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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: June 2011

Cut, Cap, Balance: Zero To Do With Deficits

So in addition to the ancient no-tax-increase pledge administered to legions of Republicans by Grover Norquist, and the new anti-choice pledge being pushed by the Susan B. Anthony List, there’s yet another, more immediately significant pledge out there that would guarantee the debt limit confrontation on tap soon would go nuclear. It’s the “cut, cap, balance” pledge endorsed by a fairly wide array of conservative groups, and it goes like this:

I pledge to urge my Senators and Member of the House of Representatives to oppose any debt limit increase unless all three of the following conditions have been met:
Cut – Substantial cuts in spending that will reduce the deficit next year and thereafter.
Cap – Enforceable spending caps that will put federal spending on a path to a balanced budget.
Balance – Congressional passage of a Balancoed Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — but only if it includes both a spending limitation and a super-majority for raising taxes, in addition to balancing revenues and expenses.

What’s interesting about this “pledge” is that action to reduce budget deficits is strictly subordinated to the most central task of permanently limiting government in a way that would virtually require destruction of the New Deal and Great Society legacy. The “enforceable spending caps,” as explained in a Wall Street Journal column penned by the leaders of three of the groups endorsing this “pledge,” don’t involve any sort of “freeze” or “slowdown,” but instead a absolute limitation based on a percentage of GDP that has only been achieved at the peak of big economic booms (e.g., the end of the Clinton administration) or prior to the enactment of the modern social safety net (the 1950s and 1960s). The version of the balanced budget amendment that represent the “balance” portion of the pledge would also include a GDP limit, along with a super-majority requirement for tax increases that makes it clear deficit reduction is not the object of this exercise.
All of this serves to demonstrate, if the thundering support of conservatives for the Ryan budget wasn’t sufficient evidence, that the primary objective of the conservative movement on the fiscal front is the destruction of safety net programs that are too popular to assault frontally. Combined with their invariable, unchanging agenda of still more high-end tax cuts, the drive for spending limitations linked to GDP is a formula for perpetual budget deficits to be perpetually used to drive down government involvement in national life to levels not seen since the 1920s. And that, folks, is the whole idea.


A Product With No Demand

Earlier today J.P. Green offered a balanced assessment of Jon Huntsman’s general election prospects in the unlikely even that he wins the GOP presidential nomination. But it’s hard to imagine Obama’s former ambassador to China ever getting to that point. Here’s Dave Weigel’s brutal take on Hunstman after watching his launch event:

Huntsman 2012 is a joint production of the political media and the fun wing of the GOP’s consultant class. (His chief strategist is McCain veteran John Weaver, who made a hobby of criticizing McCain’s negative turn in 2008; his adman is Fred Davis, who made sure you knew Christine O’Donnell was not a witch.) There is no Huntsman groundswell. There was no Draft Huntsman movement. One metric to show this: He has about 5,000 Facebook fans. A reasonably busy senator has that many. The wildly ignored 2012 contender Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, has more than 120,000 fans. True, Huntsman’s team cleverly secured a second-place showing in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference [straw poll]. When that result came down, my colleague John Dickerson heard only two hands clapping.

As for the positive hype over Huntsman cleverly choosing the same Statue of Liberty site for his launch that Ronald Reagan used in his 1980 general election campaign: Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics points out that it’s the same place where the less-than-immortal 1996 campaign of Pete Wilson started out. Right now Huntsman’s destination looks more likely to resemble Wilson’s than Reagan’s, at least in 2012. His hunch that Republicans are looking for a nominee who is civil towards Barack Obama and even shares some of his views–but who eagerly embraces the least popular recent GOP initiative, the Ryan budget–just seems a bit counter-intuitive.


