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The Daily Strategist
by staff, May 16, 2012 09:47 AM EST
Yes, we posted on the ungainly demise of Americans Elect just yesterday. But Paul Krugman's short, but juicy obit on the hapless organization and their fruitless search for a standard-bearer merits a plug. As Krugman opines,
And the center not only did not hold, it couldn't seem to get any attention whatsoever. Americans Elect, a lavishly funded "centrist" group that was supposed to provide an alternative to traditional political parties, has been a ridiculous flop. Basically, about seven people were actually excited about the venture -- all of them political pundits. Actual voters couldn't care less.
Krugman shines brightly on the why of the disaster:
Why Americans Elect? Because there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats -- that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they'd just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.
Americans Elect was created to appeal to this class of professional centrists -- which meant that it was doomed to go nowhere. Because outside that class, the large number of people who believe in all the good stuff the centrists claim to favor are, you know, going to vote for Obama. The large number of people who don't believe in any of that are going to vote for Romney. All AE could ever have been was a distraction; and it turns out not to have managed even that.
Conceived as it was on the flimsiest of premises, Americans Elect never had much going for it, other than the support of false equivalency pundits, who clearly don't know squat about coalitions or what it takes to build a real protest movement.
by staff, May 16, 2012 09:32 AM EST
At The Washington Monthly's 'Political Animal' blog, Ed Kilgore has a post up addressing the Democratic response to Karl Rove's forthcoming $25 million ad buy, and it's not encouraging for Dems:
...The people behind the three biggest pro-Democratic Super-PACs (the Senate-focused Majority PAC, the House Majority PAC, and the presidentially-oriented Priorities USA Action) are planning a gigantic, coordinated blowout fundraising effort at the Democratic National Convention. In a collective lapse of imagination, they are calling it "Super-O-Rama."
Gotta say, folks, this news bears the aroma of desperation, or at least procrastination. Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS has just committed to buying $25 million in ads during the next month, matching the Obama campaign's ad blitz. Not to be intimidated, Democratic Super-PACs are talking about raising some serious jack in September. In case it's slipped anyone's mind, the election is in November, and I suspect an awful lot of ad time will be off the table by September.
Kilgore acknowledges "the logic of using the convention for a fundraising blitz," with its "unique concentration of political and non-political celebrity talent..." But he warns, "...The Super-PACs will be competing for the attention of big money people with an awful lot of other events...The very features of a convention that make it an ideal place for money and star-power to come together also make it a logistical nightmare."
On the upside, Kilgore adds that "...It's good the money-hustlers have some idea of how they will get within shouting distance of conservative money this year," and they will have an edge with an incumbent president, a smaller, but well-heeled donor base and better ground game resources.
Nonetheless, Kilgore concludes, "it would be helpful to ensure that Democratic Super-PACs aren't in a position of "competing" with Rove and company by dominating the critical 2:00-3:00 a.m. time slot." It's a high stakes poker game, and it sounds like Dems could use a better hand.
by staff, May 15, 2012 02:45 PM EST
Since President Obama lost Arizona by 8.5 percent in 2008, it's easy to understand why many commentators are skeptical about buzz that he has a good chance of carrying the state this year. But TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira's article in the New Republic presents a compelling argument that "a convergence of factors" indicates that Arizona is indeed a good bet for the Obama campaign: As Teixeira explains:
Start with the "McCain effect" on the 2008 result in the state. There are compelling reasons to believe that GOP performance in Arizona would have been far weaker in 2008 had it not been the home state of the Republican nominee, John McCain. Indeed, Arizona was statistically an outlier, especially for its area of the country, when it came to the polls. For example, the overall national margin swing toward Obama was around 9.7 points--he won by 7.3 points and Kerry lost by 2.4 points. If the Arizona swing had matched the national swing, Obama would have lost the state by less than a point. And if Arizona had swung as much as the nearby southwestern states of Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico (all between 14 and 16 points, for an average of 15 points), Obama would have actually won the state by 4 points. So there is a reasonable case to be made that the 2008 election result drastically understates Democratic strength in the state in Presidential elections.
Next, consider the influence of ongoing demographic changes in the state which have been steadily increasing the percentage of minority eligible voters, mostly Hispanics, and reducing the share of relatively conservative white working class voters. According to William Frey's analysis of census data, these trends have continued and perhaps accelerated in the last four years. The composition of the Arizona electorate in 2012 could be 3 to 4 points more minority (chiefly Hispanic) and 3 to 4 points less white working class than in 2008.
But Teixeira cautions that "This does not mean, of course, that Obama will have an easy time carrying Arizona. On the contrary, it will likely be quite difficult,
...But it can be done, especially if the Obama campaign can change three key elements of 2008's electoral equation. First, the share of Hispanic voters must grow and their support level for Obama must increase. In 2008, 16 percent of voters were Hispanic; based on eligible voter trends that number should rise to 19 percent given solid work to register and mobilize this population. And in 2008, Hispanics supported Obama by just 56-41 in the state. Given everything that's happened in the state in the last four years and the absence of McCain, a politician famous for his moderate record on immigration, on the ticket, it should be possible to move that number up to national support levels (67-31 in 2008 and possibly higher this year).
Second, a projected 3 point decrease in the size of the total white vote should come entirely from white working class voters. Based on recent data, this is a highly plausible assumption. Eligible voter trends since 2008 are consistent with such an outcome and, in 2008, the decrease in the white vote (4 points) did in fact come entirely from working class voters, according to the exit polls.
Finally, Obama's performance among white college graduates needs to improve over 2008 levels, when he lost this group by 17 points. This was unusually weak compared to Kerry's performance in 2004, when he lost this group by only 4 points, and to Gore's in 2000, when he lost the group by 7 points. Returning to these earlier levels of white college graduate support will be crucial for Obama.
Teixeira believes that "the locus of these changes would likely be in the Phoenix metropolitan area" (64 percent of the statewide vote), where eligible minority voters are increasing fastest, white working class voters are rapidly declining and Democratic candidates have been increasing their support since 1988.
AZ now looks like Obama's best prospect for a pick-up. "If there is one state that Obama can plausibly win that he did not in 2008, Arizona is it," says Teixeira.
by staff, May 15, 2012 01:48 PM EST
Ed Kilgore posts today at The Washington Monthly on the failure of Americans Elect to nominate a presidential candidate via it's much-trumpeted on-line nominating process by it's Monday deadline:
...The organization is publicly admitting that under its own rules it won't have a candidate for president, due to a lack of interest among potential candidates and "delegates" alike...It's pretty shocking that even with the bait of general-election ballot access in 27 states and counting, AE couldn't attract a candidate capable of getting 1,000 online votes from 10 states. Kinda makes you wonder about its foundational belief that the only barrier to a victorious presidential ticket embracing a vague if deficit-hawky "bipartisanship" was the entrenched opposition of the major parties.
...Presumably AE could delay its timetable and hope someone (Buddy Roemer?) eventually crosses the bar to become a nominatable candidate. It could lower its already pathetically low threshold for candidate viability. Or it could just make a mockery of the entire bottom-up process that is supposedly the group's signature and pick a candidate (or candidates) to put forward, assuming anybody even remotely credible out there would accept the damaged goods of a nomination.
Kilgore then suggests tongue-in-cheek that AE go ahead and nominate a "Very Serious Ticket" topped by Thomas Friedman, with another "centrist" pundit veep candidate, such as David Brooks, Richard Cohen or Robert Samuelson.
By now, however, it should be clear to most reality-based observers that AE failed because there are not any credible "centrists" midway between a moderate liberal like Obama and an extremist right-wing party like the Republicans.
by staff, May 15, 2012 10:27 AM EST
Michael Tomasky ruminates at The Daily Beast on the likeability gap between President Obama and Governor Romney. Okay, it's more like a chasm, as Tomasky points out:
...This is the biggest washout of modern times, folks. Gallup just this week put the likeability ratings at Obama 60, Romney 31. It's not that Obama's number is unusually high. Look back at those Kerry-Bush numbers. Americans are an open-hearted lot, at least presumptively, so they want to like the guy who's going be the president. But they Do. Not. Like. Mitt. Romney.
It would be more interesting for all of us if there were some great mystery here, but there isn't. He reeks of privilege. Every time he says something off the cuff he says something obnoxious. Corporations are people, pal. I like firing people. Where on earth did you get those Godforsaken cookies?
Then there's the rich guy thing. Not the charming rich guy like JFK thing. More like the in-yer-face, flaunter-of-great-wealth thing:
...We're constantly told that Americans don't have any class envy, and compared to some European nations they don't. But even Americans have limits. A few million, even $50 million; okay. But a quarter billion dollars? A house with an elevator . . . for the cars? It also matters to people how the money was made. It's okay to be worth a gajillion dollars if you're Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and have made everyone's lives more interesting and cooler. But what's Mitt Romney done? Helped give us Domino's Pizza.
Even so, Romney might still pass muster, but he has no grasp of the one crucial reality of class in America: you can be filthy rich as long as you don't look or act like it. Gates doesn't comb his hair, much. Jobs wore sneakers. Romney just looks too pressed. Even when he's wearing those jeans. You can look at Romney on television and practically sense how he smells--of costly ablutions whose brand names the rest of us probably don't even know. And he acts relentlessly rich.
For Tomasky, Romney's bully behavior in prep school fits the disturbing pattern. As Tomasky puts it, "Romney's biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain't got it. And he ain't got much of a way to get it."
Discouraging though it is that Romney is apparently the best the GOP can do at this political moment, there is an upside in all this, as Tomasky concludes: "...The black guy with the weird name who's been called everything under the sun is twice as likeable as the rich white guy. This is the America that drives the wingers crazy, but that the rest of us--the majority--live in, and love."
by staff, May 15, 2012 09:28 AM EST
In his latest 'Public Opinion Snapshot,' TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports that environmental protection retains strong public support, despite conservative hopes that it would become a fading concern, as a "conflicting priority to jobs and economic growth." But it looks like conservatives' "environment-wrecking agenda" will have to wait, as Teixeira explains:
...The public didn't get the memo. In the recently released poll from Yale University's and George Mason University's climate change communication programs, 58 percent of poll respondents said that protecting the environment improves economic growth and creates new jobs. Just 17 percent thought environmental protection hurts growth and jobs, and 25 percent thought there was no effect.
In the same poll, when asked to choose directly which was more important--environmental protection or economic growth--the public decisively favored protecting the environment 62 percent to 38 percent when there is a conflict between the two goals.
The false choice between jobs and environmental protection is proving to be a tough sell for the GOP -- and that's very good news for President Obama, as well as Democrats.
by staff, May 14, 2012 03:13 PM EST
Steve Kornacki nails a crucial insight about the Republican party's increasing extremism exceptionally-well in his Salon.com, post, "The neutering of Mitch McConnell." The most interesting point is not so much about the Senate Minority Leader; Rather it's that tea party-inspired extremism changes the role of the GOP from constituent representation to a combat organization, which prefers never-ending political paralysis to bipartisan reform. As Kornacki aptly puts it:
The primary challenges of the current Tea Party era are not defined by similarly vast ideological gulfs. Lugar, for instance, was generally a party man in his Senate votes, racking up a fairly conservative record and voting against President Obama's major domestic initiatives. But he did leave some room for independence and compromise, particularly in his specialty area of foreign policy. His opponent, Mourdock, was to Lugar's right on some issues, but what really distinguished him is his belief that the Senate is a venue for partisan warfare.
"Bipartisanship," Mourdock declared last week, "ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view."
This is as concise a distillation of the Tea Party's governing vision as you'll find. It's not really about moving the GOP to the right; the party is already there, and has been for a while. It's about reflexively opposing the other party on every issue, resisting compromise at all costs, and exploiting every available legislative tool to stymie the other side. This mind-set is already pervasive in the House, and as the Times story shows, it's now making its way into the Senate.
Along with Kornacki's insight, it should be added that the 'politics as warfare' strategy evolves more from tea party and wingnut "leadership," than genuine rank and file sentiments, as Vega, Kilgore and Green point out in this TDS Strategy Memo.
by staff, May 14, 2012 12:29 PM EST
David Atkins and Digby have a well-done tag-team take-down of the 'austerity mavens' up at Hullabaloo. A couple of teasers to whet your taste-buds...Here's Atkins, riffing on Justin Lahart's Wall St. Journal post "Unemployment Rate Without Government Cuts: 7.1%":
...People who know the first thing about public policy laugh at the bipartisanship fetishists and the people who insist that "both parties have gotten too extreme." The facts are pretty one-sided here. They suggest that if anything, the President and the mainstream Democratic Party in the United States are too far to the right and too beholden to the austerity mavens, and the Republicans are living on a extremist conservative moon base with Newt Gingrich...
Then Digby, persuasively concluding after presenting several compelling charts demonstrating that state austerity policies (esp. CA) have been a disastrous drag on the economy :
If the federal government continues to refuse to help out the states financially --- especially a state as large as California, whose economy is actually bigger than Spain's, it's hard to see how it doesn't drag down the entire country....I realize that Europe and the US face different problems. But one of the problems they have in common is a daft belief among policy makers in austerity during a depression As California goes even further into hardcore austerity mode, I'd expect some unpleasant side effects to the US economy as a whole.
Not a good week for the austerity crowd, what with France, Germany, England and now this Digby-Atkins take-down.
by J. P. Green, May 14, 2012 04:33 AM EST
"Merkozy" takes another torpedo square in the belly, as Germany's Social Democrats smash Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democratic Union in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. That should put an end to the GOP's denials that Europe is rejecting austerity polices. The Social Democrat-Greens coalition took about 50 percent of the votes -- almost twice what Merkel's party received (26 percent).
If that doesn't quite convince you that Europe's austerity binge is tanking, check out Craig Stirling's Bloomberg report, "Cameron Suffers Setbacks in U.K. Opinion Polls."
This NYT article by Andrew Martin and Andrew W. Lehren makes it hard to see how any current issue could carry as much freight with young voters as the soaring costs of higher education. Thus should be a strong edge for Dems, since GOP policy gimmicks to get around more substantial federal and state government investments are pretty unconvincing --- provided Dems' can boil their edge down into digestible soundbites.
What's Rand Paul trying to prove with the gay-bashing?
Speaking of gay-bashing, take a sneak peek at this forthcoming Newsweek cover, and see if you think it is designed to undermine President Obama.
If you want data on how the President's new position on same-sex marriage is playing out with the base, particularly African Americans, Nate Silver has a clear-eyed take. Silver presents a probability distribution chart indicating that Black voters are highly likely to stick with Obama and "there are other key constituencies within the Democratic Party -- like younger voters, coastal whites and, increasingly, Hispanic voters -- who are supportive of gay marriage. And gays and lesbians themselves, and their families, are an important constituent group for Democrats. (They are more numerous, for instance, than Jewish voters.)"
Ezra Klein broadsides the false equivalency apologists for trying to spread the blame for polarization. Citing "a polarizing force on the Republican Party that simply doesn't exist in today's Democratic Party," Klein produces recent election data proving that "...there is simply no denying that the Republican Party has gone much further right than the Democratic Party has gone left, and that, from policy pledges to primary challenges, it has done much more to discourage its members from compromising than the Democratic Party has. So if you think polarization is the main problem in Washington today, then Mann and Ornstein are right: Your beef is largely with the Republicans."
Sara Robinson's Alternet post, "How Conservative Religion Makes the Right Politically Stronger" provides an interesting theory of conservatives solidarity edge. As Robinson says, "...Regular observance of shared rituals is central to this power. Religious conservatives attend services at least once a week...to affirm their commitment to their shared values, celebrate and mourn the passages of life, and connect with each other not as workers and warriors, but as human beings...Those rituals are social superglue. They build trust that extends outward into everything else these communities do. They inspire and engage people's hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits, offer incredible healing and solace when things go wrong, and provide a ready-made outlet for celebration and re-commitment to doing even more when things go right." Robinson argues that progressives should more frequently leverage rituals and gatherings to build fellowship and solidarity.
Seems to me all the Democratic hand-wringing about NC is a waste of time. Even assuming the state is moving to the right, Obama has several plausible paths to 270 e.v.'s without it, and the blue carpet will be rolled out in Charlotte, regardless.
