if you haven’t seen it yet, click on over to James Carville’s “What should the White House do? Panic!” at cnn.com for some of the toughest unsolicited advice President Obama is likely to receive. Progressives who have been urging the President to burn a few disfunctional bridges will like what Carville has to say, as one of the few strongly opinionated political strategists who has a lengthy track record to back it up. The gist:

This is what I would say to President Barack Obama: The time has come to demand a plan of action that requires a complete change from the direction you are headed.
I don’t know how else to break this down. Simply put:
1. Fire somebody. No — fire a lot of people. This may be news to you but this is not going well. For precedent, see Russian Army 64th division at Stalingrad. There were enough deaths at Stalingrad to make the entire tea party collectively orgasm.
Mr. President, your hinge of fate must turn. Bill Clinton fired many people in 1994 and took a lot of heat for it. Reagan fired most of his campaign staff in 1980. Republicans historically fired their own speaker, Newt Gingrich. Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. For God’s sake, why are we still looking at the same political and economic advisers that got us into this mess? It’s not working.
Furthermore, it’s not going to work with the same team, the same strategy and the same excuses. I know economic analysts are smart — some work 17-hour days. It’s time to show them the exit. Wake up — show us you are doing something.
2. Indict people. There are certain people in American finance who haven’t been held responsible for utterly ruining the economic fabric of our country. Demand from the attorney general a clear status of the state of investigation concerning these extraordinary injustices imposed upon the American people. I know Attorney General Eric Holder is a close friend of yours, but if his explanations aren’t good, fire him too. Demand answers to why no one has been indicted.
Mr. President, people are livid. Tell people that you, too, are angry and sickened by the irresponsible actions on Wall Street that caused so much suffering. Do not accept excuses. Demand action now.
3. Make a case like a Democrat. While we are going along with the Republican austerity garbage, who is making the case against it? It’s not the Democrats!
We are allowing the over-educated, over-explanatory bureaucrat by the name of (Congresssional Budget Office director Douglas) Elmendorf do all the talking. Do not let him make your case. Let us make your case. Is it any wonder that we were doing better in the middle of the stimulus-spending period than we are doing with the austerity program?
4. Hold fast to an explanation. Stick to your rationale for what has happened and what is going to happen under your leadership. You must carry this through until the election (never say that things are improving because evidently they are not).

Lest we forget the stakes, Carville has a reminder:

As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation. I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.
The course we are on is not working. The hour is late, and the need is great. Fire. Indict. Fight.

Carville has generated some hot buzz with this one. Straight talk from a proven winner.

I don’t often disagree with political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, but when I do it is usually over one subject: the role of “elites” versus voters in the presidential nominating process. Jonathan often makes good points on this subject, and helps bring some clarity to it by treating “elites” as including powerful issue advocacy groups and committed activists, not just some shadowy band of Beltway pundits and money bundlers.
But in a recent New Republic piece, Jonathan goes too far in dismissing the “visible primary” of caucuses and primary elections in favor of the “invisible primary” of “party actors” which precedes it. He does so in order to minimize the important of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry’s “liberal heresies,” choosing Romney’s Massachusetts health plan and Perry’s 1988 endorsement of Al Gore for president as the leading candidates’ most serious problem with the party “base.” I actually don’t agree the Gore endorsement is at all Perry’s biggest “heresy” (it took place six presidential election cycles ago, when Perry was still a Democrat and Gore was generally perceived as the most moderate-to-conservative in the Democratic field); I’d say his position on immigration, and to some extent his denunciations of Social Security, are bigger problems for him with “the base.”
But Jonathan’s broader argument is that by the time Republican elites have narrowed the field or even chosen a nominee, they will have found ways to take their favored candidates’ heresies off the table or rationalize them.
Now obviously, if all the elites have done is to narrow down the field to, say, Perry and Romney, then if anything these two candidates’ heresies will get even more attention than ever from their rivals’ advocates as a competitive environment intensifies. So the only way they get taken off the table is for an actual nominee to be all-but-selected before Iowans caucus next February or January. And indeed, Jonathan seems to think this will probably be the case:

It certainly is possible that voters could reject the choice of candidates they’re being offered; some Republican operatives probably worry that voters will reject Romney on the basis of his religion regardless of what opinion leaders say, or Perry because they fear losing their Social Security benefits (a far less symbolic issue). And in the unlikely event that party actors split and we get a long, drawn-out contest, then voters really will choose between two viable candidates with little or conflicting guidance from visible party actors. If that happens, these issues (or anything else) might make the difference. But the most likely outcome is that party actors winnow the field down to one real candidate by Iowa, and that neither of these issues is particularly important in making that choice.

