by Ed Kilgore
…What Democrats can — and must — do more of during the shank of the campaign season is to challenge Republicans to disclose their own agenda for the country, and draw greater attention to the extremist logic of where Republican positions of current events would lead. The vast majority of all Democratic messaging in the next two months needs to relentlessly focus on this single topic.
Read the entire memo.
Month: September 2010
by Andrew Levison
In recent days, as increasingly negative projections regarding the November election have appeared, a substantial number of Democrats have been seized with a genuine sense of panic. Many political commentaries have tended to suggest that what is happening may not be just the result of structural factors like the lower participation of pro-Obama groups in off-year elections or the deep recession. Rather, they suggest that a major shift in basic attitudes is occurring – that many Americans are now shifting their allegiance to the Republicans and abandoning Obama and the Democrats. Many Democrats have a sinking fear that support for Obama and the Dems is somehow collapsing.
Read the entire memo.
by James Vega
One reason for the low enthusiasm among many Obama voters is their feeling that voting for Democrats who have been vacillating or inconsistent in their support for a robust progressive-Democratic agenda means those politicians completely get away with “taking progressive votes for granted” or “betraying progressive supporters”
From this point of view, the only way progressives can ever really have any influence on “Blue Dog” and other centrist Democrats is to “punish” them by staying home on Election Day.
Read the entire memo.
Today’s news brought this tidbit from Minnesota:
Bill Clinton contends that the Republican Party has shifted so far to the right this election cycle that George W. Bush would be considered a liberal by 2010’s standard.
“A lot of their candidates today, they make him look like a liberal,” the former president said of his conservative successor during a Democratic fundraiser in Minnesota, the Associated Press reported.
Now I’m sure many people reading this quote would chalk it up to partisan hyperbole. But it’s actually a pretty acute observation.
Throughout this year’s primary season, Republican incumbents who supported No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, comprehensive immigration reform, or TARP were routinely denounced as RINOs by opponents. Those happen to be four of the larger policy initiatives of the Bush administration.
Now outside of the slim ranks of the Paulists, few Republicans are critical of Bush 43’s decision to invade Iraq, and his tax cuts remain wildly popular in the GOP. But you’d have to say that the Bush initiative that’s really enjoying a renewed boom in support among Republicans this year is his failed effort to partially privatize Social Security, which is rapidly becoming an item of mandatory conservative orthodoxy.
Anti-Bush conservative revisionism has created an important strategic problem for Democrats, who have often sought to frame the midterm elections as a choice between moving ahead with the Obama administration or returning to the failed policies of the Bush era. With some justice, conservatives respond that they, too, have moved beyond Bushism, and voters report that they don’t perceive the GOP as simply offering a return to pre-Obama policies.
The reality is that well before 2008, conservatives decided to separate themselves from the unpopular Bush by moving to his right, even as they explained his failures as resulting from infidelity to conservative principles. Epitomized by their 2008 vice-presidential nominee, they became “mavericks” by way of ever-more-intense ideological rigidity and polarization. This development nicely coincided with the immediate need to avoid going down the tubes with W., and with the conservative movement’s ancient tendency to attribute all political failure to moderation and bipartisanship. Thus was born the Tea Party Movement in all but name.
Occasionally this determination to make ideological stridency the lodestar of GOP politics becomes too extreme for electoral respectability, as with Republican nominees like Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, Dan Maes of Colorado, and Sharron Angle of Nevada. But Democrats need to start making it clear that the only thing that separates O’Donnell from the average GOP politician is her personal financial record and a flair for wacky statements. If that means giving up on Bush-bashing, so be it; as President Clinton suggests, the target has really moved beyond the views of the 43d president.
This item by Andrew Levison was originally published on September 8, 2010.
