The Pew Research Center has released one of its periodic typology studies (the last was in 2005), and you can expect it to have considerable influence on the language of political analysis in the immediate future. Here’s how the report authors sum up what’s happened to the “clustering” of Americans into relatively coherent groups in the last five or six years:

With the economy still struggling and the nation involved in multiple military operations overseas, the public’s political mood is fractious. In this environment, many political attitudes have become more doctrinaire at both ends of the ideological spectrum, a polarization that reflects the current atmosphere in Washington.
Yet at the same time, a growing number of Americans are choosing not to identify with either political party, and the center of the political spectrum is increasingly diverse. Rather than being moderate, many of these independents hold extremely strong ideological positions on issues such as the role of government, immigration, the environment and social issues. But they combine these views in ways that defy liberal or conservative orthodoxy.
For political leaders in both parties, the challenge is not only one of appeasing ideological and moderate “wings” within their coalitions, but rather holding together remarkably disparate groups, many of whom have strong disagreements with core principles that have defined each party’s political character in recent years.

More specifically, the new typology presents two Republican clusters (Staunch Conservatives and Main Street Republicans); three groups of Democrats (Solid Liberals, New Coalition Democrats, and Hard-Pressed Democrats); and three groups of independents (Libertarians, Disaffecteds, and Post-Moderns).
In general, Pew’s analysis reinforces the generally-accepted belief that Republicans enjoy more ideological coherence than Democrats, but there are some pretty striking contradictions between the views of the Staunch Conservatives who dominate GOP politics these days and at least one of the GOP-leaning indie groups, the Disaffecteds, who support more government help for the needy and strongly dislike corporations. The three Democratic “types” and the Democratic-leaning indie group the Post-Moderns have significant differences of opinion on the importance of the environment and attitudes towards immigrants.
You can wander around in the data presented in this report for days. But the important thing to remember with any political typology is that particular groups should not become obsessive objects of attention. For Democrats, “capturing” indie groups from the GOP, for example, doesn’t matter a bit more than boosting rates among Democratic groups or shaving votes from the Republican margins among GOP groups. Indeed, the Pew report shows that one of the biggest pro-Republican swings between 2008 and 2010 was among Main Street Republicans, whose modest but significant support levels for Obama in 2008 all but vanished two years later.
A vote’s a vote, in other words, but it is very helpful to know how combinations of issues and demographic factors combine to shape the electorate.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s hard to recall an essay with which I am more loath to disagree than Sean Wilentz’s May 2 piece for TNR online, which expressed the hope that the killing of Osama bin Laden could spell the end of a “long cycle of outrageous attacks, innuendo, and conspiracy-mongering, the politicized by-product of the war on terror.” Believe me, if this turns out to be true, no one would be happier about it than this confirmed Democratic “centrist.” But alas, the current craziness of our politics, expressed on both sides of the political spectrum–predominantly, however, in a mood of destructive rage on the Right–is attributable to many factors beyond the war on terror or the traumatic events of September 11. Therefore, even if you believe Osama’s destruction signals the imminent end of “the war on terror”–a highly debatable proposition in itself–a host of other incendiary factors show absolutely no sign of going away.
Wilentz attributes the bulk of the current escalation in craziness to the way in which conservative operatives like Karl Rove exploited fears stemming from “the war on terror” for political purposes in the wake of September 11. But much of the passion and paranoia on the Right stems from homegrown issues as old as the failed Goldwater presidential candidacy of 1964: the culture wars against alleged cultural relativism and decay; hostility towards the entire corpus of the New Deal and Great Society, suspicion of “Eastern elites” in both major parties, and nationalist rejection of multilateralism and “limited wars” in foreign policy–all of which sound quite familiar today. Indeed, those who call themselves “movement conservatives” (oldsters remember when “The Movement” carried very different connotations) have continued the same struggle ever since, and now consider themselves on the brink of final victory. They are not about to suddenly devolve into reasonable-sounding, compromise-seeking moderates at this late date. More specifically, a number of strains of paranoia in contemporary conservative politics have little or nothing to do with September 11, but they virtually guarantee the continuation of a savage political climate.
