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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: September 2011

The Referendum on the New Deal and Great Society

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on September 8, 2011.
There have been plenty of assessments, some quite lengthy, of last night’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Simi Valley. Some focus on conventional debaters’ points, and typically adjudge Mitt Romney the “winner.” Others focus on personality, and tend to award the prize to “alpha male” Rick Perry. Still others looked at who did and didn’t dominate the event, and noted how the fiery Michele Bachmann is beginning to fade from first-tier status.
But in the long run, the enduring significance of this debate is that Mitt Romney went after Rick Perry’s denunciations of Social Security, and Perry did not back down.
Romney’s decision showed how alarmed he and his team must be about Perry’s rapid ascent in the polls and his superior positioning in the GOP field as the guy Tea Partiers and Christian Right activists love and the Establishmetn can tolerate. Many of the most certain participants in early nominating contests–the kind of people who tell pollsters they are “very conservative”–pretty much agree with Perry’s uninhibited remarks in Fed Up that Social Security is not just a “Ponzi scheme” and a “lie” but was from the very beginning a huge step down the road to serfdom that should be retracted to the maximum extent possible. This is why Paul Ryan has become such a conservative icon–he seems to be challenging the very fundamentals of the “socialist welfare state,” the New Deal/Great Society legacy, not just ObamaCare or the 2009 stimulus package. Perry’s attack on that legacy in Fed Up was a lot more direct and visceral.
But with polls showing resistance to cuts in (much less abolition of) Social Security and Medicare being very unpopular even among rank-and-file Republicans (a broader subset of voters than likely caucus and primary participants), Perry’s stance is also perilous. You’d figure, however, that rivals like Romney would let Democrats and the news media focus attention on Perry’s radical views. That he did so himself at so early an opportunity tells us a lot about Team Romney’s sense of urgency.
Perry’s tack on the subject is now also pretty clear. He won’t take back what he said in Fed Up. But he will promise to take the edge off his attacks on Social Security and Medicare by focusing on the “Ponzi scheme” aspect of the former program–i.e., its current solvency–instead of his criticism of its original design and basic moral character. And he’ll also promise not to change the two programs for current and near-term beneficiaries on grounds that they have already planned on them.
“Grandfathering” entitlements for people over 55 or so while suggesting they are socialist abominations is a very old and transparently cynical conservative tactic. It was a feature of George W. Bush’s failed 2005 Social Security partial privatization effort, and of Ryan’s proposals for both of the big programs. Up until now, it hasn’t worked to tamp down fearful opposition among seniors–even very conservative seniors who don’t quite understand why we can’t just eliminate “welfare” for shiftless poor people and stay away from retirement programs that are a reward for a virtuous lifetime of working and saving.
We are about to find out if the generational warfare characteristics of contemporary U.S. politics have advanced to the point where at least conservative seniors will take Rick Perry up on his offer to gut entitlements for younger Americans while holding old folks harmless, and ignore his rather obvious feeling that anyone receiving such benefits is a parasite. If that happens, then Perry will become a maximum hero to those conservative activists and opinion-leaders of all ages who are determined to make the right-wing uprising of the last few years an attack on three-quarters-of-a-century of “socialist” policymaking.
If conservative seniors (and younger Republicans who are only interested in retaking power and repealing Obama’s initiatives) instead respond positively to Romney’s efforts to label Perry as too extreme on entitlements, then we’ll know that there are indeed limits to the rightward movement of the GOP at this juncture of history. I would not put big money on this proposition, however, particularly if it depends on a messenger like Mitt Romney.
Either way, it’s becoming obvious that the 2012 cycle is not just a referendum on Barack Obama, but on the New Deal and Great Society. And that’s a referendum Democrats ought to be able to win.


Dawn of the Deniers

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on September 5, 2011.
It’s not fun, but it is time to wrap your head around the fact that the presidential nomination front-runner of one of America’s leading political parties is also its most rabid climate-change denier. As the lead editorial in today’s New York Times reflects:

The Republican presidential contenders regard global warming as a hoax or, at best, underplay its importance. The most vocal denier is Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, who insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”
Never mind that nearly all the world’s scientists regard global warming as a serious threat to the planet, with human activities like the burning of fossil fuels a major cause. Never mind that multiple investigations have found no evidence of scientific manipulation. Never mind that America needs a national policy. Mr. Perry has a big soapbox, and what he says, however fallacious, reaches a bigger audience than any scientist can command.

