Those Democrats who think all the polling data is pointing in the wrong direction should read Sean Trende’s analysis today at the conservative-tilting RealClearPolitics site. It’s not all good news for Democrats, but it’s better than what you often read. Check this out, omitting the DE and NH races we’ve already talked about extensively here recently:

Connecticut Senate – Many race watchers had pegged the Connecticut Senate race as an “upset special.” After all, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had committed what looked a self-inflicted wound when it was discovered that he had exaggerated his military service. Republican Linda McMahon was far from an ideal candidate, but she was the consummate political outsider in an outsider year, and she had infinite funds to spend on New York media. Rasmussen Reports showed a steadily tightening race, and Democrats became increasingly concerned.
So it had to come as a bit of a relief to Democrats when Rasmussen Reports showed Blumenthal back over 50 percent, and expanding his lead from 7 points to 9 points. He leads 53 percent to 44 percent. This could be statistical noise, but it also could be a signal that Blumenthal has bottomed out, and that McMahon has peaked after solidifying the 44 percent of voters that cast ballots for George W. Bush in 2004. Blumenthal leads by 9.5 points in the RCP Average.
South Dakota At Large – Herseth Sandlin was one of those members that observers were increasingly writing off for dead. She was consistently in the low forties in polling and her opponent, Kristi Noem, was above 50 percent. That’s a kiss of death for an incumbent. But Rasmussen Report’s latest polling shows those numbers reversing now, with Herseth Sandlin at 47 percent and Noem at 45 percent. This comes as Herseth Sandlin starts her ad buy, and as Noem has come under fire for her numerous speeding tickets (the last occupant of the seat resigned after a manslaughter conviction for killing someone while driving). There is a special importance here, because this has been a major Democratic talking point: that once Republicans’ records come under scrutiny, Democrats will rebound.
Nevada 3rd District – Likewise, Dina Titus (abetted by outside groups) has begun her ad barrage against her Republican opponent, Joe Heck. She’s increased her lead to 47/43, from 43/42. She’s still under 50 percent, and she’d like to see a bigger return on a one million dollar investment. But being an incumbent at 47 percent is much better than being one at 43 percent.
Iowa 3rd District – Leonard Boswell likewise looked like a dead man walking, having trailed his GOP opponent by double digits in several polls. Now, an independent polling firm, Voter/Consumer Research (commissioned by a conservative group), shows the Congressman leading his GOP opponent 48 percent to 39 percent. This comes as reports surfaced that the GOP’er, Brad Zaun, had shown up outside an ex-girlfriend’s house in the middle of the night and shouted obscenities at her and her new boyfriend. A word of caution: This was a poll of 300 adults; still, it is somewhat inconsistent with the earlier likely voter polls showing Zaun up by ten points and above 50 percent. There was a subsample of “certain-to-vote” voters that showed a 47.3-41.3 percent Boswell lead, but the margin of error here was likely huge.
Florida Governor – Sunshine/VSS polled the Florida Governor’s race, and finds Democrat Alex Sink leading Republican Rick Scott by two points, 44 to 42 percent. This is good news for Sink, because Sunshine/VSS also polled the Florida Senate race, and found Marco Rubio leading that three-way race by a fourteen point margin, the highest margin of any recent pollster. If we assume that this sample is on the high end for Republicans, then this confirms Sink’s lead. She leads by 4.2 in the RCP Average.
Nevada Senate – Harry Reid’s resurrection from the dead continues. Mason Dixon shows him doubling his lead over Republican Sharron Angle to two points. Okay, I’m being somewhat facetious, but the fact that Rasmussen Reports showed a 5-point swing last week suggests that Reid really could once again be opening this race up. He leads by 2.7 points in the RCP Average….
Oklahoma 2nd District – Dan Boren had shown some real weakness in earlier PPP polling, coming in right around 50 percent. This was terrible news for Democrats, suggesting that even very conservative Democrats could be in trouble this time around. He recently released a poll showing him leading his GOP opponent 65 percent to 31 percent. Even accounting for the fact that this is a campaign poll, it suggests that he is increasingly out of the woods.

