At Politico today, Glenn Thrush writes the first of what will be a vast number of articles about the state-by-state targeting strategy of the two parties in 2012, this time focusing on Obama’s map. There’s actually not a lot of mystery about its basic outlines; there are only so many winnable states and so many ways to get to 270 electoral votes. But the 2008 Obama campaign’s willingness to put resources in an “expanded map,” which helped produce upset wins in states like Indiana and North Carolina, has created expectations for surprising decisions on targeting this time around, and Thrush gets Obama sources talking about the possibility of Arizona and Georgia being in play.
Much of the piece, however, is absorbed by quotes from Republican officials mocking this or that possible targeted state on grounds that Democrats did horribly there in 2010. Here’s RNC political director Rick Wiley:

You are going into Arizona and Georgia to expand? Republicans control everything in those states. It’s lunacy. We welcome their expenditure of resources in states we are going to win. What’s next? Montana? Nebraska?

A lot of this talk on both sides is just spin. But for the record, there are at least three factors that make the 2010 performance of the two parties in this or that state a less than reliable indicator of 2012 results:
1) It’s a different electorate. Yes, dear readers, I apologize in advance for beginning to bring this up as incessantly as I did between the 2008 and 2010 elections, but it’s a big deal. The shape of the electorate in 2012 is likely to be much more similar to 2008 than to 2010, with very significant partisan implications thanks to the polarization of the electorate by age and ethnicity.
2) A “two-futures” election is entirely possible. The challenge for any re-election campaign in difficult economic times is to make the results turn on a choice of two future courses for the country rather than simply a referendum on the status quo. Democrats signally failed to do that in the midterm election of 2010. But Republicans are cooperating quite nicely with current Democratic efforts to draw attention to the radicalism of their agenda, most notably via heavy congressional GOP support for Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. Republican behavior over the debt limit issue could reinforce negative impressions that they’ve lurched in a dangerous direction more thoroughly than at any time since 1995 or maybe even 1964. The identity of their presidential nominee could also trouble voters, given the nature of the field as it has emerged so far.
3) Republicans aren’t helping themselves in battleground states. As noted here before, Republican administrations in numerous battleground states (especially Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan) are pursuing highly unpopular policies that seem deliberately provocative. This could hurt their presidential ticket in those states, though the precise effect is very difficult to predict (after all, the deep unpopularity of some Democratic governors in battleground states in 2008 didn’t seem to hurt Obama). Let’s just say is will be a serious complicating factor for the GOP in 2012. How does a presidential campaign in Florida deal with a political landscape dominated by Rick Scott? How does the Republican candidate avoid us-versus-them demands to exhibit solidarity with Scott Walker and John Kasich? If nothing else, traumatized Democratic groups in such states won’t have to rely strictly on the Obama campaign to motivate get-out-the-vote efforts.
These are just three of a host of factors that will affect targeting strategies in 2012. Republicans would be foolish to assume it will just be a do-over of 2010 with similar results, and Democrats obviously need to take advantage of every opportunity the GOP gives them.

When a candidate for President of the United States publicly talks about his or her campaign strategy, it’s typically because there are questions about said candidate’s viability that need to be addressed by the articulation of a plausible path to victory. That’s usually not the case with a candidate who is consistently running first in national polls. But in an interview with Piers Morgan, Mitt Romney went out of his way to let people know he was going to be pretty scarce on the early campaign trail, to the point where he claimed to be happy that Sarah Palin stepped on his formal announcement speech:

“In a lot of respects it’s the best thing that could happen to me,” he said on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight.”
“Right now, your greatest enemy is overexposure. People get tired of seeing the same person day in and day out”….
“People are going to start focusing on the elections probably after Labor Day,” he said.
“For us, I’m not doing a lot of TV – just a couple of very key interviews where I get a chance to talk about things I care about,” Romney revealed.
“Until Labor Day hits I’m going be pretty quiet.”