The editorial goes on to point out that the rest of the GOP presidential aspirants, save the Hapless Huntsman, have also voiced considerable skepticism about climate change as a major problem. When pressed, Romney goes all mush-mouth, suggesting that he probably knows better. Newt has done a 180 towards denial, but integrity was never his thing.
I know Republicans who are neither climate-change skeptics nor evolution-deniers, but they don’t have much to say about it. I guess they are either intimidated by the tea party fanatics, or maybe they believe, wink wink, that their candidate is just making appropriate noises to get through the primaries and will heed the top scientists once elected. It’s a risky proposition with candidates like Perry and Paul, who would have an awful lot to repudiate.
Conservatives like Huntsman won’t find much support for their concerns about global warming from the intellectual right. Organs like the National Review address pollution-related issues with bland paeans to ‘market-based’ solutions as the panacea or articles ridiculing bizarre examples of environmentalism, such as “Gaia vs. the Big Death” in the current on-line issue.
If the GOP deniers win the presidency and congress, breathing organisms could be screwed for generations. But cheer up, at least it will provide a promising premise for a sci-fi flick: What would happen if a cult of science-denying ignoramuses achieve global domination? Dawn of the Deniers, maybe.
Cynicism aside, Democrats do have an opportunity here. Asked “Do you think the federal government should or should not regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming?,” 71 percent of respondents in a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken in June last year supported regulation. The same percentage responded affirmatively to a question about supporting funding to continue enforcing greenhouse gas regulation in a CNN/Opinion Research Poll taken in April of this year.
Thus far, however, no Democratic presidential candidate has taken full advantage of the Republicans’ bull-headed stupidity on this issue. President Obama’s strategists should prepare a debate module, punctuated with a memorable one-liner to expose the dangerous idiocy of the climate-change deniers. The Democratic echo-chamber, such as it is, should parrot the one-liner ad nauseum until most reasonable voters are embarrassed to vote for the Republican.
Progressive writers have been very good on exposing Republicans pandering to ignorance about global warming and climate change. For our political leaders, however, it’s been limited to occasional jabs in speeches. But the time is now ripe to do more. We can’t give the Republicans another pass on this one. Too much is at stake.


Republican War on Voting Exposed

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on September 2, 2011.
Ari Berman’s Rolling Stone article “The GOP War on Voting” should help alert a lot of young voters in particular about how they are being targeted for political disempowerment by the Republicans. But Berman’s piece is not only about young voters; it’s about the GOP effort to smother the electoral power of all pro-Democratic constituencies. Berman explains:

…Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. “What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,” says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP’s effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.
All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.
Taken together, such measures could significantly dampen the Democratic turnout next year – perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP. “One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Bill Clinton told a group of student activists in July. “Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate” – a reference to the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.”

Berman reviews the Republican’s bogus claims of voter fraud as a major electoral problem to justify burdensome identification requirements, encapsulated in Stephen Colbert’s warning that “Our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere.”
Berman rolls out the tally of voter obstruction in recent state-wide legislation in four areas:

