What Happens When Parties Can No Longer Be Managed Moderately?

[This is a somewhat expanded version of a piece that appeared in the Wichita Eagle over the weekend; I received an e-mail on Sunday which causes me to think more about what I mean by "moderation," and this is the result.] 

A few weeks after the dust settled from the 2020 elections here in Kansas, I was giving an online presentation on the election results to the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. Many of the virtual participants had good questions, but the most common one was some variation on a question that has been a constant here in Kansas, and elsewhere, for decades now: “Whatever happened to moderate Republicans?” It's a good question, thought obviously not a new one.

That the parties--both following and, not frequently, shaping the voters which support them--have become more polarized over the past generation is well-supported. I think the only people who can honestly say today, as I think could be at least plausibly claimed in the 1990s, that there is "no real difference between the two major parties," are people deeply committed to revolutionary or reactionary causes--everyone else clearly understands that, in both marginal and major ways, elections have consequences. And it follows, therefore, that when you see party positions become less variable and flexible, and more tightly wound around ideological poles distant from each other, that's going to have consequences for governance. It is those consequences--and specifically, in Republican-heavy Kansas, the consequences of the state Republican party having become inhospitable for the moderates and liberals who once found shelter within it--which had my good-government-concerned interlocutors most worried.

Kansas's strongly Republican (and, yes, "conservative," but actually, for reasons of history, it's even more a matter of party than ideology) majority has been in place for many decades. But for a good number of those decades the state Republican party was a fairly crude instrument, one that contained diverse factions, but those factions could be played off one another, allowing for a degree of elite management. I use "management" there purposefully, because that is--for many observers of elections and the processes by which parties serve as the machines which transform, through representative elections, voter preferences into actual legislative and executive action, anyway--exactly what is presumably demanded: managers who, through the judicious orchestration of the mechanics by which voters and candidates produce majorities which can pass bills and enforce laws, do their best to make certain that those majorities are in respectable, balanced, or above all "moderate" ways.

More often than not, those who found themselves in the role of managers were various moderate and liberal Republicans, politicians and donors and strategists who worked hard to connect with--and, by so doing, cultivate--a particular kind of Republican voter. This isn't anything unique; this type of Republican--mostly suburban, mostly college-educated, and mostly committed to the success of their local public schools and other civic organizations--was the backbone of state Republican parties for decades all across the country. These voters (and in Kansas, you found them overwhelmingly in the suburban and exurban communities which surrounded Kansas's cities, and hence the largest numbers of them were found in northwestern Kansas, in and around Kansas city) faithfully supported the GOP, but they also often protected and rewarded those who dissented from any strictly conservative or libertarian ideological line. The result was a consistent majority party that nonetheless remained somewhat flexible, with many elected representatives who tended to move left or right as the times warranted.

Ed Flentje was a long-time Wichita State University professor, a scholar and a gentleman whose place as a regular column writer for Kansas newspapers I had the honor to take over. One of his great themes over the years was to trumpet this historical happenstance in the history of Kansas's political parties as one of the primary virtues of politics in the Sunflower State. We are a state with a decided (more than 2-to-1) Republican majority among voters, thus providing stability and predictability. At the same time, this Republican majority was divided enough between moderates and conservatives that a crucial number of its elected representatives could, from one issue to the next, ally with the minority Democrats or with the more conservative part of the Republican majority in the legislature, thus allowing the party to adapt, innovate, and pursue good government policies, even progressive ones on occasion. This is, Flentje strongly implies, the best of both wolds: consistent Republican party leadership, but a Republican party that regularly had moderates like Dick Bond and Bill Graves and Jean Schodorf leading the way. So thorough was the managing power of this party faction over the decades that the representatives elected by strongly conservative voters--whom, in the wake of the Summer of Mercy and the movement of Wichita, Kansas's largest city, to the right, probably constituted the majority of Kansas Republicans--were themselves seen as the small, trouble-making faction: "Republican rebels" who messed with the state party's commitment to be "the party of government," as Burdett Loomis, another long-time observer of Kansas politics, once put it.

In the introduction to a recent collection of his newspaper writings, Flentje remains confident that the patterns he often defended still hold. The collection includes ten years of columns which follow the path of Sam Brownback as he thoroughly remade the Kansas Republican party, driving out moderates in political primaries throughout his first term as government, and embarking on a fiscal revolution that had terrible consequences for our state. Though the “Brownback Revolution” took the Kansas Republican party, and thus the state government, in what he recognizes as an immoderately right-ward direction for a time, he sees that as a historical aberration, and believes the moderate Republican faction--who were essential to Governor Laura Kelly’s election in 2018--will continue to provide balance. He says this, while noting at the same time that he writes as one who is almost certainly a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) in the eyes of many of his fellow Kansas Republicans, and also noting that moderates need to do their job as managers of the center of the party better ("grassroots politics will require tending" is his observation). Nonetheless, his commitment to the value of elite party management, of working to promote and fund campaigns and narratives which will put moderate Republicans in a deal-making, compromise-finding position, remains firm.

I don't dispute the value of Flentje's determination, given the convoluted ways that we have historically gotten our nation-wide, representative, two-party system we have. The United States was filled with various informal state-based party arrangements which functioned in mostly moderate ways--even though that regularly involved the exclusion of small segments of the local electorate--throughout the 20th century. But those arrangements may no longer hold. The 2020 election delivered a Republican majority to the Kansas House almost exactly the same as the one which existed when Sam Brownback was first elected governor a decade ago, and that similarly defiant, un-moderate, Trump-centric campaigns led to Republican wins in Congress and state legislatures across the nation, perhaps it is the rather election of Kelly two-years ago, an election made possible by Republican crossing over to vote a Democrat, that will someday be seen as an aberration here in Kansas from the new, 21st-century style of party politics.

What is that style? It is, most of all, a nationalized one. Regional variations that once characterized American politics are dying out. Flentje and others long presumed that state parties were capable of local adaptation, and continued to believe so--as recently as 2014, despite the changes which the Tea Party had by then spent carrying out (some would say "hollowing out") with the national Republican party, Flentje still suggested that Kansas Democrats take a page from the playbook of Democratic Kansas Governor Bob Docking and explicitly rebuke the national party, signing off on the winning strategy of tying his re-election in 1972 to Richard Nixon's. This year, Kansas Democratic senate candidate Barbara Bollier's similar strategy, which included explicitly highlighting voters who intended to vote for her and President Trump, obviously didn't work nearly so well.

The nationalization of American politics has many sources. There is growing congressional dysfunction, the result of campaign finance rules and the way in which ideologically committed interest groups have captured political primaries, which has allowed (or even encouraged) presidents, our only nationally elected figure, to claim, as a matter of necessity, more and more executive power. There is the growing homogeneity and finance-centered character of the America's service economy, with powerful corporations, increasingly distanced from the variable work of actual production (since natural resources from which things can be produced naturally vary around the globe), imposing a kind of accidental uniformity of interests which makes ideology much more appealing way of eliciting voters' attention than traditional political log-rolling. But today, in particular, I think of my old friend Damon Linker's recent--and excellent--two-part essay on how media technologies are turning the tools by which party elites once kept populist extremes at bay against those same managers. His conclusion to the first part is striking:

[This is] what social media does: It allows for the constructing of identities and the cultivation of resentments in a virtual space among likeminded people separated by vast distances in the physical world. Instead of [James] Madison's highly differentiated republic of discrete communities with their own regional, factional interests--or the kind of slow-motion grassroots organizing we saw in the real world during the mid-20th century--we have new forms of rapid-fire, technologically facilitated solidarity among tens of millions of Americans separated by hundreds or thousands of miles but united by a sense of shared grievance and a commitment to lashing out against its sources, real and imagined.

In short, in a centralizing world of instantaneous communication, ideological slights and crusades, whether real or perceived, can amass a movement overnight--and apparently many voters, fearful of being represented by their ideological opponents (or so their news feeds depict them), follow along. Party leaders and donors are, predictably, sensitive to this, start operating on the basis of it, and perhaps are even happy to do so. Why would that be? Obviously, people whose political preferences cannot be easily packaged in a particular ideological construct are frustrated: their swing-vote tendencies are making them less and less important, particularly in states like Kansas, where one-party dominance is mostly unquestioned. But it's not unreasonable to suppose that a good many people in those areas of local dominance have long chafed at the management they've experienced, and wanted real contestation to take its place. The fact that the breaking of this state-specific Republican status quo was primarily due to national, to say nothing to global, movements and technologies is a frustrating irony for believers in participatory and local democracy like myself. Still, unlike some, I can't pretend that I see the eclipse of the cult of anti-populist moderation as entirely bad thing. Bad for Kansas state policies, its taxes and programs and civil society? Absolutely! But bad for Kansas's democratic health? There, I think I mostly agree with Ezra Klein, who draws upon research showing the degree of ideological and historical randomness out of which the label "moderate" emerges, and concludes that frequently the moderate label is "little more than a tool the establishment uses to set limits on the range of acceptable debate." In this jerry-rigged national political system we call our constitutional order, the conviction that there is something fundamentally wrong or illegitimate with ideologically unified and disciplined parties--if that is, in fact, the direction we're going--seems a step too far, to me.

Of course, 2020 was just one election. Who knows how the Republican party will evolve once Trump, whose constant Twitter declarations overwhelmed potential intra-party factions, is out of the White House? There's no good reason to believe that we'll see a complete return to some idealized 20th-century American "normal," but it may that at least a couple surviving moderate Republicans up in the northwest corner of Kansas may find themselves not quite so pressured to either abandon or conform to their party. Still, that's a slim possibility at best. More likely, we here in Kansas may need to start assuming that nationalized, polarized, and deeply divided parties are all we have for turning voter preferences into successful public policies.

That isn’t necessarily impossible; parliamentary democracies, with their “loyal opposition” and “shadow governments,” do it all the time. But that, obviously, involves a great deal of structural adaptation, the sort of thing that would have to emerge over time as parties confront more directly their paralyzed reality, and slowly shake off the deeply ingrained belief that "one more election" could make the difference in squelching their intra-party opponents. How to create such governing forms in Republican-heavy Kansas, however, where deal-making moderates were so central to the whole idea of good government for so long, is far from clear. So I guess I'd just conclude with this, speaking hypothetically here to those who asked me where the moderate Republicans had gone. Let's say times have changed, technology has changed, funding has changed, and that for all those reasons the times wherein moderate voters would regularly send a sufficient number of dissenters and adapters to Topeka under the Republican party, such as would necessitate compromise, are at an end. Figuring out how to enable our state government to work as it once did without that party crutch has to be job number one.

What's the Matter with Kris Kobach?

[I put some thoughts about last night's Kansas primary election results up on Facebook this morning, and Chris Suellentrop, an editor at Politico, asked if I'd like to expand on one of my arguments for the magazine. The result--edited, polished, and punched-up--is here. Below is the original, slightly longer, and hopefully a little more nuanced version. Enjoy.]

As I write this, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach leads Governor Jeff Colyer by fewer than 200 votes in our state's Republican primary. Neither has conceded, and even the least contentious possible outcome will inevitably involve further delays, possible recounts, and bad feelings. A divisive Republican primary is obviously hardly bad news for local Democrats--but I'm confident that a win by Colyer, rather than Kobach, would have been the best news of all.

Nationally, this may strike some as surprising. Wouldn't the Democratic candidate (long-time state senator Laura Kelly, an old and close friend of former Democratic governor Kathleen Sebelius and a politician well-connected to the state's Democratic power base in the northeast corner of the state) naturally prefer to run against a polarizing and unpopular figure like Kobach? After all, this is a man who has barnstormed across the country, selling barely-hidden nativism and immigrant-bashing, involving himself in failed lawsuits and political crusades that have left cities with legal bills in the millions and personal contempt charges which he's been able to foist upon Kansas taxpayers to pay in his behalf. He embraced President Trump's completely groundless claims about "millions" of undocumented residents voting in American elections, was appointed by Trump himself to lead an panel determined to expose this scandal, which of course ignominiously disbanded when no evidence could be found, and accusations about the false information Kobach's peddled through that panel are plentiful. (Kobach's own personal crusade to find illegal voting has resulted, in nearly eight years in office, all of nine convictions.) On top of all this, he simply hasn't done a very good job as Secretary of State; despite all his Fox News-broadcast concern about stamping out voter irregularities, technological glitches and confused instructions--many of them  related to Kobach's own legally blocked crusade to change citizenship requirements for voting and create new rules for purging the voter rolls in the state of Kansas--continue to be endemic. So what Democrat wouldn't want to run against a target like that, especially in a conservative state like Kansas where Democrats need to divide the opposition and recruit moderate Republicans to their cause?

The problem with this analysis isn't that it's wrong; it's that it's incomplete. A deeper appreciation of the current context in Kansas, of the history of the state Democratic and Republican parties, and of the unique challenges which Kobach may bring to this race is necessary.

First, it's not enough to say that Kansas is a conservative state. It is, of course, for a host of demographic and cultural reasons. But it is also a profoundly Republican state, with the close association between that political party and the attitudes and perspectives of the majority of the states (white) citizens extending back practically to the moment of state's entrance to the union on the brink of the Civil War. The Republican lock on state politics and its federal representatives isn't absolute--but it's pretty close. (Kansas hasn't elected a non-Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1939, and the last time Republicans lost control of the state senate was 1917.) Kansas was more riled by the Populist insurgency of the 1890s and early 1900s than any other state, but unlike elsewhere in America, the Democrats were not able to build on that insurgency, and Republican dominance returned in force.

The result of this long-time party dominance has meant, of course, that factions within that dominant party became more entrenched and, sometimes, combative. By the 1950s and 1960s, it was simply an accepted fact in Kansas politics that policy would always be determined by the relative, shifting, factional strength of three groups: conservative Republicans, moderate Republicans, and--always in third place--the Democrats. Over the last four decades of the 20th century though, that triangulation enabled Kansas's political class to maintain fairly stable, and relatively sustainable, fiscal policies, not to mention generally only moderately conservative cultural policies, with Democrats occupying the governor's mansion for 28 of the past 60 years, with Sebelius (and her Lt. Governor, Mark Parkinson, who took her place for the final two years of her terms when she left to become President Obama's director of Department of Health and Human Services in 2008) being the most recent. It is Sebelius herself (who had built up an very effective--if unfortunately very personal and region-specific--network of Democratic fundraisers and activists within Kansas through the 1980s and 1990s) who is frequently credited with a common adage in Kansas politics: "Democrats don't win in Kansas; Republicans lose." That is, when the Republican party can't unify its factions, or when they are burdened with a candidate that various intra-party factions dislike, Democrats have a window of opportunity.

This is what Democrats--and really, everyone on the left in Kansas--have been anticipating ever since the 2016 election. While nationwide the election of Trump left millions of liberals, progressives, socialists, and just plain ordinary Democrats feeling shellacked, here in Kansas those of us on the left could console ourselves with results that showed the "Brownback Revolution" finally coming apart. As is well known to anyone who ever Googled "Kansas" or "Brownback" or "tax experiment" anytime in the past six years, Sam Brownback, elected governor in 2010, brought with him into the legislature a core group of passionate, deluded believers in the old supply-side economic gospel; in 2012 he orchestrated successful primary challenges against multiple moderate Republicans, which when all was said and done effectively put one conservative faction entirely in charge of the state Republican party. The result was a "march to zero" plan to turn Kansas into a no-income-tax state, a plan that flew in the face of fiscal reality and had devastating consequences for Kansas's education funding, roads, and social services, to say nothing of the state's credit rating and overall socio-economic health. The dispiriting nadir for Kansas Democrats was Brownback's re-election in 2014; since then, through the 2016 primaries and elections where Republican moderates and Democrats finally started to push back, through Brownback's departure for a diplomatic post in January 2018 with a miserable approval rating, we have been watching the window for Democrats to make a showing in the state capital of Topeka only widen.

Jeff Coyler, the current governor, has barely had six months to build up any kind of momentum, and as Brownback's Lt. Governor, he has a near-impossible tightrope to walk. He has been obliged, by fiscal reality, legislative action, and state supreme court decisions, to acquiesce to dialing back Brownback's irresponsible vision and moving back towards more sustainable approaches to taxation and school funding, meaning he found himself occupying a "moderate" position in the state Republican constellation. Yet he couldn't easily own that position, rejecting Brownback's legacy and casting himself on the side of those who always fought against Brownback and his majority...because, of course, he was central to that very movement. Which means that the script which a Democratic opponent to Coyler would follow writes itself: emphasize his central position in what is widely regarded throughout Kansas--even by many members of his own party--as a failed Republican administration, watch him contort in his efforts to distinguish himself from his disliked predecessor while not alienating the true-believing base which forms the conservative faction in the party, and reap the benefits.

I've no doubt that Laura Kelly will follow essentially the same playbook in running against Kris Kobach, should he come the nominee. But I fear it won't work as well, simply because Kobach will carry so much national baggage into the campaign along with him that, even without making any claims in association with it--which would be completely out of character for Kobach; his ideological ambitions and national aspirations are plain to anyone who has followed his career at all--Kelly would find any laser-like focus on campaigning against the Brownback legacy complicated. This is not to deny that she couldn't find good, electorally salient arguments against all that baggage; frankly, anyone who doesn't accept the idea that state election offices all across the country must all be lying about or hopelessly confused about the supposedly massive problem of voter fraud in America (an idea whose level of acceptance outside of the White House is, to be generous, extremely small) could come up with good lines of attack against Kobach. But will such salient arguments actually be politically effective, in a state where being Republican is such a deeply engrained default for so many? I wonder. To point to an unpopular Republican governor, tie his former lieutenant governor to him, and say "Republicans need to get their house to order; time to send a Democrat in to fix things," is a message that has actually worked in Kansas's past. To do the same in the midst of Fox News-amplified noise about citizenship, immigration, race relations, and President Trump's tweets (and visits--if Kobach is the nominee, I suspect the question won't be whether Trump will come to campaign for his protégé, but whether he will come twice) will be most difficult, with less of a precedent to fall back on.

In the midst of all this, we also have Greg Orman--a wealthy, smart, relatively young and attractive, socially liberal, business friendly independent from the Kansas City area running for governor. With a socially conservative state politician as his running mate, one can't help but suspect that Orman has designed his campaign in anticipation of Kobach winning the nomination: he has checked all the boxes that would be necessary for him to be appealing to moderate Republicans who can't stand Kobach as their party leader and are frightened of the prospect of him becoming governor. With a less polarizing figure leading the Republican race, the appeal of Orman's proclaimed independence would be lessened somewhat; since part of his whole argument for himself is to be outside the familiar battles between conservatives, moderates, and Democrats from Kansas history, a race that was essentially a referendum of Sam Brownback, a referendum that could borrow from patterns familiar with Kansas voters--an unbalanced Republican party in need of correction!--might arguably give his pox-on-both-houses rhetoric less purchase. But with Kobach as the nominee, Orman will definitely be in the hunt--and the likely effects a serious independent candidacy will have on the Democrats in this Republican state are easy to guess.

None of this is to say that Kelly (and her running mate, Lynn Rogers) wouldn't have a chance against both Kobach and Orman, if that's what the final ballot ends up looking like. After all, the Brownback stink can easily be associated with Kobach as well (perhaps even better than with Colyer; unlike the current governor, who has been obliged to deal with the real world for at least a few months, Kobach aggressively embraces the Brownback tax legacy, promising to double-down on it). The key will be to keep the race as Kansas-specific as possible. But with the national attention and money which follows Kobach everywhere he goes, preventing him from transforming the race into a referendum on Trump and the future of America's civilization, as opposed to on a particular Republican governor's legacy, will be difficult. Every one of us the left here in Kansas should be hoping, I think, for absentee ballots or some other unanticipated event to swing the Republican nomination back in Colyer's direction. Either way, though, our work is cut out for us. (But of course, that's nothing new.)

Of Parties, Primaries, and (Gubernatorial) Endorsements

It's 15 days until the August 7 primaries here in the state of Kansas, and early voting begins today. I'm a vote on the day-of person myself (I just like the vibe of going into my designated polling place on election day), so I still have two weeks to change my mind about which Democratic candidates I'm going to support--but given all the thought I've already put into it, the odds of anything happening that could make me rethink things some more is unlikely. So, as a few people have asked me which Democratic candidate for governor I'm supporting, I'm giving a follow-up to my post from months ago here--but you're going have to wade through all my usual pedantic ruminations first. Sorry, that's just the way I blog. (Hint #1: just go to the fifth paragraph if you can't wait. And if you absolutely can't put off the announcement even that long, Hint #2: it's the one from Wichita who has graduated from high school.)

1) I know party primaries are a problem. Primaries emerged onto the scene of American politics more or less a century ago, in conjunction with a large number of other Progressive reforms on the local, state, and national level, with the aim of taking power away from party bosses and the plutocrats who supported their positions and giving it to party members instead. Today, though, thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, communication technologies, and the internal rules of parties themselves, primaries don't do a particularly good job at preventing those candidates with large pockets and/or the explicit support of other wealth donors from quickly dominating the nominating process. And along the way, primaries bring their own pathologies with them: low voter turn-out makes it ease for well-organized extremists to dominate the intra-party debate, and the competition between even narrowly divided candidates can create narratives and animosities that end up driving media dynamics and funding pitches for the remainder of the campaign. So, yeah, primaries often create more problems than they're worth.

2) That said, I have no confidence whatsoever that the participatory genie could ever be put back into the bottle. Even if it were legally, organizationally, and politically possible to get us back to state of affairs where either of our two mass political parties were able to effectively choose, groom, and present candidates to voters (and doing so would, in my judgment, at the very least require the Supreme Court to overturn multiple precedents laid down over the past 40 years), I am highly doubtful that voters of either party would accept such a state of affairs--I strongly suspect I wouldn't, and I say that as someone fully aware of all the above-mentioned problems. And moreover, it's not like resurrecting that level of party control would somehow prevent all the corruptions that primary elections were originally designed to combat from flooding back.

3) So is the problem political parties entirely? Possibly, but I know of no other mechanism whereby a mass liberal democracy can be operated so as to actually respect the freedom of citizens to organize themselves around and in support of distinct causes and candidates except through some kind of party structure. The people who wrote the Constitution didn't really give that possibility much thought, but within a few election cycles the democratic need for parties was blindingly obvious. General plebiscitarian contests simply won't do it, despite being pushed by vaguely (but rarely actually) populist dreamers for decades. This year we have Greg Orman running as an independent candidate for governor, and he's an impressive guy, with a smart grasp of both the fiscal and the electoral realities facing our state. I like Orman, and have a lot of respect for his Lt. Governor pick, John Doll. Ultimately, though, Orman's whole drive remains deeply self-referential, insisting that he represents nothing more or less than independent, practical, business-minded thinking, as opposed to any particular set of beliefs. And human beings, being the communal animals we are, generally both want and need to be part of set.

4) Why is the Democratic party my set? Well, it's not my only set, nor the one I'm most attached to, either politically or in terms of time or money. But yes, here in Kansas in 2018, in the long wake of Governor Brownback's still-mostly-unchallenged transformation of the state Republican party into a vehicle for economic individualism as a religious conviction, the state Democratic party, for all its flaws (and heaven knows it has plenty), is the only place that folks who are committed to promoting egalitarian economic policies and expanding civil rights have to organize themselves electorally, at least practically speaking. So while the idea of switching to the Republican party so as cast a vote for a responsible conservative as opposed to an actually dangerous one had some appeal for my wife and I, ultimately we decided to stick with this particular set to see what we could do to help their candidates across the finish line in November.

5) Which brings the rubber to the road: what mix of strategy, symbolism, and substance is leading me to endorse one candidate over another? Well, like every other voter in every other primary contest everywhere in the United States, I'm thinking about what ideas best represent my wishes, thinking about what different candidates reflect in terms of different factions within the party, and thinking about what are the relative odds for any candidate to win in the general election. For Democrats (and liberals, progressives, socialists, etc., whatever your preferred handle) in Kansas, given that we're significantly outnumbered, yet have a genuine window of opportunity in 2018 thanks to the Brownback stink, that last component--a kind of second- or third-level chess, trying to figure out who has the greatest likelihood of winning one contest while still keeping themselves in contention for the next--is even more important, even though it becomes more and more of a crapshoot the further you attempt to extend your analysis forward. In any case, here's why I've come down on Brewer's side.

(Wait!, you're saying; there will be more on your ballot than just the Democratic primary for governor! True, but I'm not going to weigh in on the Laura Lombard-James Thompson race to be the Democratic candidate to run against Republican Ron Estes to be the congressional representative for Kansas's 4th district. I like and respect both of those candidates, do not see any major political differences between them, have known and supported one of them for a long time, and plan on continuing to do so. For better or worse, I don't see a need for a lot of thinking there.)

5a) First, I like all three of serious candidates (yes, I'm dismissing without comment both Jack Bergeson, the Wichita high school student, and Arden Andersen, the cool but slightly whakadoodle doctor from Olathe). Senator Laura Kelly is a smart, savvy, experienced poll, who almost certainly is the best positioned of these three--in terms of finances and in terms of party support--to run a traditional state-wide campaign for Governor. The criticisms which have been lobbed against her regarding a procedural vote of hers on the proposed expansion of Medicaid, or regarding connections between her campaign and interest groups opposed to expanding Medicaid, are, in my view, cheap and silly, reflecting no real knowledge of how legislation needs to be positioned for votes in the long term. And her Lt. Governor pick, the flat-out brilliant Lynn Rogers, is one of my favorite people in all of Kansas politics. I also like Joshua Svaty, in part because he and his Lt. Governor pick, Katrina Lewison, absolutely do represent something desperately needed in the state party: generational change. I like Svaty's practical yet unconventionally progressive opinions about the future of agriculture, and I like the fact that he was the only gubernatorial candidate sufficiently unconcerned about the "progressive" label as to make the time to get out to the Bernie Sanders rally here in Wichita. Most of all, as a religious believer with more than a couple conservative streaks in me, I like the fact that he hasn't tried to deny or repent of past votes he's taken but instead allows himself to argued about right in the middle of messy debates over abortion, faith, and much more.

5b) Still, for me, for now, it's former Wichita mayor Carl Brewer, who is almost certainly the least well-funded and the least organized of the big three. Though my contacts with Carl have been minimal over the years, I've long admired him, and have supported him since he first declared his candidacy. Why, especially given that the political ends I value most--economic egalitarianism and democracy--he's quite possibly the least progressive of the three? It comes down to substance, symbolism, structure, and--yes--strategy.

5c) On the level of substance, Carl's stated goals as governor aren't significantly different from any of the other two. He will govern with Democratic party priorities in mind, and for all their limitations (and again, I can think of many!) those priorities--pushing Medicaid expansion, loosening the penalties on marijuana usage, reforming Kansas's criminal justice and child welfare services, and most importantly, working to overturn the legacy of Brownback's tax experiment--are ones I support. On the level of symbolism, it's obvious: there have only ever been two African-Americans elected governor anywhere in the U.S., and Kansas, so far as I have been able to discover, has never had an African-American serve in any statewide elected position. Carl almost never makes reference to racial symbolism in his campaign (though it comes out occasionally; in a recent debate, after another candidate talked about his grandfather's impressive political history, Carl started his reply with the quiet snark "of course, my grandfather wasn't able to hold political office..."), but obviously, to even be able to vote for a black candidate for governor is, to my mind, a huge step forward. On the level of structure, I plead my own personal affections and interest. While there is a lot of movement between the state and the national level in American politics, there isn't nearly enough movement between the local level and the state level--and in an era when the continued urban concentration of people are making the governance of cities more and more crucial to whatever the next steps in American democracy will be, bringing the sort of real, tactile knowledge which being a longtime city leader teaches into the realm of state governance is, I think, of major theoretical and even constitutional importance. (Besides, it's been a century since a committed Wichitan, someone from the Kansas's largest city, became governor; it's time for that to happen again.) And as for strategy? Frankly, Carl doesn't have the baggage that the other candidates have, which may mean he could hold together the state Democratic coalition better than the other candidates could. Am I certain of that? Not at all. Does Carl seem able to inspire new, progressive voters? The jury is out. Will racism doom his candidacy in the general election anyway? Quite possibly. All these, and others, are legitimate strategic concerns that Democrats have to ask themselves. But to my mind, above and beyond all the aforementioned rationales, in a year when Orman will be looking to poach Democratic voters, a thoughtful, mild-mannered, quiet candidate, one who doesn't offend any particular group of Democrats and thus could be acceptable to just about all of them, is nothing to sneeze at.

6) Let me make it clear; I will strongly support, both with time and money as well as my vote, whomever wins this primary (unless something truly nuts happens, and the high school student wins, and the Republicans choose a moderate like Jim Barnett as their candidate--then all bets are off). But primaries are what we have, and so primary calculations we must make. These are mine.

Handicapping the Kansas Governor's Race

Back to blogging? Well, I'll try.

So a little over a week ago, the day before Governor Brownback's final State of the State address, I gamed out some possibilities for Kansas's 2018 gubernatorial race on Facebook. The post attracted a fair amount of attention, and let to a couple of long private conversations with some campaign insiders. I'm posting an updated version of my post here, adjusted some things I've learned and by the latest campaign fund-raising numbers, which were released just a couple of days after my original post.

1) The longer Sam Brownback remains as governor--meaning the longer the Republican leaders in Congress fail to take a simple vote on his nomination to an put-him-out-to-pasture ambassadorship--the harder it will probably be for any Republican gubernatorial hopeful who isn't Secretary of State Kris Kobach to put together a financially and electorally successful coalition of "of-course-I-reject-Brownback-but-of-course-I-embrace-the-Kansas-Republican-majority" GOP primary voters.

2) Why doesn't Kobach have to thread such a needle? Because his name recognition and his small-but-disproportionately-powerful-and-well-connected base of GOP true believers (not just in Kansas, but among Trump-supporters and immigration-bashers across the country) make him the prohibitive favorite for the nomination already, especially assuming a large and divided field, and in particular if Brownback remains governor for weeks (or months?) more to come, forcing all of his other Republican competitors (with the possible exception of Wink Hartman, who is essentially self-funding and will appeal to the libertarian faithful and probably no one else) to dance among each other while he focuses on winning the general. His comparatively low campaign fund-raising numbers thus probably worries Kobach only a little; through his association with President Trump, his talk radio show, and his constant inserting of himself into battles over voter rights across the country, his narrative--one which is guaranteed to be persuasive among at least one segment of Kansas Republican voters--has been set.

3) Kobach being chosen as the GOP nominee is probably Greg Orman's only actually plausible route to the governor's mansion as an independent candidate. To win the governorship, he will need to capture both Democratic voters (which will be a much harder proposition in 2018 than it was when he ran, without any Democratic competition, against Republican Senator Pat Roberts in 2014, but ultimately probably not all that hard; being a young, moderate, self-made millionaire will always appeal to some) and, more importantly, Republican voters. Why more important? Because there is simply no evidence I am aware of which plausibly suggests that there are enough actually "independent" (however you define that) voters in the state of Kansas to carry him to victory, even if he also won every single vote cast by Democrats. State-wide, registered Republican voters often outnumber registered Democratic voters by 2-to-1, which means his winning over GOP voters is crucial. (Might we have a repeat of 2014 with the Democratic candidate pulling out? That seems to me astonishingly unlikely, given the rise of activism and energy among Kansas Democrats since Trump's election, to say nothing of the excitement of the blue wave that has been slowly building for Democrats all through 2017).

4) In other words, if the polarizing, extreme, no-daylight-between-me-and-Trump Kobach is the GOP nominee, then Orman just might, perhaps, have a real shot of picking up enough alientated segments of the Republican electorate in November.

5) Which puts the ball in the Democrats' court. The Kansas Democratic party may yet be years away from fully shifting in a metropolitan, diverse, progressive/populist direction, but it has definitely at least begun to do so; James Thompson's win back in March of the Democratic to run in the special election over Dennis McKinney, who as a perfect example of a traditional, socially moderate/conservative, rural-based, New-Deal-appealing Kansas Democrat, proves that. All of which means that if former Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Josh Svaty gets the nomination, who hues to that old model at least insofar as his religious opposition to abortion rights is concerned, then part of the state Democratic base will likely fracture at least slightly, even despite the momentum which the nomination of Kobach will inspire locally. The pro-choice Orman would be the obvious beneficiary of any such fracturing, assuming he reaches out to the right women's groups and says the right things (which he surely would; I think he's politically naive, but he's definitely not politically stupid).

6) That means you're going to see some Kansas Democratic activists playing some three-level chess if Svaty seems to be hanging on in the run-up to the convention over the next few months. (Which he might: more than one local Democratic insider has pointed out to me the decent number of millennial activists, who played a big role in Thompson getting his nomination, who are trumpeting Svaty's youth, as well as the fact that he seems to be taking the Sanders approach when it comes to fund-raising; he had the greatest number of small individual donations of any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who reported.) The question they'll ask themselves is simply: do they want to stop Kobach more (which an Orman win would do), or want to elect a Democratic governor more, especially if the unlikelihood of that, thanks to a nominee with little name recognition and with a divisive impact on the party, was increasing? I could easily see Orman managing to poach for his team a number of prominent Democrats if Svaty seems capable of capturing the nomination.

7) But such three-level chess won't only happen among some Democrats in the (I think ridiculously unlikely) case of Svaty going all the way. Every serious Democrat knows the registration disadvantage in Kansas, and every one of them knows that none of the alternatives for the Democratic nomination--former Wichita mayor Carl Brewer, Kansas state senator Laura Kelly, and Kansas state representative Jim Ward--can remotely compete with Kobach's name recognition. (Fox News watchers from Idaho or Indonesia know the man, for heaven's sake.) They also know Orman has the money to make the run, and thus they know Democratic vote poaching will happen no matter what they try to do. And finally, they will also know that, among Republicans who don't like Kobach, Orman will, on average, have a much better shot of grabbing them than any Democratic candidate would, for all the usual partisan tribal reasons. So which gubernatorial candidate, they may think to themselves, will best be able to control the bleeding and do some triangulation in a three-way race that will likely be Kobach vs. Orman vs. a Democrat? (Obviously if Kobach's people fail to carry him through to the nomination, and the GOP gubernatorial nominee turns out to be an establishment Brownback-clone like current-Lt. Governor Jeff Colyer, this calculation will change...though perhaps not that much. Though if the Republican primary electorate somehow, bizarrely, actually manages to nominate a moderate without ties to either the Brownback legacy or the exciting-but-distasteful-to-many Kobach machine--say Kansas Leadership Center president Ed O'Malley, another relatively young man who is wildly popular among Wichita's donor class--then not only does this whole calculation get thrown out the window, but both the Democrats and Orman might as well just call it good and head home.)

8) Wasn't all this Orman-inspired angst--in the midst of what, in the wake of the unpopular Brownback administration and facing the polarizing Kobach juggernaut, was supposed to be year of hope for state Democrats--going to be avoided by Kelly's late entrance to the race? Her fund-raising numbers support that: after announcing only a month ago, and having to report her donations after only two weeks, she had still out-raised both Ward and Brewer. More than a few observers declared her the prohibitive Democratic nominee the day she announced, and with good reason; after all, she's from northeast Kansas (it has been more than a half-century since either state party had a successful flag-bearer who wasn't part of the Lawrence-Topeka-Kansas City nexus), and she has former governor Kathleen Sebelius--and her donor list--on her side. But worries remain. Her name recognition is minuscule (less than half of either Ward's or Brewer's). And her getting into the race so late smacks of...well, of a bunch of people getting desperate, fearful that the wrong candidate will result in the Democrats losing their best shot at the governor's mansion in years. Ward, despite his tireless efforts on behalf of the Democratic party and progressive causes, has a personal history that will likely make at least some Democratic donors and activists leery, with their memories of how 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Davis was treated (one meeting with a client at a bar/strip-club = Davis, lifetime pimp and pornographer) driving them to aforementioned game of three-level chess. And Brewer?

9) Well, here is where my somewhat adjusted predictions come into play. Moving from the city level to the state level (or higher) of government makes good sense in terms of policy experience; less so in matters of politics. For better or worse, voters think about local and city politics differently than they do about the much more partisan levels of politics above that. And here in Kansas, especially in terms of trying to organize a financially and electorally plausible route to a major party nomination and then a general election win, while being from Wichita (which is already often seen as conservative also-ran city by many state Democrats) as opposed to being from metropolitan Kansas City poses...well, some image problems. Still, Brewer was basically a successful mayor of the state's largest regional economic urban engine, and as a consequence--and given the fact that the Wichita media market has far more penetration throughout the state than anything from the northeast corner--he has more positive name recognition than any of his Democratic competitors. Yes, his fundraising numbers have been terrible, but there have also been shake-ups in the campaign to get things going...and more importantly, Brewer's strongest financial basis will likely be, frankly, moderate Wichita professionals and business-people, and so long as there's a shot that an O'Malley, or even an establishment Republican like Colyer, could win the nomination, many of them will be keeping their pocketbooks closed.

10) So, my conclusion? So long as Orman moves forward with his plan for a no-holds-barred run, and so long as Kobach seems on track to be carried over the finish line to the Republican nomination (likely against the wishes of at least a few major figures in the Kansas GOP) by his devoted fans, you'll eventually see certain Democratic players and donors looking more and more at Brewer. Why? Because despite not having the same organization or base of support that Kelly and Svaty and Ward all do, and despite being from the wrong part of the state, he has two things going for him. First, there is very little evidence that any remotely sizable portion of the Democratic base would be turned off by his candidacy (and the fact that it was apparently African-American turnout that made the difference in Doug Jones's recent election in Alabama will not be lost on the people who seriously contribute to the local Democratic party, I think). Second, his leadership record, because he's been out of state politics, will lack the sort of red flags which might prevent a disaffected moderate Kansas Republican who really doesn't want to vote for Kobach from considering the Democratic alternative, and turning to Orman first. (And that goes double, obviously, for moderate Kansas business-people who liked and worked with Brewer in Wichita, and basically don't have any problems with Democratic priorities, but could be scared away from donating to his campaign by anything that looks, or could be painted as, too extreme.)

11) Long story short? I wonder if perhaps the single greatest variable as to whether or not the state of Kansas might actually elect not just a Democratic governor (we've had those), but a black governor (we've never had one--in fact, so far as I've been able to discover, no African-American has ever been elected to any state-wide office in the entire history of Kansas), is whether or not Trump and the Republican majority in DC, in whose hands Brownback's nomination rests, continue to be a bunch of Keystone Kops, thus Kobach's path to the Kansas GOP gubernatorial nomination through a crowded, divided field that much more likely.

Okay everyone, have at me.

Why This Socialist Likes Stegall

On Friday, Caleb Stegall--lawyer, farmer, family man, rabble-rouser, and long-time Front Porcher--was appointed to the Kansas Supreme Court by Governor Sam Brownback. The criticisms of Stegall's appointment are many--he's been called a crony, been called unqualified, been called an extremist. I can't speak for the first two--though my familiarity with his writings and his personality lead me to sincerely doubt their truth--but I'm fairly certain the third is true. And I have to say, that's partly why I consider his appointment good news.

Of course, to be honest, if my electoral wishes had come true Stegall's appointment would never have happened. I spent much of the past six months hoping that--and knocking doors and contributing money so that--Brownback (a decent man who, to my mind, foolishly embraces many profoundly bad, simply incoherent, or just plain irresponsible ideas) would lose his re-election race. The fact that he won is, I'm quite convinced, bad news for Caleb's and my state. Caleb no doubt disagrees with me on this point--which is, itself, kind of the point as well. Caleb and I have been disagreeing for a long time, and the level and form of those disagreements have sometimes been, well, extreme. And to be able to civilly discuss and disagree about such fundamentally important things means something rather crucial: that you both see what the fundamental grounds upon which and over which one must struggle really are. To be able to fight intellectually with someone who shares your passion for the essential things is a far more rewarding experience, I think, than happening to learn that some stock figure from Republican or Democratic Central Casting overlaps with your opinions occasionally. (No doubt I agree with President Obama more often than Caleb does, and he agrees more often with Senator Mitch McConnell than I do. Oooh, yee-haw.)

Caleb and I, honestly, haven't done much fighting lately; since moving into the Brownback administration as an in-house counsel in 2011, he's kept a low profile when it comes to online debates. And between us, it's always been online; we've only met once, when we hung out and talked late at a restaurant here in Wichita one night way back in 2008. But from 2005 until 2010, Caleb and I--beginning when I stumbled upon his fine, much-missed publication The New Pantagruel, and then continuing through Front Porch Republic--found ourselves somewhat regularly arguing about what localism and populism can possibly mean. We fought over shopping at Wal-Mart, buying local food, health care reform, farm policy, the meaning of liberty, and much more. I'm sure I wasn't anywhere near Caleb's most frequent or fond antagonist, and he wasn't mine, but speaking just for myself I valued those arguments deeply, because I learned from them. While his local populism--which might be best described as a kind of Jeffersonian individualism--never converted me, his ideas were essential to getting me to think more carefully about my communitarian convictions, helping me to see both the conservative and the Laschian elements which have to be a part of any effort to bring both populist egalitarianism and local community together. And you can't have such an thoughtful, demanding, but also civil relationship with someone, and not wish them well. (Given that Caleb actually complimented me when I finally stopped playing the ivory tower socialist on the sidelines and started indulging in activism, how could not?) The bottom line is this: if I'm going to have to deal with a governor who clearly wishes to remake the judicial branch entirely, how can I object to him making a prominent part of that branch an extremist whom I happen to trust?

There are, of course, good extremisms and bad, and part of the whole reason of a free society is so that clashes of extremism can be expressed without trashing everything both interlocutors hold dear. And that's the key point with Caleb--while I have plenty of reason to assume that I will generally dislike whatever judicial opinions he hands down, as he would very likely generally dislike mine if we traded places, we both hold the same thing dear: Kansas. Our place, our community, our peoplehood, our demos. There are many lawyers who get sucked into a kind of romance of the law: maybe they see it as some kind of  Platonic-constitutional philosophical ideal, or as an aristocratic necessity to hold in the unwashed masses, or as embodying a serene technocratic-pragmatism, but however they view it "THE LAW" becomes their paean to something higher than, or better than, the people themselves and the cultures they build. The man that I interacted with, the man that helped to build Front Porch Republic, whatever else he believed, could never, I think, see the law as anything other than just one other attempt among many to organize and protect the manifold possibilities and struggles of human existence. That is, Caleb, as a member of the Kansas Supreme Court, may not be able to--and may not want to--engage in deep, revolutionary thoughts about building local communities and conservative Christian polities, but I can't believe he would forget the very human thrill of trying to figure out how such a thing might be done, or if one might even want to. That's a profound humility, a dispositional--if not philosophical--liberality which will keep him, I hope and I trust, far from the temptation to see the law as a sovereign foundation for his (or my!) preferred political project.

Of course, power corrupts; Caleb would be one of the first to remind me of that as well, I suspect. So we here in Kansas will have to watch him, as we need to watch all our top judges, because fortunately, we voters here are Jeffersonian enough that we retain the power to kick them out (though not, perhaps unfortunately, so Jeffersonian that we can elect them in the first place). Party politics being what they are, though, I suspect his position is secure. And while politically I'd much rather a state government in Topeka quite different than the one we have, given what we do have I really can't disagree with this turn of events one bit. Kudos, Caleb!

Some Populist Perspective, Ten Years (and Two Weeks) in the Making

[Cross-posted to Political Context]

This image on the left--which shows how the Democratic candidate for governor, Paul Davis, was systematically slaughtered across Kansas--is pretty much what I saw on the screen towards the end of a long night at KWCH, our local CBS affiliate here in Wichita, two weeks ago. I was their on-air political talent, so I was in the newsroom throughout the evening, watching the whole debacle unfold. And I do mean debacle--both in terms of my many predictions (which all turned out completely wrong, though I wasn't entirely alone in that), and in terms of what I think it means for our state. The news since the election has made it pretty clear just what a financial and political hole our ideologically blinkered majority party has created for the Sunflower State--and, of course, the same could be said for many other states, to say nothing of our national government itself. So yes, I was depressed that night. Then I left the country for a week, and tried to forget about it all.

Now I've been back for a week, and I've been pondering what to make of Democratic losses locally and nationally. And what I find myself thinking the most about is how things stood pretty much exactly 10 years ago, give or take. The elections of 2004--anyone remember them? President Bush re-elected, the Republicans expanding their control of both the House and the Senate, all after an extreme fierce campaign which so many on the left saw as their best chance to correct for the Bush's indefensible, Supreme-Court-assisted win in 2000. And afterwards, the internet (we weren't calling it "social media" back then!) was filled with images like this:

There was a great deal of serious--and I do mean serious--soul-searching following that election, and what it meant for the Democrats' hopes for either 1) reaching out to, and finding some sort of way to win the support of, what seemed to be a mostly white, mostly church-going, mostly socially conservative, mostly middle-class-at-best, rural demographic that was--thanks to the quirks of our electoral maps--capable of holding on to our political institutions, or 2) bringing into politically-salient existence a more liberal, more secular, more educated, more diverse, more economically oriented, urban demographic that would enable progressives to win nationally. The amount of pixels enlisted in this soul-searching surely ran into the billions; everyone was reading and arguing about Thomas Frank (or Ruy Teixeira or Ronald Brownstein or Robert Reich or any number of other pundits of the moment). People talked (humorously, mostly, I think) about secession. And in the midst of this, I got into a debate with one of the great ur-bloggers of that distant moment in internet history, Timothy Burke.

His position was straightforward: the future of the Democratic party needed to begin with maximizing the appeal of "Bicoastia," not trying to triangulate from or invest in or find identity with "Heartlandia." (Because, modernity being what it is--as Timothy presented it, anyway--any such efforts would necessarily be either condescending or inauthentic). What was necessary, instead, was doubling down on the the second option: "soft libertarianism" in regards to lifestyle issues, meritocracy and means-testing in matters of government regulation, celebrating social mobility, embracing "South Park Republicanism," etc. All of which, of course, stereotypically aligns with the interests and expectations of individuals who had made their home in an urbanized, globalized, worldly, pluralistic, secularized world. I, on the other hand, insisted upon the first option (and not just once, but many times thereafter): that the left, if it was to succeed, needed to abandon the meritocratic and ameliorative nonsense of the Clinton years, and embrace a whole-hearted egalitarian communitarianism. Christian social democratic populism, in short: we on the left needed to re-embrace union workers and farmers and--most crucially--the communities they had built for themselves and the churches they worshiped in, and build up our cause through a respect for their legitimate popular demands. That and only that, I thought, would enable the left to credibly win electoral contests against the financial powers that were both tearing American democracy apart and turning us into a crusading empire around the world.

Well, ten years are a long time, and plenty of things have changed. (Obama happened, among many others.) But thinking about the two maps above, I realized two things. First, whatever the ultimate ethical calculus of those two debated routes a decade ago, Timothy's approach is the one which won the argument for the Democrats. The logic of libertarianism is pretty much all around us. A jury-rigged (and philosophically limited) package of reasonable health insurance reforms has emerged as the absolute benchmark of liberalism (and been incorrectly labeled "socialism" for its efforts). The conventional wisdom for the past half-decade or more has all been about how the Republican party is dying demographically, with the Tea Party being a mad lashing out by angry white men against the new ascendant majority: minorities, single working women, gays, recent immigrants, and most of all: young people. Populism may not have ever really been tried, but in the wake of 2008 and 2012, perhaps there was no reason to.

But my second realization goes back to what I saw in the studio that night: a manifestly unpopular governor (Sam Brownback has never been above 50% in state-wide approval polls) re-elected, Democratic turn-out in the sewer, and the Republicans winning all the way down the ballot. It's very easy to talk dismissively talk about how Kansas is a conservative Republican state, end of story (though that is simplistic at best); it's also easy to talk about the current unpopularity of President Obama and the nation-wide campaign of paranoia and hysteria which so much of the Republican party promulgated, and how that filtered down to the grass-roots (especially when we here in Kansas have the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity as ready enablers). One can cavalierly insist that the Obama majority just happened to stay home this time around, and will easily be back in 2016. But that runs against everything I saw here on the ground: huge efforts and excitement at center of local Democratic and progressive organizations, all of which saw their chance, and all of which was reflected in the polls, and apparently none of which translated into votes. And the fact is, I've seen this--we've all seen this--in midterm after midterm, for the past ten years. 2006 is very likely an anomaly, driven by the combination of an unpopular war and conservative exhaustion; if it is the case, as some have hopefully suggested, that the GOP has crafted an electoral strategy that is deep but not broad--and I think that analysis is likely correct--then it would seem the Democrats, as the party for liberals and progressives (and all the rest of us socialists and Greens when there are no other responsible options on the ballot) has the opposite problem: it's support is broad, but not deep. Its message is not changing voting habits, or even really challenging them, much less inspiring them. The majority that seems to support progressive causes doesn't care enough about its nominal candidates to bother consisting showing up.

Anyone who cares about Kansas politics and finds himself on the left side of the political spectrum could do much worse than to read the long, provocative series of exchanges between liberal and progressive activists and Kansas Democratic party leaders which Daily Kos has hosted over the past couple of weeks (I caught up with them all after I got back from China). Even allowing for the selective viewpoint of those writing, it captures something pretty fundamental (and noted nationwide): our state-wide Democratic party wasn't thinking along Timothy's preferred lines, but neither were they embracing a strategy of deep, locally grounded populism such as I once imagined. They determined early on that "education funding" was a winning issue, and thus that became the first, last, and only focus of their campaign. Same-sex marriage (even when the courts handed that to Kansas Democrats on a silver platter!) wasn't touched; minimum wage hikes and agricultural policy and immigration--the sort of stuff which logically ought to have at least have been on radar screen of Kansas's many rural poor and urban minorities--was only lightly pushed at best. Now, maybe that wouldn't have made any difference; I'm not going to go up against the high-priced data that the state party was able to get a hold of (though I'm not sure all those polls were worth their cost...). Still, from what I can tell, Timothy's meritocratic, social libertarianism-plus-fiscal-moderation model has only succeeded nationally, not locally--and in our federal system, figuring out some way to draw out and build upon the progressive concerns of local communities is an absolute must.

Note that I said "progressive" there. I'm not going to retire my reliance upon the term populist entirely, but I have to recognize that it carries with it a lot of baggage, and over the past 10 years the playing field--and the players, both rural and urban--have changed enough that its use needs to be qualified. Ten years ago, living in Arkansas in 2004, I voted (along with a broad majority of Democrats and Republicans alike) to put an anti-same-sex marriage amendment into our state constitution; a decade later, I've changed my mind, and am happy to see the first legal same-sex marriages here in Kansas, and I'm not alone. Changes in technology--social media, not the least!--have meant it is ever more difficult to separate the increasing cosmopolitanism of urban (and therefore, for better or worse, "bi-coastal") life from penetrating and shaping the hopes and interests and expectations of even the most rural communities. And perhaps for related reasons, the current zeitgeist--which I see reflected in my own political interests--is one of decentralization, localism, diversity by way of a re-evaluating of connections. I hope, for all my usual deeply communitarian reasons, that those connections--and the culture they make possible--isn't going to go into even greater eclipse than they already too often have, but I have to own up to shifts in the terrain under my feet: the old populism--based on making the state over into a community of egalitarian identification--can't connect to a majority of left-leaning voters any longer, but maybe a new kind of populism--one that empowers both individuals and local communities--could.

It's a difficult passage that America (indeed, modern capitalism, and the modern nation-state itself) is going through at present. To use a banal but I think revealing example, it may be that more and more young people are returning to the DIY lifestyle, but they aren't doing it in the name of embracing either Brooklyn hipster urban farming or their grandparents rural gemeinschaft. There is a different mix of the progressive-libertarian and the populist-egalitarian out there, a different mix of what seems to be done best locally and what needs to happen universally. The Democratic party has a potential platform which captures at least one version of that mix: generous immigration policies, nationally portable health care (or at least health insurance) policies, student loan forgiveness, net neutrality. It's not everything, but it's something. At the very least, maybe it'll give my state's Democrats a shot of convincing enough voters that they can be trusted to fix the mess which I fear that four more years of Brownback is going to continue to build in my state. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Kansas: Election-Day Predictions

Got back from voting about 40 minutes ago. At 6am there was a long line already. Of course there's always a bunch of early risers like me taking care of their civic duty, but still, it was impressive. Still more impressive was the age and ethnic diversity in the line, considering that our voting district usually appears pretty mature and white, and also the large number of advanced votes already marked down on the ledger. Makes me feel bullish, however idiosyncratic that evidence may be.

What an election season it's been here in Kansas! It's been decades since a November has rolled around with some genuinely competitive state-wide races on the ballot, and for a political junkie like me, it's been rather amazing to watch. And not just watch--I've found myself drawn into the coverage of these races (I've probably appeared on something close to 30 television news reports since August, with more to come later today), and I've involved myself in the campaigns themselves. In attending these rallies, talking with the organizers, hosting candidates and more, I've seen broader and more intense levels of local activism here in Wichita and around the state than I've ever seen before. And deservedly so: this, unlike so many other elections which take place in thoroughly Republican Kansas, is a genuinely important election, where our votes tomorrow won't just matter in a civic sense, but seem likely to matter for actual political outcomes as well.

