One of the more pernicious if deeply entrenched constitutional doctrines in this country is the idea that spending money on political campaigns is inherently an exercise of first amendment free speech rights whose regulation requires the strictest judicial scrutiny. It’s why we do not have any effective national system for campaign finance limitations, and indirectly why at any given time about half the country thinks our politicians have been bought and sold for campaign contributions. Most fundamentally, self-funding candidates can pretty much do whatever they want, and despite the hard economic times, we are seeing self-funders arise this year in extraordinary numbers, particularly on the GOP side of the battlelines.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court seems determined to undo every effort to provide candidates who face self-funders with anything like an equalizer. In 2007, in Davis v.F.E.C., a 5-4 majority of the Court struck down the so-called “Millionaire’s Amendment” to the Feingold-McCain campaign finance law on grounds, basically, that it discriminated against millionaires by allowing the opponents of self-funders higher contribution and spending limits.
By the same dubious logic, as National Journal‘s Eliza Newlin Carney explains, the Court may be about to strike down “equalizer” provisions in six state public financing systems (Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin). In a case involving Arizona, the Court has issued a stay on the collection of “extra” public money from candidates facing self-funders until it can hear a constitutional challege to the system. Given the Davis precedent, campaign reform advocates are bracing for a bad result.

At a time when the Gulf Oil Spill is becoming a virtually unprecendented environmental disaster, while the main point of contention about the Great Recession is whether it’s about to recur or hasn’t yet ended, it’s worth wondering if the apocalyptic tone of American politics these days isn’t in large part just a reaction to extended trauma.
Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect makes that case:

In the 12 years since the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, being interested in politics or lucky enough to write about it has been an endless, often terrifying thrill. We’ve witnessed a series of high-stakes gambles, all-or-nothing showdowns, frauds, and schemes for total power that look a lot like some of Wall Street’s more hare-brained high-flying plays. There was Bush v. Gore, Karl Rove’s plan for 30 years of Republican rule, Dick Cheney’s hidden government, and the “nuclear option” — not to mention the deceptions of the rush to war in Iraq, the endless state of emergency, and the wiretapping and other abuses of civil liberties after September 11. These schemes, like those of the bankers’, created huge systemic risks to democratic government.
All those moves were by Republicans, but in response, progressives and Democrats developed their own sense of urgency and total commitment to victory in the 2006 congressional elections, and then again in the huge crusade that elected Barack Obama by a wide margin, the most fascinating electoral drama of my lifetime. Since the election, we’ve returned to winner-take-all battles: Legislative fights — notably on health care — quickly become showdowns over the very legitimacy of the administration and the Democratic majority. The Tea Party movement demands, “Give us our country back.” Arthur Brooks, the mild-mannered academic who runs the American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote a book called The Battle in which he invites a “culture war” between the 70 percent of the country that loves free enterprise and the 30 percent that is socialist, hates free enterprise, and yet has somehow usurped power.

Now Mark seems to think these ferocious outbreaks of total-war politics are in part cyclical, and he believes a disappointing GOP performance in the fall elections and the natural ebbing of the Tea Party will help create a politics that is refreshingly boring. And he points to the period between Bill Clinton’s re-election and his impeachment as the last model era of undramatic but productive governance.
If so, that’s pretty sad, since the Lewinsky scandal first broke just one year and one day after the beginning of Clinton’s second term. If and when the next era of good feelings arrives, we’d better enjoy it while it lasts.