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In recent days, as increasingly negative projections regarding the November election have appeared, a substantial number of Democrats have been seized with a genuine sense of panic. Many political commentaries have tended to suggest that what is happening may not be just the result of structural factors like the lower participation of pro-Obama groups in off-year elections or the deep recession. Rather, they suggest that a major shift in basic attitudes is occurring – that many Americans are now shifting their allegiance to the Republicans and abandoning Obama and the Democrats. Many Democrats have a sinking fear that support for Obama and the Dems is somehow collapsing.
In order to seriously evaluate this view we have to begin by recognizing that the raw data collected in opinion polls does not come with its own built-in framework for interpretation. Rather, most political opinion poll data is cognitively “shoehorned” into one of two distinct mental models: the “horse race” model or the “sociological” model.
The horse race model is based on the image of two candidates in competition for office and assumes that most voters are continually listening to and evaluating information about the candidates and are therefore very strongly influenced by campaign events like party conventions and televised debates as well as by the daily news headlines. In one formal model in political psychology — called the “online processing” model — voters are visualized as keeping a constantly updated running tally of their impressions of both candidates.
Most national political commentary implicitly accepts the horse race model and generally describes voters as though they were indeed constantly reviewing and revising their impressions and evaluations of candidates and policies. In consequence the ups and downs of candidate approval or voting intentions measured in opinion polls are assumed to be a real-time reflection of this ongoing process.
The sociological model, on the other hand, visualizes a voter’s political attitudes, including decisions about which political party or candidate to vote for, as to a substantial degree determined by an interlocking set of basic value systems that are acquired during childhood socialization and which are then used to determine what the person considers “good” or “bad” and “right” or “wrong.” Once any particular candidate, policy or issue is clearly labeled, categorized and judged within a person’s network of basic value systems, the process of then deciding whether or not to support the candidate or express approval of a particular policy is essentially automatic. Change in these value-based attitudes occurs slowly if at all.
A person’s basic value systems are inherently and inescapably rooted in his or her specific culture and, after the 2000 election, political commentators became very sharply aware of the deep social division of America into the two distinct cultures of “Red vs. Blue” America – the “Red” America that tended to be white, male working class, rural, small town and southern vs. the “Blue” America that tended to be urban, coastal, educated, female and non-white. Numerous commentators noted that these two cultures had very distinct value systems that shaped the evaluation of particular candidates, political parties, polices and issues in dramatically different ways.
In academic political science there is vast literature that studies the demographic and social roots of attitudes like political partisanship, views about issues and candidate choice and few if any political commentators would seriously deny the importance of these underlying social and demographic factors. But, as a practical matter, most daily and weekly political commentary adopts a purely horse race model in which voters are implicitly treated as if they were completely autonomous decision-makers who are reacting entirely to the latest political events.
This approach is understandable since political commentators necessarily try to focus on what is new and novel. The drawback, however is that this perspective can also induce very severe tunnel vision. It needs to be balanced by also looking at current opinion data from a large-scale sociological perspective as well.
This item by J.P. Green was originally published on September 7, 2010.
It appears that the entire left blogosphere has its collective knickers in a wedgie today over the latest round of downer opinion polls regarding the Democrats’ midterm prospects, and not without reason. Dylan Loewe, however, is marching to a different drummer over at the HuffPo, where he goes all Polyanna in the midst of epidemic doom-saying, also not without reason. Here’s Loewe, excerpted on the topic of the Dems’ longer-than-midterm, prospects:
…There is actually plenty of reason to be optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party — and the progressive ideals it represents. You just have to be able to look past November to see it…But if you step back, look beyond the current moment, and consider the broader context, you’ll see that Democrats are actually in tremendously strong shape for the long term. What happens this November isn’t inconsequential. But it’s also likely to be a temporary bump on a road toward Democratic dominance.
…It seems difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile that idea with the reality that Republicans may be on the verge of taking back Congress. And yet, that’s where we find ourselves: Republicans are about to win a ton of seats. And they are also about to spend a generation in the minority.
