Beginning tomorrow, and proceeding for as long as it takes, TDS will be featuring a special online forum on the subject of “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom.” This forum is cosponsored by the major progressive intellectual center Demos, and by TDS, and will feature some exciting and important voices in the progressive community. The discussion will focus not only on the enduring values of the progressive persuasion in U.S. politics, but on how they can be applied and communicated in the present political environment. Please stay closely tuned.

The last week has claimed the lives of two giants of the Civil Rights struggle, Rev. Benjamin Hooks and Dorothy Height, who died early this morning. Both made outstanding contributions to the African American freedom struggle. But Dorothy Height, who had the longer life, leaves a tremendous void in the hearts of civil rights activists.
For progressives, Height, who headed the National Council of Negro Women for four decades, was the consummate activist-leader and certainly the preeminent role model for leaders who want to comport themselves with dignity, humility and energetic dedication to a great cause. MLK, along with FDR, and every subsequent Democratic President sought and valued her counsel and wisdom.
As a lower-level functionary in a civil rights organization, I once sat in as a note taker more than anything else, in a conference call joined by a half-dozen nationally-known civil rights leaders. The topic will remain confidential, out of respect for the participants’ privacy. What I remember many years later is the sudden, hushed silence that came when it was Height’s turn to speak. The unspoken subtext in that silence was, ‘OK everyone has had their say, now let’s all pipe down and hear what wisdom has to say.’ Height did not disappoint. In clear, measured terms she summarized the various arguments’ pros and cons and recommended the course of action that was adopted without argument. I got the impression that all of the participants regarded her as their best thinker.
The Washington Post report on Height’s death featured a couple of wonderful quotes by Height worth sharing and remembering, both of which have some applications for Democratic strategy :

“If the times aren’t ripe, you have to ripen the times.”

and,

Stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care and low wages. . . . We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.

Height never married or raised a family. Her life was given to serve the disadvantaged and forgotten. I know of no modern-day leaders who command the same kind of universal respect and admiration as did Height, who leaves behind a powerful example of selfless, dignified leadership for a more decent society.

In this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, considers the evidence for the “tax revolt” conservative say is “sweeping the country as Americans conclude that their tax dollars are being spent unwisely,” and finds it, well, lacking. Says Teixeira:

Consider these results from the latest CBS/New York Times poll. The poll asked the public whether the income taxes they are paying this year are fair or unfair. The public judged their income taxes to be fair by a wide 62-30 margin.
The public was also asked whether “government programs like Social Security and Medicare” are worth the taxpayer costs to keep them going. The public’s response: 76 percent think the benefits of these programs justify their costs to taxpayers, compared to just 19 percent who think otherwise.

Teixeira concludes “…Americans will never love paying taxes. But they do recognize that paying taxes has a great deal to do with fairness and supporting worthwhile programs. That’s a fact, albeit an inconvenient one for conservative mythology.”

If you are a progressive political junkie, odds are that one of the most depressing features of your week is the release of new polls from Scott Rasmussen. By and large, the ubiquitous robo-calling firm yields results that are more encouraging to Republicans than others (e.g., the big advantage it shows for the GOP in the generic congressional ballot), and the sheer weight of its state polling can be mind-numbing and spirit-sapping.
It’s generally been thought that this “house effect” of Rasmussen polls is the result of the early and stringent use of “likely voter” screens, which tend to produce a more conservative electorate. According to that theory, the “house effect” would be reduced as we get closer to election day and people make up their minds whether or not they are going to vote (this also accords with Rasmussen’s good record of final-days accuracy in in recent elections).
But Nate Silver, as is his habit, takes a closer look at Rasmussen’s operations, and reaches a different conclusion: the raw sample Rasmussen uses before applying a “likely voter” screen seems to bear a “house effect” as well:

Although Rasmussen rarely reveals results for its entire adult sample, rather than that of likely voters, there is one notable exception: its monthly tracking of partisan identification, for which it publishes its results among all adults. Since Labor Day, Rasmussen polls have shown Democrats with a 3.7-point identification advantage among all adults, on average. This is the smallest margin for the Democrats among any of 16 pollsters who have published results on this question, who instead show a Democratic advantage ranging from 5.2 to 13.0 points, with an average of 9.6.