Barriers to Registration Since January, six states have introduced legislation to impose new restrictions on voter registration drives run by groups like Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters. In May, the GOP-controlled legislature in Florida passed a law requiring anyone who signs up new voters to hand in registration forms to the state board of elections within 48 hours of collecting them, and to comply with a barrage of onerous, bureaucratic requirements. Those found to have submitted late forms would face a $1,000 fine, as well as possible felony prosecution.
As a result, the law threatens to turn civic-minded volunteers into inadvertent criminals. Denouncing the legislation as “good old-fashioned voter suppression,” the League of Women Voters announced that it was ending its registration efforts in Florida, where it has been signing up new voters for the past 70 years. Rock the Vote, which helped 2.5 million voters to register in 2008, could soon follow suit. “We’re hoping not to shut down,” says Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, “but I can’t say with any certainty that we’ll be able to continue the work we’re doing.”
The registration law took effect one day after it passed, under an emergency statute designed for “an immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare.” In reality, though, there’s no evidence that registering fake voters is a significant problem in the state. Over the past three years, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has received just 31 cases of suspected voter fraud, resulting in only three arrests statewide. “No one could give me an example of all this fraud they speak about,” said Mike Fasano, a Republican state senator who bucked his party and voted against the registration law. What’s more, the law serves no useful purpose: Under the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002, all new voters must show identity before registering to vote.
Cuts to Early Voting After the recount debacle in Florida in 2000, allowing voters to cast their ballots early emerged as a popular bipartisan reform. Early voting not only meant shorter lines on Election Day, it has helped boost turnout in a number of states – the true measure of a successful democracy. “I think it’s great,” Jeb Bush said in 2004. “It’s another reform we added that has helped provide access to the polls and provide a convenience. And we’re going to have a high voter turnout here, and I think that’s wonderful.”
But Republican support for early voting vanished after Obama utilized it as a key part of his strategy in 2008. Nearly 30 percent of the electorate voted early that year, and they favored Obama over McCain by 10 points. The strategy proved especially effective in Florida, where blacks outnumbered whites by two to one among early voters, and in Ohio, where Obama received fewer votes than McCain on Election Day but ended up winning by 263,000 ballots, thanks to his advantage among early voters in urban areas like Cleveland and Columbus.
That may explain why both Florida and Ohio – which now have conservative Republican governors – have dramatically curtailed early voting for 2012. Next year, early voting will be cut from 14 to eight days in Florida and from 35 to 11 days in Ohio, with limited hours on weekends. In addition, both states banned voting on the Sunday before the election – a day when black churches historically mobilize their constituents. Once again, there appears to be nothing to justify the changes other than pure politics. “There is no evidence that any form of convenience voting has led to higher levels of fraud,” reports the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College.
Photo IDs By far the biggest change in election rules for 2012 is the number of states requiring a government-issued photo ID, the most important tactic in the Republican war on voting. In April 2008, the Supreme Court upheld a photo-ID law in Indiana, even though state GOP officials couldn’t provide a single instance of a voter committing the type of fraud the new ID law was supposed to stop. Emboldened by the ruling, Republicans launched a nationwide effort to implement similar barriers to voting in dozens of states.
The campaign was coordinated by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which provided GOP legislators with draft legislation based on Indiana’s ID requirement. In five states that passed such laws in the past year – Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – the measures were sponsored by legislators who are members of ALEC. “We’re seeing the same legislation being proposed state by state by state,” says Smith of Rock the Vote. “And they’re not being shy in any of these places about clearly and blatantly targeting specific demographic groups, including students.”
In Texas, under “emergency” legislation passed by the GOP-dominated legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry, a concealed-weapon permit is considered an acceptable ID but a student ID is not. Republicans in Wisconsin, meanwhile, mandated that students can only vote if their IDs include a current address, birth date, signature and two-year expiration date – requirements that no college or university ID in the state currently meets. As a result, 242,000 students in Wisconsin may lack the documentation required to vote next year. “It’s like creating a second class of citizens in terms of who gets to vote,” says Analiese Eicher, a Dane County board supervisor.
The barriers erected in Texas and Wisconsin go beyond what the Supreme Court upheld in Indiana, where 99 percent of state voters possess the requisite IDs and can turn to full-time DMVs in every county to obtain the proper documentation. By contrast, roughly half of all black and Hispanic residents in Wisconsin do not have a driver’s license, and the state staffs barely half as many DMVs as Indiana – a quarter of which are open less than one day a month. To make matters worse, Gov. Scott Walker tried to shut down 16 more DMVs – many of them located in Democratic-leaning areas. In one case, Walker planned to close a DMV in Fort Atkinson, a liberal stronghold, while opening a new office 30 minutes away in the conservative district of Watertown.
Although new ID laws have been approved in seven states, the battle over such barriers to voting has been far more widespread. Since January, Democratic governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina have all vetoed ID laws. Voters in Mississippi and Missouri are slated to consider ballot initiatives requiring voter IDs, and legislation is currently pending in Pennsylvania.
One of the most restrictive laws requiring voter IDs was passed in South Carolina. To obtain the free state ID now required to vote, the 178,000 South Carolinians who currently lack one must pay for a passport or a birth certificate. “It’s the stepsister of the poll tax,” says Browne-Dianis of the Advancement Project. Under the new law, many elderly black residents – who were born at home in the segregated South and never had a birth certificate – must now go to family court to prove their identity. Given that obtaining fake birth certificates is one of the country’s biggest sources of fraud, the new law may actually prompt some voters to illegally procure a birth certificate in order to legally vote – all in the name of combating voter fraud.
For those voters who manage to get a legitimate birth certificate, obtaining a voter ID from the DMV is likely to be hellishly time-consuming. A reporter for the Tri-State Defender in Memphis, Tennessee – another state now mandating voter IDs – recently waited for four hours on a sweltering July day just to see a DMV clerk. The paper found that the longest lines occur in urban precincts, a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act, which bars states from erecting hurdles to voting in minority jurisdictions.
Disenfranchising Ex-Felons The most sweeping tactic in the GOP campaign against voting is simply to make it illegal for certain voters to cast ballots in any election. As the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist restored the voting rights of 154,000 former prisoners who had been convicted of nonviolent crimes. But in March, after only 30 minutes of public debate, Gov. Rick Scott overturned his predecessor’s decision, instantly disenfranchising 97,491 ex-felons and prohibiting another 1.1 million prisoners from being allowed to vote after serving their time.
“Why should we disenfranchise people forever once they’ve paid their price?” Bill Clinton asked during his speech in July. “Because most of them in Florida were African-Americans and Hispanics and would tend to vote for Democrats – that’s why.”
A similar reversal by a Republican governor recently took place in Iowa, where Gov. Terry Branstad overturned his predecessor’s decision to restore voting rights to 100,000 ex-felons. The move threatens to return Iowa to the recent past, when more than five percent of all residents were denied the right to vote – including a third of the state’s black residents. In addition, Florida and Iowa join Kentucky and Virginia as the only states that require all former felons to apply for the right to vote after finishing their prison sentences.