Loewe, author of the newly-published Permanently Blue, conjures up an optimistic vision of America’s demographic future, with Democrat-favoring Latinos becoming a pivotal force in forthcoming elections, along with other minorities and young voters. He points out that President Obama should have a significant financial edge in 2012, while the increasingly fractious GOP stable of presidential candidates will be squandering their financial resources on attacking each other.
And Loewe’s optimism on the topic of “The Millenials” may be a little over the top, particularly in light of some of the most recent polls:
Take the younger generation, for example. The Millennials. This is a group that gave Barack Obama two-thirds of its support in 2008, and has consistently awarded the president high marks throughout his first two years. I suppose that’s not all that surprising given that they are, without question, the most socially liberal generation in American history.
Why should that worry Republicans? Because every year between now and 2018, 4 million new Millennials will become eligible voters. That means that 16 million more will be able to vote in 2012 than in 2008, and 32 million more in 2016. Even if they turn out in characteristically low numbers, they will still add millions of new votes into the Democratic column. By 2018, when the entire Millennial generation can vote, they will make up 40 percent of the voting population and be 90 million strong. That’s 14 million more Millennials than Baby Boomers, making the youngest generation the largest in U.S. history.
How can the Republican Party possibly court a generation this progressive, and this substantial, without losing its tea party base? And how can they survive on the national stage if they don’t?
This isn’t a formula for Republican dominance. It’s a formula for Republican extinction.
But Loewe concludes on a less ambitious note:
But November should be understood in context. This is the last election cycle in which this congressional map — designed predominantly by Republicans — will be used. And it will be the last year Republicans can depend on ideological purification without serious retribution at the polls.
The country is changing dramatically, and in ways that are sure to benefit Democrats. That’s why I’m so optimistic about our future. It’s why you should be too. November might be an ass-kicking. But it’s poised to be our last one for quite a long while.
Much of what Loewe is saying has been said before, particularly by TDS co-editor Ruy Teixeira and his co-author John Judis in their book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority” and in Teixeira’s “Red, Blue, and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics” Loewe could have also added that the Republicans won’t be able to do much of anything, other than more obstruction, unless their midterm wave is big enough to override presidential vetoes, a prospect no observers are taking very seriously.
But it’s good to be reminded in these dark days of Democratic doom-saying, that one midterm election does not necessarily launch a new political era, and it just might be a little blip, the last little victory in a long time for a party without vision or solutions, other than tax cuts as the panacea for all ills.
This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Christine O’Donnell is not someone you’d expect to be a Republican nominee for a competitive U.S. Senate contest, particularly in the staid state of Delaware, and particularly as the choice of primary voters over Congressman Mike Castle, who up until yesterday had won twelve consecutive statewide races.
O’Donnell is a recent newcomer to Delaware and, since arriving, has managed to get into trouble with her student loans, her taxes, her mortgage, and her job. She also unsuccessfully sued a conservative organization for gender discrimination. In general, she’s the kind of person whom you’d expect Tea Party activists to excoriate for irresponsibility, not promote as a candidate for high office. But yesterday she beat Castle handily, becoming yet another exhibit of the extraordinary extent to which ideology has trumped every other factor in the 2010 Republican primary season.
Where does this leave us? Yesterday’s eight contests all but ended 2010’s primaries, and we’re now able to step back and assess their overall political impact. The immediately obvious effect of this year’s contests has been to move the GOP far, far to the right–not only via successful primary challenges that overthrew incumbents, but also because the remaining independent-minded Republicans, fearing for their careers, rushed headlong into Tea Party orthodoxy. Meanwhile, few Democratic incumbents lost, and few contested primaries followed any sort of ideological script.
The body count of establishment candidates who lost to right-wing challenges is pretty impressive, particularly in a year full of rich opportunities to win over independents and Democrats by running candidates who are attractively centrist.