One of the most powerful wellsprings of anti-government extremism is the often-ignored but indefatigable anti-abortion movement. It’s important to remember that this significant faction in today’s Republican Party has millions of adherents who believe, to one extent or another, that America is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany in its tolerance and encouragement of a “Holocaust” that has killed millions of unborn children. These beliefs, in turn, stoke fears that the country’s next plausible step is the implementation of a program of government-backed euthanasia–the probable source of the “death panels” meme about health reform advanced by two of the most prominent anti-choice pols in America, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. One does not behave “civilly” towards mass murderers; one tries to expose their nefarious designs by hook or by crook.
Closely related to this first group is a parallel and overlapping body of politicized culture warriors who emerged when much of the conservative evangelical leadership abandoned its traditional church-state separatist principles on grounds that “a secular humanist” society had made the free practice of Christianity impossible. In this view, those who advocate, say, marriage equality for gays and lesbians are not civil rights advocates, but persecutors of those determined to obey God’s revealed will, or perhaps in an unholy alliance with Muslim proponents of Sharia law.
Another equally potent source of political paranoia comes from a group of righteous “tax rebels” who view the collection of taxes by the federal government as a form of sanctioned thievery. Since the 1970s, American politics has been periodically swept by wave after wave of tax revolts supported by people who do not simply think federal, state or local tax rates are too high, but that they are being subjected to an immoral redistribution of income benefitting unworthy people, most often the poor and minorities. This group’s anger at “looters” has often expressed itself in conspiracy theories about alliances between parasitical elites and the underclass, a staple of “producerist” protests throughout American history and in other countries as well. And more recently, it has manifested itself in panicked characterizations of modest proposals by the Obama administration–from imposing tighter regulations of the insurance and financial markets to returning the personal income tax to the pre-Bush levels of the 1990s–as part of a far-reaching socialist plot on the part of the president with the aim of destroying capitalism.
Finally, when grassroots paranoia proves insufficient, there is now a professional class of hate-mongers ready and willing to fan the flames. While the smear campaigns against war heroes like Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, and presidential nominee John Kerry might have gotten some of their juice from the “war on terror,” the iron conviction that negative campaigning almost always works has been drummed into a generation of political professionals of every persuasion. Moreover, outrageous politics has been proven to make a lot of money for its purveyors, from direct-mail-genius turned strategist Karl Rove to the many superstars like Glenn Beck created by the Murdoch media empire. And the U.S. Supreme Court’s war on campaign finance regulations has only made it easier than ever for wealthy interests to conduct surgical strikes of immense destructiveness on political enemies, with little or no accountability.
Viewed from this broader perspective, the incidents that strike Wilentz as emblems of a terror-driven political era seem more like examples of a less easily defined series of audacities committed during roughly the same period of time, from the Brooks Brothers Riot during the 2000 Florida recount, to the Terry Schiavo saga, to the viral spread of Santelli’s Rant, to the Tea Party protests of 2009 and 2010. Indeed, it’s also worth remembering that September 11 wasn’t the only traumatic event in recent American history: We’ve seen the first impeachment of a president since 1868, the first seriously disputed presidential election result since 1876, the largest changes in mass media since the 1950s, and of course, the worst financial crisis since 1929. And, given the ideological conformity of today’s Republican Party that has all but removed the internal checks on extremist rhetoric and tactics characteristic of “big tent” political parties, it is only natural to expect such paranoid politics to keep perpetuating themselves.
It would be wonderful if we could soon look back on the politics of the early twenty-first century as a bout of temporary madness touched off by a madman in Afghanistan, and ended by a merciful act of violence in Pakistan. But I’m afraid the craziness will be with us for a while.