Why would that happen? Nate doesn’t suggest any deliberate bias by Rasmussen; but the firm does use polling techniques that tend to skew the sample:

Raw polling data is pretty dirty. If you just call people up and see who answers the phone, you will tend to get too many women, too many old people, and too many white people. This is especially the case if you rely on a landline sample without a supplement of cellphone voters.
Pollsters try to correct for these deficiencies in a variety of ways. They may use household selection procedures (for instance, asking to speak with the person who has the next birthday). They may leave their poll in the field for several days, calling back when they do not contact their desired respondent. An increasing number may call cellphones in addition to landlines.
Rasmussen does not appear to do any of these things. Their polls are in the field for only one night, leaving little or no time for callbacks. They do not call cellphones. They do not appear to use within-household selection procedures. In addition, their polls use an automated script rather than a live interviewer, which tends to be associated with a lower response rate and which might exacerbate these problems. So Rasmussen’s raw data is likely dirtier than most.

Add in the likelihood that Republican voters are a bit more enthusiastic about reporting their views to pollsters at present, and you can see how Rasmussen’s “house effect” could be baked right into the cake. But if that’s true, the assumption that Rasmussen’s numbers will get more reliable as we approach election day may be questionable as well. Silver thinks the Rasmussen “house effect” is a new development that has emerged during this election cycle. So, too, may be a pattern of inaccuracy unless the firm takes corrective action.
Thus, Democrats are not necessarily exhibiting their own biases by taking Rasmussen’s results with a large grain of salt or mentally shifting the numbers leftward a few points. That’s an inexact science, but so, too, is polling.

Over at The New Republic today, Noam Scheiber is a lot more certain than I was yesterday about the likelihood that Republicans are going to lose their fight against financial regulation and pay a price for their obstruction and obfuscation while they are at it. For one thing, they are struggling to keep their own senators in line. And for another–and this will be a refreshing change of pace for progressives concerned about how health reform devolved–the dynamics of White House-congressional interaction on financial regulation are actually pushing the bill in a more, not less, progressive direction:

The reason the recent developments are so remarkable is that all reforms tend to weaken as they get closer to passage, as legislators hash out compromises with powerful interests in order to secure a deal. Bizarrely, financial reform appears to be headed in the opposite direction. When it comes to derivatives, at least, the bill Senator Chris Dodd moved through his Banking Committee in March was significantly tougher than the bill the House passed in December. Then, last week, Lincoln shocked Wall Street by producing an even tougher bill than that. “This thing is not a battle they’d anticipated,” says one administration official.

Scheiber attributes this trend to strong pressure from the White House, which is making senators like Lincoln look to other Democrats for support instead of offering early compromises to Republicans.
Speaking of Republicans, the macho bluster that usually accompanies their obstructionist tactics seems to be missing with financial regulation:

The one tactical question Democrats do agree on is that the GOP is ready to crumple. Last week much was made of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s success at getting all 41 Republicans to sign a letter of opposition to the current Dodd bill. But Democratic Senate aides have been privately mocking the letter’s mealy-mouthed language, which is carefully parsed to afford its signees maximum wiggle room. “There’s no explicit threat to vote against [opening debate],” scoffs one senior Democratic aide. “It pledges to continue negotiating.”

Scheiber predicts that Democrats will eventually offer Republicans a face-saving compromise, but not right away:

[F]or the moment, the White House seems happier to make the banks and the GOP squirm. “Probably the way it’s playing out … [we’d] make them vote a bunch of times against [a tough bill], then compromise. You’d still have a strong enough bill, but peel off five to ten votes to get it done.” The idea is to force Republicans to pay a price for their reflexive opposition–“make them actually block it, not just say they’re going to block it”–before you finally throw them a lifeline.

If that’s right, this fight could actually produce not only a better bill on the merits than anyone really expected, but a much-needed political victory for the White House and congressional Democrats. This may be the only issue in sight where Senate Republicans take a real beating while being forced to back down, but it’s certainly an issue that Democrats would love to hang around their necks like an albatross.

