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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: May 2010

Creamer Limns Strategy on Deficits for Dems

Republicans have always been the biggest budget-busters. Reagan, for example, nearly tripled the federal deficit and Bush bears responsibility for current record-level deficits. Yet, owing in part to superior GOP meme-spinning, Democrats often end up being blamed for deficits in the MSM and public opinion polls, which could have harsh consequences for Dems in November.
To help put public perceptions and expectations more in line with factual reality, political organizer/strategist and TDS contributor Robert Creamer has a must-read HuffPo post on deficit strategy, offering “six rules for how Progressives should approach the issue in the months ahead.” They include:

1). Progressives won’t get anywhere defending ever-expanding federal deficits. After all, Progressives don’t believe in ever-expanding federal deficits. Remember that the last time the fiscal outlook for the federal government looked bright was under Democrat Bill Clinton. That resulted from an increase of taxes on the wealthiest Americans — and a foreign policy that did not feature two major wars.
We need to remember that politically, the federal deficit is a kind of Rorschach test for the voters. To some people it represents government that is too large. To others it represents an out-of-control economy that has turned against them. To others it is a stand-in for political irresponsibility — for the feeling that they play by the rules and are held responsible for their actions, but the political and economic elites are not.
Virtually no one considers long-term federal deficits to be a good thing, so in the political debate it would be crazy for Progressives to appear to be defending them.
Instead we should make it completely clear that we share the view that long-term deficits must be brought under control — the real question is how. There are a number of fiscal glide paths that reduce federal deficits over the long run.
2). We must insist that each of the alternative paths to reduce the deficit be evaluated using one key measure: How will it affect our success at creating widely shared economic growth?…
Controlling the long-term budget deficit is not an end in and of itself. It is a means to an end. It is part of an overall strategy for creating widely shared economic growth for the American people. …That’s why people who say “we have to tighten our belts to lower the deficit” — or “we can’t afford to invest so much in education” — have got it all wrong…We need to control long-term federal deficits in order to prevent ourselves from having to “tighten our belts” and we need to do it in ways that achieve that end.
Economic history shows clearly that if economic growth is not widely spread, it won’t last very long. The discipline of economics discovered a long time ago that for economic output to grow over time, you need consumers who can afford to buy products.
The Bush years showcased the policies that don’t work to grow the economy or reduce the deficit. Bush took office with a growing economy and budget surpluses. He left office in the midst of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and exploding deficits. Case closed.
The reason his policies were such failures was that all of the economic growth generated in his eight years in office went to the top two percent of the population. His policies featured an economic assault on the middle class standard of living and a reliance on a credit bubble to fuel increased demand until the bubble burst and the economy fell off a cliff.
3). In the short term — in order to dig our way out of the economic catastrophe that Bush and his friends on Wall Street left us — America needs more spending on jobs and economic growth. We need an expansionary economic policy now in order to jumpstart long-term growth for the future…We have learned from economic history — and John Maynard Keynes — that to put people back to work when the economy collapses requires that we create large amounts of government demand. That inevitably results in large near-term federal deficits.
The Great Depression did not really finally end until Emperor Hirohito’s bombing of Pearl Harbor gave American politicians the will to spend at levels that had previously been unheard in order win World War II. The American economy was cranked up to full capacity. That spending set the stage for the longest, most widely-shared period of economic growth in American history.
Right now, to recover from the Great Recession, we need more spending on jobs — not less. The economy is finally creating jobs, but eliminating the deficit between our economic potential and actual output requires more government stimulus — not less.
That’s not only true economically, it’s true politically. The single greatest concern of all voters is the creation of more jobs. That requires that Democrats fight for large job programs like those proposed by Congressman George Miller. And economically it requires that the federal government increase support for ravaged state governments that are deflating growth in the overall economy by making major cutbacks in everything from education spending to police protection.
4). Right wing proposals to control the deficit don’t meet the test…The current push by Wall Street fiscal hawks to cut the long-term deficit by reducing payments to retirees on Social Security, or cutting back on critical programs like education, don’t meet that test.
Short-changing education undercuts the principle investment that will actually create long-term economic growth. It is like eating the seed corn. We must increase — not decrease — investments in education at all levels to turbo-charge economic growth over the next two decades.