One of the more disturbing and under-reported stories these days is the Republican campaign to obstruct voting by pro-Democratic groups. It’s happening in many states, and it’s a more serious threat than usual, as a result of GOP gains in November, which give them additional leverage in state legislatures.
The Miami Herald is doing a pretty good job of covering this campaign in Florida, and I would urge progressives to monitor the GOP’s voter suppression efforts at the state level more closely. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a report by the Herald’s Steve Bousquet on Democratic Senator Bill Nelson’s critique of Florida’s recent efforts at election law “reform”:

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson blasted state Republican lawmakers Monday for an election law overhaul that he says will block college students and military personnel from having their votes counted next year when he and President Barack Obama both seek re-election.
Then Nelson waded into a controversy of his own when he suggested the U.S. special forces that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden could be blocked from voting if the Legislature passes the bill.
“Should we deny those very military that carried out this very successful decapitating of the al-Qaida snake?” Nelson asked at a Capitol news conference. “Should we deny them because they have signed their voter registration card in a different way than they signed their absentee ballot overseas?”

Senator Nelson’s point is well-put and well-timed. Naturally, Florida Republicans went ballistic and accused Nelson of, gasp, political opportunism. Bousquet explains what the ‘reform’ proposals would do:

The target of Nelson’s wrath are bills awaiting floor votes in the last few days of the session. Under the proposed changes, voters could not update addresses at the polls unless they moved within their county, and third-party groups that don’t turn in voter registration forms within 48 hours would face $50-a-day fines.

The Herald’s Joy-Ann Reid elaborates in her Sunday article, “In Florida, GOP Squeezes Obama-friendly Voters“:

In Florida, the GOP-dominated legislature will soon pass laws squeezing the voting methods favored by minorities, college students and the working class.
Between them, the House and Senate bills would cut early voting from two weeks to one; force people who need to update their name or address on Election Day (say, due to marriage or divorce or a move by a military family) to vote on provisional ballots; and impose onerous restrictions on groups registering people to vote.
In the most extreme case, Republicans hope to pack the Supreme Court to undermine the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts Amendments voted through by a public who actually thought the authoritarians in Tallahassee would let a little thing like the Constitution come between them and their stranglehold on power.
And in an especially creative flourish, Rick Scott and his Cabinet have revived the spirit of Jim Crow by re-imposing restrictions on voting rights restoration that had been brought into the 21st Century by former Gov. Charlie Crist.

As for the motivation behind the FL GOP reforms, Reid explains:

Florida’s two-week early voting period was among the reforms meant to prevent embarrassments like the 2000 election. It was a hard-won victory for working people who sometimes can’t get to the polls if they work odd hours, or run out of time to resolve a problem at the polls.
Arguably, it also contributed to Obama’s Florida win in 2008, as black churches and college students took full advantage of the extra time (and the history-making opportunity)…Karen Andre, who ran the Liberty City/Little Haiti office for the Obama campaign, called the impact of early voting in those neighborhoods “amazing…It was raining constantly during early voting and people would not leave the polls,” she said.
Held harmless by the “reformers” will be absentee voting, which happens to be the method used most effectively by Republicans.

Early voting and same day registration “have been critical in getting sizable numbers of black, Hispanic and young voters to the polls, particularly in presidential elections,” according to the Reid Report’s “Florida Republicans’ War on Voting Continues.”
Lawsuits to stop the Florida GOP’s disenfranchisement campaign are expected, but prospects for a favorable decision are unclear at best. In any case, Democrats in Florida and other states facing similar shenanigans now have an extra incentive to break records in registering new voters and turning them out in ’12.

In news coverage and commentary on the political fallout of the killing of Osama bin Laden, there’s been something of a sense of rage at the idiots who think this event will re-elect Barack Obama in 2012. But actually, I’ve yet to hear anyone embrace this straw man. As Nate Silver has pointed out, the commentariat may be erring in the opposite direction of dismissing this development as meaningless. And that’s not likely at all, based on the historical record:

Historically, the correlation between a president’s overall approval rating and his rating on foreign affairs is stronger than is the case with his rating on the economy. If you place the two variables into a regression equation, it finds that foreign affairs is the more important component, although both are clearly statistically significant.