John Nichols, the go-to guy for inside skinny and sharp analysis of the progressive uprising in Wisconsin, has an insightful post, "Will People Power Defeat Scott Walker and His Cronies?" at The Nation. Nichols observes, "The protesters--union members fighting assaults on collective bargaining and the farmers, small-business owners, retirees and students who supported them--are not just forcing new elections. They are forcing their way into the political process as candidates, elbowing aside traditional politicians and old approaches to campaigning. It's not that the newcomers aren't raising money, crafting smart messages or buying thirty-second spots. They're serious contenders. But they are running on the terms of a movement they have built, mounting campaigns that are people-centered, high-spirited and unapologetic in their support of labor rights and economic justice...And they are starting to win."
by J. P. Green, May 11, 2012 02:39 PM EST
I doubt I'm alone in wondering whether my fellow Dems should be pouncing on the Romney bully story with such incautious glee. There's the usual caveats: it's a high school story, for Pete's sake; Did it really happen that way and how solid can the verification be after all those years? (the alleged victim is deceased); Anyway, who wants to be held accountable for every regrettable thing they did as a teenager?; Does it make Dems look petty when they go that far back to expose character failures of political adversaries?; Isn't this disturbingly reminiscent of the "Aqua Buddha" story that backfired so devastatingly on Jack Conway's campaign to defeat Rand Paul in the KY Senate race, (and that was college, not high school)? etc. etc.
On the other hand, what makes the story somewhat compelling, regardless of the aforementioned concerns, is Romney's evasively funky, deer-caught-in-the headlights responses to questions about it, which add to the impression of a guy who is incapable of straight talk. In addition, Romney's persona is not only that of the archetypical, Ayn Rand-reading boss who fires workers willy-nilly and justifies it as 'creative destruction'; it's all too easy to see him as the emblematic preppy prick you hated in high school.
So, I guess it makes sense for Dems to mine the story for a bit, in that it contributes to the mounting evidence that the GOP is nominating an unusually cold-hearted and double-talking presidential candidate -- even for them. But I do think such stories, whether true or exaggerated, have a very limited shelf-life, after which they begin to make the accusers look like tiresome moralists.
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Below you will find recent items published at this site that we feel have significant continuing value.
Ed Kilgore
Managing Editor
This item by Ed Kilgore is cross-posted from The New Republic, where it was originally published on April 25, 2012.
Of all the issues on which Mitt Romney will be tempted to execute an "Etch-a-Sketch" moment as he heads into the general election, immigration is the most pressing. Remember, on immigration Romney didn't just rely on his super PAC to slur his opponents; he identified himself robustly with the nativist strain in the GOP. This worked out fine in the primaries: It helped him snuff the existential threat of Rick Perry's candidacy, and provided additional fodder for his team's crucial attack on Newt Gingrich after the South Carolina primary. The general election, though, is a different proposition. With the Hispanic community an increasingly large part of the electorate, Romney will need to campaign for at least some part of the Hispanic vote, and his rhetoric in the past few months doesn't leave him with many options to do so.
Romney himself recently acknowledged his need for Hispanic voters to an elite GOP donor audience in Florida:
Predicting that immigration would become a much larger issue in the fall campaign, Romney told his audience, "We have to get Hispanic voters to vote for our party," warning that recent polling showing Hispanics breaking in huge percentages for President Obama "spells doom for us."
But as eager as Romney is to pivot, the vocal positions he took earlier in this campaign will make it very hard for him to do so. There are two lines it will be difficult for Romney to cross without inviting fresh charges of flip-flopping: his opposition to "amnesty," which largely rules out any comprehensive immigration reform proposal that includes large-scale legalization; and his loud embrace of "self-deportation" of undocumented workers. This latter position, which seemed relatively mild in the context of GOP primaries where many voters favored forced deportation, now identifies Romney with the various state efforts inspired by Arizona's SB 1070, which are designed to make life very difficult for illegal immigrants--and which tend to make life difficult for Hispanics generally. (Indeed, Romney has repeatedly endorsed SB 1070, calling it a national model, even as it receives a new burst of publicity as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments against it this week.)
Romney has nonetheless begun moderating his hard-line positions, with somewhat muddled results. His staff is now suggesting that Mitt's endorsement of SB 1070 was partial, mainly based on the law's features forcing employers to verify the documentation of workers. And there are reports that he's no longer treating Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of the drafters of the Arizona law, as his principal advisor on immigration issues. Romney has also expressed interest in the idea of a "Republican version" of the DREAM Act, though he's been hesitant to endorse Marco Rubio's proposal to give undocumented people temporary legal status if they go to college or enter the military, presumably because that might discourage "self-deportation."