I don’t have a lot of use for Tim James, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Alabama who cynically tried to inflame xenophobic passions in his state in the wake of national controversy over the Arizona immigration law with his viral “Language” ad. For that matter, I’m not a fan of James’ role back in 2003 in the defeat of a tax reform initiative that would have helped fix one of the world’s most regressive tax structures.
Still, you have to feel for James’ efforts to get a recount of Robert Bentley’s 167-vote margin over him for second place and a runoff spot in the June 1 primary, which would have happened automatically at public expense in many states. Instead, in Alabama, counts have to be challenged in individual counties, with the challenger bearing the entire cost (in this case several hundred thousand smackeroos). James fished in, but just as the recount was about to begin, lame-duck Republican Attorney General Troy King (who was trounced on June 1 in a renomination bid) weighed in with an opinion saying that candidates can’t get a recount until a nomination is final, and that won’t happen until the runoff is over.
So Tim James can’t spend his own money to find out if he really made the runoff until the runoff’s already happened. Catch-22.
Alabama GOP leaders are apparently mulling over what to do during the weekend, and James says he’s hasn’t given up. But sounds like a simple English-language interpretation of his situation would be: “Just fergit’ it.”

If you want to hear how loudly money can talk in politics, check out the new Quinnipiac survey in Florida. Two very rich men who leapt into statewide contests very late are doing very well.
One of them is Republican Rick Scott, a former for-profit hospital exec who was forced from his job amidst a massive fraud investigation, and then won fame by putting together national-level anti-health-reform ads. He leapt into the governor’s race very late, and now, after a $7 million barrage of ads that mostly express his support for Arizona’s immigration law, he’s leading conservative warhorse Bill McCollum–whose time finally seemed to have come this year after two unsuccessful U.S. Senate races–by a 44-31 margin.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic contest for the U.S. Senate, already roiled by the independent candidacy of Gov. Charlies Crist, billionarire real estate investor Jeff Greene, who got into the race right before the end of qualifying just over a month ago, has moved into a statistical tie with congressman Kendrick Meek. Advised by Democratic bad boys Joe Trippi and Doug Schoen, Greene is playing the outsider card as hard as he can.
Neither of these guys has held public office or has any deep roots in Florida. Both have been questioned about their business ethics. But they’ve got the loot, and while political history is littered with the wreckage of ego-driven campaigns by rich people, more than a few have succeeded. And if you are Bill McCollum or Kendrick Meek, who were both focused on the general election until their rich challengers came out of the woodwork, it’s got to feel like Sisyphus watching that rock roll back to the bottom of the hill.

At Open Left, Chris Bowers calls attention to a nifty chart put together by SwingStateProject’s DavidNYC that lists every 2010 House incumbent who has failed to receive over 70% in a primary.
As Chris notes, Republicans are much more likely to have attracted ideologically-motivated primary challenges–about twice as likely, actually–despite the relatively high level of ideological cohesion among House Republicans. In fact, looking at David’s chart, support for TARP seems to be the most common reason that a Republican House member received a viable primary challenge.
Outside the one or two hot-buttons motivating the Tea Party movement, Republicans don’t really have that many issues wiith each other, now that they’ve all agreed that Ronald Reagan is the truth and light on all issues, and that the only deadly sin is to even think about raising taxes. But if any GOPer forgets these guiding principles–or in many parts of the country, takes anything less than full-on Christian Right positions on abortion or same-sex marriage–a primary challenge is right around the corner.

The MSM is having quite a gush-fest about the Fiorina and Whitman primary wins in California. Fresh faces, huge amounts of campaign cash, historic wins for GOP women and all that. Dem nominees Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer begin their races dwarfed by a tidal wave of overwhelmingly favorable coverage for their opponents.
If not for Fiorina’s “so yesterday” gaffe about Senator Boxer’s hairdo, she would have gotten the same free ride that the bedazzled media has given Whitman since Tuesday. Boxer and Brown no doubt write it off as a familiar pattern of media coverage. The new kid usually gets the breathless MSM buzz after primaries, especially in a political year that has been roundly designated as a bummer for incumbents.
But it won’t be long before the sobering demographic realities of the California electorate force a reassessment among the punditry. In his WaPo op-ed, “Calif. GOP Primary Winners Look Headed for Defeat,” Harold Meyerson explains,

