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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: May 2011

The New(t) Nixon

On the eve of Newt Gingrich’s formal announcement of his presidential candidacy, it’s worth reading Matt Bai’s assessment of Newt’s legacy:

[I]f Mr. Gingrich is looking for hopeful historical comparisons, the more apt one might be Richard Nixon. Unlike Mr. Reagan, who even in his lower moments retained a certain celebrity appeal, Mr. Nixon was humiliated and all but exiled after publicly self-destructing in 1962. He then retreated to the sidelines and watched as his party disintegrated, leaving a vacuum of leadership and gravitas on the right that enabled Mr. Nixon to make one of the great comebacks in political history.

Remember that Nixon’s comeback came after the self-immolation of George Romney, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the forced retirement of Lyndon B. Johnson and a powerful third-party regional candidacy by George Wallace. If Newt’s scenario for the presidency requires those kind of events, he might as well wait on the Rapture.


GOP Debt Limit Brinkmanship Intensifies

So House Speaker John Boehner went to Wall Street (the Economic Club of New York, to be exact) and delivered a speech announcing that he won’t support a debt limit increase unless it is connected directly to spending cuts that equal the amount of increased debts. Tax increases, of course, are off the table.
Dave Weigel explains exactly how that shifts the debt limit debate to the Right:

The inside-outside game continues. Boehner gets to play the reasonable moderate who merely wants a debt limit increase with huge spending cuts or caps that House Democrats say they won’t accept. The Michele Bachmanns of the party get to keep opposing any increase, ever, for any reason. The White House stands pat and settles for whatever Republicans and the Senate Democrats who are up in 2012 — McCaskill, Klobuchar, the Nelsons — come up with.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jim DeMint, who is sitting athwart a critical 2012 presidential primary state and has a large Tea Party following, has issued his own demand that anyone who wants to run for president has to endorse a balanced budget constitutional amendment–and apparently, a version that limits federal spending to a fixed percentage of GDP–as a precondition for a debt limit increase.
Barring some significant defection of Senate Republicans willing to support a tax increase–or at least a “tax reform” package that actually raises revenues by closing off loopholes–the only way out of this box is some sort of gimmicky “agreement” that provides future procedural mechanisms to force deficit reduction without specifically identifying the means for achieving it. But Boehner’s speech didn’t seem to leave much room for that option. And his taxes-off-the-table line increases the deficit reduction target necessary to satisfy his demand, since current deficit estimates include expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
Ezra Klein suggests it’s the rejection of procedural solutions to the immediate crisis that could trigger a real crisis:

Boehner’s got a big [deficit reduction] number, but it’s not, over time, an impossible number. All of the major long-term budgets cut and raise more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years, so Boehner’s demands, though impressive in the abstract, are actually in the center of deficit-reduction consensus. What’s more questionable is his timetable. It’s very unlikely that Congress will be able to cut a multi-trillion dollar deal on deficit reduction before early-August, when the Treasury runs out of financial gimmicks to delay a default. And if Boehner and the Republicans won’t accept fiscal rules as a downpayment on deficit reduction, that leaves us with few options save for a series of hard-to-negotiate, short-term increases in the debt ceiling — which is to say, an extremely extended period of uncertainty for the market.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorial board has laid out the new economic conservative talking point that financial markets really care more about spending cuts than about a debit limit increase:

Ah, but what about the bond markets–won’t they panic as the debt limit draws near and Treasury predicts disaster? We doubt it. Bond holders want above all to know they’ll be repaid, preferably in uninflated dollars, and the best guarantee of repayment will be evidence that Washington has finally donned a fiscal straightjacket.

This is at best a disingenuous bargaining ploy, and at worst (to use a technical term) a lie, but one that will probably be repeated very soon by Republican pols around the country.


