Democratic Candidates Research Articles

The “Resurgent” Youth Voter in the United States

The 2008 U.S. Presidential election was a voting booth landslide for Democratic candidate Barack Obama over Republican candidate John McCain among 18-to-29 year old voters. This research analyzes 2008 National Election Pool exit poll data and seeks to explain why candidate Obama did so well in this election among this category of voters. The author finds that the evaluation of politicians' personalities is a critical part of explaining young voters' choice of candidate Obama as president. This research also found that young voters favored Obama because he was a Democratic Party candidate and liberal on political and social issues. In addition, the author finds some evidence of political parties reaching out to young voters as favorably affecting their voting choice which is important to analyze further given that both parties—in particular the Democratic Party—heavily favored the use of social media to do so. This cross-sectional analysis studies groups by age, party identification, and political ideology, in their general likelihood to support candidates in the 2008 presidential election. Lastly in analyzing young voter behavior from the 1992-2012 presidential elections, this research did not find evidence of a strong turnout of youth voters translating into an advantage for Democratic presidential candidates within that demographic group.

An Empirical Study of Political Bias in Legal Scholarship

AbstractLaw professors routinely accuse each other of making politically biased arguments in their scholarship. They have also helped produce a large empirical literature on judicial behavior that finds that judicial opinions sometimes reflect the ideological biases of the judges who join them. Yet no one has used statistical methods to test the parallel hypothesis that legal scholarship reflects the political biases of law professors. This paper provides the results of such a test. We find that, at a statistically significant level, law professors at elite law schools who make donations to Democratic political candidates write liberal scholarship and law professors who make donations to Republican political candidates write conservative scholarship. These findings raise questions about standards of objectivity in legal scholarship.

Auditioning for the Rhetorical Presidency: Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speeches as 'Presidential' Documents

Scholars have identified various genres of presidential speech and developed interesting and varying arguments about the nature and effectiveness of presidential rhetoric. One area of scholarship that deserves attention is a thorough examination of the content of pre-presidential speeches, specifically presidential nomination acceptance speeches. A candidate’s acceptance speech launches the general election campaign and provides each party’s nominee with a significant rhetorical opportunity. We examine the nature of the rhetoric used in nomination acceptance speeches given by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates since 1948. During this time period there have been many significant changes in the electoral and institutional landscapes. Nomination acceptance speeches offer a glimpse as to how candidates have chosen to rhetorically respond, or not, to electoral and institutional changes. Did candidates adjust their rhetoric in response to these changes? Specifically, how do candidates present themselves personally, particularly how do they portray their personal biography and partisanship? Did the use of religious rhetoric in acceptance speeches change over time as the Religious Right became more of an electoral force? Finally, as the institution of the presidency changed and the public’s expectations of presidents’ legislative responsibilities increased it is important to examine the policy substance nominees have chosen to incorporate in these speeches, especially how they claim credit for past policy accomplishments and how they take positions on policy. With this data, we can examine changes that have occurred over time in this form of speech that is unique to the era of the modern presidency. Our results indicate that in some instances, candidates were very adaptive with their rhetorical approach. In response to electoral and institutional changes, candidates begin incorporating more biographical sentences while de-emphasizing partisan references. Republican nominees respond beginning in 1980 by incorporating significantly more religious rhetoric than in the previous time period, however, Democrats did not. Candidates also begin progressively including more policy substance in their speeches by claiming credit for collective accomplishments and ratcheting up the amount of position taking in which they engage. Overall, we find that this genre of speech is a surprisingly adaptable one that has evolved into a speech that is much more “presidential” than it was initially, thus providing each nominee with a chance to audition for the rhetorical presidency.

Primaries and Candidates: Examining the Influence of Primary Electorates on Candidate Ideology

Primary elections in the United States have been under-studied in the political science literature. Using new data to estimate the ideal points of primary election candidates and constituents, we examine the link between the ideological leanings of primary electorates and the ideological orientation of U.S. congressional candidates. We use district-level data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and ideal point estimates for congressional primary election candidates to examine the role of primary electorate ideology in the selection of party nominees. We find that more extreme Republicans are more likely to win their party's primary and that Republican and Democratic candidates are responsive to different electoral constituencies.