Many aspects of a president’s job performance, values and priorities, character traits, and communications skills combine to influence public perceptions, and public opinion research varies in its capacity to measure it all. Single-bullet theories of what decides presidential elections, and what can be disregarded as meaningless noise, are always seductive, but usually wrong.

Several weeks ago TDS published a strategy memo which argued that participatory systems of democratic decision-making would not only give Americans more confidence in government but would also generally produce more progressive policies than the beltway consensus as well.
The current debate over the budget deficit provides a rather dramatic example of this proposition. A commentary in the New York Times noted the following:

With help from some of our techno-genies, (New York Times economics editor David Leonhardt) devised an interactive graphic that lets you choose from a menu of tax increases and spending cuts and benefit tweaks until the budget balances. In short, he crowd-sourced the deficit.
Nearly 9,000 readers worked the puzzle. Individually, they were all over the map. But as a group, they accomplished the goal by splitting the difference: almost exactly half the savings came from tax increases, half from spending cuts. Collectively, readers seemed to realize that the hole we’re in is too deep to be filled by tax increases alone or spending cuts alone.
The result is broadly consistent with polls, which show that a majority of American voters hate most tax increases and a majority hate cutting entitlements, but — confronted with a choice of one, the other or some of each — they’ll go for the hybrid.

The current Washington debate, on the other hand, is grotesquely overweighted toward spending cuts. Even the so-called “compromise” Gang of Six plan is expected to produce a proposal requiring three dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of higher revenue.
As Jon Chait notes:

Why such a skewed distribution? They’re trying to forge a compromise between Democrats who have a commitment to support certain programs and Republicans who oppose higher taxes as a matter of principle — and, indeed, hew to a longstanding doctrine that refuses to acknowledge any connection between tax levels and the deficit…inevitably, any deal between such mismatched sides is going to be skewed.

Now, it is undoubtedly true that the average reader of the New York Times is more liberal than the median American voter. But the fact that national polling data indicates broadly similar preferences for an approach balanced between tax increases and spending cuts suggests that a participatory democracy exercise giving several thousand Americans the opportunity to design a plan would produce a result that would be more progressive, more democratic and more acceptable to most Americans than anything likely to come out of Washington.
An approach of this kind would also have one other benefit: Republicans would hysterically oppose the idea because they could not control the outcome. This would dramatically show Americans how little they really care about the opinions of ordinary citizens and how hollow are their claims to be genuine representatives of the “real America”.

The first of what will almost certainly be a series of efforts to quickly measure the public opinion “bounce” the president receives from the successful operation to remove Osama bin Laden from this world is now out, from the highly reputable duo of the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post.
And it’s about what you would expect: a nine-point jump in the president’s job approval ratings since April polls, and his highest “favorable” rating (56%) since 2009. His positive numbers among indies went up 10%, to 52%.
The bounce will fade, of course, over time unless it is supplemented by other good news or favorable impressions. But it’s something for potential 2012 candidates like Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee to think about while they sit on the fence.

Not one but two of the scenarios predicted by pundits as possible outcomes of yesterday’s national elections in Canada turned out to be accurate. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives did win a majority after two consecutive minority governments. And the leftish New Democratic Party will constitute the Official Opposition, displacing the long-dominant Liberals. Additionally, the Bloc Quebecois had a horrendous election, and the Greens finally won a seat in the House of Commons.
In theory, the Liberals could go the way of their British namesake, becoming a centrist third party while ceding pride of place to the NDP. Harper could overreach or screw something up and usher in a coalition government of the Center-Left in the next elections. And for that matter, the Grits (the Liberals’ nickname) could stage a comeback. It hasn’t been that long ago (1993, to be exact) that the Tories–or technically, their forebears the Progressive Conservatives–were reduced to just two seats in parliament, leading to the joke they had finally achieved gender parity in their delegation (one man, one woman).
In any event, the Canadian results can be interpreted as good news from both Right and Left perspectives. Time will tell which perspective really matters.