So the Senate is preparing for a vote to debate financial regulation legislation, and a partisan slugfest with potentially large electoral consequences is fully underway.
Democrats hope they have gotten Republicans into a tight space that will finally make them accountable for the contradiction between pro-corporate policies and populist rhetoric. The GOP, with its anti-bailout rhetoric, has already worked hard to make voters forget that TARP and other financial community bailouts were their own party’s idea, imposed by their own president and supported by their own party’s congressional leadership. But since their opposition to tough regulation of the financial sector is a lot less ambiguous than their opposition to bailouts, its opposition to the present legislation poses more than a small problem, since even voters who aren’t crazy about government regulation of the private sector generally are largely in favor regulation of the financial sector.
The GOP’s solution has been to oppose regulation as–surprise, surprise–bailouts! That’s why the White House is reportedly pushing for the removal of a “liquidation fund” from the bill that was the only real connection in reality to the Republican claims that it would create “endless bailouts.” Moreover, Democrats have made a lot of hay out of meetings between Wall Street potentates and GOP Members of Congress, who have created a more-or-less united front against the regulatory initiative.
The latest twist and turn in this war of words is also pretty interesting: instead of denying their strategerizing with Wall Street, Republican congressional leaders are simply claiming that Democrats take money from Wall Street, too! The fairly transparent aim here is to muddy the waters, reinforce preexisting public perceptions that both parties are in bed with Wall Street, and then count on general anger with “Washington” to give them victory in November.
It’s a pretty cynical but rational strategy, but it’s not clear it will survive a Republican filibuster against the main tangible effort to regulate Wall Street since the financial collapsse, much less a protracted fight between now and November. Certainly Democrats have a big stake in blowing away the smoke and exposing the real positions of the GOP on financial regulation, and needless to say, in going the extra mile in keeping their own political petticoats clean and starchy on this subject.

For those Democrats looking for a little political sunshine on the horizon, I wrote an essay published by Salon over the weekend that examined reasons for Democratic optimism and Republican caution that will emerge once the midterm elections are over.
I made three basic points: (1) the very turnout patterns that will help Republicans in 2010 will likely be reversed in 2012, with the current GOP focus on appealing to older white voters becoming a handicap rather than an advantage; (2) for all the talk of “fresh faces” emerging from the midterms, it is extremely unlikely that any of them will emerge quickly enough to run for president as Republicans in 2012; and (3) the existing Republican presidential field is at least as weak as the 2008 field, and could produce a weak nominee. That’s all totally aside from the facts that the economy could improve by 2012, that the president remains relatively popular, and that Republicans may be unable to offer a credible alternative agenda for the country.
While I was by no means making any predictions for 2012, I did provoke a cranky response from RealClearPolitics’ Jay Cost, who fired back a post suggesting I didn’t much know what I was talking about. Why? Because, well, young voters might trend Republican (since they did back in the 1980s), Republicans might amass enough “angry white voters” to overwhelm the rest of the electorate in 2012, and Democrats have nominated “dark horses” before so it’s ludicrous for any Democrats to suggest Republicans can’t do the same in 2012.
Lordy, lordy, so much heat in response to a piece mainly suggesting that Republicans should try to curb their enthusiasm–a suggestion that Cost himself has often made to those in both parties who see every positive development as augering a divinely dictated permanent majority. Yes, Jay is right, anything’s possible. Young voters may do a 180-degree turn in their political attitudes between 2008 and 2012, but it’s unlikely. Yes, it is always possible to amass a large enough lead in one demographic category to win any given election, but it’s doesn’t happen often, and it’s a particularly perilous strategy when that category is gradually shrinking as an element of the electorate. And no, I don’t know, just as he doesn’t know, who the Republican nominee for president is going to be in 2012.
But Jay doesn’t deny my most basic point that the well-known age disparties in midterm versus presidential turnout happen, at this moment in political history, to be helping Republicans disproportionately in 2010, and could accordingly disappear as an advantage, and even become a disadvantage, in 2012. Republicans like Jay need to think about that, and not just complain that the observation isn’t a scientific prediction.
As for the presidential field, I was actually making two separate points that Cost seems to conflate: the first is that the loose talk about “fresh faces” emerging from the current cycle and brushing aside the early GOP field is a dangerous delusion; it rarely if ever happens, and didn’t happen in the four elections Jay cites as counter-examples. He’s on stronger ground suggesting that “dark horses” (not “fresh faces”) could emerge, but doesn’t deal with any of the specific problems I mention about the currently available “dark horses,” other than to mock them. And yes, it’s possible that Pawlenty’s Sam’s Club Republican bit will finally catch on. Maybe insider enthusiasm for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels will become communicable to actual voters outside Indiana. Perhaps Rick Perry and Jim DeMint aren’t as crazy-sounding to swing voters as they sound to Democrats. But if I were a Republican, I would be a mite more worried than Cost seems to be about my weak presidential field, and a mite less confident that weak fields somehow magically produce strong “dark horses.”
The bottom line is that the natural GOP tendency to extrapolate a good, or even very good 2010 to a good 2012 misses some pretty basic problems that could plague today’s high-riding party before too long. And if you don’t believe me, ask former President Bob Dole.

WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s “The Tea Party: Populism of the privileged” provides a clear-eyed case that the Tea Party is more a media creation than an authentic, new movement. Reporting on the findings of a CBS/New York Times poll released last week, Dionne’s explains:

…The Tea Party is essentially the reappearance of an old anti-government far right that has always been with us and accounts for about one-fifth of the country. The Times reported that Tea Party supporters “tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.” They are also more affluent and better educated than Americans as a whole. This is the populism of the privileged.
…This must be the first “populist” movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the Tea Party folks say they most watch Fox News “for information about politics and current events,” compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole..

As for the characterization by the easily-suckered segment of the MSM that the Tea Party is a ‘populist’ movement, Dionne cites “a tendency of Tea Party enthusiasts to side with the better-off against the poor” which “puts them at odds with most Americans.” Dionne adds,

…The poll found that while only 38 percent of all Americans said that “providing government benefits to poor people encourages them to remain poor,” 73 percent of Tea Party partisans believed this. Among all Americans, 50 percent agreed that “the federal government should spend money to create jobs, even if it means increasing the budget deficit.” Only 17 percent of Tea Party supporters took this view…Asked about raising taxes on households making more than $250,000 a year to provide health care for the uninsured, 54 percent of Americans favored doing so vs. only 17 percent of Tea Party backers.

And despite Tea Party supporters protestations to the contrary, Dionne notes that “race is definitely part of what’s going on,” citing the poll’s findings that 52 percent of Tea Party loyalists say “too much” is “being made of the problems facing Black people,” compared to just 19 percent of those who are not loyal to the Tea Party. Dionne adds that “A quarter of Tea Partiers say that the Obama administration’s policies favor blacks over whites, compared with only 11 percent in the country as a whole.”
The danger, says Dionne:

…Both major parties stand to lose if they accept the laughable notion that this media-created protest movement is the voice of true populism. Democrats will spend their time chasing votes they will never win. Republicans will turn their party into an angry and narrow redoubt with no hope of building a durable majority.

It’s a useful insight. Dems should not be deterred from their progressive mandate by the same old wingnut segment of the vox populi that has been around for many decades, all gussied up in tri-corner hats as a 24-7 Fox News ‘reality’ show.

This commentary from noted Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from The Huffington Post.
Between health care reform, financial reform, and analyzing the fascinating and disturbing trends in right wing ideology over the last 15 months, I haven’t written that much about the 2010 elections lately, but that will be changing in the months to come. This election season will be intriguing.
Back in March of last year, I started warning my fellow Washington, DC Democrats that we could be headed for a 1994 style train wreck if we didn’t watch out. By following the Geithner/Summers plan to coddle the big banks and accept the classical trickle-down economic idea that “jobs would be a logging indicator,” I feared we were both discouraging base voters and ticking off working class swing voters. My worst fears proved in the New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts elections, as working class swing votes turned against us with a vengeance and Democratic base voters – young people, unmarried women, and people of color – did not turn out to vote in very high numbers.
It is way too early to tell what will happen in November. There are signs that Democrats are starting to understand what they need to do to improve their chances. The passage of health care reform shows that Democrats have the guts and ability to get big things done. Pushing back harder and picking a fight with the big bankers and their Republican allies (thank you, Mitch McConell!) is incredibly important, and the Obama administration has been willing to do that. Going to the mat for immigration reform will help turn out Hispanic and young voters. And if the real economy – meaning jobs and wages, not the stock market or bankers’ profits – starts to see real improvement, Democratic performance in 2010 might surprise some people. However, it’s still too early to tell how all this is going to play out.
One thing that is clear to me, though, is that the mood of voters is more anti-establishment and anti-incumbent than it is purely anti-Democrat. When a formerly popular Republican Governor Charlie Crist is being trounced by 30 points in the polls to a previously unknown far right-winger like Rubio, when a republican icon like McCain is struggling with a primary challenge, and when a longtime, well-liked Republican Senator like Chuck Grassley sees his approval rating go from the mid 70s to the low 40s in a year, you know that voters’ ire is at least as much about incumbency as it is about party.
In that context, I want to raise a big red flag about one of the most traditional strategies political parties fall back on in a challenging election cycle, which is what I call the “defend the flag” strategy. The assumption is that they have to defend all incumbents at all costs, and give up on challengers breaking through. I think that is a major mistake in an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment year like this one. Usually, party committees and the numbers prove that in an average election cycle, saving incumbents is easier than electing challengers. In a year like this one, I think it’s a huge mistake for Democrats to make. It’s the outsiders, the anti-establishment, anti-status quo candidates who have more traction in this election.
In Florida, Kendrick Meek has a very solid chance at taking out far right extremist Rubio after he wins his ugly primary fight with Crist. In Ohio, both Lee Fisher and Jennifer Bruning are strong candidates to take out a Bush administration hack in Rob Portman. In NH, Paul Hodes is strongly positioned to win the Gregg’s Senate seat given the nasty primary on the Republican side. In Missouri, Robin Carnahan is a very appealing alternative to Tom DeLay’s closest ally in Roy Blunt. In Kentucky, if Jack Conway wins that primary, his reformer credentials give him a solid shot at beating extremist libertarian Rand Paul. And in Iowa, crusading anti-corporate lawyer Roxanne Conlin might have the stuff to beat ancient insider Grassley. These would all be pick-up seats for the Democrats. That’s 6 races where Democratic challengers have a decent shot at taking a Republican seat.
My strong advice to my friends at the party committees and in the donor community: don’t forget about races like these. Pulling back and playing only defense to save incumbents and seats we currently hold is a formula for bigger losses this year. We have a chance at holding our own this cycle if we play some offense well.

