Contrary to the prevailing wisdom being parroted by conservatives, Greg Sargent has obtained some interesting polling data indicating that most blue collar whites, perhaps the largest swing voter constituency, approve of the Occupy Wall St. protests. As Sargent explains:

It’s become an article of faith among some conservative and even neutral commentators: If Obama and Dems embrace Occupy Wall Street, they risk driving away droves of blue collar white voters in swing states who are crucial to Obama’s reelection. The argument: These voters tend to be culturally alienated by the theatrics of such protests, just as they were in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and won’t think Occupy Wall Street’s brand of populism is in their own interests — so Obama and Dems align themselves with the movement at their extreme peril.
But I’ve obtained some new polling that seriously complicates this argument: In two new national polls, the cross tabs show that majorities of blue collar whites do, in fact, back the protests.

Sargent asked for and got data from United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll, and Time magazine’s poll revealing the views of non-college-educated whites, “a reasonably good category for judging blue collar white sentiment.” The results showed:

In the National Journal poll, 56 percent of non-college-educated whites agree with the protesters; only 31 percent disagree.
In the Time poll, 54 percent of non-college-educated men, and 48 percent of non-college educated women, view the protests favorably. (That’s roughly 51 percent overall.) Meanwhile,only 29 percent of non-college-educated men, and only 19 percent of non-college-educated women, disagree. (That’s roughly 23 percent.)
The sample sizes were reasonable, too: In the National Journal poll, 384 non-college-educated respondents were polled; in the Time poll, 379 were surveyed.

Sargent acknowledges the problems with interpretation: “These may be low information voters. They may be reacting to the target of the protests more than registering agreement with the protesters themselves. Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have a specific agenda, which makes it easier for people to back it, and things could change once it starts making specific demands.”
He notes also that President Obama’s approval rating with this demographic is still very low. But, as Sargent adds, the evidence he insightfully unearthed nonetheless suggests that “the protesters’ message may be resonating among voters who are supposedly certain to be alienated by the protests.”
Conservatives seem to be in denial, longing for the good old days when they could get away with the even then simplistic contention that social protesters and white workers were separated by a vast cultural divide into two very different political tribes. That’s not to say that the poll numbers will hold indefinitely, as Sargent notes. But it doesn’t look like the ‘hardhats vs. hippies’ meme is going to stick this time.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In the many baleful assessments of the 2012 Republican presidential field, the running joke for months has been “somebody has to win.” Indeed, that seems to be the main reason so many pundits are confident that Mitt Romney, a candidate the party’s rank-and-file conservative stalwarts clearly don’t like and don’t want to nominate, will ultimately win the prize. But Romney’s noncommittal stance in Iowa, coupled with poll-leader Herman Cain’s lack of campaign infrastructure or regularity of visits, means the state that is set to vote first on January 3 presents a tantalizing opportunity for a dark horse or a supposed has-been to swoop in and shake up the race. And Iowa’s unique caucus dynamic–which rewards candidate loyalty and ideological purity, but doesn’t require a lot of money to compete–only makes the stage that much more inviting for Perry, Bachmann, or even Santorum to make a last-minute surge.
The biggest reason why Iowa remains an open ballgame is that the two candidates currently dominating the polls, in Iowa and nationally, haven’t really committed to competing in the state. In Mitt Romney’s case, that is very deliberate; having arguably blown the nomination in 2008 by diverting resources from New Hampshire and raising expectations in Iowa that were dashed by Mike Huckabee’s upset win, he’s obviously not eager to risk the same mistake twice. So Romney’s mainly lying back in the weeds, though he remains first or second in every Iowa poll, and is returning to the state this week for the first time since May. In Herman Cain’s case, on the other hand, his lack of organization and light schedule in Iowa have simply served as exhibit A for the argument that he’s not a serious candidate for the presidency. His activity in Iowa over the next couple of weeks will therefore be watched closely by the chattering classes with an eye to his basic viability. But unless Romney or Cain change their tactics and dive headfirst into the state, Iowans–who are extremely self-conscious about their role in the presidential nominating process–will likely not keep telling pollsters they favor the two men who are spurning their affections.