I’d say this solves any mystery about whether Romney is going to succumb to the temptation created by his relatively high Iowa poll numbers to compete in the August Iowa State GOP Straw Poll, unless he’s figured out a way to get thousands of Mitt-o-Maniacs on buses to Ames on August 13 without making any noise. He could still theoretically go for broke in the Caucuses a few months later, since a win might well propel him to the kind of winning streak that could lock up the nomination. But Iowa Caucus-goers tend to look dimly on candidates who refuse to help them hoover up money at the Straw Poll, which is the state party’s principal fundraiser.
More generally, his remarks indicate that he really does seem committed to a late start for his campaign. If he more or less skips Iowa, his strong position in New Hampshire and Nevada would indeed make it less important for him to get out there early. But this strategy runs the risk of exposing him to a slow bleed of support as other candidates pound him on RomneyCare day in and day out. It’s not as though his major problem is the possibility of committing some new gaffe; he committed his big gaffe by signing health reform legislation in Massachusetts in 2006, and then defending it to the point of no return.
Perhaps Mitt thinks if he marshals his resources carefully, he can manage early expectations and then drown the rest of the field in a sea of money. But contrary to his claim that nobody’s paying attention to the campaign, a lot of impressions are going to be made among Republican elites and the rank-and-file as well between now and Labor Day, and he’ll just have to accept the hand he’s dealt after rivals have begun to shape the contest.

In joining the widespread mockery towards Tim Pawlenty’s Big Economic Speech in Chicago yesterday, TNR’s Jonathan Cohn makes an interesting comparative point.

The contrast to the environment for Democrats seeking the presidency is fairly stunning. At this point four years ago, John Edwards and Barack Obama had put out detailed health care plans that had realistic assumptions, vetted by economists and health care experts, and actually looked pretty similar to what eventually became the Affordable Care act. Hillary Clinton would soon do the same. By the time the primary season was over, all three had also put out detailed plans on the economy and foreign policy.
They were running for president and so, no, they didn’t tell every “hard truth.” Their numbers didn’t always add up and some of their boasts turned out not be true. But, by and large, Democratic domestic policy proposals were both more detailed and more realistic than anything we’re seeing from the Republicans, partly because Democrats knew analysts would demand rigor and partly because they understood these plans could become templates for actual governing.

The notable wonkery of the 2008 Democratic candidates was quickly forgotten. In 2009, many Beltway pundits quickly joined conservative complaints that Barack Obama was “overreaching” on grounds that he was elected on a platform that didn’t extend much beyond a pledge to work with Republicans. He surely didn’t have any mandate to pursue health care reform, a subject on which even relatively small differences between the Democratic contenders were endlessly aired in debates, press releases, and even in paid campaign ads. Perhaps T-Paw is counting on a similar amnesia to afflict the commentariat if he is elected president.
But the threshold for being taken seriously on policy issues is definitely a lot lower for Republicans, if only because there are only so many ways you can say you want to cut high-end taxes and ravage the social safety net. Even the title Pawlenty is giving his economic program–“The Better Deal”–sounds like it was pulled out of the air ten minutes before he made his speech. By contrast, Democratic wonkiness seems almost quaint in its concern for facts and details.

When a bad idea tanks in politics, it’s smarter proponents usually move on to something else. But sometimes denial and delusion prolong the agony, as appears to be the case with Republican ‘Vouchercare.’ As TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira’s reports in his most recent ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages:

Amazingly, despite the strongly negative reaction so far to the Ryan budget’s plan to end Medicare as we know it, conservatives are continuing to back it, arguing that all they need is better messaging about the plan. This is clearly delusional. No message is going to change the simple fact that the public doesn’t like the plan and wishes it would go away…

Teixeira cites recent CNN polling data which “make this fact about as clear as polling can make it.”:

…58 percent say they oppose the plan to change Medicare with just 35 percent in favor. Moreover, strong opposition is present across the age spectrum. Those 50 and over oppose the plan 60-33 but those under 50 are nearly as strong in opposition (57-36). And independents, whom conservatives have so assiduously courted, oppose the plan 57-34.

If that’s not clue enough,

…Just 25 percent of those under 65 believe they will be better off under the plan when they are eligible to receive Medicare, compared to 43 percent who think they will be worse off. And among seniors–who of course are already receiving Medicare–a scant 13 percent think they will be better off, compared to 58 percent who believe their situation will be worse.