Now I’m not sure he means this pre-selection will probably occur before or as a result of the Iowa Caucuses, but it’s not a very good bet either way. Indeed, since the emergence of the Iowa Caucuses in the 1970s, the GOP nomination (in contests not involving an incumbent) has never been decided before or by Iowa. If you had to pick a “decider” state, it would probably be South Carolina, the third (or since 2008, the fourth) state, which played a crucial role in 1988, 1996, 2000 and 2008. Sure, you can claim that one candidate had a big advantage earlier on, but losses in Iowa by Ronald Reagan in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1988, and John McCain (who barely competed in the state) in 2008 threw off some of those initial calculations, as did New Hampshire losses by Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. And a meaningful role for actual voters does not strictly depend on a deep split among elite “party actors” (though they often do split). Virtually every significant power center in the Republican Party backed George W. Bush in 2000, and it required a white-knuckle/bare-knuckle comeback by Bush in South Carolina to head off an uprising by John McCain.
As for 2012, it does look like “party actors” are going to be divided between Romney and Perry well into the “visible primary,” unless something big changes between now and the end of the year, in no small part because of nervousness over the kind of “heresies” Jonathan tends to dismiss. Some Republicans think RomneyCare will make it difficult for Mitt to effectively exploit the unpopularity of ObamaCare in a general election campaign; some also think Perry’s Social Security rhetoric would make him exceptionally vulnerable against Obama. And there are “party actors” who don’t much trust either pol because of the inconsistency shown by their “heresies.”
So yeah, backers of these two candidates really do need to worry about their vulnerabilities during the nominating process, particularly when actual voters get involved and the real deal goes down.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The most significant policy disagreement in last week’s Republican debate went almost unnoticed. The moderator asked Jon Huntsman, “What does Governor Romney not get about China?” After noting America’s economic weakness and the need to focus on our tasks here at home, Huntsman remarked, “I’d have to say, Mitt, now is not the time … to enter a trade war.”
Behind this exchange lies a remarkable development. A few days before the debate, Romney’s campaign released “Believe in America,” a book-length economic plan. In most respects it summarized standard conservative positions. To be sure, the plan didn’t go as far toward reducing individual income taxes as ardent supply-siders would like, and it kept its distance from Paul Ryan’s politically explosive Medicare proposal. Still, it offered almost no outright surprises … except on trade. In seven bluntly stated pages, Romney staked out the toughest position against China that any mainstream national politician has adopted in a long time. The following quotations provide a sense of its tone:

Having tried and failed with ‘engagement,’ the Obama administration now behaves as if the United States has no leverage in dealing with a country that routinely steals our designs, patents, brands, know-how, and technology. …
This is not all happenstance. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate policy by the Chinese government that seeks to build up its economy by piggybacking on Western technological success. …
The Chinese government facilitates this behavior by forcing American companies to share proprietary technology as a condition of their doing business in China. China’s unfair trade practices extend to the country’s manipulation of its currency. …
And it uses a variety of unfair practices–for instance, inventing regulations and standards that only Chinese companies can meet, and artificially lowering costs for Chinese companies–to tilt the playing field in its favor. Instead of responding forcefully, the Obama administration has acted like a supplicant.

To counter these practices, Romney proposed a new approach, which begins with “unilateral steps” to get China’s attention. He invoked his private-sector background: “Anyone with business experience knows that you can succeed in a negotiation only if you are willing to walk away. If we want the Chinese to play by the rules, we must be willing to say “no more” to a relationship that too often benefits them and harms us.” The initial steps include:

stopping counterfeit and fraudulently labeled products at the border;
going to courts and the WTO to challenge practices that violate existing laws and treaties;
imposing targeted tariffs and economic sanctions; making common cause with our allies to thwart mandatory technology transfers;
designating China a currency manipulator and imposing countervailing duties;
and barring U.S. government procurement of Chinese goods and services unless the Chinese government ends its discrimination against U.S. goods and services.