Introducing these kinds of nuances into Romney's immigration positions may not elicit a backlash, but it's questionable whether it's enough to win over skeptical Hispanics. Yet any explicit flip-flop by Romney on immigration will reinforce his image as a calculating prevaricator. That will not only hamper his ability to establish credibility among Hispanics, it will damage his appeal to swing voters. He also has to be sure to protect his right flank, particularly since the white independent voters he desperately needs tend to harbor some nativist sentiments. (Its unclear if such latent xenophobia will be affected by news that the flow of undocumented workers entering the country has largely ended and net migration from Mexico has officially reached zero.)
Of course, many pundits think Mitt just needs to put someone with a Spanish surname on the ticket to attract Hispanic voters. But the two most likely candidates, Marco Rubio and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, both have plenty of other flaws (the first-term governor Martinez raises the specter of Sarah Palin; a recent PPP poll shows Rubio not helping Romney even among Florida Hispanics as a running-mate.) In any case, both Rubio and Martinez have repeatedly said they are not interested in joining the ticket.
Romney has previously said that Hispanics care more about the economy than about immigration policy. With his stance on immigration, he better hope that's true--and that he can get a large enough minority of that vote to win battleground states. And if all else fails, I suppose, he always has the nuclear option: arguing that the polygamous colony his great-grandfather founded south of the border makes him a "Mexican-American." That's sure to go over well.
This item by J.P. Green was originally published on April 24, 2012.
Alternet's ace Sarah Jaffe has an informative post, "Labor Unions' Fight for the 99% Goes Way Beyond Raising Campaign Dollars," which puts organized labor's political role in clear perspective. I'll just share a few graphs and urge everyone to take a few minutes and read the whole thing. Jaffe provides an historical overview and sets the stage:
You'd think people would have learned the lesson in 2011: labor is an integral part of the progressive coalition, one of the only forces capable of acting as a counterweight to the organized money that's taken over our politics.
Yet as election season wears on, many politicians and reporters seem to have forgotten. From Wisconsin, where the former mayor of Madison claimed that candidates shouldn't be "beholden to big unions," to the Web, where debates over union endorsements seem to focus only on how much money labor will spend to support its chosen candidates.
Republicans whine about union money in politics. But that's not thier greatest concern, as Jaffe points out:
"The labor movement has always given money to candidates," Damon Silvers, policy director and general counsel at the AFL-CIO, told AlterNet. But when it comes down to winning elections, their greatest contribution is boots on the ground. "And not just any boots, but people who are plugged into their communities, who are trusted. They're the backbone of America's civic culture, the people who are the poll watchers, the people who volunteer at food banks, local leaders in unions, the shop stewards, the people who pound the pavement. They are the core of civil society in the United States."
...Most of those little victories -- those 4 percent raises and new contracts with health care benefits -- are won day by day, inch by inch, in grinding organizing campaigns and lengthy negotiations with management. They don't make headlines the way a multimillion-dollar ad buy does. As Perlman pointed out, unions are workers' organizations that do politics, not political organizations. But with only 11.8 percent of Americans represented by a union, the political action unions do has become the public face of labor.
As for the real extent of union financial contributions to candidates, Jaffe notes:
"CNN's Charles Riley calculates that for 2011-2012 the 100 biggest individual donors to super PACs make up only 3.7 percent of the contributors but supply more than 80 percent of the cash," Noah noted.
Even as the AFL-CIO launches its own super PAC, Worker's Voice, the difference is obvious. Eliza Newlin Carney at Roll Call reported that the AFL-CIO's PAC has raised some $5.4 million and will report $4.1 million cash on hand when it has to file first-quarter disclosure reports. Compare that to the $76.8 million raised by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS--which got 87 percent of its cash from just 24 donations from ultra-rich donors who gave over $1 million apiece. American Crossroads, the super PAC arm of Crossroads GPS, has already spent $29 million since its founding in 2010.
...Even with the super PAC, organized labor's monetary contribution to the election is going to look small compared to big business. AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer told Roll Call, "We were outspent 20-to-1 last time. We will probably be outspent 20-to-1 this time. But we are going to out-organize them by more than 20-to-1."
...The labor movement is built upon grassroots organizing. Organizing workers takes conversations, face-to-face, personal connections, and solidarity. That's why the most important contribution from labor even in today's big-money era is going to be, as Perlman said, "actually talking to people, explaining the issues in a real way, not in a 30-second ad way."