Berman notes that the ACLU and other groups are challenging the GOP-lead disenfranchisement campaign, calling on the Justice Department to be more assertive in fighting the racially-discriminatory ‘reforms.’ Berman cites a 2008 MIT study indicating that less than two-thirds of eligible citizens voted and “9 million voters were denied an opportunity to cast ballots…because of problems with their voter registration (13 percent), long lines at the polls (11 percent), uncertainty about the location of their polling place (nine percent) or lack of proper ID (seven percent).”
Berman believes “…Such problems will only be exacerbated by the flood of new laws implemented by Republicans. Instead of a single fiasco in Florida, experts warn, there could be chaos in a dozen states as voters find themselves barred from the polls.”
Clearly Democrats should not entertain any complacency regarding voter suppression the 2012 election, just because things went well enough in 2008. The 2000 election may have been the ugliest presidential election in U.S. history, with the ‘Brooks Bothers Riot,’ abuse of felon disenfranchisement laws and the shameless politicization of the U.S. Supreme Court. But the stage is now being set for massive disenfranchisement of targeted constituencies next year, and this time Dems should plan accordingly.


“It’s Not an Entitlement–It’s Ours”

Today’s underwhelming news on the presidential campaign trail is that Tim Pawlenty has endorsed Mitt Romney for president. With that and five or six bucks, Romney can get a very good king-sized latte at Starbucks.
What makes the announcement interesting, however, is that T-Paw immediately jumped on the message-du-jour of the Romney campaign: bashing Rick Perry on Social Security:

“Gov. Romney wants to fix Social Security. He doesn’t want to abolish it or end it,” Pawlenty said. “Gov. Perry has said in the past that he thought it was ‘failed.'”

Now this messaging may be temporary, attributable to the venue of tonight’s CNN/Tea Party Express candidate debate in Florida.
But maybe it’s not, and Team Romney perceives Perry’s negative remarks on Social Security (and Medicare, and basically every progressive policy initiative of the twentieth century) in Fed Up as a potential silver bullet, partially on grounds that the issue affects Perry’s electability, and partially because elderly Republican primary voters are sensitive about their own benefits, even though the Texan claims they’ll get every nickel they expect.
If so, does this represent a rare example of a Republican presidential candidate deliberately running “to the left” of a rival in the primaries?
Not necessarily. It’s important to understand that many seniors simply do not look at Social Security and Medicare as “government redistribution programs” no different than Medicaid or Obamacare, but as earned benefits–as an “entitlement” in a very literal sense. Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect traveled to a Tea Party event in South Carolina recently and picked up on this sentiment:

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 long-time member of the group, “That’s my money that I put into Social Security–I deserve it.”

This is the same sentiment, which many progressives interpret as blatant hypocrisy or selfishness, that led so many conservative seniors to adamantly oppose ObamaCare while demanding no cuts in Medicare–or even because they believed extending health coverage to the uninsured would directly lead to Medicare cuts.
The fact that Social Security, and to an even greater extent Medicare, in fact do represent a redistribution of money from taxpayers to most if not all beneficiaries has not shaken the iron conviction of many seniors that the programs are fundamentally different from “welfare” in any form.
So ideologues like Perry who have identified Social Security and Medicare as just part of the vast march to socialism during the twentieth century are in danger of an attack that may conventionally look like it’s coming from “the left” but may actually threaten them most among staunch conservatives who think federal austerity measures should strictly come out of the hide of “those people” who haven’t “earned” their benefits–you know, younger people, poorer people, darker people. Perry’s “grandfathering” ploy of going after Social Security and Medicare while promising today’s seniors they won’t be affected may help some, but doesn’t deal with the underlying reality that many conservative voters less concerned with ideological rigor just don’t buy the idea that “their” programs are part of the problem in the first place. A really clever if dishonest attack line on Perry might even combine criticism of the Texan’s positions on retirement programs and immigration and suggest he’s protecting “those people” at the expense of “us.”
If that happens (and Michele Bachmann strikes me as just the kind of rival who will go in that direction), the immediate perception that the debate over Social Security and Medicare is pushing the 2012 Republican field to the “left” or “center” in order to better position the GOP for the general election could be off 180 degrees. It could in fact promote a dynamic in which candidates become more and more direct in appeals to their older white conservative base that budget decisions and social policies are really just a matter of “us” versus “them.”