Trende goes on to note unhappier polling news for Democrats in Pennsylvania, Oregon, North Carolina and Michigan (and potentially bad news in Iowa), but at a time when the zeigeist suggests an undifferentiated pro-GOP tsunami, it’s good to know that actual data indicates that candidate quality, message, and effort matter for Democrats.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s still a close race, but the odds are that Washington, D.C., mayor Adrian Fenty will lose to D.C. Council chairman Vincent Gray in the dispositive Democratic primary next Tuesday. And many observers are already deploring the racial polarization of our nation’s capital that may be evident in the results, with Gray winning mainly because of overwhelming support among African Americans.
The storyline, written many times, is that Fenty has focused on tough reforms, most especially of D.C.’s horrid public school system, that are mainly of interest to the upscale white gentrifiers who have been colonizing the District in recent years. He has meanwhile ignored, critics say, the economic concerns of the suffering black voters who live outside of, or are being pushed out of Washington’s boom areas by rising rents.
If Gray wins, there’s no doubt that national pundits will immediately associate Fenty’s demise with the political prospects of Washington’s most famous resident, Barack Obama, who has also, it’s often said, forgotten his base.
But as a former resident of the District, who lived in Washington back in the days when Marion Barry dominated local politics, I have to say that the racial polarization present in the Fenty-Gray race seems comparatively benign.
In his later mayoral campaigns, Barry stood forthrightly for the proposition that District government existed to provide jobs for middle-class African Americans (many of them non-District residents), not to deliver services. He depended on what was then called the “Lorton vote,” the families of prisoners in D.C.’s jail. And every issue was polarized on racial lines, with Barry, deploying an argument familiar to ethnic politics of every variety, constantly suggesting that any reform idea was intended to reduce Chocolate City’s self-government.
Then came the mayoral reign of Anthony Williams, who rendered the idea of competent government services non-racial, if not entirely non-controversial.
Adrian Fenty rode into office on Williams’s legacy, and the long-awaited backlash against coldly rational government reforms is manifesting itself. But let’s not treat this as an overwhelmingly racial issue. Vincent Gray is not Marion Barry, and his victory, if it happens, would mainly be a matter of making District government more sensitive to the needs of citizens, mostly African Amercians, who are not doing well economically. Gray’s constituency includes public employees hostile to needed reforms. But he’s hardly promising a wholesale gutting of Fenty’s initiatives.
The bottom line is that racial polarization in voting can be toxic or healthy. The presidential competition between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 became extraordinarily predictable on racial and ethnic grounds even though, or perhaps because, they differed little on policies. Either one of them would have pursued a similar agenda in the White House. That may be the case in the D.C. mayoral primary too, if Vincent Gray wins and understands his victory as mandating a modification rather than a reversal of Adrian Fenty’s policies.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Among Tuesday’s primaries is a suddenly red-hot contest in usually mild-mannered Delaware, where Republicans have been counting on picking up Joe Biden’s old Senate seat since the day Congressman Mike Castle announced for the race. But now Castle is suddenly looking vulnerable to a right-wing uprising which, in turn, could make Democratic candidate Chris Coons the front-runner going into November. If that happens, Democrats hoping to defend the Senate will become less dependent on wins by vulnerable incumbents like Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, and Russ Feingold.