You would think the recent Dem pick-up in NY-26, in which GOP Vouchercare was a pivotal factor, would give the Republicans yet another clue. Not so, as Teixeira explains: “…Alas, common sense of any kind seems in short supply among today’s conservatives.”

It’s always noteworthy when a 2012 Republican presidential candidate decides to deliver a substantive speech instead of simply shoveling out red meat and expressing the radical sentiment that America is great and God is good. Tim Pawlenty, who despite his position as a smart-money favorite for the nomination remains mired in single digits in most polls, gave a Big Economic Speech in Chicago today, and it’s interesting how much sheer silliness was packed into it.
As many progressives are derisively noting, T-Paw tossed out what he called “the Google Test” for determining what government should and shouldn’t do: “If you can find a good or service on the Internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing it.”
Taegan Goddard spotted the genesis of this ludicrous “idea” right away:

It’s hardly a new idea, however. Former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith (R) called the same principle a “yellow pages test” more than 15 years ago in the pre-Google era.

T-Paw’s speechwriters might have observed that there is vastly more information on Google than in the Yellow Pages, to the point that there are few government functions other than, say, the firing of intercontinental ballistic missiles, that wouldn’t flunk the test. Updating Goldsmith’s “test” in this manner is really bone-headed.
”
But let’s give Pawlenty a break and write off the “Google Test” as a comic-book illustration of his devotion to privatization that he didn’t mean literally. Elsewhere in the heart of the speech, there stands a contradiction so blatantly obvious that it’s hard to believe he’s not aware of it. He goes on at some length promising to return the economy to the growth levels of the early 1980s and late 1990s. He then proposes the usual GOP-favored tax cut program (sharply lower rates on corporations and wealthy individuals and abolition of the capital gains and estate taxes, offset in theory by the elimination of “loopholes”), and then begins assaulting President Obama for wanting to eliminate the Bush tax cuts on high earners:

Regrettably — President Obama is a champion practitioner of class warfare. Elected with a call for unity and hope. He’s spent three years dividing our nation. And fanning the flames of class envy and resentment. To deflect attention from his own failures. And the economic hardship they have visited on America.
But class warfare is not who we are.
I come from a working class background. I didn’t grow up with wealth. But I’ve never resented those who have it.
The top ten percent of income earners already pay more than 70% of income taxes. We could jack that up to 80 or 90% — as President Obama would have us do. But that’s not the point.While it might make the class warfare crusaders feel better. It wouldn’t create a single job in America. And it would destroy many.

Er, say, Tim, weren’t those horribly confiscatory high-end tax rates in place during both of those go-go periods you say you want to bring back? And actually, weren’t top rates a lot higher during the early 80s, even after Reagan’s tax cuts?
As often as Democrats make this simple point, and Republicans just ignore it, it appears the latter have decided to just brazen it out on sheer assertion that the 80s and 90s were some sort of low-tax paradise that Obama is determined to destroy.
I wish I could say this, or the Google Test, is the silliest thing in Pawlenty’s deep, deep speech, but it’s not: he also announces he will demand the Fed take a hard-money policy aimed at coping with that great contemporary economic emergency, runaway inflation. To the extent that rising prices are a problem, it’s associated mostly with energy prices, which operate independently of general price levels. If the Fed is going to try to combat that, it would have to be through deliberately deflationary policies, which is the dumbest thing imaginable given the current state of the economy.
It says a lot about today’s GOP that the purveyor of this economic nonsense is usually regarded as a safe, semi-moderate, and above all tediously conventional pol. Just wait until Michele Bachmann delivers her Big Economic Speech!