Teixeira: Public Likes American Jobs Act Provisions

Polling data indicates that President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act contains provisions the public supports, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

The two biggest components of the act are payroll tax cuts, both for employees and employers (about $240 billion) and infrastructure spending on roads and schools (about $140 billion). Over the next few weeks we will see a lot of polling about these ideas, but we already have indications from polling prior to his speech that these two big items will receive a friendly reception from the public.
Start with the payroll tax cuts. Around a week before the speech, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that the public, by 2:1 (40-20), thought continuing to cut the payroll tax was a good idea for a jobs plan rather than a bad idea.

Regarding infrastructure spending, Teixeira reports:

…The same poll found the public supporting funding a new road construction bill, with 47 percent terming it a good idea, compared to 26 percent who thought it was a bad idea.
Infrastructure spending was also tested in another poll before the speech, conducted by George Washington University/Politico. In that poll, the public was asked about an infrastructure measure very similar to what the president proposed: “a large scale federally subsidized nationwide construction program putting Americans back to work building roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals.” The public supported this idea by a wide 51-21 margin.

“The public is clearly ready for the American Jobs Act,” says Teixeira. “But is Congress? The next few weeks will tell the tale.”


Sabato: Obama’s 2012 Hopes Hinge on 7 Swing States

Fourteen months out may seem a little early to start counting electoral college votes, but we can be sure that’s exactly what the pros are doing on both sides. Larry J. Sabato, who has a pretty good track record in assessing presidential elections, reasons it out state by state and then works up a tally that both blue and red strategists are sure to note:

So Republicans are a lock or lead in 24 states for 206 electoral votes, and Democrats have or lead in 19 states for 247 electoral votes. Seven super-swing states with 85 electors will determine which party gets to the 270 Electoral College majority: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13). Prior to Obama’s 2008 victories in each state, several of these toss-ups had generally or firmly leaned Republican for most elections since 1980. Virginia, which hadn’t voted Democratic since 1964, was the biggest surprise, and its Obama majority was larger than that of Ohio, which has frequently been friendly to Democrats in modern times. Massive Hispanic participation turned Colorado and Nevada to Obama, and it helped him in Florida. New Hampshire was the only state lost by Al Gore that switched to John Kerry; its special New England character makes it especially volatile.

It’s a fairly optimistic scenario for Dems, given the worrisome economic challenges of the political moment. And Sabato pinpoints another advantage the President can leverage, “Right now, though, a troubled President Obama — so far unopposed for renomination — has the luxury of keeping both eyes on the Electoral College, planning his trips and policies accordingly.” In a related post, Sabato and associates work through various scenarios targeting the “fickle five” states (NC, IN, FL, OH and VA).
Sabato believes the Democratic preferred target states will depend on the GOP nominee, since there are very different regional angles to consider with respect to front-runners Perry and Romney. The “National Popular Vote Campaign” to render the electoral college inconsequential doesn’t appear to be on track to kick in for 2012, so winning a majority of electoral votes of the seven swing states remains the big game.
Equally encouraging, Alan I. Abramowitz, also writing in Sabato’s Crystal Ball, sees “a slight advantage to Obama,” adding “It appears that there are more ways that he can piece together the 270 electoral votes needed to win in a close election. Despite what happened in 2000, the Electoral College may yet turn out to be the Democrats’ friend in 2012.”


The Jobs Speech and a Democratic Opportunity

It’s safe to say that most Democrats liked the tone of last night’s presidential “jobs” speech even if they considered it far too late and/or are skeptical that Obama will sustain it over time.
Aside from its unusually passionate delivery, its focus on jobs rather than deficit reduction, and its implicit (if not terribly explicit) partisanship, the speech also framed the economic emergency and GOP obtructionism in their proper historical context. The president reminded viewers that undermining government’s capacity to act in this type of situation cuts deeply against the country’s traditions, and amounts to an effort to roll back policies to the early twentieth century:

[W]hat we can’t do — what I will not do — is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades. (Applause.) I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy. (Applause.) We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top. And I believe we can win that race.
In fact, this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own — that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.

Even more pointedly, given the debate that has now broken out in the Republican presidential contest over whether to kill or simply gut the New Deal and Great Society safety net programs, Obama exposed the radicalism of the “constitutional conservatism” that has gripped the GOP:

Ask yourselves — where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance? (Applause.)
How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? (Applause.) How many Americans would have suffered as a result?