Romney’s plan concluded with a ringing pronouncement:

The United States does not have to accept forever the practices that have led to a huge and seemingly perpetual trade deficit with China. … The time has come to lay out a series of steps that China must take to become a responsible member of the global economy. And the time has also come to lay out the consequences that would accompany its failure to make rapid progress toward that end.

This plan has a significance that goes well beyond the policy specifics and their immediate political implications. Mitt Romney is running for president as the champion of the business community. It is hard to believe that his hard-hitting stance toward China was not developed in close consultation with his numerous contacts in that community. If his views reflect theirs, it means that U.S. firms with substantial interests in China have shifted their position in ways that could prove momentous for future relations between the world’s two largest economies.
Twenty years ago, Bill Clinton campaigned against President George H. W. Bush on the grounds that Bush had placed our diplomatic and commercial relationship with China ahead of considerations such as human rights and democracy. Once Clinton took office, systematic and sustained pressure from the U.S. business community forced the administration to relent, and the status quo ante was mostly restored. But if Romney is accurately representing the views of his core supporters, the business community has now concluded that the status quo no longer serves its interests and that the playing field has tilted too much to be accepted.
In a lead editorial, the Wall Street Journal accused Romney of being willing to risk a “trade war” for crass political reasons, and it argued that giving Americans the impression that a confrontation with China will bring lost jobs back to the United States is offering “false hope.” Maybe so. But Romney seems willing to run for president on the proposition that there’s leverage we have failed to exploit and that a tough stance will force China to change course. If he’s elected on that basis, he’ll have no choice but to test that proposition.
It’s possible, of course, that Romney’s tough China stance is intended mainly to sway primary electorates in trade-sensitive states such as South Carolina and that he intends to pursue a steady-as-you-go strategy if he’s elected president. If so, he’s fooling himself. As the Clinton case illustrates, campaigns have consequences. In September 1992, Bill Clinton declared that “We will condition favorable trade terms with repressive regimes–such as China’s Communist regime–on respect for human rights, political liberalization, and responsible international conduct.” And that’s what he did–at first. Seventeen months into his presidency, in May 1994, after much turmoil inside his administration, he finally announced a course correction: “I am moving … to delink human rights from the annual extension of most-favored nation trading status for China.”
Today, the Chinese and American economies are far more deeply intertwined than they were two decades ago, and the potential costs of disrupting the relationship have risen accordingly. If Romney becomes president, we’ll find out whether the business community has really changed its mind about China, and how much heat he’ll be willing to endure if they haven’t. We’ll learn, as well, whether the Chinese government will respond with compromise or confrontation. And as we do, the future of the world economy will be at stake.

There is simply no end to Republicans screwing around with election laws to gain political advantage at every opportunity. The latest GOP scam, well-reported in Mother Jones by Nick Baumann, has Pennsylvania Republicans planning to do away with the state’s winner-take-all electoral vote allocation, and replace it with a congressional district-based allocation system. The goal, of course, is to dilute the electoral power of a pivotal state that awarded its 21 electoral votes to Senator Obama in 2008. As Baumann explains:

The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college. Every political junkie knows that the presidential election isn’t a truly national contest; it’s a state-by-state fight, and each state is worth a number of electoral votes equal to the size of the state’s congressional delegation. (The District of Columbia also gets three votes.) There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs; win 270, and you’re the president.
Here’s the rub, though: Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan–which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett–Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes–one for each of the state’s two senators–would go to the statewide winner.)
This could cost Obama dearly. The GOP controls both houses of the state Legislature plus the governor’s mansion–the so-called “redistricting trifecta”–in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats.

Cute, huh? Baumann fleshes out the scam:

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight–six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state’s two senators) for winning the state. Since Obama would lose 12 electoral votes relative to the winner-take-all baseline, this would have an effect equivalent to flipping a medium-size winner-take-all state–say, Washington, which has 12 electoral votes–from blue to red.* And Republicans wouldn’t even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.
If the president wins the states John Kerry won in 2004 plus Ohio–otherwise enough to give him a narrow win–changing the electoral vote rules in Pennsylvania alone would swing the election to the Republican nominee.