Surge and Decline: The Impact of Changes in Voter Turnout on the 2010 Senate Elections

Enthusiasm among Republican voters and a lack thereof among Democrats was cited by many post-election analyses as a contributing factor to the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections. Analysis of the aggregate county level voter turnout and results of the 2010 Senate races provides strong evidence of (1) a sharper decline in turnout from 2008 to 2010 in areas in which Barack Obama did well in 2008 and (2) a significant relationship between turnout changes from 2006–2010 and 2008–2010 and changes in the vote share of Democratic Senate candidates in 2010. In addition, a test of the referendum theory of midterm elections shows that declining presidential approval ratings, but not economic indicators, are predictive of the Democratic vote share in 2010. Despite previous findings that midterm and presidential electorates do not fundamentally differ, this analysis of the 2010 Senate elections provides evidence that differential turnout among core and peripheral voters is an important part of the explanation for the surge that occurs in presidential elections and the subsequent decline in voter participation during midterms.

Out of Step? Voters and Social Issues in U.S. Presidential Elections

Recent political commentary has argued that the Republican Party is “out of step” with voters on social issues, costing Republicans the 2012 presidential election. This dramatic claim is deserving of scrutiny in its own right and also for the way it offers new perspective on long-standing controversies concerning the role of social issues in U.S. national elections. We present results that seek to advance established scholarship on electoral politics as well as journalistic claims concerning the rising importance of social issues for elections. Using data from the American National Election Study, we find that social issues mattered to voters in presidential elections from 1992 through 2012. The influence of social issues on voter choice rivals those of attitudes toward defense spending and government provision. We find further evidence that liberalizing trends in social issue opinion consistently benefited Democratic candidates in presidential elections. We consider the relevance of these results for scholarship on voter choice and elections, noting further implications for commentary on the 2012 presidential election.

An Empirical Study of Political Bias in Legal Scholarship

Law professors routinely accuse each other of making politically biased arguments in their scholarship. They have also helped produce a large empirical literature on judicial behavior that has found that judicial opinions sometimes reflect the ideological biases of the judges who join them. Yet no one has used statistical methods to test the parallel hypothesis that legal scholarship reflects the political biases of law professors. This paper provides the results of such a test. We find that, at a statistically significant level, law professors at elite law schools who make donations to Democratic political candidates write liberal scholarship, and law professors who make donations to Republican political candidates write conservative scholarship. These findings raise questions about standards of objectivity in legal scholarship.

The political polarization of physicians in the United States: an analysis of campaign contributions to federal elections, 1991 through 2012.

Few current data are available regarding the political behavior of American physicians as the number of female physicians has increased and the number of solo practitioners has decreased. To analyze campaign contributions that physicians made from the 1991 to 1992 through the 2011 to 2012 election cycles to Republican and Democratic candidates in presidential and congressional races and to partisan organizations, including party committees and super political action committees (Super PACs). We explored partisan differences in physician contributions by sex, for-profit vs nonprofit practice setting, and specialty using multiple regression analysis. We studied the relation between the variation in the mean annual income across specialties and the mean percentage of physicians within each specialty contributing to Republicans. Differences in contributions to Republicans and Democrats, for all physicians and for subgroups. Between the 1991 to 1992 and the 2011 to 2012 election cycles, physician campaign contributions increased from $20 million to $189 million, and the percentage of active physicians contributing increased from 2.6% to 9.4%. Of physicians who contributed during the study period, the mean percentage contributing to Republicans was 57% for men and 31% for women. Since 1996, the percentage of physicians contributing to Republicans has decreased, to less than 50% in the 2007 to 2008 election cycle and again in the 2011 to 2012 election cycle. Contributions to Republicans in 2011 to 2012 were more prevalent among men vs women (52.3% vs 23.6%), physicians practicing in for-profit vs nonprofit organizations (53.2% vs 25.6%), and surgeons vs pediatricians (70.2% vs 22.1%). In 1991 to 1992, these contribution gaps were smaller: for sex, 54.5% vs 30.9%; for organizations, 54.2% vs 40.0%; and for specialty, 65.5% vs 32.7%. The percentage of physicians contributing to Republicans across specialties correlated 0.84 with the mean log earnings of each specialty; specialties with higher mean earnings had higher percentages of physicians contributing to Republicans. Between 1991 and 2012, the political alignment of US physicians shifted from predominantly Republican toward the Democrats. The variables driving this change, including the increasing percentage of female physicians and the decreasing percentage of physicians in solo and small practices, are likely to drive further changes.

Physicians and politics.