Another factor that indicates anything can happen in Iowa is the accelerated schedule, which ensures that all the candidate jousting for position will occur on a very short track. The early caucus date immediately after the holidays will reduce the attention normally paid to the campaign and greatly inhibit the ability of candidates to “go negative.” With caucuses being held, literally, on the first day most working Iowans return to the grind after an extended vacation, turnout could also be affected despite the intense interest Republicans everywhere are exhibiting in this particular presidential race. And low turnout could spell better chances for a dark-horse candidate.
Finally, because Iowa is a caucus, not a primary, it means that voters will be more ideologically driven than in primary states. Iowa GOP caucuses do not, however, involve the byzantine procedures of viability thresholds, vote-trading, and multiple divisions into preference groups that make Democratic caucuses in the state such an ordeal; people show up, vote for a presidential candidate, and then sample the pot-luck snacks. In other words, organization matters a lot, but it doesn’t have to be as extensive, expensive, or strategically adept as the finely-honed instruments deployed by Obama, Edwards, and Clinton in Iowa in 2008. Just ask Mike Huckabee, who won the GOP caucuses four years ago with a budget that would have barely lasted a week in the Democratic contest.
At this moment, then, other candidates can realistically imagine themselves launching an audacious Iowa campaign that shakes up the race. Bachmann, who won the August Iowa GOP Straw Poll, remains an obvious contender. She’s a sentimental and ideological favorite of many Iowa activists, and a close friend and ally of influential Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King, who is expected to make an influential endorsement before long. Rick Perry, despite his profound crash in the polls, will now have the opportunity to spend some of his vast budget, test-drive the shiny new Iowa organization he mainly inherited from Tim Pawlenty, and show off his allegedly superior retail political skills. And even Rick Santorum has a shot. With more appearances in the state than any other candidate, he has long competed with Bachmann for the favor of hardcore, single-issue social conservatives, who are perhaps more formidable in Iowa than in any other early state. Moreover, his persistence, reflected in the symbolic gesture of pledging to campaign in all 99 counties, is the sort of monomaniacal Iowa-centric behavior activists there like to reward.
With just over ten weeks until voting begins, Iowa’s hardcore conservatives have yet to settle on an ultimate champion. This might very well tempt Romney to abandon his sensible strategy of focusing on New Hampshire and Nevada and instead try for an early sweep by beating divided competition in the caucuses. One thing, at least, is certain: The current state of irresolution, for both anti-Romney conservatives and for Romney himself, won’t last much longer. So you can expect some real turbulence in Iowa during the next few weeks, as Romney and Cain make their decisions about the state’s importance and their rivals try to get attention before the shiny distractions of the holidays take hold. After all, somebody has to win.

The following article by political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross- posted from HuffPo.
It wasn’t long ago that conventional wisdom among Democratic strategists handicapped Mitt Romney as President Obama’s toughest potential Republican challenger. But lately there has been a big shift.
In fact, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Mitt Romney is the very embodiment of the political narrative that will likely define the 2012 Presidential race. Unless there is a miracle, the outcome of next year’s election will likely be determined by whom the public blames for the lousy economy.
Of course the Republicans will argue that the culprit is the “overreaching,” “innovation-stifling” big government and its leader, President Obama. Their prescription to solve the country’s economic woes: eliminate every regulation in sight, cut taxes for the wealthy and free Wall Street bankers that lead us into the promised land.
Democrats, on the other hand, will pin the blame exactly where it belongs — on the reckless speculation of the big Wall Street banks, their Republican enablers — and the stagnant middle class incomes that have resulted from the top one percent of Americans siphoning off virtually all of the country’s economic growth since 1980. They will fault the “do-nothing Republican Congress” for their insistence on defending the status quo, and their refusal to create jobs.
Earlier this summer — when Republicans had succeeded in making “fiscal responsibility” and “deficit reduction” the touchstone of American political discourse — a businessman like Romney appeared to many to be just the ticket. But the tide has turned.