Cutting Social Security payments does nothing but diminish the wide distribution of income that is essential to sustain long-term growth. As important, it’s just plain wrong. People who have worked all of their lives and played by the rules deserve a decent retirement.
…It makes no sense to argue that we can “no longer afford” the same pension and retirement benefits today that we have had for the last forty years when we generate twice as much output per person. The problem isn’t that we can’t “afford it”. The problem is that the wealthiest people in America have kept a substantial portion of that income gain for themselves…Frankly, I’m getting pretty sick of hearing guys who make ten million dollar bonuses on Wall Street tell Social Security recipients who make $13,000 a year that they have to “tighten their belts” because we “can’t afford them.”
Let’s remember that the Wall Street types that make deficit reduction an end in itself are the same geniuses whose reckless speculation caused the collapse of the economy, cost eight million Americans their jobs and cost retirees tens of billions in pensions. You don’t see the people who caused this catastrophe “sacrificing” or “tightening their belts” for the good of the national economy.
…None of them has any credibility lecturing seniors about fiscal conservatism or “tightening their belts.” In fact, one element of any responsible plan to reduce the long-term deficit involves big increases in the taxes on what speculators, Wall Street bankers, and idle heiresses pay for the benefit of living and prospering in our society.
Some of these same people advocate a “grand bargain” that cuts Social Security or Medicare in order to show the “business community” that Democrats are serious about reducing the deficit so that they will agree to some increase in taxes. Of course when it comes to Medicare — and all heath care — we need to do everything we can to rein in rising costs. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with limiting the availability of health care to every American. We just fought a major war on that subject and won.
And Social Security can be made sound simply by increasing the cap on incomes that must pay Social Security taxes to include the top earners in America…
5). To assure we meet this test, we must eliminate the confusion between investment and consumption in our federal budget.
Right now, every expenditure made by the federal government counts the same — as spending. That’s not true of businesses. If a business makes an investment in new productive assets — in plants or equipment, for instance — that’s not counted as an expenditure, it’s counted as an asset on the firm’s balance sheet that is depreciated over its useful life.
The federal government has no capital budget. Spending on new roads, or new government buildings that result in increased productivity in the economy are counted just the same as expenditures on pure consumption that satisfy our needs in the present. That artificially enlarges the “federal deficit” — and the “federal debt.” We count all of the Government’s debt, but we never count any of the government’s assets in determining net government debt.
To have a real picture of the fiscal health of the Federal government, that has to change. Moreover, it has to change if there is to be a political incentive to spend more federal dollars on investment in future economic growth.
6). Stay on the offensive. In dealing with the deficit issue, Progressives have to stay on the offensive. The Pete Peterson’s of the world have geared up to use the new Presidential Fiscal Commission as a soapbox to promote their pro-Wall Street views that attempt to paint “greedy seniors” and out of control “entitlements” as the villains of the fiscal drama. We can’t cede any ground on this issue.
In fact, the tiny plutocracy that sopped up most of our economic growth for the last decade and gambled recklessly on Wall Street are the true villains of the piece. They are the same people who insisted on the massive Bush tax cuts for the rich and a tax code where hedge fund managers who literally make hundreds of millions of dollars each year pay taxes at a lower rate than the janitors who sweep their floors.
And, of course the real fiscal villains are the Bush era neocons who insisted that America spend a trillion dollars on the War in Iraq.
Austerity for seniors, cuts in education spending, reductions in spending on infrastructure — these are not long term solutions to America’s fiscal woes. They will make matters worse.
In the fall elections, Democrats must tell seniors — which include the major universe of swing voters — the truth. If the Republicans take control of Congress they intend to implement Congressman Paul Ryan’s plan to abolish Medicare and replace it with a voucher system
They will also do everything they can to privatize Social Security — which by the way will actually increase the size of the federal deficit.
To succeed this fall we have to demonstrate that Democrats are the party of average Americans — while the Republicans are the party of Wall Street and the big insurance companies…We must make certain the voters understand that we are the party of growth, while the GOP is the party of fiscal recklessness that leads inevitability to austerity…

Above all, Creamer argues that progressive messaging must continually remind the public that “it was Democrats who actually controlled the long-term deficit and generated surpluses and prosperity,” while Wall St.’s Republican puppets created the economic policies “that resulted in economic collapse and exploding deficits.” Looking toward the future, Creamer argues convincingly that Dems must emphasize broadly-shared economic growth as the central goal of our fiscal strategy.


