagine them breaking through the widespread perception that the economy is in serious, if not terminal, trouble.

Among the interesting finding of the USA Today/Gallup poll cited by Ms. Page is something she virtually throws away by enclosing it in parentheses:

(Romney does have an advantage on somewhat higher-ranking concerns than Obama does, including the No. 1 deficit issue.)

Now that causes one to pause and think. Wasn’t the deficit supposed to be an issue voters didn’t trouble themselves about. If it didn’t matter to Dick Cheney or Paul Krugman, why should it matter to them? Jobs, growth, income, taxes, interest rates … those were things the voter could get his mind wrapped around and then take his conclusions into the voting booth with him.

But deficits? No so much.

Now, however, voters rank it #1. And far above … oh, income inequality. The Buffett rule, it seems, does not rule.

Why this concern over deficits?  Perhaps the news from Europe has something to do with it. The Greeks and Spaniards overspent and now their unemployment situations would make 8 percent out of work seem an occasion to break into a chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Voters know that things cannot go on like this and that, therefore, they won’t. 

The election will likely come down to these questions:

Earlier this month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein made quite a splash with a lengthy piece that, when boiled down to essentials, blamed the Republican party for what’s gone wrong in Washington, D.C. This weekend, they were back with a list of reforms to fix the problem.

I was a bit surprised that they didn’t suggest a constitutional amendment banning the GOP! After all, that seemed to follow most directly from their thesis.

But at any rate, here are their four ideas for alleviating partisanship.

1. Campaign finance reform to increase disclosures and cut down on coordination between parties and candidates.
2. Independent commissions for redistricting.
3. “Restoring majority rule” to the Senate by reforming the filibuster.
4. Boosting turnout through things like automatic registration.

What a terrible list. After going full bore on the Republican party for all the evils of partisanship, this is all they can come up with? Four ideas that have been bouncing around ill-attended, dull-as-dishwater Beltway panels for decades? Talk about a letdown!

I want to make a narrow point about this list, specifically their argument about reforming the filibuster, and then a broad point about their entire premise.

Narrow point: I’m all for a debate about the utility of the filibuster. I’ve written extensively on it in the past, and respect and appreciate people on the other side of the issue. What I do not respect, however, is the misappropriation of the English language to make a point.

That’s exactly what Mann and Ornstein have done here by invoking the concept of “majority rule.”

From a rhetorical standpoint, this is a great phrase to use. This is a democracy, after all, and majority rules. Who isn’t in favor of majoritarianism?

Well, for starters, the framers of the Constitution had their doubts, which is one of the reasons they invented the Senate! Put simply, a majority in the Senate does not have to equal a majority of the whole country. In fact, you can construct a majority coalition in the Senate with less than 20 percent of the total voting public being represented by the winning side.

In other words, "majority rule" has no relevant meaning when we apply it to the Senate. So can we stop misusing loaded, moralistic words like “majoritarian” to win an argument? If the facts support your case, you shouldn’t need to do that, right?

Broad point: Mann and Ornstein have accidentally reminded me of something that I occasionally forget: Much of the liberal  establishment class in Washington does not understand what is happening to our country. It was an utterly tone-deaf and just plain incorrect idea to blame the GOP for all the ills of D.C. last week, but then to come back with this milquetoast list of reforms is unintentionally illustrative.

Reporting from Carrollton, Arkansas, the Washington Post finds some locals still upset with actions of a "Mormon militia" over 150 years ago. The Post reports:

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.”

Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons “evil.”

But the main concern of the paper is ... will this hurt Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney? 

The article, headlined "Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history," attacks Romney for being a Mormon, because, according to the paper, his coreligionists and ancestors were responsible for "the first 9/11."

There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult.

And yet, there is scant evidence that Romney’s religion is making much difference in how voters here are thinking about the presidential election and whether they are willing to back the former Massachusetts governor. 

Keep in mind: Romney is 65. He was not a part of or responsible for the massacre in any way. Nevertheless, the Post justifies its publication of the story by writing, "Still, Romney’s candidacy has prompted some soul-searching in this area, where a historical group estimates that more than half the residents can trace their ancestry back to the wagon train."