Once they got the debt ceiling “hostage taking” episode behind them, the administration has used its jobs package — and its own budget proposals — to draw a sharp line in the sand. The President has demanded that Congress take action on jobs and pay for it by raising taxes on millionaires.
Then came the Occupy Wall Street Movement — and the worldwide response — that has tapped into the public’s fundamental understanding, and anger, at the real nature of the economic crisis. The fact is that one of the only people around more unpopular than politicians are Wall Street bankers.
Finally, of course, the economic facts on the ground have made it clearer and clearer that right wing economic theories that blame “bloated entitlements” to seniors who make an average of $14,000 a year — and demand “fiscal austerity” — are just plain stupid. According to the Washington Post, even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — long the world’s leading advocate of deficit reduction and “austerity” — has now warned that “austerity may trigger a new recession and is urging countries to look for ways to boost growth.”
As the national economic dialogue has shifted, the public’s view of Mitt Romney has also come into focus. His out-of-touch “1% moments” proliferated.
On August 11, the blog Think Progress captured the now-famous video of Romney opining, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Of course, given his record of dismembering and bankrupting companies at his old firm, Bain Capital, if “corporations are people,” then Romney is guilty of murder.
On August 29th Romney disputed an account about the expansion of his beach front home. “Romney: Beachfront home is being doubled in size, not quadrupled,” The Hill reported.
Then, just a few days ago, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Wall Street donors had abandoned President Obama in droves and flocked to Romney.
Finally, an extraordinary photo surfaced from Romney’s days as CEO of Bain Capital, where he made massive profits while five of the companies under his firm’s direction went bankrupt and thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Apparently their difficulties in finding places to stash their profits became a joke among the young hotshots at Bain. They posed for a photograph with money stuffed in their pockets — even their mouths. There at the center of the picture was the grinning CEO, Mitt Romney, with money overflowing from his pockets and his suit jacket.
There he is — posing as the poster child for the 1%.
The picture could be the iconic image of the iconic line from the film Wall Street: “Greed is Good.”
Increasingly, many Democratic strategists have begun to feel that Romney could be the best possible opponent for President Obama next year.
Think about the way swing voters make political decisions. They don’t make their judgments about how to vote based on “policies or programs.” They evaluate the personal qualities of the candidates.
In determining who is on their side and shares their values — do swing voters choose Romney — the poster child for the 1% — or President Obama?
In the coming campaign, who is more likely to appear as an insider defending the status quo that people don’t like — and who will appear to be an outsider trying to bring change? Normally you’d have to say that the consummate “insider” is the guy who is President of the United States. Not necessarily so if his opponent is Wall Street’s own Mitt Romney.
And several factors unique to Romney make his situation even worse:
•Voters want leaders with strong core values. That’s not a description of Mitt Romney who has flip-flopped on just about every position he’s ever taken in public life. When Karl Rove ran George Bush’s campaign against John Kerry he said that Kerry’s statement that he voted for the War in Iraq before he voted against it was the gift that kept on giving. Rove took a Senator with strong convictions and convinced swing voters that he had none. If Rove could do that to Kerry, think about the easy time Democrats will have in convincing America that Romney’s values shift with the wind.
•Voters want to connect emotionally with their leaders. Ask Al Gore how important it is for candidates to “connect” with the voters. Romney has the personality of a statue. He just doesn’t make emotional contact.
Much of the Republican smart money is going to Romney because it thinks he is increasingly likely to be the nominee. I can understand why the Wall Street money is going to Romney — they want their guy to be President.
But I’m guessing that if he gets the nomination, by this time next year, Wall Street’s investment in Romney will look about as “smart” as all that money they put into sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps four years ago.

George Lakoff’s “A Framing Memo for Occupy Wall Street” at Reader Supported News contains some sound advice for the protesters. Lakoff, author of “The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain,” shares some good insights here, among them, “Occupy elections: voter registration drives, town hall meetings, talk radio airtime, party organizations, nomination campaigns, election campaigns, and voting booths…Above all: Frame yourselves before others frame you.”