Anti-Ivy Revolt Now!

Conservatives are picking around Elena Kagan’s bio and record to find some reason to oppose her. One of the more ingenious efforts is by David Brooks, the New York Times columnist whose usual MO is to fly around every contemporary issue from a lofty height and find some reason to land near the talking points of the Republican Party. So, too, with Kagan, where Brooks says a lot of things about her careful avoidance of confirmation-threatening controversies, and then drops this little bomb:

What we have is a person whose career has dovetailed with the incentives presented by the confirmation system, a system that punishes creativity and rewards caginess. Arguments are already being made for and against her nomination, but most of this is speculation because she has been too careful to let her actual positions leak out.
There’s about to be a backlash against the Ivy League lock on the court. I have to confess my first impression of Kagan is a lot like my first impression of many Organization Kids. She seems to be smart, impressive and honest — and in her willingness to suppress so much of her mind for the sake of her career, kind of disturbing.

So on a Court that currently sports nine Ivy League law school graduates–five appointed by Republican presidents–Kagan is the one who is likely to spur a backlash against Ivyism!
Where was this anti-Ivyism when conservatives blocked the nomination of Harriet Miers–a graduate of SMU Law School–to the Court?
Hard to say. Brooks isn’t coming right out and opposing Kagan, but he is lending aid to the invidious argument that all sorts of things about the political status quo should somehow be attributed to the Obama administration and its appointees.


Could Meg Whitman Lose Her Primary?

After spending upwards of $60 million, much of it lately on attack ads against her Republican primary rival, Steve Poizner, California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman appears to have lost most of a large lead over Poizner and is heading towards the June 8 balloting in an astonishingly vulnerable position.
A new Survey USA poll out yesterday shows eMeg leading Poizner 39%/37%, a twenty-point net swing in Poizner’s favor since the previous SUSA survey in April. Even if you are skeptical about the accuracy of SUSA’s robo-polls, California political cognoscenti all seem to agree that Poizner is closing fast.
This is significant beyond the borders of California for at least four reasons. The first and most obvious is that Whitman’s epic spending on early television ads doesn’t seem to be doing her a lot of good. If she winds up becoming the new Al Checchi–the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who broke all previous spending records on heavily negative ads and then got drubbed in his primary–it will be an object-lesson to self-funders everywhere.
The second reason a Whitman defeat or near-defeat would resonate broadly is that it would confirm the rightward mood of Republicans even in a state where they are reputedly more moderate. At this point, both Poizner and Whitman are constantly calling each other “liberals,” with Poizner, who’s running ads featuring conservative GOP avatar Tom McClintock, getting the better of that particular argument. Whitman would have undoubtedly preferred to have kept closer to the political center in preparation for a tough general election campaign against Jerry Brown. But Poizner is forcing her to compete for the True Conservative mantle in a very conspicuous way.
Thirdly, there are signs that Poizner is also forcing Whitman–and by implication, the entire California Republican Party–to risk a repetition of the 1990s-era GOP alienation of Latino voters by endorsing harsh immigration measures. This has been a signature issue for Poizner from the beginning; he supports bringing back Proposition 187–the 1994 ballot measure pushed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson that is widely interpreted as having destroyed California’s Republican majority by making the state’s huge Latino population a reliable and overwhelming Democratic constituency. Poizner has also lavishly praised the new Arizona immigration law. Having tried to ignore the issue initially, Whitman is now running radio ads in which Pete Wilson (her campaign chairman) touts her determination to fight illegal immigration. If those ads migrate to broadcast TV, it’s a sure bet that Whitman is panicking, and that monolithic Latino support for Brown in the general election is a real possibility. And if that can happen in California, where immigrant-bashing is so obviously perilous, it can certainly happen in other parts of the country.
Finally, it’s worth noting that aside from immigration, the issue on which Poizner seems to be gaining traction is the attention he’s devoted to Whitman’s involvement with Goldman Sachs. She was on the firm’s board for a number of years, and earned a very large amount of money from an insider practice–then legal, now illegal–called “spinning,” which she nows says she “regrets.” Poizner’s having a lot of fun with this issue, and the California Democratic Party is chipping in with an ad ostensibly promoting financial reform in Washington that is mainly aimed at Whitman. Lesson to would-be-business-executive-candidates: some kinds of private-sector experience are not helpful to your candidacy in the current climate.
It’s worth noting that there’s another major statewide GOP primary going on in California, involving another female former-business-executive who gained national attention through involvement in the McCain presidential campaign. That would be Carly Fiorina, who is running for the Senate nomination to oppose Barbara Boxer, but is struggling to catch up with an opponent, Tom Campbell, who really does have a moderate repuation, at least on abortion and same-sex marriage. And one of Fiorina’s main problems is a third candidate, Chuck DeVore, who’s running hard as the True Conservative in the race. Fiorina has recently wheeled out endorsements from Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum. All three major GOP Senate candidates have endorsed the Arizona immigration law. The outcome of this race, and where the competition positions the winner, could also have a fateful impact on the general election and on the future of California politics.