The fallen include two incumbent senators: Robert Bennett of Utah (who didn’t even qualify to participate in the primary) and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Another purge victim was Florida Governor Charlie Crist, the GOP star who was driven to become an independent. There was Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who lost a gubernatorial primary; Florida gubernatorial candidate Bob McCollum; Colorado Senate candidate Jane Norton and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis; Delaware Senate candidate Mike Castle; Nevada Senate candidate Sue Lowden; Kentucky Senate candidate Trey Grayson; and California Senate candidate Tom Campbell. House incumbents like Bob Inglis of South Carolina lost for the sin of voting with the Bush administration in favor of TARP. Of course, many of these races involved extenuating circumstances, as in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary, where the candidate positioned furthest to the right–Nikki Haley–won in no small part because of a backlash against aggressive attacks on her character and ethnicity. But the sheer number of upsets from the right is stunning, especially as compared to the number of upsets pulled off by moderate Republicans, which amounted to one: Rick Snyder’s money-driven victory over a divided conservative field in the Michigan gubernatorial primary.
The roll of candidates who surrendered to the right-wing is in some ways even more impressive. Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk won against weak conservative opposition after repudiating his vote for climate-change legislation. Arizona Senator John McCain abandoned what was left of his own moderate voting record in the process of subduing J.D. Hayworth. California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman beat conservative challenger Steve Poizner by running an unbelievable number of ads attacking him as an abortion-rights supporter and tax-and-spend champ, and “just another liberal Sacramento politician,” even as she talked tough on immigration. Whitman went so far that she’s spent every moment since the primary trying to regain her centrist bona fides, and still hasn’t recovered. Indeed, it’s difficult to identify any competitive Republican primary, even in areas where moderates have traditionally done well, in which every viable candidate did not aggressively brand him- or herself a “true conservative.”
The role of the Tea Party movement in this rightward shift was significant, but it was not ubiquitous. And if, like me, you think the Tea Partiers are simply a mobilized bloc of conservative Republican voters, focusing on their role as if it were some sort of independent force is a chimera. What we have actually witnessed this year is the final victory in a Fifty Year War waged by the conservative movement for control of the Republican Party. The timing of this rightward lurch is remarkable, given that the usual practice of parties which have recently lost multiple elections is to “move to the center.” And, barring some miracle, an electoral triumph for this newly hard-right Republican Party will almost certainly render the transformation semi-permanent, confirming, as it will, the longstanding belief held by “movement conservatives” that excessive moderation–usually defined as any moderation–hurts Republicans politically.
The contrast with Democratic primaries is vivid. There were only two major left-leaning primary challenges to statewide incumbents, in Arkansas and Colorado, and they both failed. Neither of these challengers was a fire-breathing progressive. Left-wing challenges to House incumbents in California, Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma also failed; only in Florida was the contest close. In most of the country, Democrats united early behind their strongest general election candidate, and even where there were competitive statewide primaries–as in the Pennsylvania and Ohio Senate races and the Alabama, Minnesota, and Vermont gubernatorial races–ideological differences were relatively subdued. The closest thing to a “purge” was probably in Alabama, where Artur Davis chose to thumb his nose at his own electoral base, and faced the consequences. If there was a “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party,” it was more like a schoolyard tussle than a cage match.
Lord knows I’ve written enough about today’s final big batch of primaries, here and elsewhere. But in advance of the results, it’s a good idea to think about the significance of the fact that two very unlikely candidates for the U.S. Senate are in a position to compete seriously for Republican nominations.
In Delaware, Christine O’Donnell is not exactly the kind of person you’d expect to become the Tea Party avenger against establishment candidate Mike Castle. She’s had the sort of tax, mortgage and student loan problems that afflict many Americans, but that most Tea Party folk have righteously condemned as as example of the irresponsibility that is the country’s chief vice. She’s launched what most conservatives would call a “frivolous lawsuit,” against a conservative organization, claiming gender discrimination, no less. And at a time when we are supposed to believe that conservatives are focused on fiscal, not cultural issues, O’Donnell’s main claim to fame and ticket to get on television has been her unusually extreme views on sexual behavior, which I won’t go into in detail at this family-friendly site.