Democrats: Hang on a minute about those “anti-Keynesian” voters. There is indeed a large group who can accurately be described that way but they are not a “majority” and Democrats can still reach them – but not by repeating the traditional clichés

This item by Andrew Levison was originally published on June 15, 2011.
In a TDS Strategy Memo that got fairly wide attention last week I argued that “a very strong anti-Keynesian perspective on job creation is now widespread among American voters” and that therefore “simply repeating the traditional Democratic narrative — regardless of how frequently or emphatically — will not produce significant attitude change.”
In the process of being paraphrased and restated by other commentators, these two statements became transformed into two quite distinct assertions (a) that a “majority” of American voters no longer accept Keynesian measures and (b) as a result, Dems can no longer win their support for further action to create jobs.
Neither of these revised statements is correct. Let’s take them one at a time.
First, as far as how many Americans actually accept the explicitly anti-Keynesian view that cutting spending would really produce jobs, polling specialist Ruy Teixeira points to the following “forced choice” Washington Post poll as particularly revealing:

Do you think large cuts in federal spending would do more to create jobs or do more to cut jobs in this country?”
More to create jobs – 41%
More to cut jobs – 45%
Neither (vol.) -7%
Unsure — 7%

This is as close as one can come to an absolute, “gun to the head” forced-choice -the wording of the question doesn’t even offer the respondent a “neither” option — and even so 15 percent either said “neither” or that they just didn’t know. So, at the very best, only a minority of 40% of the American people really support the explicitly ideological anti-Keynesian position that cutting spending will create jobs.
On the other hand, however, the textbook Keynesian view that “cutting spending destroys jobs” also falls short of a majority. So, on this poll, Keynesians and anti-Keynesians seem roughly tied and neither has an absolute majority.
But look at what happens when respondents are given a third choice.

“If the government makes major cuts in federal spending this year in an effort to reduce the budget deficit, do you think these cuts will: [randomize] help the job situation/hurt the job situation, or not have much of an effect either way?”
Help – 18%
Hurt – 34%
Not have much of an effect either way — 41%

In this case the explicitly ideological anti-Keynesian view drops very dramatically to 18%. In contrast, a larger group of about a third of the sample takes a “Keynesian” view that spending cuts would hurt job creation while the remainder feels that spending cuts would “not have much of an effect either way”. The number of Americans who genuinely and passionately believe that massive spending cuts would really create millions of new jobs is therefore likely closer to the 20% figure in this poll than the 41% “forced choice” figure in the previous poll.
But what about those 41% in this second survey who say cuts would not have much of an effect either way?
A professor teaching a traditional Economics 101 course would say that people who think cutting spending during a deep recession would not have any effect at all are not only factually wrong but are also technically expressing an “anti-Keynesian” view. But many of the people choosing the “not much effect” option are not really making a serious macroeconomic forecast (i.e. “I predict that the net effect of major spending reductions on the unemployment rate will be zero”) but rather a view that is more accurately viewed as basically “skeptical” or “cynical” as opposed to ideologically anti-Keynesian.


When the Center Has Finished Shifting, It Gets Quiet

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on June 14, 2011.
After carefully watching and writing about last night’s first 2012 GOP presidential candidates’ debate, I woke up this morning and was surprised to hear a lot of talk, much of it from left-of-center observers, suggesting the candidates had shown all sorts of surprising maturity and moderation. This take by Jacob Weisburg of Slate is representative:

The GOP presidential field, while hardly dominated by political giants, appears far less outlandish than one might have predicted. At the first Republican debate in New Hampshire on Monday night, the seven candidates competed not for evangelical or libertarian favor, but for the status of someone plausible to compete with the president for swing voters.
Here are some of the things that did not happen in the debate. No one called Obama a socialist. No one gave ambiguous encouragement to the “birther” faction. While all of the candidates oppose gay marriage, no one bashed homosexuals. With the exception of the marginal former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, no one directly endorsed the Ryan Plan. Two months ago, every Republican in the House backed this plan; now, no one wants to talk about it.