This is as close as Obama has come in a long time to abandoning the pretense that today’s Republicans are anything like their go-along-to-get-along predecessors who were willing on occasion to bend ideology to get things done. If you accept the idea that his bipartisan rhetoric has been in part a “set-up” to expose GOP obstructionism and radicalism, this speech represents the first of what ought to become a series of communications that “pivot” to a message that increases rather than obscures partisan differentiation.
But another big presidential shoe will drop next week when, as Obama announced during the speech, the White House releases a formal proposal for long-term deficit reduction measures for consideration by the congressional “super-committee”–and to “pay for” the jobs initiative he proposed last night. He has already put Democrats on notice that he will endorse “reforms” in Medicare they won’t like. If the deficit-reduction proposal moves even more aggressively than anticipated towards “entitlement reform” in order to avoid deal-killing tax increases or excessive short-term cuts in discretionary spending, the partisan differentiation he sought last night might be “re-blurred” at the very moment Republicans are seeking cover for their radicalism on entitlements.
So this is a moment of great opportunity for Democrats, but it won’t last long.
UPDATE: Mark Schmitt’s take on the speech is similar to mine but framed differently and very interestingly: he calls Obama’s approach in the jobs speech “fighting bipartisanship.” As someone who labeled Obama’s original strategy for dealing with the GOP “grassroots bipartisanship,” aimed at either forcing GOP cooperation or exposing its obstructionism, I obviously agree with Schmitt’s parallel interpretation of what the president is trying to do now.


Creamer: Obama Jobs Plan Seizes High Ground

The following article by political strategist and partner in Democracy Partners Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
President Obama’s speech to Congress tonight reset the political battle lines and put Progressives back on the offensive.
The speech included provisions that Republicans in Congress may actually agree to pass — like continuing the payroll tax holiday that if allowed to lapse would affect the paychecks of virtually every American worker. But it also made the case for bold initiatives to rebuild America’s infrastructure and directly create jobs through a teacher corps and youth jobs program. These bolder proposals are critically necessary to jump start the economy, and Obama is betting — correctly — that if they fail to support them, Republicans will pay a political price next year.
What was needed was a package of proposals that were bold, projected urgency, and will create jobs now. The president delivered.
Obama explicitly rejected the dangerous, fallacious notion that the path to long-term economic growth runs through the valley of economic austerity.
He clearly defined the fundamental difference in values — and economic philosophy — between progressive Democrats and right wing Republicans.
The president provided the perfect counter point to Rick Perry’s outrageous statement in the Republican debate, that the Obama economic record had proved once and for all that “Keynesianism was dead.” Of course, just the opposite is true.
Any one who has taken a semester of Economics 101 knows that problem at the root recessions is too little economic demand to purchase the available supply of goods and services. Seeing their customer base shrink, businesses make fewer investments, and layoff more workers and the economy enters a downward — deadly spiral.
What is needed to restore the economy to health is not “confidence” but customers. And the only economic actor that can provide those customers is the government. We must all collectively act through our government to restart the economy because if everyone is left to act in their own rational individual economic self interests they will make matters worse, not better. With less demand from customers, it is rational for businesses to hold on to their cash and lay off workers, but that only increases the number of people who are unemployed and unable to buy new products.
The 2009 stimulus bill halted the slid of the economy into depression. Without it we would have had another Great Depression. But it turns out the stimulus wasn’t large enough to restart the engine of self-sustaining growth.
That’s because we now know from new economic data that the Republican policies that lead to the melt down on Wall Street and triggered the recession, had inflicted even more damage on the economy than anyone knew at the time.
That means that to get us out of this economic swamp, the government must act to create more jobs now — so that more people have money in their pockets and can buy more products and demonstrate to businesses that it makes economic sense to hire more workers and invest in more plants and equipment.
The notion that you can create more jobs by cutting government spending is not just another theory or point of view — it is verifiably wrong. And in his speech the president made it clear that the Republican “emperor has no cloths.”
When the Republicans prevented continued aid to state and local government, half a million teachers, firemen, health care workers, and cops were laid off — its that simple.
If we were to cut the Social Security or Medicare benefits of middle class seniors they would have less money to buy things and that would mean that businesses hire less workers — this is not hard.
As for the Republican’s fixation on eliminating “regulatory burdens” and cutting taxes for wealthy “job creators” — that is exactly the plan that lead to the deregulation of Wall Street and the crash — and that generated exactly zero private sector job growth during the Bush years — that’s right zero. We’ve been there and tried that. It didn’t work when Herbert Hoover tried it before the Great Depression and it didn’t work when George Bush tried it before the Great Recession.
And of course in both cases that policy lead more and more of the fruits of our economy to go to the top two percent of Americans and less and less to the middle class. Today 400 families control as much wealth as 150 million Americans. That kind of gaping inequality creates the conditions that lead to economic stagnation, because when the income of everyday workers don’t increase to keep pace with increases in worker productivity, it is mathematically impossible for workers to buy the new products they create.
Henry Ford understood that to be successful he had to pay his workers enough so that they, themselves, could by the cars they produced. Rick Perry and the Republicans don’t get that simple fact. Luckily, President Obama does.
But this speech did more than clearly define the difference between progressive and right wing economic philosophy. It had huge political benefits for the president and Democrats.
First, Obama rejected the Republican view that there is nothing we can do to create new jobs but cut government spending and pray. He argued that we can take the future into our own hands — that we are not just the victims of forces that are so big and so powerful that we are simply at their mercy. People don’t want to be told they are helpless or that they must simply get used to the “new normal” and watch the American Dream go up in smoke. They want leadership, and Obama provided it.
Second, Obama recognizes the political fact that jobs trump short-term deficits. According to a July Gallup poll, concern over the economy and jobs top concern for the deficit by at 58% to 16% margin. The great deficit discussion — Republican frame for debate that has dominated the summer — completely missed the mark when it comes to the interests of most Americans.
Finally, Obama signaled the kind of campaign he will run in 2012. No incumbent president has won re-election in the last century when the economy was not either good — or materially improving — except for one. Harry Truman won in 1948 in the midst of bad economic news, by running against the “do-nothing Republican Congress.”
Obama political adviser David Axelrod was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that “Obama will make clear that Republicans are to blame if they don’t agree to the jobs measures… Harry Truman once said if you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat. And that’s what the president is going to do.”
That is exactly the kind of message that will simultaneously attract swing voters who want strong leadership to create jobs — and at the same time re-inspire the progressive base.
Even if they want to go further than the president when it comes to the scale of a jobs program, progressives were elated that the President has sounded the call to battle on this critical issue — that he has drawn an indelible contrast between the failed right wing economic policies of the past — and progressive policies that will lead to widely shared long term economic growth.
If we take it, progressives and Democrats have the high political ground when it comes to the all important jobs debate. But that requires that we stand up proudly for our economic principles and contrast them sharply with the failed right wing economic policies of the past. Our principles provide solid political ground from which fight the battle of 2012. Obama’s speech signaled that is precisely where he intends to make his stand.