Former PA Governor Ed Rendell says Dems should file a lawsuit against the measure, if it is enacted. But The GOP plan may be legit within the parameters of the Constitution, according to law professor Karl Manheim, quoted in Baumann’s article. “The Constitution is pretty silent on how the electors are chosen in each state,” says Manheim, adding that the Republican plan “would certainly increase the political advantage of politically gerrymandering your districts.”
Worse, the time seems ripe for Republican electoral vote manipulation to spread, as Baumann reports:

…After their epic sweep of state legislative and gubernatorial races in 2010, Republicans also have total political control of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, three other big states that traditionally go Democratic and went for Obama in 2008.* Implementing a Pennsylvania-style system in those three places–in Ohio, for example, Democrats anticipate controlling just 4 or 5 of the state’s 16 congressional districts–could offset Obama wins in states where he has expanded the electoral map, like Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, or Virginia. “If all these Rust Belt folks get together and make this happen, that could be really dramatic,” says Carolyn Fiddler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which coordinates state political races for the Dems.

Chris Bowers reports at Daily Kos that Republicans are taking the opposite tack in Nebraska — changing to a winner-take-all electoral vote system to benefit their party’s candidate. (In 2008, Obama picked off one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes).
Fiddler adds: “This would effectively extend the effect of gerrymandering beyond Congress and to the Electoral College. State legislatures could gerrymander the Electoral College.” John Fortier, an electoral college expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Reuters, “It would be harder for Democrats to win in a close election if this goes through.”
Baumann doesn’t discuss what could happen in the event of an anti-incumbent sweep next November. If fed-up voters give Republicans control of the Senate and Democrats control of the House, it’s possible the GOP manipulations could backfire, as Democrats take back districts now held by the GOP. But Republican gerrymandering in place would offset the effects of an anti-incumbent sweep to some extent.
Another backfire scenario would occur if Republicans win a majority of PA votes, and Dems hold some districts and get a chunk of PA’s electoral votes. “Despite Obama’s easy win in Pennsylvania three years ago, he is now broadly unpopular there, with 52 percent of Pennsylvanians saying he doesn’t deserve reelection in a recent Franklin and Marshall College poll.,” reports Aaron Blake in WaPo’s The Fix.
It’s a gamble, but it looks like one the PA Republicans like, since they haven’t won any of the state’s electoral votes since 1988. The National Popular Vote Compact probably won’t be in place in time to offset the electoral vote shenanigans for 2012. But the GOP’s manipulation of election laws certainly underscores the importance of the compact as a potential remedy leading to direct popular election of the president down the road.
After the 2000 fiasco, many called for direct popular election of the President of the United States, but the calls for reform faded out. It’s even more clear today, however, that it is the only way to permanently put an end to the GOP’s campaign to undercut the will of the people in electing our President. It should be a top priority the next time Dems get the votes to make it happen.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The fireworks-laden CNN/Tea Party Express Republican debate on Monday night didn’t much change the chattering class’s assessment of the candidates, with most pundits interpreting the pounding that Perry received as a confirmation of his dominance of the field. Because he was attacked from the “left” on Social Security and the “right” on immigration and his controversial HPV vaccination program, he’s being hailed as “the Man in the Middle,” which is where you want to be.
This sanguine interpretation depends heavily on the assumption that the attacks on Perry somehow cancel each other out. But there’s no indication that Perry’s rabid denouncements of Social Security are winning him accolades from voters on his right flank–and, indeed, they may even be hurting him among these folks as well. Perry, in other words, isn’t just vulnerable to the roundabout argument that denouncing Social Security will make him less electable in November of 2012; it makes him less “nominatable” as well.
The idea that Tea Party supporters and other hard-core conservative voters just love Perry’s harsh rhetoric about Social Security–an assumption that television commentators repeated often after the Florida debate–is actually not all that well-supported. While sporadic polling on the subject indicates that conservative Republicans, including Tea Party folk, care more about reducing the budget deficit than about protecting entitlement programs, and are marginally more open to changes in Social Security and Medicare than the average voter, there is certainly no evidence they share Perry’s claim that it was unconstitutional from the beginning and should ultimately be junked in favor of some state-run alternative (the latter idea is so completely eccentric that it has never been polled, though that will likely change). And a poll released on Monday by CNN tested Perry’s “monstrous lie” and “failure” characterizations of the program and found Tea Party supporters rejecting it by a 59-40 margin; Republicans, in general, reject it 69-31 and conservatives reject it 67-32.
Looking a little deeper, there is anecdotal evidence that to the extent very conservative voters are critical of Social Security and Medicare, it’s as a subset of general hostility to federal spending. Compared to other kinds of federal spending, however, they are golden–not just because Republicans and Tea Party supporters disproportionately benefit from retirement programs thanks to their high relative age, but because they view them as earned benefits that are morally superior to “redistributive” or “welfare” programs. Here’s what The American Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie heard on a recent visit to a Tea Party event in South Carolina:

During a campaign event in Myrtle Beach on Labor Day, the Texas governor said that “anyone who wants to keep the status quo on entitlements isn’t being honest,” and at Wednesday’s GOP debate in California, Perry called the retirement program a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme.”
To the older, white Tea Party voters Perry needs to win the Republican nomination, this simply isn’t true. “We paid into Social Security,” said Steven Anderson, a member of the Low Country 9/12 project and a retiree. His wife, Judie, chimed in, “It’s not an entitlement, it’s ours.” The same went for Art LeBruce, a retired Army medic and longtime member of the group: “That’s my money that I put into Social Security–I deserve it.”

This sentiment echoes the strong, defensive attitude towards Medicare expressed by conservative seniors when it was argued that “ObamaCare” might divert money from their hard-earned benefits to health insurance for younger and poorer Americans.
Seen from this perspective, the attacks on Perry Monday night on Social Security and on immigration may not be coming from different directions. They could actually become mutually reinforcing, depicting the Texan as someone who has contempt for generations of retirees who relied on the “unconstitutional” New Deal program–but has compassion for illegal immigrants and their children. Michele Bachmann might be just the rival to put these themes together (she was reportedly planning to go after Perry on Social Security at the Florida debate, but Romney preempted any opportunity to do so). After all, back in 2009 she actually preceded Sarah Palin in linking ObamaCare to Medicare cuts and ultimately to “death panels” aimed at seniors.
It would also not be the first time in Republican presidential politics that a policy position interpreted as “very conservative” got a candidate into trouble with conservatives for unanticipated reasons. In 1976, Ronald Reagan narrowly lost the New Hampshire primary–and arguably, the nomination–because conservative voters were convinced by clever Gerald Ford operatives that the Gipper’s proposal to devolve welfare programs to the states might force adoption of statewide taxes in the Granite State, a major no-no.
So it is not clear at this point whether Perry is, in fact, the “Man in the Middle,” whose critics from the left and the right make him seem more reasonable than his manner would indicate and poise him to win the nomination. Unless he gets his act together and ignores flattering polls and press clippings, he could wind up being a “Man in the Crossfire,” suffering from an eroding Tea Party base and increasing skepticism from electability-focused GOP elites.

Elizabeth Warren today announced her Senate candidacy to replace Scott Brown, and if she wins, the Democratic Party will gain an incorruptible voice for consumers and workers — much to the dismay of corporate America. Writing in The Nation, John Nichols explains what Warren’s candidacy could mean:

Warren wants to change the economic debate in a country where the poverty rate is rising, the middle-class is shrinking, the rich are getting dramatically richer and the corporations are writing the rules. In Warren’s words, working families have been “chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it.”
“Washington is rigged for big corporations that hire armies of lobbyists,” she continued. “A big company like GE pays nothing in taxes and we’re asking college students to take on even more debt to get an education, we’re telling seniors they may have to learn to live on less. It isn’t right, and it’s the reason I’m running for the U.S. Senate.”
…She started Wednesday morning not in the halls of academies but at a Boston commuter station, where she greeted working men–in a campaign start that provided evidence that this, like all of Warren’s endeavors, will be a high-energy and people-powered project. And the nation’s most identifiable battler against the big banks and the Wall Street speculators was driving the message home. “The pressures on middle-class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” she said. “I want to change that.”