In this issueof JAMAInternalMedicine,Bonicaandcolleagues1 provide for the first time, to our knowledge, a full description of the political campaign contributions of American physicians. Their rigorous analysis of campaign contributions for presidential and congressional elections over thepast 2decades showshow these contributions relate to the sex, specialty, income, andemploymentof eachphysician andhowthepolitical preferences of the profession have changed in recent years. This is an interesting study, although the results are largely predictable. Bonica and colleagues1 find a secular trend toward support ofDemocratic candidates; in recent 2-year election cycles, physicians’ support for Democrats was similar to that of thegeneral public. Therewas strongerDemocratic support among female physicians thanmale physicians, amajority of Democratic support among employed physicians, and muchmoreDemocratic contributions byphysicians in lowerpaid primary care specialties than by those in the higher-paid surgical and procedural specialties. Republican support was stronglycorrelatedwithmeanincomeof thespecialty,but there werenodata todeterminewhetheryoungconservatives chose those specialties or whether they became conservative after making their specialty choice. The authors are careful not to extrapolate much beyond their findings.Theirdata showarecent shift toward theDemocrats in the traditional physician support of Republicans, and they believe that this shift is likely to continue. However, thesedatamaynotbe representativeof the rank and file of physicians. The authors consider only contributions to individual candidates or party-connected organizations that total $200ormoreover anelectioncycle, the threshold for reporting to theFederalElectionCommission.With this limit, they found that only 2.6% of active physicians contributed to federal election campaigns in the 1992 election cycle andonly9.4%contributed in the2012electioncycle. It is a safe guess that the majority of physician contributions were less than $200 (like those of the general public), so we cannot be sure from this study which party most physicians really favored. Furthermore, there has recently been a large movement of solo practitioners and small partnerships into employment by institutions, such as hospitals, insurance plans, and physician-ownedmultispecialtymedical groups,2 which this analysis does not fully capture. The authors present data on aggregated physician contributions for fewer than 20 of the largest employers. On the basis of my discussion with a representative of the American Medical Group Association, the trade association representing more than 400 large practice groups, I estimate that large groupsmay employ one-third or more of all practicing physicians. These large employers undoubtedly influenced the political contributions of their employees, andwedonot knowhowmost of their contributions were distributed. Inaddition,Bonicaandcolleagues1describechanges inpatterns of campaign contributions that are so recent that predictionsof howphysicianswill behave in the future are at best uncertain. We simply do not know howmost physicians will react to theproblems thatwill probably emerge as theAffordable Care Act (ACA) plays out. Despite its initial benefits, the ACA leaves a substantial number of uninsured and underinsuredpeople in theUnitedStates, andbymostpredictions, the costs of public and private insurance will continue to increase at a rate that threatens thenational economy.3Will physicians remain passive? Will their political views remain the same as their patients' access to affordable health care is furthererodedbyrisingcosts?Andwillphysiciansallowtheir ability to function as autonomous but accountable professionals, whose practice is morally based, be compromised by the innumerableByzantine regulations andguidelines generatedby thecontinued implementationof theACAand itspossible later amendments? I hope not. Economic incentives in the ACA, and the feefor-service payment system that the ACA supports, still encourage thehighest-paid specialists to choose the statusquo.4 Nevertheless, I believe thatmostphysicianscareenoughabout the values of their profession to work for a better, more equitablehealthcare systemwhen theneedbecomesobvious.Provided that the new system ensures physicians of appropriate professional independence and fair compensation, most will want to see reform that corrects the ACA's failures.5 Furthermore, the newwave of female physicians, whowill soon representhalformoreofall activephysicians,willprobablychange attitudes in all the specialties, including the opinions of their male colleagues. The data show that female physicians favor Democratic candidates. Thus, I believe that female physicianswill expand the social outlookof theprofession, encourage it to become more liberal in its political views, and persuade it to consider how to replace the ACA with a better system. A new health care system that provides universal access and is affordable and efficientwill be difficult to achieve. The private insurers and all the other businesses that profit from the current commercial systemwill resist it.Major reformwill need wide public support, which in turn will rely on advocacy by themedical profession. But I believe that reformwill nevertheless be eventually enacted because itmeets awidely sharedandgrowingpublicdesire formore fairness inanAmericansocietypervadedby inequality inaccess togoodhealthcare andmany other social benefits. Physicianshaveuniquepower to reshape themedical care system. They arewhatmakes itwork and are best qualified to Author Audio Interview at jamainternalmedicine.com

The 2012 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective. Edited by Robert E.Denton, Jr. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 202 pp.