Political Case for Afganistan Drawdown Coming Into Focus

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA15) has a post up at HuffPo “Why Dick Lugar Wants Drawdown; Why Defense Industries Don’t,” which makes a strong case for accelerating withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Honda, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce says:

A drawdown is what the majority of the American people want. They want us to end America’s longest war in history. They want us to stop spending $120 billion a year in Afghanistan, particularly when our heavy military footprint is not making Americans or Afghans safer. In the last year, we had the highest number of U.S. casualties, the biggest single-year spike in insurgent attacks, the most devastating of Afghan civilian deaths (an airstrike on nine youths gathering wood), an Afghan majority that says their basic security and basic services have worsened substantially, and majority populations in the U.S. and Afghanistan that want the troops to leave.

Senator Lugar (R-IN) had made news with this sobering observation about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan:

“Our geostrategic interests are threatened in numerous locations, not just by terrorism, but by debt, economic competition, energy and food prices, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and numerous other forces,” he said in a statement. “Solving these problems will be much more difficult if we devote too many resources toward one country that, historically, has frustrated nation building experiments.”

Honda’s claim about public opinion is affirmed to some extent in the latest Pew Research Center poll, conducted May 5-8, which found that 49 percent of respondents want to “remove troops as soon as possible,” while 43 percent want to “keep troops in until situation has stabilized.” In an NBC News-Hart/McInturff poll conducted 5/5-7, 46 percent of respondents “somewhat disapprove” or “strongly disapprove” of “leaving some American troops in Afghanistan until 2014,” while 42 percent said they “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve.”
Honda advocates transferring U.S. funding for our large occupation force to support “policing, intelligence and negotiations…at a fraction of the cost of the heavy military, air and navy operations that currently characterize our security strategy.” He admits it won’t be easy, but he argues persuasively that it is the right way to go:

Such a shift requires courage, especially for members of Congress, given all the industries that benefit from our footprint-heavy warfare. But now is the time to take that necessary step. Our country has been emboldened, and we must now leverage this unity into a new direction for our defense apparatus — one that will keep us safer in every possible way, from our forces to our finances.

Writing in The American Prospect, Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network, believes that that bin Laden’s death may provide an opportunity to open political dialogue:

By dealing a blow to al-Qaeda — and by implication, to its allies in the Taliban and its protectors in Pakistan’s intelligence establishment — bin Laden’s death may have created new opportunities for a political settlement in Afghanistan. While experts across the political spectrum have been calling for talks with elements of the Taliban, opponents have argued that because the U.S. had not turned the tide militarily, now was not the time. It’s hard to imagine a bigger military momentum-changer than the bin Laden operation. Military and regional experts from Gen. David Petraeus on down have said for years that a political solution — one that gives Afghans a stake in their government — as opposed to military intervention is the key to scaling back the administration’s 2009 surge and ultimately ending U.S. combat operations there. But given that the war in Afghanistan was about more than just finding bin Laden, our withdrawal will likely occur independently of his death.

President Obama showed bold leadership in ordering the raid on bin Laden’s compound at considerable risk. His challenge now is to provide equally-strong leadership in dramatically scaling back our military involvement in Afghanistan, while advancing the incentives for a political settlement. In so doing he will strengthen Democratic prospects, as well as our national security.


Mitch Daniels and the Gravitas Lobby, Part Two

Huffpo’s Jon Ward is reporting that Mitch Daniels wants to run for president, and that the only hurdle to his candidacy is his wife’s hesitancy to discuss her decision to leave Daniels and their four daughters in 1993, and then marry another man, and her subsequent decision in 1997 to return to Daniels and remarry him.
Interestingly enough, Cheri Daniels, long known as reticent about direct involvement in politics, is going to be the keynote speaker at a major Indiana Republican Party event this Thursday. It’s a bit hard to imagine her taking on that assignment even as she is thwarting her husband’s presidential ambitions, but you never know.
Meanwhile, Team Daniels took a major shot across the bow today from Rush Limbaugh, who issued a sneering commentary making it clear he interprets terms like “serious” and “gravitas” as applied to Daniels much as I figured social conservatives might do: as “boring” and “moderate.”