Suffice it to say that her opponent, Scott Brown, will not be hurting for corporate cash. Warren will need small contributors, lots of them. She will get good support from unions, and Nichols notes that the influential National Nurses United union is already on board her campaign in a big way.
Nichols does a good job of limning the big-picture significance of a Warren victory:

It’s not just that a Warren candidacy could provide Democrats with a needed pick-up of a currently Republican-held seat–although that’s a big deal for the party, which faces a dismal electoral map in 2012. If the chief advocate for real banking reform and the development of a federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau runs and defeats US Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, she will instantly become an essential spokesperson for progressive values in national economic, regulatory and fiscal policy debates.
Put Warren next to stalwarts like Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, a re-elected Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, a re-elected Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, as well as progressive candidates like Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin and Hawaiian Democrat Mazie Hirono–House members seeking open Senate seats–and you’ve got the makings of what Warren’s old friend Paul Wellstone always wanted: a Senate progressive caucus.

Not to take anything away from the aforementioned progressive senators, but few of them could teach Warren much about corporate abuses. She is one of America’s top experts on the topic, as well as a fearless advocate for reform.
Progressive Democrats who have been lamenting the future of their party and its reluctance to embrace populist principles have just run out of excuses. The Warren campaign will be a no-whining zone — and a place where progressive activists can confidently invest their time, talents and economic resources.

There’s no denying the GOP crowing rights for their twin victories in NY-9 and NV-2 yesterday. Stat wizard Nate Silver reviews the vote and rolls out a grim (for Dems) assessment in today’s edition of his Five Thirty Eight blog. First, he acknowledges the special circumstances in New York :

There are good reasons to think that local issues may have loomed especially large in New York’s 9th Congressional District, where the Republican Bob Turner won on Tuesday. President Obama had significantly underperformed his Democratic predecessors in the district in 2008, and the large split in voting between the Brooklyn and Queens portions of the district — the Brooklyn parts are more heavily Jewish — implies that Israel-related issues may have played a role.
There were other local factors as well: influential endorsements for Mr. Turner by Democratic leaders like former Mayor Ed Koch and the Assemblyman Dov Hikind, and local rabbis; the close timing of the election with the Sept. 11 anniversary; the fact that the district had been vacated by a Democrat, Anthony Weiner, in a scandal; and perhaps gay marriage in a district that is economically liberal but fairly religious, with pockets of social conservatism.
Still, even if those issues played a role, even if they swung the result, the Democrat David Weprin would likely have performed better had the national environment been stronger for his party.

Silver crunches the numbers and then analyzes the NY election in light of the “partisan voting index” (“a measure of how the district voted relative to others in the past two presidential elections.”). Silver concludes that the Republican victor, Bob Turner, pulled off a net swing of +18 percent from the p.v.i.
Silver runs the Nevada results through the p.v.i. analysis:

The Nevada Second, for instance, has a P.V.I. of Republican plus-5, meaning that the Republican candidate would be expected to perform 5 points better there than a Republican might nationally. Since a vote for the Republican is (usually) a vote against the Democrat, you need to double that number to project the margin of victory. In this case, that would imply a Republican win by 10 points given average candidates and a neutral overall political environment.
The Republican Mark Amodei, however, leads by 22 points as of this writing, an easy victory, meaning that he overperformed the P.V.I. by 12 points.

Ouch. No matter how you spin it, there’s no avoiding the conclusion that Republicans did substantially better than expected in Tuesday’s elections.
Silver acknowledges the big Democratic win in NY-26 in May, a +17 swing from the p.v.i., noting that Obama’s approvals were much higher then, along with the less impressive Democratic July win in CA-36, where Dems underperformed in p.v.i. terms. He averages the four special congressional elections of 2011 and finds a score of R+7 and concludes that “Democrats may still be locked in a 2010-type political environment.”
Worse, Silver adds that special elections have a “statistically significant correlation to the outcome of the next general election,” although “…the relationship is weak and frequently runs in the wrong direction, as it did in 2010.” He points out that special elections are weak measures of anti-incumbent sentiment, since there are no incumbents on the ballot. He also notes that polls indicate Dems are “roughly tied” with the GOP in therms of the generic ballot polls for House races.
Silver concludes “Nevertheless, these are waves that portend trouble…At the very minimum, they imply a reduction in the odds that after three consecutive “wave” elections, 2012 will show a tidal shift back toward Democrats.”
A more optimistic analysis for Dems would point out that Dems are 2 and 2 in 2011 special elections. There are 13+ months left and, if the economy begins to turn around faster than expected, all bets are off. Nonetheless, as Silver makes clear, the possibility of a broad rout of Democratic candidates is a very real concern, and President Obama will have to campaign harder and smarter to prevent it.