The Kagan Nomination

Even before the president’s announcement of Elena Kagan as his second nominee for the Supreme Court, progressives were beginning to rethink their position of skepticism (often assumed in the cause of encouraging a different nominee, typically Judge Diane Wood), and conservatives were beginning to gird up their loins for a confirmation fight.
There will be some progressives (probably Glenn Greenwald, but perhaps others) who may never reconcile themselves to support for a Justice with Kagan’s record as Solicitor General on civil liberties issues related to executive power and treatment of terrorism suspects.
But as SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein suggested at The New Republic this weekend, the confirmation debate in the Senate is very likely to fall into familiar partisan/ideological patterns, with the final vote representing a mirror image of the Alito confirmation.
One major argument for her nomination all along has been her recent confirmation as Solicitor General with significant Republican support. But some GOP senators will quickly argue that a different standard altogether will be used for a lifetime appointment to the High Court, and find reasons to vote against her (one senator, Arlen Specter, is in a particularly embarrassing situation, having voted against Kagan for Solicitor General back when he was struggling to placate conservatives; he must now support her for the Court in the midst of a tough Democratic primary battle).
A summary of immediate conservative reaction to Kagan’s nomination by CBS’ Jan Crawford indicates that her enforcement of Harvard Law School’s ban on military recruitment on campus on grounds that DADT violated the university’s non-discrimination policies will be the lightning rod for the campaign against her. That makes sense, because the issue simultaneously strikes chords with cultural conservatives spoiling for a Court fight, and with conservative “populists” generally who will depict Kagan as an New York/Ivy League elitist out of touch with mainstream patriotical values.
But as I’ve argued earlier, the real question is whether the newly radicalized conservative/Tea Party faction of the GOP will insist on making the confirmation fight a showcase for their own distinctive views on the Constitution, which would make any Obama nominee, and most Republican nominees, categorically unacceptable. Kagan’s notoriously short public record of pronouncements on constitutional issues may, in fact, feed conspiracy theories that she represents a carefully planned leftist plot to move the Court in a totalitarian direction.
So even as Republicans search (almost certainly in vain, given the scrutiny she’s already received as a likely Court nominee) for some smoking gun in Kagan’s background, keep an eye on the tone of conservative rhetoric about this nomination. If it gets as shrill as I suspect it will, then progressives need to be prepared for a counter-offensive that exposes the radicalism of the increasingly dominant faction of the GOP.