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It was serendipitous: The day after Mitt Romney announced his presidential candidacy in a speech that focused heavily on claims that he’s the guy to turn around the economy, a jobs report came out that threw cold water on earlier optimistic sentiments about the prospects of the unemployed and of those threatened by depressed wages and unemployment. On the heels of lower growth estimates for the economy as a whole, this development creates a news context for the early phases of the 2012 election cycle that seems to be, as veteran Democratic pundit Mark Shields put it, “tailor-made for Romney.” And you can understand the argument. Romney has an extensive corporate background, looks the part of a CEO, and without question, he would prefer an issues environment focused on anything other than health care reform or the cultural issues on which he’s never inspired trust among conservatives.
If Romney wins the Republican presidential nomination, bad economic news will, of course, help him against Barack Obama, though that would be true of any GOP nominee. Perhaps it would help Romney even more, however, because his background makes him a plausible economic “pragmatist” who takes ideological oaths with a wink and crossed fingers. But will bad economic news help Romney win the Republican nomination? Don’t count on it.
While Romney’s business background endears him to pro-Republican business elites, it’s worth noting that such a personal history has rarely been a boon to Republican candidates in the past. Despite the GOP’s ancient pedigree as the party of business, being a successful corporate or entrepreneurial figure has never been treated as a prerequisite for a presidential nomination. With the arguable exception of George H.W. Bush, whose early adventures in the Texas oil industry were a less than prominent feature in his resume, there hasn’t been a Republican presidential nominee known mainly for his business experience since Wendell Willkie in 1940. Steve Forbes in 1996 and 2000, and Mitt himself in 2008, are among the few major candidates who could even make business experience a major calling card, and both these men campaigned more as ideologues–True Conservative alternatives to more moderate front-runners–than as job creators. Moreover, Romney’s background as a corporate “turnaround” (often a euphemism for downsizing) consultant makes his resume a mixed blessing. He’s identified more commonly with the Wall Street, not the Main Street, segment of the American business community, and that’s a problem for him in both the GOP primaries and any hypothetical general election.
Moreover, when you consider the state of contemporary conservative economic philosophy, it’s by no means clear that Republicans are looking for a highly competent, hands-on manager of the federal government’s economic development efforts. Indeed, the whole point of the current conservative push is to keep hands off the economy on the grounds that the federal government can’t make any meaningful positive contribution to economic growth, other than perhaps by opening trading relationships with other countries. And when it comes to reducing unemployment, most Republicans claim to believe that a Republican administration sworn to oppose tax increases and hell-bent on wholesale deregulation and major federal spending cuts will have an immediate positive effect on job growth, presumably by reassuring lenders and employers that uncertainty about future tax and regulatory trends is no longer warranted. Others, meanwhile, are candid in rejecting short-term economic trends–and particularly high unemployment–as top concerns, other than as the unfortunate price that some Americans must pay for past fiscal profligacy.
In this environment, it’s not clear what advantage Romney would have; his own economic message for 2012 is almost entirely negative, and it differs in no important respect from that of the other candidates. Indeed, Romney might even come off as lacking when compared to Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann, who have been consistently more extreme in their demands that congressional Republicans threaten economic havoc if their desired spending cuts or entitlement reforms aren’t enacted. And it should be obvious, in a party that equates economic growth with limited government, that Romney’s huge problem–the Massachusetts health reform plan he championed and still defends–is by no means eliminated by an increased focus on the economy. Romney himself, in his presidential announcement speech, knelt before the altar of small government by saying: “We are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy.” ObamaCare, and its close relative, RomneyCare, is without a doubt the preeminent symbol to conservatives of that alleged lurch into socialism.