And everyone (even Romney!) already apologized for the massacre, anyway.

The Mountain Meadows Massacre remains one of the darkest episodes in the history of Mormonism. The church has apologized for the incident, and Romney addressed it during his 2007 presidential campaign in response to a reporter’s question.

“That was a terrible, awful act carried out by members of my faith,” he told the Associated Press. “There are bad people in any church, and it’s true of members of my church, too.”

The Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Texas is now within nine points, according to a new poll. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll shows Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst with 40 percent, while his challenger, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, is at 31 percent. Former Dallas mayor Tom Leppert is in third at 17 percent.

With the the May 29 primary just a week away, Cruz appears to be gaining ground on Dewhurst. He's been aided in his effort to be the conservative alternative to Dewhurst by an endorsement from Sarah Palin, who recently recorded a robocall to Texas voters. "Ted Cruz has defended the Constitution, U.S. sovereignty, and over three million veterans, and he's endorsed by Tea Party Express," Palin says.

Dewhurst, meanwhile, has a new ad featuring Governor Rick Perry, who endorsed his lieutenant last month. Watch that ad below:

The Dewhurst campaign and its surrogates seem to have recognized the Cruz threat in recent weeks, with both Dewhurst and a pro-Dewhurst super PAC airing ads accusing Cruz of not being a true conservative.

But the momentum may be on Cruz's side, not just in the polls but also in the last-minute money game. The Cruz campaign announced late last week that it raised over $542,000 between April 1 and May 9 and has raised $6.1 million overall. Those are slightly higher numbers than Dewhurst's. While Dewhurst has the backing of the Texas Republican establishment, Cruz has garnered support from national and local Tea Party and conservative movement types.

If no candidate wins a majority of the vote on May 29, the race will go to a runoff on July 31. Many observers believe if Cruz can make it to the runoff, he would have the advantage over Dewhurst.

The other day, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in the recall gubernatorial election.

"No governor in recent memory has been so controversial. No governor in America is so polarizing. Everyone has an opinion about Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin," the paper editorializes. "Here's ours: We see no reason to remove Walker from office. We recommend him in the June 5 recall election."

The Democratic response to the disappointing news of not being endorsed by the largest newspaper in the state? To whine, to make accusations of bias, and to bring up ... Joe McCarthy.

Check out this letter from the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic party, Mike Tate, responding directly to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsement: 

"It saddens, but does not surprise, that the state's largest newspaper would continue to support the most divisive, and possibly most corrupt, governor in Wisconsin history.

"The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has supported Scott Walker in its editorial and news pages for years, has seriously underplayed the scandals of his various administrations, has treated the historic recall movement with small-minded contempt and will, therefore be judged harshly if remembered at all, in Wisconsin's history.

"One need only read the Milwaukee Sentinel editorials AGAINST the Civil Rights Movement and FOR Joe McCarthy to remember how silly and reactionary a news organization can look in the hindsight of the ages.

"And so it will be with Scott Walker, who has been treated with the embarrassing kindnesses of the Journal Communications empire, which props up the Walker agenda with a daily and unrelenting stream of propaganda via right-wing extremists Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner.

"But it is not merely the editorial support that is so troubling.

"Scott Walker not only owns the back editorial pages of the paper — he also owns the front pages of the paper with what is is supposed to remain a neutral forum for actual news. In this case, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has practiced repeated journalistic lapses, underplaying the shocking criminal corruption scandal in Walker's midst, downplaying the enormity of the division and dishonesty emanating from this administration and hyping up and adopting a shocking re-engineering of the truth by Walker on everything from jobs numbers to government transparency.

"This endorsement is also troubling given that it is a blatant about-face to their previous editorial policy of not endorsing in recall elections, having not endorsed in any of the recall elections of last summer.

"In the end, time will tell whether the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's snide and small support for Scott Walker and against the average citizens of Wisconsin will make the difference on June 5th. But by turning such a blind eye to facts in the service of an ideology so extreme and an administration so corrupt, the paper has made yet another backward stand against history."

Bill Kristol, with Karl Rove, Joe Trippi, and Evan Bayh, yesterday on Fox News: