Retire David Broder Today (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?/Washington Post Department)

Greg Sargent watches yet more journamalism from David Broder, who trashes the New York Times's Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee for being insufficiently obsequious to today's Republican Party:

Horses Mouth March 15, 2007 09:08 AM: Tuesday's Times story was a fairly straightforward report on a big poll the paper did that was full of bad numbers for the GOP. It was entitled, "G.O.P. Voters Voice Anxieties on Party's Fate." Broder didn't like this -- not one little bit. In response, he attacked the Times, thundering:

Months before the first votes are cast in the campaign of 2008, some in the media are conducting last rites for the Republicans. The rush to bury the GOP is as hasty as it is premature.... The headline atop Page 1 of Tuesday's New York Times read, "GOP Voters Voice Anxieties on Party's Fate." It sounded like a death knell for the party that has held the White House for 26 of the past 38 years. But the evidence was thin.... I would say that the problem seems to lie in the eyes of those political observers who are impatient to judge an election that is many months, not weeks, away...the only thing we know for certain about the 2008 election is that we know none of the vital facts that will determine its outcome.

Broder... said the [Times's] rush to judgment was premature. But... guess what Broder didn't tell his readers... the Times piece... aired exactly the same point that Broder did -- that it would be premature to use such data for a long-term prognosis -- not once, but twice. It said this:

And by a 20-point margin, respondents said that if the election were held today they would vote for an unnamed Democrat for president rather than a Republican. Such questions are hardly predictive of the outcome of an election so far away, but they do offer an insight into the health of the party today.

And it also quoted someone else making the same point:

Republican strategists said they were not surprised about the poll's findings, though they said Republicans were too pessimistic in concluding now that the party could not win in 2008. "People should be concerned"... said Glenn Bolger, a Republican strategist. "But if you go back in time to 1991, the Democrats had a lot of the same concerns, both about the candidates running and their possibility of winning. And it turned out pretty well for them."

Broder... snip-snip-snipped those inconvenient facts away. Snip!...

[W]hat... enraged Broder so much about this piece[?] One guess might be that in Broder's Bipartisan House of Worship no one can whisper aloud that one party is doing far better than the other.... [But] when the GOP was dominant... the priests didn't seem to mind so much back then.

Comments

[NJ Lawyer]

Invoking the same old meme despite so many facts to the contrary is a sign that Broder now lacks a tractable mind.

[James Killus]

Is it possible that Broder is actually actively on the take? It doesn't seem likely, but it's not as if checks haven't been written before.

[TROTSKY]

David Broder "enraged"? Sorry, but it doesn not compute.

Speaking of facts, Broder wrote:

"Of course, Republican partisans have every reason to be uneasy today. Their party has lost control of both houses of Congress. The president's overall ratings are in the cellar; the Iraq war continues, with mounting casualties; and aggressive investigations are uncovering fresh scandals in the administration at almost every turn.

You would have to be a clueless Republican not to be worried.

[Gerard MacDonell]

Apprarently, you can google David Broder to find out who he is. The WaPo site even has a picture.

[c.l. ball]

Broder criticizes the disjunction between the NYT headline and the poll data* -- the poll does little to detect "anxieties" of GOP members. Saying the GOP is divided or that 40% see a Democratic victory more likely than a GOP one in 2008 is not the same as being "anxious." There are reasons why the GOP *should* be anxious (its negatives are higher than the Dems) but that is not the same as saying it *is* anxious. Oddly, the poll did not ask Dems if they believed *their* party was divided, which would have made the GOP figures more meaningful.

The Dem lead over GOPers (see p.15) has increased since Oct. 2004 from a 5 point lead for the Dems to an 8 point lead, but that was in an election that Bush won by over 1 million votes. And the Dem percentage is flat. Those 3 points went from the GOP to independents. So, this is not much better news for Dems. The 35% Dem. plurality is no guarantee of 2008 victory given that same plurality failed to give them the election in 2004.

The GOP candidate field is screwy -- Guliani is liked by 50% of the GOP voters, more than any other candidate, but he is pro-gay, pro-abortion (or was) and that doesn't link with most of the party, which is more anti-gay (marriage & unions) and anti-abortion than the public.

But the Dems should not be hopeful. H. Clinton's numbers are screwy -- the Dem. primary voters like her, but the public is more unfavorable than favorable. Obama is the public's favorite. The GOP thinks a candidate that opposes the war is more likely to win, but Clinton had voted for the war and refuses to call for a complete withdrawal.

The Times's qualifiers are in the 14th and 18th 'graphs of a 29 'graph story. When other journalists have had qualifiers or alternate views that far down, DeLong and others have claimed this an evidence of bias.

Broder's point is quite clear -- with the election over 18 months away, it is far too soon to tell. Broder's remarks are a good warning to the Democrats -- don't become complacent about 2008 based on 2006. Remember, after the Senate went to the Dems in May 2001 due to Jeffords' party-switch, the Dems went on to lose the Senate in 2002.

* Which is available here: http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20070313_pollresults.pdf

[kharrisk]

"...the only thing we know for certain about the 2008 election is that we know none of the vital facts that will determine its outcome."

This must be a man speaking as a proud, fuzzy generalist. My guess is that political professionals feel that they possess many of the facts that will determine the outcome of the election, though far from all. They know what the bench looks like for many of the congressional elections. They know what fund raising and hiring of top professionals looks like. They have a fair notion of which candidates are able to show well early but cannot stay in the race (Rudy). They know the relative infreqency of Senators winning the presidency. They know that primaries are being rescheduled and while they may not be able to figure out what that may mean for the outcome, they know it as a "vital facts that will determine its (the election's) outcome." They are paid for their knowledge of the very "vital facts" that Broder claims nobody can know.

I do not understand how people who have the capacity to craft ringing phrases can lack the capacity to go back and figure out whether they are true. That stikes me as often the case with Broder and Friedman and all the bowtie editorialists.