The 2012 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective. Edited by Robert E. Denton, Jr. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 202 pp. In his preface to The 2012 Presidential Campaign, Robert E. Denton reflects that he has edited a book on the presidential election for every campaign dating back to 1992. Each of these elections, he argues, was both unique and very much the same as preceding contests. The chapters selected for the 2012 iteration reflect that dialectic--the contributors both explore subject matter that is particular to this cycle and place the election in appropriate historical context. Some of the chapters are exemplary, most are useful, and as a collection the edited volume holds up nicely alongside its predecessors in Denton's series. The book begins with Rachel L. Holloway's analysis of the nominating conventions, which is one of the strongest chapters in the book. She provides a convincing narration of the recent historical competition between the Democrats and Republicans over the framing of the American Dream and, in doing so, demonstrates a tug-of-war between Reagan's individualism and Obama's communitarian alternative. Her analysis works not only as an explanation for the convention rhetoric, but also as a broader lens to understand the ideological stakes of the 2012 election. In the second chapter, Gwen Brown continues the analysis of the nominating conventions by looking at the addresses given by candidate wives. She adopts a useful framework to consider the unique constraints faced by this sort of speaker--though when she expands her discussion to the spouses' role in the convention video, the connection with the spousal speeches might not be as complimentary as Brown intended. Meanwhile, in one of the strongest chapters in the collection, Craig Allen Smith convincingly debunks the pernicious myth that the election was Romney's to lose. This chapter draws on Allan Lichtman's keys to the White House (Keys to the White House: A Surefire Guide to Predicting the Next President [Rowman and Littlefield, 2008]), the Pew Research Center's political typology of American citizens (http://www.people-press.org/typology/), and a tipping-point analysis of electoral votes to illustrate the extent to which Obama truly was a decisive favorite to win reelection. Smith then argues that if Obama had adopted a less partisan campaign strategy, he might have been able to win an even larger victory. The compilation also contains chapters on three of the most studied types of political communication: campaign ads, debates, and political apologia. John C. Tedesco and Scott W. Dunn give an overview of the major themes of the political ads run by the two campaigns and the super-political action committee (super-PAC) groups airing ads on their behalf. Their findings raise interesting questions about the effects of highly negative third-party ads as well as the consequences for message effectiveness when campaigns have little control over third-party ads. Ben Voth's chapter on presidential debates presents data on the speaking time of each candidate, the number of times the candidates interrupted one another, and the number of times the candidates were interrupted by moderators. He finds that, on average, the Democratic candidates spoke for just over two minutes more per debate and that the moderators more frequently interrupted the Republican candidates. Voth then presents a series of recommendations to remedy this inequity. Joseph M. …

A Gender Gap among Evangelicals? An Examination of Vote Choice by Gender and Religion in the 2008 Presidential Elections

Barack Obama appeared poised to capture more votes among Evangelical women than Evangelical men given the prominence that economic and wartime issues played in the 2008 election. However, I find that no gender gap existed among Evangelicals in 2008; instead, religious tradition trumps gender as a predictor of presidential vote choice. While Obama fared similarly to John Kerry, Evangelical women were significantly more likely to vote for Al Gore than Evangelical men, demonstrating that there may be circumstances in which Democratic presidential candidates can mitigate some of their voting losses to Evangelical women.

Text trajectories and media discourse

During the Democratic nomination for President of the United States (2007-2008), Hillary Rodham Clinton’s laughter became the subject of intense scrutiny by mass media and was dubbed, The Clinton Cackle. This paper investigates how the ‘cackle’ characterization was first established, and thus, formed the basis of an intertextual series (Hodges, 2011), wherein this re-presentation of Clinton’s laughter circulated across multiple discursive contexts. By examining various dimensions of the decontextualization and recontextualization of Clinton’s laughter as it ‘travelled’ across contexts (Blommaert, 2005), the analysis illustrates how the news media effectively reshaped the kinds of meanings and values attached to it and concomitantly (re)produced and reinforced a stereotypically gendered, negative (i.e., sexist, misogynist) perception of her. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of tracing the trajectory of this ‘text’ in terms of the ideological nature of the intertextual processes at work, and the implications for women politicians more generally.

“Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose”: Friday Night Lights and Victorian Fictions of Provincial Life

Friday Night Lights, the 2006-2011 television series about a Texas high school football team, owes a debt to readers of Victorian fictions of everyday life and provincial fiction. Habituated to the quotidian, readers of Victorian fictions of provincial life are arguably the best equipped for understanding the critically-acclaimed television series, for in it, like the fiction that precedes it, hardly anything of moment happens. Plot and telos are hardly the point; the series locates its energies in the stuff of everyday life rather than in the logic of suspense. Recent work on the provincial novel helps us understand the politics of FNL in a way that goes beyond its own explicit themes of race, class mobility, and education. That both the Democratic and Republican candidates for the U.S. presidency in 2012 used the fictional team’s mantra—“Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can’t Lose”—suggests the extent to which the ideas of the show tapped into a politics about nation. Paradoxically, the show’s deliberately provincial scope allowed it symbolically to unify the nation.

The cost of racial animus on a black candidate: Evidence using Google search data

How can we know how much racial animus costs a black presidential candidate, if many people lie to surveys? I suggest a new proxy for an area's racial animus from a non-survey source: the percent of Google search queries that include racially charged language. I compare the proxy to Barack Obama's vote shares, controlling for the vote share of the previous Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry. An area's racially charged search rate is a robust negative predictor of Obama's vote share. Continuing racial animus in the United States appears to have cost Obama roughly four percentage points of the national popular vote in both 2008 and 2012. The estimates using Google search data are 1.5 to 3 times larger than survey-based estimates.

Walking a Tightrope

We examine columns of three Pulitzer Prize-winning African American columnists to identify the frames they used to offer perspective on the candidacy and early administration of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States. The period under study stretches from the time when it became clear that Obama would be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee through the first six months of his administration. Using a typology we developed for identifying frames, we find that the columnists—Leonard Pitts of The Miami Herald, Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, and Cynthia Tucker of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution—concentrated on a frame of duality that shows Obama defined by race while trying to transcend the moniker, a conflict successful African Americans have known all too well.

ELECTING POLICE AND CRIME COMMISSIONERS IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 2012 AS SECOND-ORDER ELECTIONS

The first elections to the newly created 41 posts of Police and Crime Commissioner in England and Wales were held in November 2012. The results show all the main characteristics of second-order elections. Turnout was low. The two unpopular coalition parties in the national government lost vote share compared to the outcome of the most recent general election, whereas the main opposition party's share increased substantially—as did that of a minor party (UKIP). Labour, Liberal Democrat and UKIP candidates all performed better than expected, the more that they spent on the campaign—although spending was in general low compared to the legal maxima. A number of independents were elected, all in areas where the Conservative Party performed well in the 2010 general election: almost all of the independents who reached the second round of the supplementary vote system gained a clear majority of the second preference votes.

The politics of redistribution in local governments: the effect of gender representation on welfare spending in California counties

AbstractThis research explores the impact of gender representation at the state and local levels on redistributive choices. This research also examines whether female officeholders moderate the impact of the local economy and institution on welfare spending. Hypotheses are tested across 58 counties in California over ten years, between 2001 and 2010. According to the fixed effect models, women in state legislature had a positive effect on local welfare spending, while women on county boards had no significant effect. However, a positive moderating effect of women on county boards during economic hardship was found. Three categories of control variables include institutional factors, such as the introduction of Proposition 1A and county home rule; political factors, such as the political preference of each county’s residents and strength of non-profit organisations; and socio-economic factors, such as intergovernmental revenue, unemployment rate and demographics. Counties with more intergovernmental revenue and supporters of Democratic presidential candidates are likely to spend more on welfare services.

Carolina Blues: President Obama and the 2012 Campaign in North Carolina

Illinois Senator Barack Obama, candidate for the U.S. presidency won the 2008 election and the state of North Carolina; a notably southern state with its own pernicious racial history. NC had hesitantly given Senator Obama its electoral blessings with a slim 14,177 margin of victory over Arizona Senator John McCain. Obama earned 2.14 million (49.7%) voters to McCain‘s 2.12 million (49.38%) in 2008. Senator Barack Obama had achieved a stunning accomplishment in a state that has been but an electoral dream for most modern Democratic presidential candidates. His achievement came as the result of forming a coalition of African Americans, women, youth, and white independent voters.Four year later, President Obama narrowly lost to Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the state of North Carolina. Pundits and political analysts often point to President Obama‘s electoral successes nationally as the result of several key factors that substantiated his 2008 and 2012 campaigns as models of efficiency and effectiveness: 1) the most technologically driven campaign in political history; 2) campaign funding that exceeded even the wildest imagination of political professionals; and 3) favorable demographics with the expanding number of racial minorities and Unaffiliated (not associated with political parties) voters. What led to President Obama‘s failure to achieve what candidate Obama managed to do in North Carolina? President Obama lost what many saw as an increasingly blue state which prompted dreams of North Carolina advancing toward a new era of progressive politics.

