Daniel W. Drezner NOT!

WHEN ACADEMICS ATTACK: Marc Herold is an associate professor of economic development and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire. According to UNH's web page, Herold has only published one refereed journal article in either economics or women's studies – ever [So how come he’s got tenure and you don’t?—ed. Oh, don’t be a smart-ass]. Last year, however, he issued a press release claiming to have developed a comprehensive list of close to 4,000 civilian casualties in Afghanistan during last year’s campaign. This list garnered a lot of foreign and some American media attention. Multiple stories (click here and here) -- by neocons, to be sure -- demonstrate Herold's analysis to be a not-so-subtle exaggeration of press reports. To quote one assessment, "the problem is not the national origin of the source so much as the fact that most of them are third- or fourth-hand overlapping hearsay interviews with Afghans in Pakistani refugee camps some days' journey from Kabul and Kandahar who heard various stories along the way with no precise dates attached." Most estimates place the civilian casualties at approximately 1,000.

Reading this exchange of e-mails between Herold and a blogger (link via InstaPundit) is like rubbernecking at a traffic accident or a coming across a Madonna movie while flipping channels – you know you shouldn’t watch, but you can’t help it. I don’t think either of them is exhibiting the kind of decorum approved by Miss Manners. It also, perhaps, demonstrates why Herold’s methodology should be challenged – he writes without thinking.

READ IT AND WEEP: Both of these stories are in today's Chicago Tribune:

"Iraqis in U.S. back push to oust Hussein."

"Americans in Iraq protest U.S. invasion plan."

The latter story is worth reading for two reasons -- to capture the willful denial of the American protestors in Iraq, and the Tribune reporter's obvious resentment that the protestors have greater access to the Iraqi regime than the Western media.

THAT FASCIST-COMMUNIST COMPARISON AGAIN: A while back I raised the question of why communism continues to have more intellectual respectability than fascism. I raise it again after reading David Corn's informative LA Weekly story on the chief organizers of the anti-war rally in Washington:

"...the demonstration was essentially organized by the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country’s 'socialist system,' which, according to the party’s newspaper, has kept North Korea 'from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.' The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, 'Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.'"

Now, I guarantee you that if a conservative politician were ever to attend a march or rally organized by the Nazi party, that would (and should) be the end of their mainstream political careers. Trent Lott and George W. Bush have had to defend themselves after attending functions sponsored by organizations (i.e., Bob Jones University) that have, shall we say, less than enlightened views on race. That's fine, they should have to defend themselves. (To be clear: I'm not saying fascism deserves more intellectual respectability, but that communism deserves less). But what is the likelihood that Jesse Jackson or Susan Sarandon will be asked to explain their willingness to work shoulder-to-shoulder with unreconstructed Stalinists?

MY 2002 ELECTION SPECIAL: Jacob Levy and I agreed to predict the congressional elections. Jacob's prediction is here, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball page is our expert to beat, and an extra-special treat if we can beat the Iowa Electronic Market.

I'm doing this with some trepidation, for three reasons:

1) I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the American politics fraternity. In other words, American electoral politics are not my area of specialty.

2) Off-year elections rarely reflect aggregate trends, and it's rare that all of the local idiosyncratic factors (Toricelli for Lautenberg, Mondale for Wellstone) perfectly cancel each other out.

3) Predictive models of election outcomes in political science stink. I mean, they suck eggs. Every political science model worth its salt predicted Gore clearing 55% in the popular vote in 2000. The one thing everyone could agree on after the 2000 election was that these models were patently, obviously, wrong.

So, with those caveats, here's what I'm thinking:

A) The news on the economy is decidedly mixed. Unemployment just ticked up a tenth of a point, but productivity growth is high and overall economic growth remains positive. Politically, none of this matters as much as the fact that consumer confidence took a nosedive in October. That may have been due to jitters over a war with Iraq, but it's still the dominant number. In the end, the president's party takes a hit when the economy is perceived to go south, so that cuts in favor of the Dems.

B) It's an off-year election, which traditionally favors the party out of the presidency. 1998 was an aberration, largely because the Republicans foolishly caved to Clinton on substance and made the election a referendum on impeachment

C) Last election, the polls seemed to have a rightward bias of 1-2 percentage points. This was likely due to elevated African-American turnout. Post-Florida, I suspect that turnout for this constituency will remain high.

D) Redistricting from the 2000 census favors Republicans. Of course, this only affects the House races.

So,

House: GOP +1, which will leave Dick Gephardt way, way out in the cold.
Senate: Dems +2, which will leave Jim Jeffords way, way out in the cold.

Because Jacob is also predicting individual Senate races, here are my picks:

NH: D (Shaheen)
MN: D (Mondale)
NJ: D (Lautenberg)
MO: R (Talent)
NC: R (Dole)
SD: D (Johnson)
CO: D (Strickland)
AK: D (Pryor)
LA: D (Landrieu)
GA: D (Cleland)

Similar to Jacob, except that I think Shaheen wins in New Hampshire and Johnson holds on in South Dakota.

One final prediction: because all media outlets have predicted Florida-style legal challenges in multiple races across the country, I come to the inescapable conclusion that no Congressional election will be close enough to prompt a legal challenge. This will leave David Boies way, way out in the cold.

UPDATE: You might notice that there was no mention of Iraq anywhere in that passage. None. The reason is Bush's decision to work through the U.N. Security Council, which deflates the issue like a balloon. Even the New York Times editorial page acknowledges that the Bush administration has made a serious effort to negotiate, to the point where France is looking like the obstructionist. This will reduce any anti-war turnout that would obviously trend Democratic. However, the haggling at the U.N. makes Iraq seem more like "normal politics" and less like the imminent outbreak of hostilities, which also blunts any rally-round-the-flag effect for Bush.

THE RUSHDIE ARGUMENT: Salman Rushdie's op-ed in today's Washington Post picks up my point about the strong liberal arguments in favor of regime change in Iraq. Rushdie is hardly an apologist for the Bush administration. It's quite clear that he has concerns about the process leading up to an invasion (unilateralism vs. multilateralism) as well as process concerns post-invasion (how much will the administration follow through on creating democratic institutions in Iraq). His key graf raises another point that's sort of obvious but has been left unsaid; the last vestiges of Iraqi liberalism want an invasion:

"This is the hard part for antiwar liberals to ignore. All the Iraqi democratic voices that still exist, all the leaders and potential leaders who still survive, are asking, even pleading for the proposed regime change. Will the American and European left make the mistake of being so eager to oppose Bush that they end up seeming to back Saddam Hussein, just as many of them seemed to prefer the continuation of the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan to the American intervention there?"