…California Republican primaries have a nasty habit of rendering their winners unelectable in November, and this year’s contest looks like it will be no exception. To win, Whitman and Fiorina — conventional conservative business Republicans both — had to take positions so far to the right that their chances of winning a state in which Barack Obama commands a 59 percent approval rating are slim. During one debate with her Republican opponents, Fiorina affirmed the right of suspected terrorists on no-fly lists to buy guns, presumably lest the gods of the National Rifle Association strike her dead on the spot. At a campaign event at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, Boxer, never one to let a hanging curveball go unswatted, contrasted Fiorina’s guns-to-terrorists stance with her own co-authorship of a law allowing pilots to carry guns in cockpits.

And then there is the thorniest (for Republicans) of issues:

But the issue most damaging for Whitman and Fiorina is immigration. Pressed by their GOP primary opponents and the Republican electorate to endorse Arizona’s draconian new law, Fiorina proclaimed her support for it while Whitman countered the charges from her right that she was soft on immigration by affirming that she was “100 percent against amnesty” and demanding a huge increase in border enforcement. To bolster her credibility, her ads featured former Republican governor Pete Wilson — champion of 1994’s Proposition 187, which would have denied all public services, including the right to attend primary and secondary schools, to illegal immigrants.
Wilson won reelection in 1994 by backing 187, which the courts subsequently struck down. But his victory was probably the most pyrrhic in modern American politics. Threatened and enraged by 187, California’s Latino immigrants began naturalizing, registering and voting in record numbers. Southern California’s Latino-led labor movement — the most energized and strategically savvy labor movement in the nation — became particularly adept at turning out Latino voters for Democratic candidates and causes.
…the California electorate has been transformed — moving the state decisively into the Democratic column. In the 1994 election, according to the nonprofit William C. Velásquez Institute, which seeks to raise minorities’ political and economic participation, Latinos counted for 11.4 percent of California voters. By 2008, they comprised 21.4 percent. And particularly when immigration is an issue, theirs is a heavily Democratic vote. “There’s a whole generation of Latino voters who don’t believe the Republicans look out for them,” Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO, told me on Election Day. “We ran against Pete Wilson for years after he was out of office. And, voilà! He’s back — he’s vouching for Whitman!” Labor will make sure the Latino community knows it. Already, the California Nurses Association is running an ad on Spanish-language radio that splices in a clip from a Whitman primary commercial in which she and Wilson discuss cracking down on immigration.

Meyerson concludes,

It’s not just that Republican nativism pushes perhaps a fifth of the electorate into the Democratic column. It’s that the state’s Republicans are simply far to the right of the majority of Californians — so much so that they do not have a majority of registered voters in any one of the state’s 53 congressional districts…In winning their nominations, they [Whitman and Fiorina] said things deeply offensive to a fatally large swath of California voters. Their campaigns may be gold-plated, but they have ears of purest tin.

Add to that the fact that Jerry Brown may be one of the most battle-seasoned candidates in history, having won grueling campaigns for Governor of California, Mayor of Oakland, CA Attorney-General and having won and lost presidential primaries. The media didn’t cover his comments well, but Brown will not be giving Whitman an easy time of it. He has already blasted Whitman for spending $71 million on her primary campaign, and added in his recent press conference,

“She paid herself $120 million, and then EBay had to lay off 10 percent of its workforce. Now, is that waste and abuse? Is that what you want?”

In stark contrast, Brown had an impressive record of budget management and job creation during his stint as governor, while living a life of unprecedented austerity for the chief executive of the nation’s largest state. As Brown noted in his news conference,

When I was governor of California, we built up the largest surplus in history — $4.5 billion. We created 1.9 million jobs. We reduced taxes by billions

Whitman has already gone into handler-imposed seclusion, issuing lame statements about Brown’s website not being up to snuff and bragging about her issues brochure, which Brown derided for being lavishly illustrated with photos, but way short on substance. Californians worried about their job security, pensions and education of their children are not likely to prefer Whitman’s track record to Brown’s.
As for Fiorina, last year the biz rag web site ‘Condé Nast Portfolio’ designated Fiorina as one of “The 20 Worst American CEOs of All Time“, noting also,

A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005…HP stock lost half its value during Fiorina’s tenure.