In other words, the candidates did not howl at the moon, and did not go out of the way to associate themselves with a dangerously specific and unpopular Medicare proposal.
They did, however, with the exception of Herman Cain’s brief endorsement of food safety inspections, uniformly reject any positive government role in domestic affairs, and more specifically, any legitimate government role in the economy, other than keeping money tight and getting rid of its own regulations. If anyone thought government could do anything at all to help the unemployed other than give more tax dollars and power to the people who had laid them off and/or foreclosed on their mortgages, they kept it to themselves. They engaged in an orgy of angry union-bashing that was entirely unlike anything that’s ever happened in a debate among people running for president. And the sort of reticence Weisberg perceived on cultural issues basically meant that candidates who favor criminalization of abortion and re-stigmatization of gay people say they won’t make it a major campaign issue. And why should they? They all agree on these extremist positions.
And that’s an important thing to keep in mind: When the political center of a party, or a country, is in the process of shifting, there’s a lot of noise and conflict. When it settles in its new place, however, it gets very quiet. To a very great extent, that’s what has happened in the GOP. It is not a sign of “sanity” or “moderation;” simply one of consensus.
I also think a lot of the “how nice they are” assessments of the field after the debate reflect little more than the belief that Mitt Romney did really well and may actually get the nomination. That makes non-hardcore-conservatives feel better, if only because they tend to assume Romney’s own hardcore conservatism is fake.
All the talk about Mitt dodging a bullet could be a mite premature. Yes, Tim Pawlenty passed up a chance to hit Romney at his weakest point, “ObamneyCare.” Politico was so stunned by this turn of events they devoted their top story this morning to endless quotes from pundits and campaign strategists savaging poor T-Paw for cowardice or stupidity. But it’s a long way to the 2012 convention, and the assumption that last night’s scenario will be repeated in future campaign developments is entirely unwarranted. Perhaps Pawlenty thought other candidates would “go negative” in the debate before he had to. Or perhaps he figures he’d better become the “conservative alternative to Romney” before he has to worry about actually beating him. Who knows?
But the bottom line is that the GOP did not suddenly transform itself overnight. The drive to the right in the GOP has been underway for more than four decades. If it seems to have stopped, that’s probably becomes it has arrived at its destination.


Kicking the Unemployed When They Are Down

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on June 10, 2011.
Recent highly publicized national jobs reports showing private-sector gains being offset by public-sector losses have drawn attention to the macroeconomic costs of the austerity program already underway among state and local governments, and gaining steam in Washington. But the effect on the most vulnerable Americans–particularly those out of work–is rarely examined in any systematic way.
At The American Prospect, Kat Aaron has put together a useful if depressing summary of actual or impending cutbacks (most initiated by the states, some by Congress) in key services for the unemployed and others suffering from economic trauma. These include unemployment insurance, job retraining services, and family income supports. In some cases, federal funds added by the 2009 stimulus package are running out. In others, the safety net is being deliberately shredded.
A recent report from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes that the most important family income support program, TANF (the “reformed” welfare block grant first established in 1996) is becoming an object of deep cuts in many states, precisely at the time it is most needed:

States are implementing some of the harshest cuts in recent history for many of the nation’s most vulnerable families with children who are receiving assistance through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. The cuts will affect 700,000 low-income families that include 1.3 million children; these families represent over one-third of all low-income families receiving TANF nationwide.
A number of states are cutting cash assistance deeply or ending it entirely for many families that already live far below the poverty line, including many families with physical or mental health issues or other challenges. Numerous states also are cutting child care and other work-related assistance that will make it harder for many poor parents who are fortunate enough to have jobs to retain them.

This is perverse precisely because such programs were once widely understood as “counter-cyclical”–designed to temporarily expand in tough economic times. Not any more, says CPBB:

To be effective, a safety net must be able to expand when the need for assistance rises and to contract when need declines. The TANF block grant is failing this test, for several reasons: Congress has level-funded TANF since its creation, with no adjustment for inflation or other factors over the past 15 years; federal funding no longer increases when the economy weakens and poverty climbs; and states — facing serious budget shortfalls — have shifted TANF funds to other purposes and have cut the TANF matching funds they provide.

This retrenchment, mind you, is what’s already happening, and does not reflect the future blood-letting implied by congressional Republican demands for major new cuts in federal-state safety net programs–most famously Medicaid, which virtually all GOPers want to convert into a block grant in which services are no longer assured.
If, as appears increasingly likely, the sluggish economy stays sluggish for longer than originally expected, and both the federal government and states continue to pursue Hoover-like policies of attacking budget deficits with spending cuts as their top priority, it’s going to get even uglier down at the level of real-life people trying to survive. If you are unlucky enough to live in one of those states where governors and legislators are proudly hell-bent on making inadequate safety-net services even more inadequate or abolishing them altogether, it’s a grim road ahead.