She’s not from Delaware, and at present, has no visible means of support. That she might defeat Mike Castle, a man who’s won twelve straight statewide elections, and is the best and perhaps only hope for a Republican victory in November, is a red flashing sign of the extent to which Republican primary voters are elevating ideology among all competing concerns.
In New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte is on paper the ultimate Republican dream candidate. She’s attractive to independents, but is also conservative enough to have won endorsements from Sarah Palin and several anti-abortion groups. She has none of Castle’s ideological or voting-record problems. She’s sort of the East Coast version of Carly Fiorina, without the history of laying off employees in the private sector or the powerful incumbent opponent or the daunting political landscape. Her fast-rising challenger, Ovide Lamontagne, most resembles Iowa gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats (who lost to establishment candidate Terry Branstad in June), a longtime soujourner in the social conservative fields without much money or pizazz. But Lamontagne has the backing of the New Hampshire Union-Leader, and its willingness to attack Ayotte every single day during the stretch drive to the primary, mainly for the sin of going along with a court-orderered settlement that gave Planned Parenthood $300,000 in legal fees after it sued the state over its parental-notification law, which Ayotte stoutly fought to defend.
There’s a lot going on in both states, and both Castle and Ayotte may well win. But the fact that either of them is in trouble speaks volumes about the current condition of the GOP, beyond the oft-mentioned fact that O’Donnell and Lamontagne would instantly make these two races an uphill climb against Democratic opponents. The big story of the primary season is that virtually every candidate in GOP contests has sought the “true conservative” mantle, and where right-wing insurgents haven’t won, they’ve pushed their opponents to the right.
While there is no denying that the Obama Administration is taking a big hit in opinion polls for the current economic state of affairs, the public is quite clear which President and which party deserves most of the blame, reports TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira in his most recent ‘Public opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress website. As Teixeira explains:
…In a just-released ABC News/Washington Post poll, 60 percent of the public thought the Bush administration deserved a great deal or a good amount of blame for the country’s economic situation, compared to 42 percent who thought the Obama administration deserved that level of blame.
Similarly, in an early September CNN poll, 53 percent of the public thought Bush and the Republicans “are more responsible for the country’s current economic problems,” compared to just 33 percent who thought Obama and the Democrats were more responsible.
It’s sometimes said that Americans have short memories and forgive quickly. But when it comes to assigning responsibility for ruinous economic policy, it’s a different story. As Teixeira puts it, “Conservatives may want to believe the public has forgotten how bad the Bush administration was and blame only the Obama administration for the country’s ills. But that’s clearly not the case.”
For all I know, by now House Democrats may have already made the informal decision whether or not to force a vote on extension of middle-class tax cuts and expiration of high-end tax cuts.
I understand that if the votes aren’t there, they aren’t there. But it will be extraordinarily disappointing if they decide against forcing the vote on grounds that it will make some of their Members “uncomfortable.”
This is clearly the last opportunity prior to November 2 for congressional Democrats to make an impression on voters, not only about their own priorities, but about what sort of policies we can expect if Republicans gain control of the House. The GOP has been able to disguise or draw attention away from their own agenda throughout this midterm election cyle. Making them vote against tax relief unless the bulk of it goes to upper-income Americans exposes their hypocrisy on taxes and on federal budget deficits at the same moment. And this strategy also happens to be very popular, as TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg is expected to personally explain to the House Caucus later today.
There are few true no-brainers is the complicated business of politics, but this may qualify. Having cynically enacted tax cuts scheduled to expire at a date certain in the future in order to disguise their impact on the deficit, Republicans are in no position to label that expiration a “tax hike,” particularly since millionaires will benefit like everyone else from the portion of their income that falls into the lower brackets.
No matter what happens in November, Democrats are going to have to begin forcing comparisons of the two parties and what they stand for going into the presidential cycle of 2012, lest that election become another “referendum” whereby Democrats assume total responsibility for an economic and fiscal situation they largely inherited. This tax vote is the perfect opportunity to begin that process.