Not a track record to inspire working people to vote for her, either.
If Whitman and Fiorina had been business leaders who had track records of living modestly while keeping concerns for their employees front and center, maybe Brown and Boxer would have more to worry about. As Republicans, however, both Fiorina and Whitman have more in common with Gordon Gekko than Abe Lincoln. The guess here is that the working people of California ain’t having it.

The big development in non-election news from Washington this week has been the collapse of bipartisan negotiations for cap-and-trade legislation, caused by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s defection. Said defection has been a long time in the making; earlier Graham broke off longstanding negotiations with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman on climate change, allegedly because he was angry with Harry Reid for hinting that immigration reform might come first in the Senate. Now that Reid’s backed off that idea, Graham’s been forced to more or less flip-flop entirely on climate change, and is now backing a far less ambitious bill introduced by Richard Lugar that would have no cap on carbon emissions.
The CW has suggested that Graham’s happy feet on climate change is the product of pressure from his Republican colleagues in Congress who don’t want any “cap-and-tax” bill and basically don’t want any cooperation with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. But I think the problem may be a little closer to home for Graham.
Earlier this year, a couple of Republican county committees down in South Carolina raised eyebrows with censure resolutions aimed at Graham for his support for cap-and-trade, comprehensive immigration reform, and TARP. One of those committees was from Lexington County, which happens to be the residence of Nikki Haley, who then became the only gubernatorial candidate to embrace Graham’s censure for ideological heresy.
Now maybe it’s a coincidence that Graham threw in the towel on cap-and-trade the day after Haley became a national political rock star in the wake of her strong (49%) performance in the SC Republican gubernatorial primary, but maybe it’s not. Graham won’t be up for re-election until 2014, but as Bob Dylan once said (though not in the context of climate change): “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
I bring this up in part as a reminder to progressives who are naturally sympathetic to Haley as a woman and as a minority member who has been accused without much evidence of being a cheat and a liar, and called a “raghead” to boot. That’s all well and good, but don’t forget she is also a serious hard-core conservative who eagerly identifies herself with the Jim DeMint, take-no-prisoners wing of her party, and who may have just played a role in blowing up what was once a promising effort to deal with one of the most important challenges facing the country and the world. To be sure, she should be judged on her ideas and record and not subjected to gender-based double standards or sexual innuendo. But make no mistake, her “ideas” are really bad from any progressive point of view. She’s only a breath of fresh air in SC politics if you think, like she does, that the good ol’ boys who’ve been running things are dangerously liberal.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is crossposted from The New Republic.
As several recent surveys make clear, concern about deficits and debt is rising sharply. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey conducted in early May showed that the share of individuals rating “the deficit and government spending” as the top priority for the federal government to address has jumped since January from 13 to 20 percent–second only to job creation and economic growth. According to Gallup, “federal government debt” now ties with terrorism for the top spot in perceived threats to our future well-being. It is entirely possible that we are reaching an inflection point in public attitudes that will force the political system to change course.
Indeed, as Janet Hook shows in a well-reported piece in Monday’s Los Angeles Times, concerns about the deficit are already forcing congressional Democrats to scale back ambitious plans for continuing stimulus. Hook quotes Mark Mellman, a pollster who has long worked with Democrats, as saying that “there’s no question that people are almost as concerned about the deficit and government spending as about jobs. It is not just about the actual dollars–it is a metaphor for wasted money and lack of discipline and long-term economic decline.” A near-identical complex of concerns created an opening for a third-party presidential movement that garnered 19 percent of the vote in 1992 and strengthened the case for the policy of fiscal restraint Bill Clinton adopted in 1993.
All of this raises the question of whether public sentiment coincides with sound economics. A pretty good case can be made that it did in the 1990s, although it’s also possible to argue that the U.S. economy got a special boost during that decade from information technology and the winding-down of the Cold War. Today, many economists fear that we may be headed for a replay of Japan’s “lost decade” of slow growth, which in our case would condemn us to historically high levels of long-term unemployment.
That raises another question: What can the United States learn from the Japanese experience that should shape our own policy choices during this decade? This is more than an academic question, and the discussion cannot be confined to professional economists. After all, how to deal effectively with the twin challenges of economic growth and fiscal sustainability will be this decade’s dominant domestic policy debate.
It was in that context that I waded (some would say blundered) into a public colloquy with Paul Krugman and his legions of supporters. In the process, I discovered that Japan’s lost decade is surprisingly difficult to decode and that much of the data doesn’t mean what it appears to. Because Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics seems to be the generally acknowledged guru of Japanese economics studies, I turned to a lecture he delivered at LSE last month. Posen argues that when the Japanese employed traditional Keynesian stimulus, it worked in the ways that conventional theory would predict and that the recovery faltered when the government unwisely pulled back from stimulative policies. (In that respect, Japanese policies in the late 1990s were akin to FDR’s turn toward restraint after 1936, which halted the recovery and renewed the decline.) Posen sums up as follows:

Note, however, that this assessment is not a blank check for unlimited fiscal stimulus at every time, everywhere. Japan in the 1990s was where fiscal activism should have worked the best, being closed, with passive highly home-biased savers, and a large economy with essentially no foreign indebtedness. Having a low government share in GDP and a low tax base also means the distortions incurred by sustained fiscal expansions are of relatively low cost. Looking at today’s world, only the U.S. shares these attributes with Japan, and can thus afford to engage in ongoing fiscal stimulus in a protracted recession–and the lesser passivity of U.S. savers and increasing American foreign indebtedness suggest some limit will be reached. [Italics mine]

In short, the United States can go down Japan’s road, but not as far. In that respect, the U.S. stands between Japan and the UK, whose economy is far less closed than Japan’s and whose public sector is much larger. (To judge from the important speech Prime Minister David Cameron gave on June 7, he agrees with Posen’s assessment and has decided to attack public spending frontally.)
To get a better handle on how far the U.S. can venture down the road of sustained fiscal stimulus, I turned next to an important survey, “Activist Fiscal Policy to Stabilize Economic Activity,” written by two macroeconomists, Berkeley’s Alan J. Auerbach and my Brookings colleague William Gale. In a key section of their paper, titled “Short-Term Stimulus with Long-Term Deficits,” they state that “there are many reasons to think fiscal policies would have different effects if they are adopted during a period of fiscal stress than they would otherwise. … [F]iscal consolidations have less contractionary effects when adopted under fiscal stress, as measured by high debt and projected government spending relative to GDP.”
In plain English: the higher spending and public debt go, the stronger the economic case for fiscal restraint. At some point, serious deficit reduction ceases to be a green eye-shade exercise and becomes essential for sustainable economic growth. But when? After summarizing the grim prognosis for U.S. deficits and debt during this decade and beyond, Auerbach and Gale formulate the choice as follows:

[P]olicy makers will need to decide when to cut off stimulus and start imposing fiscal discipline. Cutting off stimulus too soon could plunge the economy into a new downturn, as happened to the United States in 1937 and Japan in 1997. Letting stimulus run for too long could ignite investors’ fears and create a ‘hard landing’ scenario.

In retrospect, Keynesians agree that U.S. and Japanese policymakers underprovided fiscal stimulus, given the length and severity of the crises they faced. If we were sure that we are now up against a comparable crisis, then the case for continued stimulus would be compelling. But the problem is that we aren’t sure, and we do know that as public spending and deficits continue to rise, the risks that come with excessive debt accumulation increase significantly.

Read more…