The New Abortion Litmus Test

It’s hardly news that the anti-choice movement has all but conquered the Republican Party. Pro-choice Republicans (or at least pols who call themselves that because they don’t favor complete abolition of abortion rights) still exist, but are few and far between. At the presidential level, the self-described Right to Life Movement has an effective veto on candidates, as was evidenced once again in 2008, when Rudy Giuliani’s campaign crashed and burned and John McCain was prevented from selecting Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge as his running-mate.
But impatient anti-choicers, who have always suspected Republican pols of playing them for suckers by making their concerns a low priority once in office, are ratcheting up the demands in this presidential cycle. The Susan B. Anthony List, a relatively new group modeled on the pro-choice organization Emily’s List, has devised a new and fairly complex pledge that it is urging Republican presidential candidates to take. Here it is:

FIRST, to nominate to the U.S. federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, not legislating from the bench;
SECOND, to select only pro-life appointees for relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions, in particular the head of National Institutes of Health, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health & Human Services;
THIRD, to advance pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs, and defund Planned Parenthood and all other contractors and recipients of federal funds with affiliates that perform or fund abortions;
FOURTH, advance and sign into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.

The third and fourth planks represent the latest strategic initiatives of the RTL movement: systematic defunding of institutions providing not only abortions but contraceptive services, and “fetal pain”-rationalized bans on abortions after 20 weeks, which have been enacted in several states (the SBA List wants similar federal legislation, which would, of course, trigger a major constitutional test in the federal courts).
So far five candidates (Bachmann, Gingrich, Paul, Pawlenty and Santorum) have signed the SBA pledge, and two–Cain and Romney–have refused to do so (it doesn’t appear Huntsman has been pushed to pledge just yet; Gary Johnson also wouldn’t sign it). The excuses made by the two non-signatories are a bit weak: Cain objects to the idea that the president would have to “advance” the abortion ban legislation, on grounds that’s the legislative branch’s responsibility. Romney said he had issues with too-broad language on both funding and nominations.
Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann both went after Romney on this incident, using it to remind Republican voters of Mitt’s shaky past on abortion policy.
Will this brouhaha matter over time? Perhaps, but only at the margins. SBA isn’t the only anti-choice group out there, and many conservatives would advance a different strategy on this subject, and/or don’t like public litmus tests.
But it does provide another kernal of doubt that Mitt Romney is “one of us” in the minds of conservative activists, particularly in Iowa and the South, who don’t buy the idea that social issues aren’t significant in this election cycle.


Huntsman’s Scenario More of a Guantlet

Jon Huntsman announced his campaign for the presidency today, which should enliven the campaign for the GOP nomination and possibly set the stage for deepening ideological divisions within his party.
Matt Bai’s portrait of Huntsman in the Sunday New York Times magazine will not cause a lot of concern in the Obama campaign. True, Huntsman won his re-election (Utah governorship) with 78 percent of the vote and Obama ’08 campaign manager David Plouffe said the possibility of a Huntsman campaign back then made him a “wee bit queasy.”
But Bai’s profile of Huntsman reveals an oddly detached and dispassionate candidate with an upper-class pedigree, as heir to his father’s chemical industry fortune. His mother is the daughter of an LDS apostle. Money won’t be a problem for Huntsman, who expects to raise additional dough from wealthy Republicans who have some moderate ‘social issue’ views, place a premium on lowering the capital gains tax, but can’t get their heads around the Romney thing.
Huntsman’s bet for the Republican nomination has to be that the tea party candidates will cancel each other out, and there will be enough Romney-phobes to give him a real shot. This scenario presupposes more charisma than Huntsman may have, although NYT columnist Frank Rich’s description of Romney as “an otherwordly visitor from an Aqua Velva commercial, circa 1985” is not so far off the mark.
It also assumes, not without some evidence, that Pawlenty may be a non-starter. But there’s always the chance that Huntsman’s campaign might boomerang and divide what’s left of the GOP’s moderate conservatives, end Romney’s hopes and make possible the election of one of the more conservative candidates.
Assuming that Huntsman somehow grabs the GOP nod, he will have a tough trek, make that a gauntlet-run, in the general election if the economy improves significantly in the next year. Without an economic axe to grind, Huntsman’s case weakens considerably and he will likely have some ‘splainin’ to do regarding his increasingly sharp attacks against the guy who gave him his most important job. Hard to see how he gets through it without being branded in the minds of many “character voters” as a disloyal opportunist/hypocrite. That baggage isn’t going to magically disappear.
Then there is the flip-flopping, as described by Wayne Holland, chairman of the Utah Democratic party, in Nia-Malika Henderson’s article on Huntsman’s entry in today’s WaPo:

The Jon Huntsman I know supported Barack Obama and President Obama’s recovery act, but said it should have been larger…The Jon Huntsman I know worked with Democrats to pass the cap-and-trade program and said at the time it was the only alternative to a carbon tax. The Jon Huntsman I know signed into law a health insure exchange and proposed an individual mandate for Utah. It now appears that has all changed.