Mitch Daniels and the Gravitas Lobby

In a recent profile of the proto-candidacy of Mitch Daniels, I predicted that the Very Serious People in Washington would begin caterwauling for his entry into the race.
This does indeed seem to be happening, if the Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza is listening to the appropriate Republican Beltway poohbahs, which he is certainly well-positioned to do. Last week’s minor-candidate-dominated South Carolina debate seems to have been the tipping point for Very Serious People who want Mitch to get in to stop all the crazy social-issues pandering:

The GOP presidential race has been defined by relative chaos — and weakness — among the field.
That was reinforced at last week’s first presidential debate of the season, which, aside from former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, featured a handful of long shots and no-shots debating such topics as the legalization of marijuana — and even heroin.
Daniels is regarded (and regards himself) as a candidate of considerable gravity, willing to focus on making tough choices about the nation’s financial future even if that conversation is politically unpopular. (At a February speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, he said that “purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers.”)
A Daniels candidacy probably would be taken as a sign that the games are over for the Republican Party, that it is time to buckle down and organize to beat President Obama.
“He will turn a race that is about less serious politics into a race about more serious policy,” argued Alex Castellanos, a Republican media consultant who is not aligned with any candidate heading into 2012. “Daniels is the adult in the room saying the party is over, it’s time to clean house. That contrast in maturity is how a Republican beats Obama.”

Now if I were a social conservative activist, I’d be pretty annoyed with all the veiled suggestions from Washington that my set of issues was for children, while fiscal stuff was for adults. This is why Daniels’ repeated call for a “truce” on cultural issues drives people who get up in the morning to fight abortion or gay marriage absolutely nuts.
But totally aside from the intra-Republican factional implications of the lobbying for Daniels, you have to question the planted axiom that Very Serious Talk about debts and deficits is the obvious way to beat Barack Obama. Daniels is hard to distinguish from Paul Ryan in terms of his thinking about how to deal with what he calls the “red menace” of debt, particularly in his enthusiasm for a massive restructuring of Medicare. This is not popular, and is likely to become much less popular as people begin to understand that “premium support” in the context of Medicare would mean a fixed and limited federal contribution to help pay for ever-more-expensive and hard-to-get private health insurance policies.
I strongly suspect that Very Serious People love Daniels because they think he is serious enough not only to keep the social-issues fanatics in the closet, but to find a way to guide his party in the direction of a deficit reduction compromise involving tax increases, as all “adults” understand will be necessary.
But if Daniels were indeed that sort of magical figure, the last thing on earth you’d want him to do is to run for president. The GOP presidential nominating contest in 2012 is absolutely certain to involve a long series of activist-imposed litmus tests. For Daniels, number one will be renouncing the “truce.” And number two will be an irrevocable, tattooed-on-the-skin promise to never, ever consider tax increases, even if the world is crumbling. That’s just the way the game is played in the GOP, particularly ever since George H.W. Bush agreed to a bipartisan deficit reduction package in 1990.
If Daniels does decide to run (and he could make an announcement as early as this week), the Gravitas Lobby will fill the air with as much excitement as it is possible to convey with respect to such a sober and adult proposition. Whether this excitement is communicable to the actual nomination campaign trail, where the people that Pew calls Staunch Conservatives are totally in charge, is a truly serious question.


TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira: Public Supports Alternative Energy, Citizenship Path

In his current ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress Web Pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports on The Pew Research Center study, “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology.” Teixeira finds significant common ground on two key issues in particular among Americans of varying self-described political beliefs. Teixeira explains that the study,

…segments the public into nine groups: eight politically active groups and one inactive group (bystanders) composed entirely of nonvoters. Of the eight active groups, two are described as “mostly Republican” (staunch conservatives and Main Street Republicans), three as “mostly Democratic” (new coalition Democrats, hard-pressed Democrats, and solid liberals), and three as “mostly independent” (libertarians, disaffecteds, and postmoderns). In reality, however, postmoderns lean strongly Democratic, while libertarians and disaffecteds lean strongly Republican. So there are really four active Democratic and four active Republican groups.

With respect to alternative energy, Teixeira find broad support:

…Overall, the public prioritizes developing alternative energy over expanding oil, coal, and natural gas by a 63-29 margin. And, as shown in the chart below, seven of Pew’s eight active typology groups support this position, including a whopping 40-point margin among the Main Street Republican group. Only the staunch conservatives (9 percent of the public) dissent from the rest.

On providing a apth to citizenship for illegal immigrants, Teixeira cites even braoder agreement among the public:

Similarly, the public as a whole supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the United States by 72-24. And again, seven of eight active typology groups endorse this position, including Main Street Republicans by 19 points, libertarians by 34 points, and disaffecteds by 36 points. Only the staunch conservatives dissent, and even here there are as many supporting as opposing the position (49-49).

Despite the vociferous objections of far-right ideologues, it appears that providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and developing alternative energy are two progressive ideas that win support across the political spectrum.


TDS Co-Editor William Galston: Survey Says

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Every five years, the Pew Research Center publishes a survey-based political typology, which uses attitudinal scales and cluster analysis to locate relatively homogeneous groups within the American electorate. This year’s survey found eight such groups–three at the core of the Democratic coalition (New Coalition Democrats, Hard-Pressed Democrats, and Solid Liberals), two Republican (Staunch Conservatives and Main Street Republicans), and the remaining three independent (Libertarians, Disaffecteds, and Post-Moderns). This form of analysis makes it possible to define areas of tension within each party’s coalition, as well as unexpected convergences across party lines. The results yield a number of surprising discoveries about the upcoming political opportunities–and liabilities–that lie in store for both parties.
The opportunity for compromise is greater than you think. One issue that enjoys a surprising degree of bipartisan support for reform is immigration. 72 percent of respondents favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, with only 24 percent opposed. Conversely, respondents favor tougher enforcement of immigration laws and our border by a margin of 78 to 19. In other words, there’s a super-majority for comprehensive immigration reform waiting to be mobilized. Now look at the breakdown by group. Majorities in seven of the eight–including one of the core Republican groups–favor a path to citizenship. Even the “Staunch Conservatives” are split down the middle, 49/49. And every group–even the “Solid Liberals”–favors stronger enforcement. President Obama and his team will be guilty of political malpractice if they don’t push hard for action, and Republicans will pay a price if they go all-out to block it.
The same kind of consensus exists when it comes to reducing the federal budget deficit. All the Democratic groups say that reducing it will involve a combination of spending cuts and tax increases; no surprise there. But 59 percent of “Main Street Republicans” agree. Even libertarians split evenly on this question. Staunch Conservatives are the only group favoring a spending-cuts only approach, a stance endorsed by only 20 percent of the overall electorate. Paul Ryan and the House Republicans are stunningly out of touch with mainstream public opinion on this issue, and it’s hard to believe that Republicans won’t pay a political price unless they trim their sails.
The Democrats’ coalition is remarkably shaky. Political observers have long noted that the Democratic core is less homogeneous than the Republican one, and the Pew survey adds precision to this impression. For example, while both core Republican groups self-identify as conservative, liberals dominate only one of the three groups that make up the Democratic coalition. In the other two, moderates form a plurality, and conservatives outnumber liberals.
These divisions among Democrats become evident when it comes to questions about the role of government. While the issue unites the Republican core, 68 percent of “Hard-Pressed Democrats,” a predominantly blue-collar group, say that government is almost always wasteful and inefficient; 74 percent of Solid Liberals, a much more educated and upscale group, disagree. Fully 40 percent of Hard-Pressed Dems favor a smaller government, versus less than 20 percent for the other two Democratic groups. Not surprisingly, fully half of Hard-Pressed Democrats say that reducing the budget deficit is a top priority for this year, versus only 32 percent for Solid Liberals. And blue-collar Democrats are much more sensitive to rising prices than is any other group in the electorate, suggesting that the continuation of high gas prices into the 2012 presidential election season could reduce their enthusiasm for the incumbent.
Obama needs to rebuild support among a key group of independents. It’s likely that independents will play an outsize role in determining both parties’ prospects in 2012. Of the three independent groups, the most intriguing is the one the Pew researchers call the “Post-Moderns.” It is the only group in which self-described moderates form an outright majority. Its members tend to be young, white, well-educated, and upscale. They are liberal on cultural issues, immigration, the environment, and foreign policy. At the same time, they are pro-business and pro-Wall Street, and they are skeptical of expansive programs aimed at helping minorities and the poor. 61 percent of Solid Liberals believe that “racial discrimination is the main reason many blacks can’t get ahead”; 79 percent of Post-Moderns disagree. For them, post-racial America is a fact, not an aspiration, and they supported Barack Obama in 2008 in part as symbol and proof of that fact.
Of all the groups, Post-Moderns are the most likely to trust government and the least likely to be angry with it, and half of them believe that government often performs better than people give it credit for. But these affirmative attitudes don’t translate into support for a more expansive public sector. Only 35 percent of Post-Moderns favor a bigger government providing more services, for instance, while 55 percent opt for a smaller government offering fewer services. Not surprisingly, this group responded especially negatively to the government activism of the 111th Congress. It gave Obama an astounding 52-point margin over McCain; two years later, this margin was cut in half, the largest fall-off in Democratic support registered by any group.
Taken as a whole, the Pew survey suggests that each political party faces a challenge next year. If hard-core conservatives dominate the Republican presidential nominating process, the eventual candidate may be forced to endorse positions on important issues that a majority of the electorate rejects. On the other hand, unless Obama can alter some of the impressions that independents and even some Democrats have formed during his first two years, his support may well be less broad-based and enthusiastic than it was in 2008. If both parties meet their respective challenges, 2012 could witness a productive debate on basic issues. If neither does, the election is likely to be shrill, negative, and thoroughly dispiriting.


How Unions Can Grow, Help Dems

Mike Elk, a third-generation union organizer who writes for the Campaign for America’s Future has a post up at Alternet, which should be of considerable interest to both the labor movement and the Democratic Party. Elk’s post, “Major Union Victory for Rite Aid Workers Offers Roadmap for Labor Movement,” is important to the Democratic Party because labor unions function as a pivotal source of funding and volunteers for Democratic candidates. When unions grow, the Party’s resources will expand.
Elk’s insights about the highly successful campaign of the International Longshoremen Workers Union to organize Rite Aid workers at the company’s southwest distribution center should prove instructive for future campaigns. First, a little history:

The victory is a testament to the resolve of the workers and organizers — it’s a success five years in the making. It reveals how tough the environment for rehabilitating the labor movement is, but also how it is still possible to win through creative, direct action.
“We’re excited about winning this victory, even if it took longer than it should have” said Carlos “Chico” Rubio, a 10-year warehouse worker who was on the union bargaining committee. Unlike many unions that do win a good contract, the union was quick not to praise the boss for agreeing to a contract, but to point out instead that the process was a long and costly one. Workers decided to first start organizing a union in March of 2006 and hoped to have a new contract within several months, not five years.
Rite Aid management responded with the typical toolbox of anti-union tactics. They hired a team of expensive union busters to hold anti-union intimidation sessions and captive audience meetings. They threatened to fire workers if they supported the union and even fired two workers for wanting to a join a union. They asked a delay of over 18 months from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on scheduling a vote so that they could have more time to run intimidation sessions to make workers wary of joining a union. Finally after two years of organizing and despite massive anti-union attacks, workers voted to join a union 283 to 261 in an NLRB supervised election in June of 2008.

Elk reports that Rite Aid stalled with bad faith or “surface bargaining” for a full year after the vote. Then the union and workers got creative:

…Workers started by attending yearly stockholder meetings and opening lines of communications with stockholders and board members. They released detailed reports about how much money the union busting efforts of Rite Aid was costing the company. Workers were able to persuade some stockholders to put pressure on Rite Aid to negotiate a fair and equitable contract.
Likewise, they used their leverage against Rite Aid by expanding the fight across various unions and the country. They formed a coalition of nationwide Rite Aid workers from various unions including UFCW, SEIU, and Teamsters who coordinated their strategy. Workers reached out to powerful community allies with groups like United Students against Sweatshops and Jobs with Justice. They held protests in nearly 50 cities across the country against Rite Aid and promised to apply more heat if Rite Aid didn’t settle the contract dispute in California.

After creative coalition-building comes economic withdrawal, a.k.a. ‘hardball’:

Most importantly, the workers union had a strong presence within the distribution center in Lancaster, California. Workers even engaged in “work to rule,” where they purposely slowed down movement in the distribution center in order to put pressure on the company to settle a contract. Even last year, 75 workers walked off the job for a day in Lancaster, California to protest Rite Aid’s lack of good faith bargaining.
Finally, when negotiations seemed to be breaking down at the last second, they launched a “pinpoint” boycott campaign at two Rite Aid workers at two Rite Aid Stores in San Pedro, California on April 1, 2011. They persuaded hundreds of seniors to switch their prescriptions to other pharmacies. The threat of a larger boycott spreading forced Rite Aid to finally settle the contract a month later.

To put the Rite Aid campaign’s success in perspective, Elk points out that “fewer than 1 in 6 organizing drives ever results in a union contract for workers in the workplace.”
It looks like the ILWU and Rite Aid workers have developed a promising organizing template for the 21st century union movement. It’s an especially welcome development, coming soon after the Wisconsin protests and the awakening of many workers to the unexpected consequences of voting Republican.
An invigorated labor movement is also critically-important for insuring the integrity of the Democratic party. As Joan Walsh notes in her Salon.com post today, data provided to her by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka indicates,

…Democrats have become almost as reliant as Republicans on corporate money (Republicans get 79 percent of campaign contributions from business; Democrats get 72 percent, and the share from unions has dropped in half in just the last decade.)

Restoring a larger share of contributions from unions to Democratic candidates will help make the Party less beholden to their corporate contributors — and more responsive to the priorities of working families. But the challenge is made more difficult, as Walsh reports, by the AFL-CIO’s recent decision to invest more of current resources in shoring up the Federation’s structure and programs, and less on federal candidates for office. In her interview with Trumka, he explains how the allocation of the Federation’s resources will be different going forward:

…We’re going to do a full-time, around the calendar political program that’s going to be mobilizing and educating people 12 months a year, 24 months a cycle, as opposed to doing it till Election Day and dismantling it. We’re going to keep people in place, and actually make people pay a price [if they don’t keep promises]. We’ll start running some of our own, in state races.

Democrats face a tough challenge in the short run in raising funds for candidates to make up for the expected shortfall resulting from the AFL-CIO’s new priorities. If they can raise the needed funds through other means, a stronger union movement could result in a more mutually beneficial relationship down the road. In the longer run, what it comes down to is that Democrats must do a better job of supporting unions and their priorities, so unions can grow and return the favor.


Better News On Redistricting

Charlie Cook’s latest National Journal column takes a comprehensive look at congressional redistricting around the country, and while it’s hard to call it good news for Democrats, it’s certainly a lot better than what we were hearing immediately after last November’s elections:

Just three states–Arkansas, Iowa, and Louisiana–have completed congressional redistricting. Although Republicans were forced to swallow one of their own seats in Louisiana because the state is losing one, the district to be cut in Iowa may come out of either the Democratic or the Republican column. Forty states will need to complete new maps in the next year; so far, anyway, redistricting isn’t looking like the GOP bonanza that some Republicans initially thought it would be.
Republicans haven’t had great early success in channeling big money toward their vulnerable freshmen, in part because one in five House members is a GOP freshman and they are competing for resources. Instead, many GOP strategists are counting on redistricting to help shore up seats in places where Republicans might have been able to win in a 2010 kind of environment but wouldn’t flourish again under the same map.
In Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states, redistricting may indeed boost some of these freshmen and take Democratic opportunities off the table. In terms of the overall numbers in the House, however, redistricting is increasingly looking like a wash. Even though Republicans will redraw four times as many seats as the Democrats will, the GOP’s chances to win big in the mapmaking game are offset by the number of seats the party already picked up in 2010.

Cook also mentions that Republicans in some states (e.g., Texas) simply can’t overcome the surge in Hispanic population. In other states, everyone must cope with a great deal of procedural uncertainty, notably in California and Florida, who are implementing new “nonpartisan” redistricting systems. It’s too early to make definitive judgments, but it’s certainly not looking that bad for Democrats, who should benefit in 2012 from much more favorable turnout patterns.