The Referendum on the New Deal and Great Society

There have been plenty of assessments, some quite lengthy, of last night’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Simi Valley. Some focus on conventional debaters’ points, and typically adjudge Mitt Romney the “winner.” Others focus on personality, and tend to award the prize to “alpha male” Rick Perry. Still others looked at who did and didn’t dominate the event, and noted how the fiery Michele Bachmann is beginning to fade from first-tier status.
But in the long run, the enduring significance of this debate is that Mitt Romney went after Rick Perry’s denunciations of Social Security, and Perry did not back down.
Romney’s decision showed how alarmed he and his team must be about Perry’s rapid ascent in the polls and his superior positioning in the GOP field as the guy Tea Partiers and Christian Right activists love and the Establishmetn can tolerate. Many of the most certain participants in early nominating contests–the kind of people who tell pollsters they are “very conservative”–pretty much agree with Perry’s uninhibited remarks in Fed Up that Social Security is not just a “Ponzi scheme” and a “lie” but was from the very beginning a huge step down the road to serfdom that should be retracted to the maximum extent possible. This is why Paul Ryan has become such a conservative icon–he seems to be challenging the very fundamentals of the “socialist welfare state,” the New Deal/Great Society legacy, not just ObamaCare or the 2009 stimulus package. Perry’s attack on that legacy in Fed Up was a lot more direct and visceral.
But with polls showing resistance to cuts in (much less abolition of) Social Security and Medicare being very unpopular even among rank-and-file Republicans (a broader subset of voters than likely caucus and primary participants), Perry’s stance is also perilous. You’d figure, however, that rivals like Romney would let Democrats and the news media focus attention on Perry’s radical views. That he did so himself at so early an opportunity tells us a lot about Team Romney’s sense of urgency.
Perry’s tack on the subject is now also pretty clear. He won’t take back what he said in Fed Up. But he will promise to take the edge off his attacks on Social Security and Medicare by focusing on the “Ponzi scheme” aspect of the former program–i.e., its current solvency–instead of his criticism of its original design and basic moral character. And he’ll also promise not to change the two programs for current and near-term beneficiaries on grounds that they have already planned on them.
“Grandfathering” entitlements for people over 55 or so while suggesting they are socialist abominations is a very old and transparently cynical conservative tactic. It was a feature of George W. Bush’s failed 2005 Social Security partial privatization effort, and of Ryan’s proposals for both of the big programs. Up until now, it hasn’t worked to tamp down fearful opposition among seniors–even very conservative seniors who don’t quite understand why we can’t just eliminate “welfare” for shiftless poor people and stay away from retirement programs that are a reward for a virtuous lifetime of working and saving.
We are about to find out if the generational warfare characteristics of contemporary U.S. politics have advanced to the point where at least conservative seniors will take Rick Perry up on his offer to gut entitlements for younger Americans while holding old folks harmless, and ignore his rather obvious feeling that anyone receiving such benefits is a parasite. If that happens, then Perry will become a maximum hero to those conservative activists and opinion-leaders of all ages who are determined to make the right-wing uprising of the last few years an attack on three-quarters-of-a-century of “socialist” policymaking.
If conservative seniors (and younger Republicans who are only interested in retaking power and repealing Obama’s initiatives) instead respond positively to Romney’s efforts to label Perry as too extreme on entitlements, then we’ll know that there are indeed limits to the rightward movement of the GOP at this juncture of history. I would not put big money on this proposition, however, particularly if it depends on a messenger like Mitt Romney.
Either way, it’s becoming obvious that the 2012 cycle is not just a referendum on Barack Obama, but on the New Deal and Great Society. And that’s a referendum Democrats ought to be able to win.