If the economy tanks further, Huntsman would have a decent chance, as would just about any GOP nominee, north of the lowest tier. Even then, however, Huntsman’s lack of any discernible connection to everyday working people could be a formidable obstacle.
JFK proved that brainy rich guys can connect with the pivotal white working-class. But it does require an ability to project warmth, a good sense of humor, compassion and maybe a bit of a track record. I’m not seeing it in Huntsman’s persona, as viewed through Bai’s profile. Huntsman’s working-class cultural creds are pretty thin — apparently his favorite sports are motocross and bungee-jumping. His handlers and ad-makers will have a tough assignment making him seem like a ‘regular guy.’ All in all, it seems fair to say that the GOP field has not been impressively strengthened by Huntsman’s entry.


GOP Immigration ‘Reform’ Rotting Crops, Endangering Farms

On May 29, I commented on an article about the, ahem, fruits of Republican immigration ‘reform,’ which have included labor shortages, rotting crops and pissed-off farmers in Georgia. Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Constitution has an update on the disastrous after-effects of the enactment of the legislation. An excerpt:

After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.
…Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.
The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

The solution? Gov. Deal now wants to deploy an estimated 2,000 unemployed criminal probationers who live in s.w. Georgia to pick what’s left of the rotting crops. As Bookman says, “Somehow, I suspect that would not be a partnership made in heaven for either party.” Bookman adds:

The pain this is causing is real. People are going to lose their crops, and in some cases their farms. The small-town businesses that supply those farms with goods and services are going to suffer as well. For economically embattled rural Georgia, this could be a major blow…We’re going to reap what we have sown, even if the farmers can’t.

Other possible “solutions” to the farm worker crisis being bandied about include raising wages — and consumer prices — to hopefully attract more workers and weakening enforcement of the new law, which is not likely to impress migrant farm workers much. Can prison labor be far behind?
Latinos are 8.8 percent of Georgia residents, but approximately 3 percent of Georgia’s registered voters, so the Republicans undoubtedly figure they won’t pay too much of a political price for the new law. Harassing the undocumented workers of Georgia’s leading industry may score a few points with wingnut ideologues for the Republican Governor and state legislators. But Dems may just have gained an edge with Georgia’s farmers, who live and work in the real world.


Teixeira on Obama’s White Working Class Threshold

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira provides a solid analysis at The New Republic today of precisely how well Barack Obama needs to do among white working-class voters to win re-election in 2012:

In 2008, during his otherwise-solid election victory, Obama lost the white working class vote by 18 points. In 2010, however, things got much worse: Congressional Democrats’ experienced a catastrophic 30 point deficit among the same group. While the first number is a figure Obama could live with repeating, the second could very well prove fatal.

Teixeira goes on to explain that white working class voters, which have been trending Republican heavily in presidential contests since 1996, are particularly important in key swing states:

White working class voters could end up representing as much as 56 percent of Ohio voters in 2012, judging from Census voter supplement data. Anything close to a 30 point deficit in 2012 will almost definitely sink Obama in this state, no matter what happens with the friendlier portions of the Ohio electorate….
Contested states with high proportions of white working class voters like Minnesota (60 percent white working class in 2012), Wisconsin (58 percent), Pennsylvania (55 percent), and Michigan (53 percent) could easily be flipped if this group flees from Obama.

In the long run, of course, white working class voters represent a shrinking percentage of the electorate. But this one-time bulwark of the Democratic Party can still decide elections.

[T]he good news for Obama is that the level of support he needs from this group of voters is not terribly high. While a 30 point deficit might sink him, he could survive pretty easily on a 23 point deficit, John Kerry’s margin in 2004. That Obama would likely win with this very large deficit, while Kerry lost, indicates just how much the demographics of the country have changed in the 8 years since Kerry’s defeat. But while the bar for Obama may be lower, he still needs to clear it, and at the moment, that’s looking like a real challenge.