GOP Contenders Beware: If Mike Huckabee Runs, He’ll Have a Real Chance

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
For Mike Huckabee, the decision of whether to run for president has got to be excruciating. On the one hand, he’s done quite well in both primary and general election polls without lifting a finger. He has a very clear path to the nomination based on his demonstrated strengths with socially conservative voters in 2008. And the GOP has moved in his ideological direction since then, making his “insurgent” persona far more of an asset than a liability. On the other hand, he’s got more than a few powerful enemies in elite Republican circles and he’s doing what he seems to love most–hosting a regular television show–while making real money for the first time in his life. He’s also young enough, at fifty-five, to wait for 2016 to run.
In the meantime, Huckabee is doing his very best to keep his options open: putting together a organization-in-waiting, quashing rumors that he’s definitely taking a pass on 2012, staying in the limelight with the occasional controversial statement, and getting around the country–and the world–with some regularity. He’s even reported to be meeting with potential 2012 fundraisers, thereby addressing his greatest weakness in 2008. But while there’s an element of truth to his claim that residual name identification from 2008 gives him more time to decide than a relative unknown candidate like Mitch Daniels–not to mention more free media opportunities from his perch at Fox–his base of conservative activists is getting restless, and Fox itself is said to have given him a May 31 deadline to get off the fence or give up his show. Several members of the 2008 team that engineered Huckabee’s shocking upset over Mitt Romney in Iowa have already taken their talents elsewhere, and his reputation as an outsider who substitutes hard work for deep pockets is taking a hit, particularly when compared to Tim Pawlenty, who has been relentlessly organizing in the First-In-the-Nation-Caucus state. In other words, Huck will soon be forced to make up his mind, and if he does jump into the race by early summer, the question remains: What are his actual chances?
Huckabee’s biggest advantage is a crystal clear path to victory in the Republican primary, based on the simple fact that two of the first four states in the nominating process, Iowa and South Carolina, are among his national strongholds. Early polls of likely caucus-goers in Iowa show him running first or second, despite an extended absence from the state. His unique position of authority among conservative evangelicals is critical given that group’s unusual importance in the caucuses. And some key members of his 2008 Iowa team, notably co-chairman Bob Vander Plaats, are still on the sidelines, ready for duty, while others are working for candidates who might be considered Huckabee stalking horses (e.g., Judge Roy Moore, whose main Iowa supporter is Huck’s other 2008 Iowa co-chair, Danny Carroll).
Huck should also favor his odds in South Carolina, where he came very close in 2008 to derailing John McCain’s nomination–and might well have won the state if he hadn’t earlier taken a flier on an expensive and futile excursion into Michigan. It also didn’t help that fellow-southerner Fred Thompson made a last ditch effort in the Palmetto State, taking away votes that might have otherwise gone to the Arkansan. But this time around, with Haley Barbour out of the race, Huck would be the natural 2012 front-runner in the state, particularly if he had already rained on Tim Pawlenty’s parade in Iowa and made a decent showing in New Hampshire. And finally, even if the state of Florida fails to move its primary up into February, Florida’s Republicans are likely to hold a relatively early and critical contest, perhaps immediately after South Carolina. This should also favor Huckabee, who is building a very large house near Pensacola, is now registered to vote in Florida, and whose best-known 2008 backer in the Sunshine State was a guy named Marco Rubio, now everyone’s early favorite for the 2012 vice presidential nomination.
But if Huckabee can chart a credible path to victory, he’s also got more than a few roadblocks he’ll have to contend with along the way. The biggest of such hurdles is the hostility he invariably arouses in elite Republican circles. Huckabee first ran afoul of these groups in 2008, when he refused to defend George W. Bush’s handling of the economy and sounded the occasional populist notes despite his fairly orthodox fiscal positions. His record of budget compromises–including some that involved tax increases–with Democratic legislators in Arkansas was enough to arouse the formidable antipathy of Grover Norquist, who has made enforcing no-tax-increase pledges on state-level Republicans a top priority in the last decade. More generally, a war of words between Huckabee, several major conservative talk-show hosts (including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck), and the Club for Growth faction (which Huck once termed the “Club for Greed”) has left some very bad blood that refuses to go away. The result is that if Huckabee runs in 2012, there will be a bottomless well of money and air-time available for attacks on his Arkansas record–and not just the tax increases he approved, but his exercise of executive clemency powers and the ethics allegations made against him as governor.
A second, and closely related obstacle, is Huckabee’s less-than stellar ability to raise money. His 2008 campaign ultimately raised a total of $16 million (compared to $113 million raised by Mitt Romney), with nearly half of that coming in after he won Iowa. By comparison, one of his main rivals for the affections of Iowa’s social conservatives, Michele Bachmann, raised $13 million in 2010 for a House race. Huckabee appears to be one of those politicians who either hates asking for money or is simply no good at it, and unless he can prove himself adept at the kind of grassroots fundraising methods pioneered by the Obama campaign in 2008, this could be an immediate disqualifier.
The final question dogging a potential Huckabee campaign is whether his love affair with the mainstream media–something that was absolutely crucial for him the last time around–will survive continued exposure to his world view. In the absence of impressive fundraising numbers, Huckabee’s extensive and largely favorable “earned media” in 2008 was a very important asset to his campaign. Like John McCain back in 2000, Huckabee got fawning press through exceptional affability and total accessibility, with some added bonus points for being genuinely funny and playing a passable bass guitar. Perhaps because he was considered such a good-natured long shot, few of Huckabee’s media friends took much of a serious look at exactly why this pleasant and rational-seeming man got most of his actual support from hard-core anti-abortionists and quasi-theocrats–nor did they question whether it was a good idea for an ordained Southern Baptist minister to run for president in the first place. But that could all change with a second, and more seriously regarded, Huckabee campaign. His poorly received remarks during a recent trip to Israel–in which he disparaged a two-state solution and highlighted his belief there is actually no such thing as a Palestinian–could just be just the beginning of a rude awakening for a press corps that’s been thus far taken by the man’s considerable charm.
So it’s by no means surprising that Mike Huckabee is at best ambivalent about putting himself and his family through the ordeal of another presidential race. It is, however, a portentous decision not just for the Huckabees but for the entire Republican field. The major candidate most affected by which way it turns out is probably Tim Pawlenty, the smart-money frontrunner who seems to be staking everything on Iowa and who would likely struggle to become the electable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney in southern primaries if a rival like Huck is around. And ironically, it’s Romney, whose presidential ambitions were fatally damaged by Huckabee in 2008, who might ultimately benefit most from another campaign by his old rival–if that campaign helped to knock out more formidable candidates like T-Paw. But who knows? The man is a true phenomenon, and in a contest of personalities between Huckabee and Romney–or really, between Huckabee and anyone in the field–it would really be no contest at all.