Tonight’s GOP Debate: On the Attack?

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Since the last full-scale debate in Iowa, Rick Perry’s entrance into the Republican nomination contest and rapid ascension in the polls has been remarkable. The last two national surveys of Republicans show him opening up a double-digit lead over Mitt Romney, and edging up into the high thirties overall. The latest poll from Iowa gives him a double-digit lead over Straw Poll winner Michele Bachmann. The latest poll from South Carolina shows him beating second-place candidate Romney by better than a two-to-one margin. Most shockingly, a new poll in Nevada has him leading Romney in that Mormon-rich state long considered to be Mitt’s ultimate citadel. So will anyone in this suddenly endangered GOP field go after him in tonight’s debate at the Reagan Library?
Actually, one candidate already is: Ron Paul, whose campaign is buying national television time, possibly even during the debate, to run an ad contrasting his endorsement of Ronald Reagan in 1980 with Perry’s endorsement of Al Gore in 1988. It’s a clever use of the Reagan hook, and it relies on the fact that few of today’s Republican primary voters have any reason to know or remember that Al Gore was generally considered the most conservative Democrat in the 1988 field, making him a natural favorite for Perry, who was still a year or so away from his conversion to the GOP.
Paul’s gambit provides a reminder of the occasional significance of candidates who don’t have a realistic chance to win the nomination: They can go after candidates who do in ways that attract attention and even move votes. And while most lesser candidates lack the kind of financial resources to fill the airwaves with campaign ads, they get serious exposure during the endless series of debates, where they are free to wreck havoc. Aside from Ron Paul, Rick Santorum is always game for an attack on first-tier candidates like Perry and Romney for their alleged lack of interest in the cause of outlawing abortion. And Newt Gingrich, who has even less to lose than Santorum, is ready to pounce whenever a candidate or a questioner says anything he considers stupid.
“Real” candidates, on the other hand, would prefer to let the small fry do the dirty work for them, unless the attack involves a powerful issue where the attacker might directly harvest votes from the attackee. It would therefore not be too surprising to see Michele Bachmann go after Rick Perry on immigration tonight, an issue many consider to be his Achilles’ heel among conservatives, and a potential wedge issue in Iowa where Bachmann is battling to keep up with Perry. Another highly possible line of attack might come from Mitt Romney, who has already done a drive-by on Perry’s lack of private-sector experience, which is a simple way of undermining the Texan’s otherwise potent “job-creation” record among conservatives who don’t believe government can do anything to promote economic growth.
A tougher challenge for Perry’s rivals, however, involves the potentially toxic comments on Social Security and Medicare he (or an impolitic ghostwriter) made in his recent book Fed Up. As Newt Gingrich painfully learned when he criticized Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposals on the early campaign trail, there is zero percentage right now for a Republican candidate to go to the left of anyone else on “entitlement reform.” While it may be true that Perry’s remarks could hurt him in a general election, his GOP rivals see little room to exploit the situation. The same is true of potential criticisms of Perry’s economic record in Texas. His opponents would all be pleased if doubts were raised about the “miracle” Perry supposedly wrought on jobs and growth. But since his formula of low taxes, low public spending, deregulation, and hostility to unions and environmentalists is conservative gospel these days, they don’t want to be anywhere near a microphone when blasphemy is uttered about its effectiveness.
All in all, the odds of major clashes between candidates tonight–other than those involving Ron Paul, who is not only dishing it out, but whose “anti-militarist” foreign policy views offer a target-rich environment for more conventional conservatives–may be dampened by the simple fact of where the debate is taking place. Aside from their desire to let someone else wield the cudgels, the candidates know that any attack in Simi Valley will be sure to draw a rebuke based on Reagan’s supposed “Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Any Fellow Republican.”
But the candidates would do well to remember that Reagan himself was known to throw an elbow now and then during his 1976 and 1980 presidential nomination campaigns. For Perry’s part, the new front-runner seems to enjoy a rhetorical barroom fight. His remarkable rise all but ensures that it’s only a matter of time before his rivals give him a chance to rumble.