The Union’s Most Defensive General

The Union’s Most Defensive General Kathryn Shively Meier (bio) Chester G. Hearn. Lincoln and McClellan at War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. 280 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $45.00. George B. McClellan has remained somewhat of an enigma to his numerous biographers over the years. It is perhaps easiest to reduce McClellan to a petulant and ambitious egotist who failed to effectively communicate with Washington, or to an unstable and indecisive general who squandered field opportunities based on an imagined manpower disadvantage. Such was the inclination of early scholars, from Bruce Catton to T. Harry Williams, while Stephen Sears’ George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (1988) presented a more nuanced inspection of McClellan that nevertheless confirmed the general’s penchants for self-paralysis, vague planning, and deficient command and control. In contrast, McClellan defenders, such as Warren Hassler, H. J. Eckenrode, and Bryan Conrad, emphasized the Young Napoleon’s brilliance in organization, engineering, and artillery, calling attention to the public’s (and Lincoln’s) unreasonable expectations for a quick win early in the war when even Ulysses S. Grant would have to face a nine-month siege before victory. Ethan Rafuse, in perhaps the most unique of McClellan biographies, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union (2005), dispensed with the troublesome habit of divorcing the political from the military man. He posited that McClellan’s Whiggish roots and West Point training gave rise to his preoccupations with outmaneuvering the enemy, tactical reliance upon engineering and artillery, and discrediting Confederate leadership. Chester Hearn’s new analysis of McClellan does not meaningfully diverge from its predecessors, but rather it filters McClellan’s politics and generalship through the prism of his relationship to Lincoln as the two attempted to craft early Union military strategy. It is a narrow focus, and while it predominantly relies upon the perspective of McClellan rather than the commander-in-chief, Hearn ultimately indicts McClellan for weak performances as commander of the Army of the Potomac, general-in-chief, and 1864 Democratic presidential candidate. Hearn concludes that the root causes of McClellan’s failures lay in his European defensive tactical training, which was solidified at West Point and in his European travels; in McClellan’s infatuation with Napoleon and [End Page 78] his inability to translate Napoleonic principles to the contemporary realities of Virginia terrain and technological innovations; and in McClellan’s propensity to generate personal conflict. Hearn argues that, while Lincoln grew and learned from his mistakes, McClellan patently rejected any idea that did not originate in his own brain. In the first two chapters, before plunging into the war, Hearn dwells very briefly upon Lincoln’s and McClellan’s military backgrounds. Unlike John C. Waugh’s 2010 Lincoln and McClellan at War, which more extensively investigated how the two men crossed paths before the 1860s, Hearn is more interested in Lincoln’s early dearth of strategic knowledge and support from decrepit General-in-Chief Winfield Scott and inept Secretary of War Simon Cameron. It was this atmosphere in which McClellan first came to Washington, solidifying his high regard for his own skills in contrast to those floundering around him. McClellan would scarcely depart from the original strategy he laid out on August 3, 1861, after possibly consulting with the Comte de Paris. In what McClellan deemed the primary theater of war, Virginia, he demanded 273,000 troops for himself to be transported by water to threaten Richmond. He agreed with Winfield Scott’s alternate so-called Anaconda Plan in just one respect—targeting the Mississippi Valley—but allocated just 20,000 troops to that region. Hearn faults McClellan’s plan for focusing too heavily on the East and for making Southern cities instead of rebel armies his targets. Hearn also criticizes the general for failing to understand Lincoln’s goals, which included driving the Confederates from Manassas and maintaining a strong Union force between the Rebel and Federal capitals—an early sign that McClellan neither listened to nor respected his commander-in-chief. While McClellan capably built up the demoralized and undertrained Army of the Potomac in the wake of the defeat at First Bull Run...

Immigration, Latinos, and White Partisan Politics: The New Democratic Defection

Immigration is profoundly changing the racial demographics of America. In this article, we seek to understand if and how immigration and increasing racial diversity are shaping the partisan politics of individual white Americans. We show that whites’ views on immigration and Latinos are strongly related to their core political identities and vote choices. Using a range of different surveys, we find that, all else equal, whites with more anti‐immigrant views or more negative views of Latinos are less apt to identify as Democrats and less likely to favor Democratic candidates. This rightward shift harkens back to an earlier period of white defection from the Democratic Party and highlights the enduring but shifting impact of race on American politics.