Over the past few days, everyone has been asking me for my predictions, which is to be expected. On Sunday, the newspapers gave us a rundown on predictions from scholars at other Kansas universities who have been watching the elections like I have; I've already given my take on how things stood 20 days out, and 10 days out, but do I have any predictions for today?

Incumbent Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach vs. Republican-turned-Democrat Jean Schodorf. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say Schodorf wins by a hair, despite Kobach having held on to a consistent--though small--lead in most of the (relatively few) serious polls which have included this race. Just wishful thinking? Probably--but also it's the fact that there has been a relentless ground game to reach out to Hispanic and African-American voters here in Kansas, and at least some evidence those very voters may have been undercounted in the midterm polls this time around. So I'm just going to take a leap of faith, inspired by what I've seen over the weekend and this morning, and say Schodorf pulls this one off, though probably by less than a point (meaning, of course, that you can expect our nothing-if-not-smart-and-determined current Secretary of State to use all the resources available to him to fight Jean for every single vote).

Independent newcomer Greg Orman vs. incumbent Republican Senator Pat Roberts. This is the race which I've been saying for a week or more is the most likely to go into the wee morning hours, but I'm not sure I believe that any longer. On the contrary, while I still think it'll be close, I don't think it'll be as close as the Secretary of State race, and we won't have to go too long after the polls close to make it clear that history is being made: a slight but difference-making number of Kansas voters (equal numbers moderate Republicans who were turned off by the embarrassing and desperate flood of money on Roberts behalf, and Tea Party Republicans who can't forgive him for his treatment of his primary challenger Milton Wolf), are going to send an independent to the Senate.

(Oh, and the Senate make-up? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound; let's let my bullish flag fly (though I'm not getting crazy or anything--I can still read the polls). The Republicans hold onto to Kentucky and they gain West Virginia, Montana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Alaska, and Iowa. The Democrats hold on to New Hampshire, North Carolina, and (surprisingly) Colorado; Louisiana goes to run-off in December, and Georgia in January. Greg Orman thus stands on November 5th as an independent in a Senate made up of 50 Republicans, 45 Democrats, 3 Independents, and 2 races yet to be decided. He'll be able to ask for just about whatever he wants from either party, and they'll give it to him in exchange for him joining their caucus. And he'll choose the Democrats, giving them two more years of Biden-tie-breaking control, because the Republicans have treated him like crap.)

Incumbent Republican Governor Sam Brownback vs. Democrat state representative Paul Davis. Put a fork in him; he's done. I mean, of course it'll still be close, and no, I wouldn't bet the farm on this outcome, or even $20. But $10? Yeah, probably. For heaven's sake, even the National Review, one of the flagship publications of American conservatism, says it's all over for Browback. The moderate Republicans which he and his acolytes and/or paymasters hounded out of office in 2012 have left his fold, and the more I hear from people I know--a former lieutenant governor of Kansas, a current state district court judge--the more convinced I am that the governor has failed to win these people back. Look for a new job, Sam; as of January, you'll need it.

Kansas: 10-Day Predictions

Taping an episode of This Week in Kansas last Thursday, our host Tim Brown asked us assembled commentators: what do we predict for November 4, only a week and a half away? Well, I hauled up my predictions from 10 days ago--but with one alteration. So here's my latest on the three big state-wide races here in Kansas, again going from, in my view, the least likely to flip to the most:

Incumbent Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach vs. Republican-turned-Democrat Jean Schodorf. There's a serious lack of polling available for public consumption for this race; the most recent serious poll to include the race for Kansas Secretary of State showed Schodorf down by six points, which showed little change from what other occasional polls have suggested ever since the end of September. And the "debates" (more like opportunities for the candidates to stand and recite their talking points, but you know what I mean) which these two have held haven't helped Schodorf much: Kobach is a real political animal, a superb and utterly unhesitant communicator, confidently throwing out highly questionable claims about voter fraud and red-meat-for-the-base insinuations about Schodorf being soft on illegal immigration, all of which makes his opponent seem, it unfortunately must be said, old and unfocused and a little whinny by comparison. I remain deeply impressed by the ground game which Hispanic groups, African-American churches, and other social organizations in Kansas's major cities have put together, registering and informing and motivating voters against Kobach's policies, but I can't deny any longer that this race is looks increasingly unlikely to result in an upset.

Independent newcomer Greg Orman vs. incumbent Republican Senator Pat Roberts. Since I last wrote, various facts have become clear to me about this race. First, the number of Tea Party conservatives and others who backed Milton Wolf during the Republican primary, and were incensed at Roberts's lazy dismissal of his challenger, and as a result can't see themselves voting for Roberts in 10 days time, does not appear to be shrinking. Second, Orman's strategic choice to not directly engage the tremendous amounts of negative advertising being directed against him--at rates of, depending on how you count the money and television ads, anywhere from 4 to 1 to as much as 8 to 1--is paying off. Orman obviously couldn't really directly challenge many of these accusations without undermining his own determination not to be placed on the political map (which of course would only play directly into Roberts's hands), and as a result his public presentations have kept themselves focused on the distasteful dysfunction of Congress and the pragmatic appeal of a genuinely independent candidate. And there is evidence that's working for him, being able to hold his own despite an onslaught of Republican opposition. Roberts still obviously still has all the advantage of incumbency, of a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats and others by almost 2 to 1, and most of all of a narrative which puts the highly-unpopular-in-Kansas President Obama at the center, but I have to move this one up, with a greater chance of the incumbent losing than I'd long thought likely. It's definitely not "likely," but it strikes me as much more possible than it did previously.

(Incidentally, my predictions for the Senate overall? Well, 10 days out, I'd say that I think Nunn will win in Georgia outright, and Landrieu will pull out a win in the December 6th run-off in Louisiana. I can't bet on Udall in Colorado, as much as I'd like too, nor Pryor in Arkansas, nor Weiland in South Dakota. Shaheen will hold on to her seat in New Hampshire, and McConnell will hold on to his in Kentucky. And then, on top of all that, let's say Orman wins here in Kansas. That means, for whatever it's worth, that I'm imagining, come November 5th, the Republicans holding 50 seats in the Senate and the Democrats (with two Independents) holding 48, and looking forward to the run-off in Louisiana. The pressure on Orman to declare he'll caucus with the Republicans--whatever their party flunkies may say--and, by thus giving the Republicans 51 in their caucus, simply end the waiting over who will be in the majority will be immense. But by the same token, I could imagine the Democrats, assuming they similarly smell a Landrieu win awaiting them in a month's time, moving heaven and earth--perhaps Reid offering to step down as majority leader?--to capture Orman's vote, thus giving them a Biden-tie-breaking 50-50 breakdown in the Senate. Hey, it's possible.)

And now finally, incumbent Republican Governor Sam Brownback vs. Democrat state representative Paul Davis. It's really not looking good for our governor. Not in absolute terms, to be sure: on paper, Brownback still has all the advantages of incumbency, all the advantages of being the flag-bearer for the state Republican party, not to mention enjoying tremendous levels of support from dozens of conservative groups outside Kansas. But maybe you can have too much of a good thing; among other concerns, there is real reason to believe that some of the more outrageous ads flooding airwaves and filling mailboxes aren't so much reminding wavering Republicans of reasons to stick with their party as just increasing their dislike for the incumbent. The very latest polls show Davis leading by five points (and, perhaps even more crucially, shows Brownback as having the support of less than 40%  of female Kansas voters and only 77% of his own party). Some tracking polls suggest that Brownback still maintains a tiny lead over Davis, but others disagree. Either way, though, I can only reiterate what I wrote before: while this is still (as with both of the above races) the Republican incumbent's race to lose, it seems pretty clear that, if there is any place where your typical disappointed Kansas Republican voter is likely to switch their allegiance, it's going to be in choosing their next governor. I trust Sam Brownback has some back-up plans in mind for his post-governorship, because that is by no means a merely intellectual possibility any longer.