To cold-blooded political junkies, the idea of Delaware Republicans tossing Castle is nuts. He’s led every poll from the beginning, has won no fewer than twelve statewide elections in Delaware, and has demonstrated appeal to independents and Democrats. His primary opponent, Christine O’Donnell, is an erratic, if very energetic, conservative Catholic religio-political activist mainly known for outspoken views about sex that would have been considered a bit too rigid in 1950. She also holds the distinction of having unsuccessfully sued a right-wing think tank for gender discrimination after it fired her, and she possesses a history of personal financial woes that would not normally appeal to the pay-your-own-damn-mortgage Tea Party crowd. But she’s had a lot of exposure on conservative national media, and managed to win the GOP nomination against Biden in 2008, garnering 35 percent of the vote that November.
More importantly, Castle is far more vulnerable to the deadly RINO charge than most of the Republican politicians who’ve been given that designation by conservatives. He voted for the House climate-change bill. He’s crossed the gun lobby. And he’s pro-choice. As for association with the much-suspect establishment, Castle has been a statewide official in Delaware for 30 years, as Lieutenant Governor, Governor, and at-large congressman. He went from Dover to the U.S. House in 1992, in an apparent arrangement with Tom Carper generally referred to as “The Switch,” which enabled term-limited Governor Castle to run for Carper’s House seat while Carper (now the state’s senior senator) ran for governor. For Tea Party types, in other words, Castle bears many Signs of the Beast. And O’Donnell’s piled on by rather unsubtly questioning his masculinity, if not his sexual orientation.
Nobody gave O’Donnell much of a chance until very recently, but the stunning victory of Joe Miller over Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska seems to have convinced the Tea Party Express to deploy heavily in Delaware on O’Donnell’s behalf, followed, at the last possible moment, by endorsements from the NRA, Sarah Palin, and Jim DeMint. It’s true that these latter worthies weighed in too late to offer anything other than moral suasion, but it has increased the perception that O’Donnell is a hot property. And late Sunday night, Public Policy Polling, which has been tracking Delaware opinion for a while, released a survey showing O’Donnell moving ahead of Castle among likely primary voters by a 47-44 margin, with 55 percent saying Castle is “too liberal.”
Any way you slice it, the tightening Delaware Republican race is pretty good news for Chris Coons, who led O’Donnell 44-37 in an August PPP poll, and has run well enough against Castle to benefit from the bad feelings generated by O’Donnell if Castle survives.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Delaware is also one of the rare places where Democrats think they have a good chance of picking up a House seat: Mike Castle’s House seat, as it happens, where former Lieutenant Governor John Carney, who narrowly lost the 2008 gubernatorial primary to Jack Markell, looked very strong in an August poll against the two Republicans fighting for the nomination to face him.
If Delaware does throw a monkey wrench into Republican plans for control of Congress, no one would be happier than the vice president of the United States, whose first elected office 40 years ago was to the New Castle County Council, then represented in the state senate by Mike Castle, and now supervised by County Executive Chris Coons. Delaware is a very cozy place politically, where Christine O’Donnell stands out like the crazy out-of-state cousin who moved in and wouldn’t leave.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In most of the major competitive Republican primaries this year, three interrelated factors–money, ideology, and influential backers–have been on display in eyecatching ways. The political furies of 2010 have lured an unprecedented number of self-funding neophytes onto the ballot; Meg Whitman, Rick Scott, and Linda McMahon being just the most profligate examples. It’s the rare Republican primary where most, if not all candidates decline to call themselves “true conservatives” and impugn the ideological purity of their opponents. And it’s been a banner year for endorsements and counter-endorsements, with numerous candidates benefitting (and in some cases suffering) from identification with the national GOP, national or local Tea Party Groups, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and other richly symbolic figures.
All these factors are at work in New Hampshire, whose Republican U.S. Senate primary on September 14 is the marquee contest in that state. The prize is the nomination to succeed retiring Republican Senator Judd Gregg. The race has drawn national attention because–well–it’s New Hampshire, whose citizenry plays such an outsized role in the selection of our presidents, and also because this is one of the open Republican Senate seats that Democrats hope to win in order to counteract the slaughter of their incumbents elsewhere.
Early on in this race, the gods of the Washington Republican Establishment settled on Attorney General Kelly Ayotte as their New Hampshire candidate. She was presentable, had no voting record to exploit, and seemed appealing to independents; yet she was also entirely acceptable to “movement conservatives,” particularly New Hampshire’s very influential anti-abortion lobby. Best of all, polls showed her running comfortably ahead of the putative Democratic candidate, Congressman Paul Hodes. When Ayotte obtained the coveted Mama Grizzly endorsement from Sarah Palin in mid-July, most outside observers figured she’d locked it all up, despite annoying attack ads run by a very free-spending businessman, Bill Binnie, whom Palin went out of her way to slur as a RINO.
But it turned out the fun was just beginning. Binnie has tossed well over $5 million of his own money into the race, allowing him the important luxury of heavy advertising on expensive Boston media, and drawing blood from Ayotte by accusing her of unwillingness to go after illegal immigrants, along with negligence in monitoring a notorious Ponzi scheme that had been in the news for months. Ayotte responded in kind, and the two have engaged in a slugfest, wherein each constantly accuses the other of being “liberal.” In this classic murder-suicide dynamic, both candidates’ negatives have risen, creating an opening for the two other major candidates, fiery “true conservative” veteran Ovide Lamontagne, a past gubernatorial nominee, and another self-funding businessman, Jim Bender.
At the end of August, an endorsement far more powerful than Sarah Palin’s occurred, when the infamous 900-pound troglodyte of Granite State politics, the New Hampshire (formerly Manchester) Union-Leader, came out for Lamontagne, providing invaluable free media coverage and a barrage of criticism aimed at Binnie and Ayotte. The latter has been under constant attack by Lamontagne and the Union-Leader for appearing to support Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, and for agreeing to pay out $300,000 in state funds to Planned Parenthood as part of a court-ordered settlement of a suit against a state parental-notification law.
The one recent poll of the contest, a September 1 survey by Magellan Strategies, showed Ayotte at 37 percent, Lamontagne at 21 percent, Binnie at 17 percent (with a 54 percent unfavorable rating), and Bender at 13 percent. Lamontagne has since hit the airwaves for the first time, calling himself the “only conservative” in the race, and Binnie’s apparently decided to go all in for an appeal to independents and the ever-shrinking ranks of Republican moderates by trumpeting his pro-choice views.
Going into the last few days of the primary campaign, Ayotte is still the favorite, but if Lamontagne catches her by Tuesday, it will be one of the more improbable upsets of the year, and a distressing one for national Republicans–who are well aware that he’s the one candidate running behind Paul Hodes in published polls. The possibility that rich “RINO” Bill Binnie’s many attacks on Ayotte could indirectly nominate Lamontagne goes to show that, even amid all the cacophony this Republican primary season, money can still speak the loudest.

Conservative and Republican surrogate organizations are launching their fall midterm ad campaigns this week in a big way — big enough to overshadow ad spending by pro-Democratic groups. The ads offer interesting insights to what the GOP perceives as pivotal constituencies, Democratic weak spots and, perhaps the GOP’s vulnerabilities. As Jeremy P. Jacobs reports in his Hotline On Call post, “Starting Lineup: 60 Plus Steps Into The Election“:

…60 plus, which bills itself as the conservative alternative to AARP, is going up with nearly $4M worth of ads in 10 congressional districts Thursday and Friday. The group plans to stay up with the ads for four weeks and this is just the beginning of what 60 plus plans to spend this year, a source with the campaign tells Hotline On Call.
The ads are another example of the advantage Republicans hold this year among third party groups. When added to the millions the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and American Crossroads are spending, 60 Plus’ ads show that the Democrats are at a distinct disadvantage this year in this area.
The ads are all similar. They feature testimonials from senior citizens and criticize the Democrat in the race for backing health care reform and siding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Jacobs links to this sample ad, said to be similar to others, which strikes me as more ‘preaching to the choir’ than crafted to win swing voters. Here it is:

What is interesting about the ’60 plus’ ad is the targeting of seniors, as well as the shameless fear-mongering about HCR. But does sneering at “liberals” really win any new hearts and minds? Perhaps it’s a ‘turn-out-the-base’ ad, a clue to the GOP’s overall strategy. In this opening series, they may be banking that most swing voters will stay at home, or perhaps they will address swing voters in another ad later on.
Clearly, the Republicans are not taking seniors for granted, hopefully because their internal polling indicates many seniors have a problem with Republican fooling around with Social Security and Medicare. There should be more than enough material for Dems and progressive groups to launch a counter-offensive targeting seniors. The problem is money to buy ads. Now would be a good time for Democrats to contribute to support pro-Democratic ads, since time and available ad space is limited.
Jacobs says the ad buys are targeted to specific House races:

The ad buys are in districts that are both must wins for the GOP this year — such as Rep. Allen Boyd’s (D) FL 02 and Rep. John Boccieri’s OH 16 — and districts that would likely represent the GOP winning back the majority — such as Rep. Joe Donnelly’s IN 02 and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ in AZ-08.
The districts, broken down below, do share one common thread: In each, the Republican challenger is at a substantial cash-on-hand disadvantage to the Democrat. These ads, like the other conservative third-party group ads, will be critical to GOP challengers’ — and the NRCC’s — efforts to combat the Dems’ cash advantage.
The ads will go up in the following districts on Thursday, with the size of the ad buys in parenthesis: AZ 01 ($395K), AZ 05 ($460K), AZ 08 ($164K), FL 02 ($340K), FL 08/24 (same ad — $925K), PA 03 ($194K), PA 11 ($250K), TN 08 ($485K)….Ads will go up in OH 16 ($463K) and IN 02 ($200K) on Friday.

Jacobs also links to a GOP ad for the campaign to hold Republican Senator Richard Burr’s seat. This one seems more designed to win swing voters, albeit with the shopworn ‘Democrats are spendthrifts’ meme. What gives it additional buzz is that the same actors were featured in a pro-Democratic ad which was credited with helping to unseat Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole two years ago — a clever idea. I’m not sure it’s effective, though. You decide:

Note that seniors are also the lead characters in this ad, although a 20-something woman is thrown into the mix to cover another demographic they are worried about. I would hazard a guess that Elaine Marshall, his opponent, is polling well with young women in NC. This ad requires a more creative response to piggy-back on the existing ad buzz in this campaign (maybe a humorous depicting of Burr as an empty suit, or maybe The Invisible Man, since his lack of concrete accomplishments is already a bit of a meme in NC political circles). But Democrats would be well-advised to take the senior vote as seriously as do their adversaries.
The other thing that these ads share in common is that they are attack-focused, with a little “not like us/me” tacked on at the end of the NC ad. There’s not much else an obstructionist party can do but attack the pro-active party and its candidates. In response, Democratic challengers and incumbents alike should not waste too much time playing defense. The “He/she distorted my record” whine is the swan song of the loser. Especially for the post-Labor Day segment of midterm campaigns, the best defense is a ferocious counter-attack in ads and in every opportunity for media sound-bites.
The formidable challenge for Dems in the coming weeks is adequate funding for ads. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly budgeting $75 million for political ads, almost all of it for defeating Democrats. Many other conservative groups have ponied up big bucks for ads to defeat Democrats. Such are the rancid fruits of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission.

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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.

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When John Boehner sent up his raise-the-age-for-Social Security-Benefits-to-70 trial balloon back in June, he caught some predictable flack. Maybe not enough, if the current street protest demonstrations in France against raising the age for retirement benefits are any indication.
Yes, I know, unions are much stronger in France, as is class consciousness in general. France is far more progressive in terms of social benefits than the U.S., as well as other European countries. And yes, there is growing and broad discontent with the Sarkozy government’s performance on a range of economic concerns, which helped to get those huge crowds out in the streets of Paris and across France.
Nonetheless, it was President Sarkozy’s proposal to raise the age of eligibility for minimum retirement benefits from 60 to 62 ( from 65 to 67 for a full pension) that sparked the most massive protests demonstrations France has seen in two decades. It’s not just the graying of the French population. It’s also the feeling among middle-aged and young workers that they are about to get screwed because Sarkozy’s center-right government has mismanaged the economy. Apparently, the U.S. isn’t the only country in which the government’s primary retirement security program is a ‘third rail.’
Sarkozy isn’t the first French leader to catch hell for trying to weaken retirement benefits. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac withdrew his proposal to weaken retirement benefits for transport workers after strikes crippled France.
The differences between French and U.S. politics notwithstanding, American seniors don’t like politicians weakening their government retirement benefits any more than do their counterparts in European countries. They may not take it to the streets quite so readily, but they will take it to the polls, and they vote in disproportionately large numbers, especially in midterm elections.
Boehner’s proposal wouldn’t fully kick in for 20 years — intended no doubt as a buffer zone to protect his party from angry seniors. But many seniors are rightly suspicious of any screwing around with Social Security, as a ‘slippery slope’ that sets a dangerous precedent. And the 20 year buffer zone wouldn’t come as much comfort to middle-aged workers, who are also a large midterm demographic — the age 45-59 demographic were 34 percent of mid-term voters in 2006. It’s up to Democrats to remind them, again and again, that Boehner’s idea delays their retirement eligibility.
So the events in France may indicate that Boehner got off way too easy. A little grumbling here and there doesn’t get it as a response, when the guy who will be running the House of Representatives if his party carries the day on November 2nd starts setting the stage for screwing millions of American workers.
No, it’s not as much an issue of immediate concern as jobs and economic recovery. But Boehner’s putting the weakening of Social Security benefits on the table ought to merit more outrage. As usual the print and broadcast media let him off easy, but that’s partly because Democrats didn’t raise enough hell about it. That can be changed by raising the issue more frequently in speeches and ads, and maybe in time enough to do some good on November 2nd.

Stacy Mitchell has an article of interest for Dems who want to get a larger share of small business voters, up at Bloomberg Businessweek. Mitchell removes the facade of two organizations which purport to serve small business men and women, but throw them under the bus when big corporations give the nod.
Mitchell cites the examples of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry and the PA chapter of the National Federation of independent Businesses, both of which opposed Gov. Rendell’s plan to cut the business income tax rate for small businesses. The plan would also close a loophole allowing multi-sate retail chains and banks avoid PA taxes, and big biz just wasn’t having it.
But it’s not just the PA affiliates, as Mitchell explains:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the NFIB, together with their state-level affiliates, are among the country’s most powerful lobbying forces. While they claim to speak for small business, a look at their lobbying record suggests their primary allegiance lies elsewhere. The U.S. Chamber has fought to preserve offshore tax havens that only multinationals can use, leaving small businesses at a disadvantage. Both the NFIB and affiliates of the Chamber have lobbied in various states to maintain loopholes like Pennsylvania’s. And neither group has contested the multi-million-dollar tax breaks cities routinely bestow on big-box retailers to the detriment of their independent rivals.
Although the Chamber says it represents 3 million small businesses, that’s misleading. The figure includes members of local and state chambers, which have no say over the national group’s activities. The U.S. Chamber’s direct membership includes some 300,000 small businesses, or about 1 percent of the total nationwide. While small businesses are prominent in its press releases, they’re scarce in its boardroom; the vast majority of the Chamber’s 125 board members represent large corporations. “Our policy priorities are closely aligned with our small-business members,” and the Chamber has a committee that focuses on them, says Giovanni Coratolo, the Chamber’s vice-president for small-business policy.

And with the NFIB, the same priorities are reflected in political contributions:

All 300,000-plus members of the NFIB are small businesses. Yet their politics are out of sync with the broader small-business community. While an American Express poll shows that 32 percent of small-business owners are registered as Democrats and 33 percent are Republicans, 85 percent of the NFIB’s campaign contributions went to Republicans in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics…

And both groups have provided limp support for the kind of credit reform small business people desperately need, according to Mitchell:

The NFIB’s close ties to Republicans may explain its effort to downplay the effect of the credit crisis on small businesses. Ever since President Barack Obama proposed the small-business lending bill now stalled in the Senate, the NFIB has said access to credit is a low priority. An NFIB survey, though, showed that 55 percent of small employers sought loans in 2009, and over half of those couldn’t meet all of their borrowing needs. While the NFIB and the Chamber say they don’t oppose the lending bill, neither has done much to persuade Congress to vote for it. Compare that with the full-court press both groups waged against the financial reform bill. Small businesses paid dearly for Wall Street’s excesses and, as frequent users of credit cards and home equity loans to finance their growth, have much to gain from stronger consumer protections. Yet the U.S. Chamber and NFIB repeatedly cited the interests of small business as a reason to oppose the bill.

Mitchell reports that some local affiliates of both groups have decided to pursue their goals without the support of the national organizations. In addition, new groups like American Independent Business Alliance and the National Small Business Assn. are filling the void left by the chamber and NFIB in representing the interest of small business people, many of whom like the health care reform legislation passed by the Obama administration.
Democrats have a lot to gain by standing tall for the interests of small businesses and by supporting the truly independent organizations which genuinely represent their interests. In so doing, Dems can increase their share of a key constituency — one which also is instrumental in launching the economic recovery America so urgently needs.

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.
In Europe, the voters who are the equivalent of American liberals and progressives have never thought about politics this way. Because the European center-left outside of Britain has historically been divided into several center-left parties rather than one umbrella party like the Democrats the voters realized that – if they ever wanted to build a majority coalition –they had to agree – after voting for their own preferred party in a first round of elections – to support the candidate of whichever coalition-partner got the most votes in a second round of voting.
These voters did not feel “betrayed” or “taken for granted” because even as more left-wing voters in some districts had to support candidates to their right, centrist voters in other districts supported candidates to their left. Both sides understood that their common interests would be better served by cooperating than by their acting alone.
Now I can already hear U.S. progressives complain “Yeah, sure, but here in America we’re always the ones who have to make all the compromises and never the Blue Dog types”, “We’re always the ones who have to take it on the chin”, “it’s always a one-way deal”
Except that it’s not. During the 50’s and 60’s, in dozens and dozens of congressional districts blue- collar Democrats loyally voted for Democratic candidates who were much more liberal than they were on social issues. They did it out of a combination of party loyalty and trust that the Democratic candidate would be more pro-labor on economic issues.
I mean, come on. Did you really think all those Irish guys sitting around the taverns in Southie for the last 40 years were just peachy-keen thrilled with Teddy Kennedy’s position on about 500 different liberal social issues or that the guys in Al Gore’s old district were slapping “save the whales” bumper stickers on their pickups?. No, they were doing a New Deal version of “critical support” and “strategic voting”.
And meanwhile guess who was “taking them for granted” year after year – yeah, that’s right, progressives. Go back and look at how many liberal commentators said Kennedy’s senate seat was clearly a lock because it was “Teddy’s old seat” and those blue-collar guys would never vote for a Republican.
So come on progressives, let’s set aside the “we’re the only ones who ever, ever, have to compromise” rationalization and start thinking strategically about the coming election.
If we want Nancy Pelosi to keep being the Speaker of the House, it ain’t gonna happen because we sit at home and stew because the Democratic candidate in our district is too conservative for our tastes. You vote for whichever Democrat won the primary because that’s how you support Nancy Pelosi and Alan Grayson and Al Franken and all the other Democrats who you do like. That’s the meaning of strategic voting and critical support.

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.