Michael Bocian and Andrew Baumann of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research have a post, “Aggressive Wall Street Reform: A Win-Win-Win for Democrats” at GQR‘s web page (via Politico), which should give GOP leaders a headache. Up until now the Republicans have had Dems cornered on financial reform, as the authors explain:

Politically speaking, Democrats should relish a debate over Wall Street reform…Democrats remain in a dangerous position heading into November. Their deteriorating position is driven almost entirely by a drop in their standing — not by any improvement of the Republicans…A lot has to do with the public’s worries about spending and government, coupled with their continued economic struggles.
But it is exacerbated by the voters’ views that Democrats have put Wall Street’s interests ahead of their own. For example, almost 48 percent of voters said “government’s policies to deal with the economic recession” helped big banks a lot, according to an Economic Policy Institute survey, conducted late last year by Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster.
Just 3 percent agreed that government’s policies helped “the average working person” or “you and your family.” Our own recent poll for Democracy Corps found that a 46 percent plurality of voters think Obama and Democrats put bailing out Wall Street ahead of creating jobs for ordinary Americans.

But, with health care reform out of the way, Dems can now focus on improving their image with respect to reforming Wall St. Baumann and Bocian present some convincing data pointing to a Democratic advantage:

A high-profile Senate debate about Wall Street reform could help reverse this. The political benefits could be even broader, according to bipartisan survey for Pew last month.
It revealed that voters want action that holds banks accountable…Indeed, 42 percent said “making big Wall Street banks repay the bailout money they received” was “one of the most important things for Congress and the president to work on.” In a list of 8 possible priorities, only “creating jobs” (43 percent) was higher.
The House bill includes an amendment that requires the banks to repay TARP funds. It looks politically smart for Senate Democrats to include a similar provision…In fact, a robust debate about Wall Street reform would have multiple political benefits for Democrats. Our polling reveals that pro-reform messages generate intense responses from Democratic voters, while also appealing to independents.

Further,

After hearing arguments for and against a strong reform bill…64 percent of voters favored reform, according to recent national survey of 1000 registered voters that we conducted with YouGov…Fully nine-in-ten of Democrats backed the measure, including 55 percent who did so strongly, while independents favored reform by a solid 55 to 45 percent margin. Even 39 percent of Republicans supported the bill.

Strong Wall St. reform is a certain victory for Dems, argue Bocian and Baumann, because it “puts Republicans in a terrible position — forcing them to give in and hand Obama another victory. Or to side with Wall Street banks and their lobbyists — whom the public loathes” and generate headlines like “Republicans Huddle With Lobbyists to Kill Financial Reform Bill.”
All of which gives Dems some much-needed leverage for improving their overall image and their creds with respect to financial reform in particular, while opposing Republicans will be forced to defend the institutions that the public believes is responsible for the meltdown. Should be fun to watch.