The signature moment of last night’s CNN/Tea Party Express Republican presidential candidates’ debate was the response to Wolf Blitzer’s hypothetical question about health coverage for a 30-year-old man needing life-saving surgery: would you just let him die? Before any candidate could answer, quite a few voices in the audience shouted “Yes!” None of the candidates bothered to rebuke them. The John Galt faction of the Tea Party Movement was in the house.
The most remarkable thing about the content of the debate was the complete absence of a single suggestion of anything positive government could do to improve the lives of Americans. Tax cuts and deregulation, general or specific, were the answer to every conceivable problem. At one point, Herman Cain seemed to be saying that energy company executives should control a commission to oversee EPA. Rick Perry avidly agreed, and that was the “centrist” position, since the crowd was far more pleased with Ron Paul’s call for abolition of the agency (along with several Cabinet departments) altogether.
As you know if you watched the debate or read about it, the main dynamic of candidate interaction last night was the pounding Rick Perry took on Social Security, immigration, and his abortive effort to mandate a HPV vaccination for Texas school girls. He did not, in my judgment, handle any of it particularly well, and was especially hesitant and unconvincingly repetitive in his defense of the Texas version of the DREAM Act, to the great annoyance of the Tea Party audience. If the idea was to speak past the live audience to Latinos or to the general electorate, he failed to pull it off, instead looking like a chastened little boy stubbornly sticking to a lie. As Paul Begala noted on CNN, Michele Bachmann crossed an important line in suggesting corporate cronyism in Perry’s HPV initiative (his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical company manufacturing the vaccine); it’s one thing to accuse a fellow-Republican of heresy, and another altogether to call him corrupt.
There was brief coverage by CNN of Perry after the debate addressing supporters from the audience, and he was back in the groove, swaggering around and shouting denunciations of Obama and bureaucrats. Given the utter predictability of the attacks he sustained, and the likelihood he was rehearsed on all of them, you have to say he’s not off to a good start as a presidential debater. If there was any surprise from Perry, it was probably his categorical statement that it was time to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan (a position hard to imagine given the obsession with support for the “Iraq surge” among Republicans during the last presidential cycle). Romney was not asked about Afghanistan, but this could emerge as a point of contrast down the road.
All in all, the debate provided a stark contrast of the primary and general electorates. Every time these candidates spend time on national television competing to appeal to the former, their freedom to maneuver once it’s time to focus on the latter is gradually constricted. Democrats should hope for as many of these events as the calendar will allow.

Ron Brownstein has a post up at National Journal Daily, “With Doubts, Voters Prefer Obama Jobs Plan” reporting on a United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll with some good news, tempered by cautionary notes, for President Obama.
The Poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International 9/8-11, indicates that nearly half of respondents believed the president’s jobs plan will “help somewhat” and that the President still enjoys a slight edge 37 to 35 percent over congressional Republicans in public trust to revive the economy. As Brownstein explains, “With some exceptions, those polled saw more promise in the ideas that Obama offered in his speech than proposals Republicans are touting in Congress and in the 2012 campaign.” Brownstein cautions, however:

…The share of Americans who said that Obama’s policies have compounded economic difficulties was nearly double the portion who said he has improved conditions. And just one-in-six said they expected the jobs plan he sent to Congress will significantly reduce unemployment.