Assuming there’s no major immediate blowback in the Middle East from the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, what, realistically, can the White House expect in the way of better feelings about the president here at home?
Unsurprisingly, Mark Blumenthal at HuffPollster is all over the question with historical precedents and one very important distinct feature of the current atmosphere: Americans had largely given up on the prospect of a capture or killing of OBL, when it finally happened. This made it a “welcome surprise.”
Still, as Blumenthal notes, foreign-policy-related “bumps” in presidential approval ratings are rarely long-lived. As for the size of the one on the way, he suggests the 7-point boost George W. Bush got when Saddam Hussein was captured is the best analogy (though I doubt most Americans’ hatred of Saddam ever reached the levels earned by Osama).
All I’d add is that “welcome surprises” like Osama’s death may have a greater residual effect when they cut against common criticisms of the president involved. As I suggested in an earlier post today, certain attack lines on Barack Obama may never be as effective as they were the day before yesterday. But the most important factor is how the White House builds on this “surprise.” And I’m with J.P. Green on this: a brisk drawdown of troop levels in Afghanistan would be exactly what the political doctor ordered heading towards November of 2012.

This is not a foreign affairs site, so I won’t venture any guesses about the impact of the killing of Osama bin Laden on Pakistan, Afghanistan, or the Middle East–or for that matter, on the lethal capacity or intentions of al Qaeda and its imitators.
The event will probably produce a very short-lived boost for economic indicators, including stock markets, while slightly reducing the upward pressure on oil prices being caused by instability among oil-producing states.
The President will probably get an approval ratings bounce, even if reaction to bin Laden’s demise turns out to be very negative in the greater Middle East. But as Nate Silver cautioned early this morning, the bounce is almost certain to be short-lived, and the 2012 presidential election will almost certainly revolve around domestic rather than international issues.
Still, from a strategic point of view, the death of Osama on the direct orders of Barack Obama is going to complicate life a bit for the Republicans who want to replace him in the White House, and for the vast army of conservative gabbers who have spent the last three years depicting Obama as an enemy of Americanism at worst, and at best as a liberal naif who doesn’t understand the dangers of the world and is constitutionally incapable of acting forcefully to defend the country.
In particular, the idea that Obama is hopelessly addled by multilateralism and fear of offending friends and foes will be difficult to promote in the face of this dramatic action taken on his direct orders deep within Pakistan (very near the Pakistani Military Academy, as a matter of fact) and apparently without specific advance notice to Pakistani authorities. This aspect of the operation may or may not have been advisable in terms of U.S.-Pakistani relations, but it will definitely be a problem for the attack dogs of American conservatism.

I doubt anyone could script a better closer for the ‘birther’ idiocy than President Obama’s announcement that Navy Seals have killed Osama bin Laden as a result of a raid he personally green-lighted. No, the hard-core birthers aren’t going away, and the more paranoid among them will surely find fault with the President’s long-form birth certificate.
But what was behind birtherism from the get-go was a conscious attempt to raise questions about the President’s patriotism, and an effort to discredit him as somehow unamerican, actually alien. No doubt most birthers, like an absurdly high percentage of self identified conservative Republicans, also embrace the equally-ignorant/paranoid notion that the President is a Muslim, along with the bigoted subtext that all Muslims are anti-American. It’s a warped form of neo-McCarthyism, designed to discredit a progressive president’s patriotism and smear an entire faith.
That President Obama ordered the raid that finally ended the life of the top Islamic terrorist should put an end to most of this paranoid speculation. It should marginalize the adherents to the dark corners, where political lunatics dwell. No doubt, some will come up with conspiracy theories faulting Obama for not getting bin Laden sooner. But not many sensible voters will give them any credence.
From this point forward, few serious political candidates will continue to parrot the birther, Obama-as-secret-Muslim theories. GOP Presidential candidates will now pretend they always disdained such talk.
The most interesting question that now arises is will the President begin pulling our troops out of Afghanistan at a much faster rate? I certainly hope so, since he is not likely to have a better opportunity to do so with the cheering support of a grateful nation, putting him in even better position for reelection and strengthening Democratic candidates in 2012.