NRA, GOP Minions Defend Terrorist Gun Rights

it will come as no great surprise that the NRA, and some of their Republican errand boys are now defending the rights of terrorists to buy guns and even explosives. Even in the wake of the attempted Times Square bombing, we have conservative Republicans like Senator Lindsay Graham prattling on about how the lofty principles they ascribe to the second amendment are somehow more compelling than the safety and security of Americans on our own soil.
To be fair, not all Republicans have shrugged off concerns about terrorists legally purchasing weapons. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) has testified in favor of legislation he is co-sponsoring with Sen Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) to close the “terror gap.” There are a few Republican mayors spinkled among the 500+ mayors supporting the restrictions. Heck, even the Bush administration supported restrictions, which were blocked by NRA lobbying and their (mostly) Republican supporters in congress.
The NRA’s defense of terrorist gun rights is underscored, as you might guess, by the usual “slippery slope” argument. You know, the one about how the mere mention of gun control will lead us inexorably toward a dictatorial confiscation of all firearms to pave the way for our incoming communist masters. It seems crazy to imply that this paranoia should trump legitimate concerns about suspected terrorists buying arms and explosives willy-nilly.
A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed that persons listed on the terrorist watch list have purchased firearms and explosives from licensed U.S. dealers on more than a thousand occasions over the past six years, and quite legally. As William Branigan reported in the Washington Post,

According to the GAO report released Wednesday, FBI data show that individuals on the government’s terrorist watch list were involved in firearms or explosives background checks 1,228 times from February 2004 through February 2010. Of those transactions, 1,119, or about 91 percent, “were allowed to proceed because no prohibiting information was found — such as felony convictions, illegal immigrant status, or other disqualifying factors,” the GAO’s Eileen R. Larence said in prepared testimony.
She said the 1,228 transactions involved about 650 individuals, of whom about 450 engaged in multiple transactions and six were involved in 10 or more.
From March 2009 through February 2010, Larence said, 272 background checks yielded matches to persons on the terrorist watch list, one of whom was purchasing explosives. Several others were listed not only in the FBI’s Known or Suspected Terrorist File but were also on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list, she said…”According to FBI officials, all of these transactions were allowed to proceed because the background checks revealed no prohibiting information under current law,” Larence testified.

Do the Dems have an opening here? I think so. An Ipsos/McClatchy Poll conducted 1/ 7-11 found that 51 percent of respondents agreed generally that it’s “necessary to give up some liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.” A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll conducted 6/4-5, 2008, found 88 percent supporting reforms “Preventing certain people, such as convicted felons or people with mental health problems, from owning guns.” I would thus be very surprised if a strong majority of Americans would not support some reasonable weapons purchasing restrictions on suspected terrorists.
UPDATE: A poll by The Word Doctors (Republican strategist Frank Luntz’s outfit), conducted 11/25-12/2 on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that a stunning 82 percent of NRA members supported “a proposal prohibiting people on the terrorist watch list from purchasing guns,” with only 9 percent of NRA members opposing the proposal. Clearly, the NRA leadership is very much at odds with its rank and file membership on this issue. (Thanks to Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence for flagging the poll)
Polls do show that the GOP has a small edge in public confidence regarding which party can fight terrorism most effectively. Democratic solidarity for reasonable restrictions on suspected terrorists could help level public opinion on national security concerns respecting the two parties — and just might prevent a great tragedy.


Why Southern Republicans Are “Raising Arizona”