As Jaffe concludes, "...Really, the most important question shouldn't be whether labor will spend a lot of money on TV ads. The question instead, for smart political watchers, will be whether the volunteers, who do the grunt work of campaigning, the door-knocking and phone-banking and stamp-licking, will show up..."
This item by J.P. Green was originally published on April 24, 2012.
There's a bit of a dispute going on in Democratic pundit circles about how best to 'frame' the 'real Romney' in campaign messaging. Would he be most accurately -- and effectively -- portrayed as a flip-flopping flibbertigibbet or a slickster wingnut?
The New Republic's Noam Scheiber comes down on the side of characterizing the GOP nominee-in-waiting as "a Goldwater-esque extremist," tempered by "an added selling point that the coverage has so far ignored." As Scheiber says,
My only quibble is with Team Obama's parsing of the allegation. The formulation David Plouffe gave the Times last week went as follows: "Whether it's tax policy, whether it's his approach to abortion, gay rights, immigration, he's the most conservative nominee that they've had going back to Goldwater." I'd tweak this slightly (not that anyone asked for my advice) and say, "Whether it's tax policy ... abortion, gay rights, immigration, he's *running as* the most conservative nominee that they've had going back to Goldwater." I don't think many people look at Mitt Romney and see an authentic, fire-breathing conservative. But I do think they'll believe he's been willing to act like one to appease his party. And that the appeasement won't abruptly end on Election Day...On top of which, phrasing it this way lets you use both the "too conservative" argument and the "soulless" argument in a way that's perfectly coherent, so you don't really have to choose.
Describing Romney as a "vulture capitalist who lacks a human core but has embraced a conservative agenda to lead his fellow Republicans and plutocrats to victory in November," Alec MacGillis's take, also at TNR, "A False Choice For Obama's Anti-Romney Message," offers a melding of the two views:
I also see the two frames as linked and not as inconsistent as some are making them out to be, but in a slightly different way--as fully symbiotic arguments that each would not work all that well entirely on their own, that are stronger if yoked together....Yoking the two frames together works even better when they are combined with the third frame at Obama's disposal: Romney as the plutocrat who (after a blessed start in life) made his millions slicing and dicing companies, regardless of the human collateral, and who now benefits from a very low tax rate on his fortune. This framing makes each of the other two more persuasive. It buttresses the notion of Romney as one without a core--he'll do whatever it takes to get on top. And it explains Romney's current conservatism, making it seem more than just sheer opportunism at least when it comes to taxes and the economy--of course he's embracing the Ryan plan: It lowers rates for people like himself, even to the point of saving his own sons millions in estate taxes!
Ed Kilgore also envisions a synthesis of the two views at WaMo's 'Political Animal,', albeit angled differently:
I don't see a problem here. Of course the Obama camp emphasized the "no core" argument during the primaries, since it reinforced conservative doubts about Romney and also painted him as someone so character-less that he'd do or say whatever was necessary to win the nomination. Now that Mitt's spent months and months pandering to conservative activists and blasting his opponents for ideological heresies real and imagined, it's perfectly logical to point out how he's harnessed himself to a political movement that's partying like it's 1964. But the "no core" attack line must be recalled now and then to turn on bright flashing lights whenever Romney tries to reposition himself, which he really does need to do lest he come across as Paul Ryan with a lot less personality.
Is it really confusing or risky to depict Romney as an empty suit in the thrall of radicals? Weaver says something I've also heard from anxious Democrats who fear that calling Romney is flip-flopper could make him more attractive to swing voters: "Being a flip-flopper might actually help Romney. It shows he's not an unreasonable person."
Really? People who don't like the ideology Romney has been incessantly peddling for the last two presidential cycles are going to vote for him because they believe he's an incorrigible liar?
I don't think so. Mitt has built a trap for himself throughout his public career, and Team Obama would be foolish not to bait it and spring it. Persuadable voters don't much like flip-floppers and don't much like "severly conservative" ideologues, either. And they really don't like pols without the character to maintain a reasonably consistent point of view even as they ingratiate themselves to people who are unreasonably enslaved to an extremist ideology against which every decision made by Romney every single day of his presidency would be policed relentlessly and viciously.
Put another way, we are now talking about a flip-flopper who no longer has the wiggle-room to tack back towards sanity, much less moderation. That's not a problem for the Obama campaign; It's an embarrassment of messaging riches.
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