Finally, continued bad economic news could undermine Romney’s most important asset (aside from money) in the nomination contest: the possibility that early caucuses and primaries could create a fight between Romney and one or two opponents perceived as being “unelectable” against Barack Obama (e.g., Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or Herman Cain). To put it bluntly, any development–including a struggling economy–that weakens Barack Obama’s standing going into 2012 also reduces the willingness of conservatives to accept a nominee they really don’t like in the name of electability. Romney will do best if Republicans think they must have him to win. In a worsening economy, it will be much easier for them to vote with their hearts, none of which belong to Mitt.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Friday’s job growth numbers, reported by the Labor Department, present a sobering picture for President Obama and the Democrats. With the pace of hiring down and the unemployment rate above 9 percent, the report suggests that the nation’s recovery is once again faltering. These numbers only underscore our continuing economic difficulties. And for a mix of political and policy reasons, the federal government has no significant new fiscal or monetary weapons left to deploy. As they head into an election that is certain to focus on the economy, the administration and congressional Democrats have no choice but to put the best face on a bad situation. What can they do?
As it happens, two recently released reports have explored public attitudes on the economy. Taken together, they illuminate the challenges Democrats will face in framing a credible and effective economic message. But they also shed light on surprising opportunities and, read closely, they just might point to the best way forward.
On Thursday, Andrew Levison published a memo asking “Why Can’t the Dems Make Jobs a Winning Political Issue?” His answer: While Democrats’ default response to high unemployment and slow growth is Keynesian, “a very strong anti-Keynesian perspective on job creation is extraordinarily widespread among American voters.” Large numbers of voters don’t think they have to choose between spending reductions and job creation because they see the former as one of the keys to the latter. Not only is government spending seen as a drag on the private sector, but also the most prominent Keynesian stimulus in recent years–the 2009 stimulus package–is widely regarded as a failure. Although a large majority of economists have concluded that it prevented a bad situation from becoming much worse, a majority of the American people believe that it failed. From their standpoint, the fact that unemployment continues to stagnate near 9 percent is proof enough that we can’t spend our way to prosperity. And the Obama administration helped to undermine the credibility of the stimulus early on by issuing an overly optimistic assessment of its likely effects.
To be sure, there are many “ambivalent” voters who are neither Keynesians nor supply-siders but rather are cross-pressured by these competing narratives, and each party needs to win them over. For Democrats to appeal successfully to the ambivalents, Levison contends, they must grapple with four realities:
1. “Simply repeating the traditional Democratic narrative–regardless of how frequently or emphatically–will not produce significant attitude change.”
2. “Doubts about the ability of government to create jobs reflect not only a disbelief in Keynesian remedies for unemployment but also the profound doubts many Americans have about government in general.”
3. “Attempts to convince the critical group of ambivalent voters have to be based on those voters’ distinct way of thinking about political issues–the desire to find a ‘common-sense’ middle ground.”
4. “The widespread progressive assumption that job creation should necessarily be just as popular today as it was in the 1950s and 1960s is simply wrong.”
Levison concludes that any effective Democratic message must tackle the public’s deep skepticism about government and convince the ambivalent portion of the electorate that the party’s economic prescription reflects common sense rather than obsolete assumptions.
Also on Thursday, a second report was unveiled, this time from Democracy Corps, a group headed by long-time Democratic survey researcher Stan Greenberg and party stalwart James Carville. Based on a new survey, it reaches conclusions that are broadly consistent with Levison’s. The report documents a substantial fall in public confidence that Republicans have the right approach to fiscal and economic policy. But Republican losses have not translated into Democratic gains, either for the party or for President Obama. The mood of the public with regard to the economy is pretty close to “a plague on both your houses.” Neither party has an approach to recovery and growth that the public regards as inspiring or even credible.
A majority of Americans continues to believe that the economy is either stagnating or getting worse, and only 44 percent overall (and 34 percent of Independents) approves of Obama’s handling of that issue. Core economic realities shape these attitudes. Forty-three percent of respondents have experienced reduced wages and benefits; 35 percent have actually lost a job; and 27 percent have lost health insurance for some period of time. Fully 20 percent have fallen behind on their mortgage. For these reasons, talking about progress on the economy–either actual or impending–only weakens the credibility of the speaker.
The public has clear views about the major economic problems that public policy needs to address. Thirty-seven percent named “high government spending, the budget deficit, and taxes.” The same percentage cited “the middle class and working people facing rising costs and declining income.” Close behind with 32 percent was the “outsourcing of American jobs and China creating rules that block American exports,” followed by a wasteful government dominated by special interests and not accountable to the people (26 percent), falling behind India and China in education and innovation (22 percent), and taxes and regulations that prevent businesses from hiring people and expanding (19 percent).