This item is cross-posted from FiveThirtyEight.
While Arizona has sparked the latest national furor over immigration policy, and Western Republican pols are dancing around the issue like it’s a bonfire (which, politically, it is), some of the most impressive and immediate repercussions have been in the Deep South, where conservatives are stampeding to express solidarity with the Arizona governor and legislature, and, in one case, to revive the English-Only chesnut. Why is that?
I’d suggest there are four inter-related factors: (1) newly visible and culturally threatening Hispanic populations, that (2) aren’t large or engaged enough to represent a significant voting presence; (3) red-hot Republican primaries; and (4) the difficulty of finding ways for Republican candidates to distinguish themselves in an atmosphere of monolithic conservatism on most issues.
It’s reasonably well understood that Hispanic immigration to the Deep South took off during the last decade. If you rank the states by the percentage increase in Hispanic population from 2000-2008, five of the top seven are in the South, with South Carolina (88.1%) ranked first, Arkansas fourth (82.1%), North Carolina fifth (79.8%), Georgia sixth (79.7%) and Kentucky seventh (76.3%). And in some states, the sheer number of Hispanics is reaching impressive heights, particularly for places with little or no prior diversity aside from African-Americans. Census estimates tell us there are now 777,000 Hispanics in Georgia, 685,000 in North Carolina, and 531,000 in Virginia.
While Hispanics are not distributed evenly in such states, nor are they disproportionately “hidden” in the anonymity of big cities. In my own home state of Georgia, it’s a rare small town that during the last decade hasn’t suddenly acquired an authentic family-owned Mexican restaurant or two, begun selling a few votive candles in convenience stores, or displayed signs and school instructional materials in Spanish. This has all happened very fast. In 1990, when visiting the north Georgia town of Gainesville, which bills itself as “The Poultry Capital of the World,” I was a bit surprised to spot a large sign at a used car dealer that simply said: Financiamos. Today Gainesville’s population is one-third Hispanic.
But even as Hispanics have become a regular (and to some, a disturbing) feature of Deep South life, they have not yet become a voting bloc significant enough to matter in all but scattered local elections. For a variety of reasons, including legal status, age, recent arrival and mobility, the percentage of southern Hispanics eligible to vote is very low. In fact, in the states of the Old Confederacy (excluding Florida and Texas), there were only two states as of 2006 in which Hispanics represented as much as 2% of eligible voters: Virginia at 2.8%, and Georgia at 2.3%. The Hispanic percentage of the population in these states in 2006 was, respectively, 6.8% and 7.4%.
So whereas in states with larger and more established Hispanic populations politicians considering anti-immigrant messages have to think seriously about blowback, there are no real negative consequences in the Deep South to offset the incentives for such rhetoric.
And not surprisingly, at least among Republicans, they are succumbing to the temptation to raise immigration as an issue in this year’s highly competitive Deep South primaries.
Most notorious, so far, has been Alabama’s Tim James, for whom the pioneer of viral video, Fred Davis, prepared an ad in which the taciturn Christian Right businessman, who has been struggling to overcome Judge Roy Moore’s strength among his targeted constituency in a multi-candidate gubernatorial field, demands that driver’s tests be conducted only in English. “This is Alabama,” he says. “We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it.” The ad has earned James priceless attention, and so far, his rivals have criticized him only for failing to focus on illegal immigrants rather than foreign-language-speakers generally.
At about the same time as James’ ad, another struggling Deep South gubernatorial candidate, former congressman Nathan Deal, was making support for an Arizona-style law in Georgia his signature issue. Deal is mired in third place in most polls, and is battling the bad aroma of ethics charges that helped speed his resignation from Congress earlier this year. His base region is the highly immigrant-sensitive North Georgia mountain area (which includes the aforementioned chicken-processing town of Gainesville, along with the heavily-Hispanic-staffed carpet industry), which also happens to be the most heavily Republican part of Georgia.
Deal’s gambit hasn’t spurred his rivals to follow suit just yet, but it’s likely. Secretary of State Karen Handel, who’s running just ahead of Deal in most assessments of the race, is famous for championing a tough, controversial voter ID law that was generally understood in Georgia to be aimed more at Hispanics than at the traditional target of Republican “voter fraud” alarms, African-Americans. With the entire field sounding monotonously similar on most national issues, and equally prone to indulge in Tea Party rhetoric about state sovereignty and even nullification, it’s unlikely that Deal’s opponents will give him a monopoly on the immigration issue.
Arizona Fever has spread much more rapidly in South Carolina, where at the first GOP gubernatorial candidates’ forum after the Arizona law was enacted, all four candidates called for adoption of a similar law. The most distinctive note was sounded by Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, the man who created a national stir earlier this year for comparing beneficiaries of subsidized school lunches to “stray animals” who shouldn’t be encouraged to eat (he later apologized for the “metaphor,” but not for the sentiment). Bauer took the opportunity to suggest that South Carolina wouldn’t be a magnet for illegal immigrants if lazy welfare recipients were willing to work.