Brownstein also noted strong public support for a constitutional amendment to cap federal spending and balance the budget, along with slight and near majorities for cutting corporate taxes, repealing health care reform, tax cuts for all earners and Romney’s proposal to “repeal a regulation for each new one promulgated.”
Conversely, “Nearly as many (46 percent) thought that extending the Bush tax cuts would not be too effective or not effective at all,” and “at least 37 percent also said expressed doubt that repealing the health care law, limiting regulations as Romney proposed, or cutting corporate taxes would do much good.” Moreover, notes Brownstein:

Ideas Obama touted in last week’s speech generally fared better. Three-fourths of those polled said they believed his proposal to cut taxes on employers who hire new workers, or provide a raise to existing ones, would be either very or somewhat effective in creating jobs. Seven-in-10 said the same about his proposal to provide state and local governments funds to prevent layoffs of teachers and police officers. Two-thirds rendered the same verdict on the idea of helping more homeowners refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates.

Brownstein also notes that people of color more strongly supported the President’s proposals. But nearly half of white respondents believed the President’s actions “had hurt the economy,” with college-educated whites as negative as those without a college education.
As Brownstein concludes, “…Obama’s hopes next year may turn on convincing voters to see the 2012 election as a forward-looking choice between competing vision rather than a referendum on his results since 2009.”

Feeling a little queasy about the partnering of Cable News Network with the Tea Party Express in presenting the GOP prez candidate debate last night? You’re not alone. Here’s Adele M. Stan, writing about it in her Alternet post, “When Did CNN Become a Shill for GOP Extremism and the Tea Party?“:

CNN, once known for its unflinching coverage of actual news events, last night decided to become a maker, not a chronicler, of news. When the cable news network decided to partner with the Tea Party Express for a debate among the Republican presidential candidates, it cast aside any ethical concerns a news organization might have about direct involvement in elections and active engagement in altering the dynamics of a political party.
You could say there was a bit of a payoff, after a fashion, for the American people in the bargain, though: an unvarnished look at who the rank-and-file of the Tea Party really are, and what they believe. The audience in Tampa was said to comprise members of 150 Tea Party groups from across the nation. True to form, they applauded at the notion of an uninsured person in a coma being left to die (as suggested by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas), and booed Texas Gov. Rick Perry for saying that undocumented citizens who were brought to this country as children, through no fault of their own, should be allowed to pursue a higher education here. And CNN surely could have put together an audience of Tea Partiers without partnering with an organization that makes direct payments to the campaign coffers of right-wing candidates.
If the Tea Party Express was nothing more than a political constituency of the Republican Party, that would be bad enough. But it’s not: it’s a political action committee, directly involved in electioneering, and the CNN event promises to aid the fundraising efforts of the Tea Party Express PAC. CNN’s co-sponsorship of the Tea Party Express debate amounts to an incalculable in-kind contribution to a far-right political PAC, elevating its brand name, providing free air time and event-staging, and conferring an aura of legitimacy on an organization that is essentially a fundraising operation for anti-government candidates. If this isn’t illegal, it’s time to scream from the rafters, why not?
In the 2010 midterm elections, Tea Party Express raised a total of $7.7 million, which it spent on the U.S. Senate campaigns of Christine (“I’m not a witch”) O’Donnell, Del.; Sharron Angle, Nev.; Joe Miller, Alaska; and Marco Rubio, Fla., among others. In fact, Tea Party Express donated the maximum allowable amount to the congressional campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann, something that none of the other contenders at last night’s debate can claim.

Stan goes on to further document the rabid partisanship of the Tea Party Express, well to the right of even the tea party, and concludes of CNN, “So, in its partnership with Tea Party Express, CNN is essentially (however inadvertently) deploying Wolf Blitzer, who moderated last night’s debate, to alter the political dynamic of the Republican Party to move it even further to the right than it already is.”
Stan suggests that CNN was trying to upgrade its wingnut cred to take a bite out of Fox News’ viewership, noting the network’s recent hiring of wingnut commentators. She concludes:

Each time a news organization partners with a constituency group in a presidential debate, it accords that group a greater impact than competing constituencies — and that’s troubling enough. But when a news organization partners with a group that gives money directly to candidates and that makes attack ads against candidates it doesn’t fancy, that news organization has crossed the line into electioneering. And that’s just plain wrong.

Not to demonize the entire network, because CNN does some good work, both on the little screen and on line. But I’d have to agree with Stan that this “partnership” is more than a little on the cheesy side. I doubt we will see CNN partnering with an equally-ardent progressive PAC to present a presidential debate anytime soon.