Read more…

In his New York Times column today Paul Krugman presents a strikingly clear explanation of the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to health care – a distinction between Republican “Vouchercare” and Democratic “Medicare”
Here’s how Krugman explains it:

Medicare is a government-run insurance system that directly pays health-care providers. Vouchercare would cut checks to insurance companies instead. Specifically, the program would pay a fixed amount toward private health insurance — higher for the poor, lower for the rich, but not varying at all with the actual level of premiums. If you couldn’t afford a policy adequate for your needs, even with the voucher, that would be your problem.

And most seniors wouldn’t be able to afford adequate coverage. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that to get coverage equivalent to what they have now, older Americans would have to pay vastly more out of pocket under the Paul Ryan plan than they would if Medicare as we know it was preserved.

Republicans have desperately tried to deny that the Ryan plan would transform Medicare into a radically different voucher system. They say instead that it would create a “new, sustainable version of Medicare”
Krugman replies:

I’ll just quote the blogger Duncan Black, who summarizes this as saying that “when we replace the Marines with a pizza, we’ll call the pizza the Marines.” The point is that you can name the new program Medicare, but it’s an entirely different program.

The mainstream media, with their characteristic tendency to define editorial “balance” as a point exactly midway between fact and bullshit, dutifully report the Republican spin that if they call their program “new improved Medicare” then the press has an obligation to describe it that way. The Republicans even went so far as to try to block an advertisement that attacked them for planning to “end Medicare” on the grounds that it was unfair to let anyone criticize the program using anything other than their preferred words.
The attempt to block the advertisement indicates how threatened the Republicans feel by the popular reaction to their proposal. There is no doubt they will pour tens of millions of dollars into ads pushing the “new, improved Medicare” spin and hope that that, along with their admirable message discipline, can simply smother the chorus of criticism their plan has unleashed.
Krugman’s devastatingly simple and accurate distinction between “Vouchercare” and “Medicare” provides Democrats with an extraordinarily powerful way to cut through the spin and keep the debate clearly focused on the basic issue.
Dems should use the terms “Republican Vouchercare” and “Democratic Medicare” at every possible opportunity and in every single discussion. This is a case where the most relentless message discipline will not only be extremely effective but fundamentally truthful as well.
“Republican Vouchercare” vs. “Democratic Medicare” – clear, powerful, accurate and compelling. Repeat it until the Republicans start pulling out their hair.

Whatever else you read today, don’t miss the New York Times editorial “They Want to Make Voting Harder?” which provides an excellent update on the GOP’s voter suppression campaign, which certainly appears to be targeting African American voters. It’s hard to select an excerpt, since every sentence of the editorial is substantive, but here goes:

…Early voting, which enables people to skip long lines and vote at more convenient times, has been increasingly popular over the last 15 years. It skyrocketed to a third of the vote in 2008, rising particularly in the South and among black voters supporting Barack Obama.
And that, of course, is why Republican lawmakers in the South are trying desperately to cut it back. Two states in the region have already reduced early-voting periods, and lawmakers in others are considering doing so. It is the latest element of a well-coordinated effort by Republican state legislators across the country to disenfranchise voters who tend to support Democrats, particularly minorities and young people.
Mr. Obama won North Carolina, for example, by less than 15,000 votes. That state has had early voting since 2000, and in 2008, more ballots were cast before Election Day than on it. Mr. Obama won those early votes by a comfortable margin. So it is no coincidence that the North Carolina House passed a measure — along party lines — that would cut the early voting period by a week, reducing it to a week and a half before the election. The Senate is preparing a similar bill, which we hope Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, will veto if it reaches her.

Racially-motivated? Sure looks like it:

…More than half of the state’s black votes were cast before Election Day, compared with 40 percent of the white votes. A similar trend was evident elsewhere in the South, according to studies by the Early Voting Information Center, a nonpartisan academic center at Reed College in Oregon. Blacks voting early in the South jumped from about 13 percent in 2004 to 33 percent in 2008, according to the studies, significantly outpacing the percentage of whites.
One of the biggest jumps was in Georgia, where, over the objections of several black lawmakers, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill in April that would cut back in-person early voting to 21 days, from 45 days. Florida just cut its early voting period to eight days, from 14. Florida also eliminated the Sunday before Election Day as an early-voting day; election experts note that will eliminate the practice of many African-Americans of voting directly after going to church.

It’s not only the south, however. The editorial notes that a similar effort is underway in Ohio. No doubt other of the 33 states that allow early voting and have GOP-controlled legislatures will follow suit. Shameless.
For Dems, the challenge is clear — develop programs to mobilize the constituency for early voting to turn out in the shorter time frames.