The Power of Freedom: A Response

This item is by John E. Schwarz, who wrote the introductory essay for the Demos/TDS online forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom.” It is his response to the other essays submitted to the forum.
Let me say how impressed I am with the many different angles of this important topic that the respondents have spoken to and the thoughtfulness of the responses. Summarizing the forum, Ed Kilgore points out that two kinds of issues have been dominant. I’d like to take up each of the two issue areas and the respondents’ comments about them in turn.
The first general area has to do with how significant freedom actually is. One issue, voiced by Mark Schmitt, is that focusing on freedom amounts mainly to simple “reframing by naming,” that is, it is little more than merely rebottling the same product. I see the purpose very differently, not as cosmetic but as absolutely essential. At bottom, the purpose is to identify the foundational value that progressives actually believe in; to recognize what that crucial value means and requires, reaching back to the Founders; and, to advance that basic value against false libertarian representations of it. On that basis, it also serves as an umbrella transforming what now is a series of different and discrete individual policy elements into an overarching, coherent, and inspiring vision.
An allied concern, raised by Will Marshall, is that the progressive ideal of freedom has only limited political salience because Americans don’t and never will understand freedom in the expansive way that progressives do. In this view, the conservative notion of freedom as small government and free enterprise is encoded in our DNA. Yet, the introductory essay (and Halpin and Teixeira as well) cite strong evidence contesting this conclusion and indicating, to the contrary, that a sizeable majority of Americans in fact do instinctively support the progressive ideal of freedom (see Center for American Progress, “The State of American Political Ideology 2009: A Study of Values and Beliefs,” p. 41).
Even so, Halpin and Teixeira and also Hilary Bok raise the problem that the progressive ideal of freedom, with its call for governmental activism in the economy, is seriously weakened to the extent that Americans distrust government. They contend it is crucial to address the substantial misgivings that many Americans presently have about government. I agree.
There are a number of approaches to build on which in combination can move successfully toward that more favorable attitude. Effectively articulating the goals of programs in terms of protecting and expanding our freedom (and the security that comes with freedom), rooted in the thinking of the Founders, should moderate the feeling that government is going far beyond its proper bounds, which is a major component of today’s misgivings about government. It is also a way to show how and why progressives care about getting budgets under control—and have the record, relative to conservatives, to prove it.


Abramowitz: HCR Impact on Midterms Likely Limited

Anyone interested in the politics of HCR should check out Alan I. Abramowitz’s “Health Care as an Issue in the Midterm Election” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abamowitz, a TDS Advisory Board member, provides an updated analysis of whether HCR “has the potential to influence enough voters to affect the results of the House and Senate elections.”
Noting that “that the most important influence on voter decision-making in congressional elections is party identification,” Abramowitz argues that “the influence of an issue depends on the proportion of partisans on each side who disagree with their own party’s position. The potential of an issue to influence the outcome of an election is greatest when the proportion of cross-pressured partisans is much larger in one party than in the other party.”
Using this framework, Abramowitz taps recent Gallup poll data, obtained 3/26-28, in which respondents expressed preferences for generic Democrats or Republicans for House seats, along with their opinions about the HCR Act. Abramowiz found:

The first thing that stands out when one examines the results of this poll is the powerful influence of party identification on vote choice. Among all registered voters, 48% favored a generic Republican, 46% favored a generic Democrat, and 6% were undecided. However…well over 90% of party identifiers and leaning independents supported their own party’s candidate. There was almost no difference in this regard between identifiers and leaners…92% of Republican identifiers and 97% of Republican leaners favored a generic Republican while 95% of Democratic identifiers and 90% of Democratic leaners favored a generic Democrat.
When registered voters were asked about the effect of the health care law on their congressional vote, they divided fairly evenly: 40% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported the law, 46% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law, and 13% said it would have no effect on their vote.
…These opinions were generally consistent with voting intentions. 75% of Democratic voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored the law while only 8% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law; 84% of Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law while only 9% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored the law. Among undecided voters, 28% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored the law, 34% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law, and 38% said it would have no effect on their vote.

Abramowitz concludes,

…Only a small minority of voters are cross-pressured on the issue of health care reform and…the numbers of cross-pressured Democrats and Republicans are about equal. Moreover, among undecided voters, there is a fairly even split between those saying they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports the law and those saying they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes the law. Based on these results, there appears to be little potential for this issue to produce a shift in voter preferences. The main effect of health care as an issue would probably be to reinforce voters’ partisan preferences.

Regarding the voter enthusiasm factor, however, Abramowitz cautions that,

…So far this year most polls have found Republicans to be more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats and that was also the case in the Gallup survey. 71% of those supporting a generic Republican indicated that they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year compared with only 56% of those supporting a generic Democrat.

Certainly the ‘enthusiasm gap’ favoring Republicans is cause for some concern. But the flip side, says Abramowitz, is that “there appears to be more room for increased enthusiasm among pro-reform Democrats than among anti-reform Republicans.” Thus Dems stand to benefit from an effort to energize HCR supporters, as well as an educational campaign to increase their number.
All of which also suggests that the economy, particularly jobs, may well trump health care as the pivotal concern for midterm voters.


The Brits Un-Decide

It wasn’t a big shock, but still, citizens of the United Kingdom woke up today to a very unsettled political situation, having rebuffed Labour and the Liberal Democrats in yesterday’s election, but without giving the Tories the majority necessary to immediately govern.
With votes still out from two seats, the Conservatives have 305 seats, Labour has 258, the Lib Dems 57, and other parties 28. The popular vote split 36% Tory, 29% Labour, and 23% Lib Dem. The major surprise was that the “Cleggmania” that seemed to grip the electorate during the campaign did not translate into a much better showing for the Lib Dems, who actually lost seats. But they certainly retained some influence as the party holding the balance of power, and today Nick Clegg is entertaining semi-public overtures from both the big parties to form a coalition government, while hoping to secure some sort of agreement to move the electoral system away from the first-past-the-post method that has so long frustrated the Lib Dems (most notably yesterday).
The most likely outcome is a minority Tory government under David Cameron with a short-term mandate to deal with the country’s immediate economic and financial problems and then hold another election, possibly even this year. Given the brevity of British campaigns, that’s not quite the nightmare scenario it sounds like to American ears. On the other hand, given the problems Britain faces right now (as eloquently outlined by William Galston), it’s unlikely a minority government facing an immediate election is going to exactly represent a profile in courage.


TDS Co-Editor William Galston: The Politics of Evasion

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
For all of the excitement surrounding the UK’s general election, its main players have been deeply evasive on the nation’s central question: What to do about the massive fiscal imbalance they’re staring at? Here is how the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies begins its quietly scathing analysis:

The financial crisis and the recession have prompted a huge increase in government borrowing over the last two years, as the gap between what the public sector spends and raises from taxes has widened to an extent not seen since the Second World War. The Treasury believes a significant part of this increase in government borrowing is ‘structural’—in other words, that it will not automatically disappear as the economy recovers. This means that, in the absence of discretionary tax increases and spending cuts, government borrowing would remain high by historic standards, pushing the government’s debt burden and interest payments onto an unsustainable upward path.
Confronted with this prospect, the three main parties all accept that a significant fiscal tightening will be necessary over the coming Parliament, and perhaps beyond. Given that this is likely to be the defining task of the next administration, it is striking how reticent all three parties have been in explaining exactly how they would go about it. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos do not even state clearly how big a fiscal tightening they would seek to achieve, and by when, assuming that the public finances evolve as the Treasury currently expects. And all three parties are particularly vague about the cuts in public spending that they all think should deliver the majority of the fiscal tightening. [Italics mine]

The consequence is that the next British government, whatever its composition, will take office without a clear popular mandate to do what every potential leader (indeed, all but the most benighted back-bencher) knows needs to be done. Because the campaign has not adequately prepared the people for sustained austerity, every significant spending cut will come as a nasty surprise, and many will evoke fierce resistance. This is not a formula for effective governance in hard times.
I’m not saying this to single out the Brits, because the politics of evasion has infected almost all western societies, including our own. Just about everyone knows that the U.S. government will have to turn toward fiscal restraint, for the simple reason that we can’t keep borrowing a trillion dollars a year (and turning over a total of five trillion a year in public debt) without incurring burdensome interest payments and running grave risks. But almost no one running for office is talking about this challenge in more than vague generalities.
I shudder to think of what will happen when we hit a wall—when the risk premium demanded on U.S. debt begins to rise and holders of capital become less and less willing to finance our structural deficit on terms our economy can afford. The people will feel blindsided and betrayed—rightly so. If you think public mistrust and anger are bad now, just wait. Will our leaders—starting with the president in his 2011 State of the Union address—summon the courage to treat our citizens as adults and level with them about what needs to be done? Our future is riding on the answer.