One of the frequently-heard cynical utterances in Georgia is “Thank God for Mississippi,” because they almost always edge out the Peach State in the race to the bottom regarding various educational statistics. Well, today it’s “Thank God for Alabama,” which has topped even GA in the quest for bad press for having the most idiotic, destructive and racist immigration law. This New York Times editorial explains it well.
Speaking of vicious, self-destructive immigration policies, Trip Gabriel’s “Comments on Immigration Alienate Some Hispanics,” also in the NYT, discusses the boomerang potential of immigrant-bashing in the GOP Vegas debate.
At Daily Kos, Chris Bowers flags new and recent polls indicating strong public support for OWS. Bowers cautions “These are great numbers for Occupy Wall Street, but they should be digested with an important qualifier. By a four-to-one margin, those who agree with Occupy Wall Street “mostly agree” rather than “completely agree.” When polls are heavy with “somewhat” or “mostly” responses, that is often a sign that opinions are not well formed on that subject matter. As such, the challenge for Occupy Wall Street moving forward will be to solidify its broad, but soft, support.”
Gotta love Blue Texan’s comment at Firedoglake.com on Sarah Palin’s diss of Gov. Perry’s immigration policy: “Man, just when the Secessionist needed a life preserver — she throws him an anvil.”
Interesting read at Foreign Policy, where Jacob Heilbrunn has a lament “Twilight of the Wise Man,” concerning the demise of, well, sanity among the GOP’s international affairs gurus, in particular the once-influential but now besieged-by-the-tea-party Sen. Richard Lugar. “This kind of above-politics deal-making on matters of global importance was once the hallmark of a whole caste of Republican policymakers, the so-called “wise men”: avatars of the establishment who always maintained that foreign affairs is a lofty sphere to be left untainted by partisan bickering.”
AP’s article, “Ohio Union Fight Could Boost Dems’ 2012 Chances” by Ann Sanner and Sam Hananel quotes former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland on the importance of the November 8 referendum regarding whether to dump Ohio’s draconian restrictions on public employee unions: “If we were to win, I think it would be a major encouragement that will be hugely beneficial, not only to Democrats running for the state House and state Senate, but I think it would be a huge benefit to Senator (Sherrod) Brown and to President Obama.”
WaPo Fact-Checker Glenn Kessler doesn’t merely shred the job-creation claim made by Sens. McCain, Paul and Portman about their “ludicrous” alternative to the President’s jobs bill; he pulverizes it to smithereens.
Joe Slade White and Ben Nuckels discuss “The unconventional campaign that helped Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn secure an improbable win” in their Campaigns & Elections post, “Values, Timing and Breaking the ‘Rules.” The authors answer some interesting questions, including: “So how did the pundits and insiders have it so wrong? How did the Quinn campaign get outspent by over a million dollars on TV in the last eight weeks and still pull off a victory? And how did Quinn win, while the Democratic candidate to fill President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat lost?”
Aspiring authors take note of Herman Cain’s clever formula for getting your book on the best-seller list: Run for Prez, shell out $36K of campaign cash for copies of your own book, bought from your own company and..voila! Greg Howard fleshes out the scam at Slate.com.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Many pundits are asking whether the Democratic Party and the White House should “embrace” the Occupy Wall Street movement. The question is poorly posed. The real issue is the nature of the problems that now confront us and the most effective response to them. The party and the administration should make common cause with OWS to the extent that doing so is consistent with an agenda and message that Democrats can take to the country next year with a reasonable hope of rallying majority support.
Some basic facts are clear. The emergency measures the administration implemented in 2009 averted all-out catastrophe but did not restore the economy to health. The patient is still in the ICU, and the blood transfusions are coming to an end. The economy is growing far too slowly to make a dent in unemployment and is likely to do so for quite some time. While the top 1 or 2 percent are doing very well, the middle class is suffering. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 14 that median household income in the United States declined 7 percent from 2000 to 2010, the worst ten-year performance in more than forty years. Projected increases over the next decade will not be enough to regain the lost income, which means a full two decades of stagnation.
While there are many reasons for this gloomy picture, the most important is household debt, which remains much too high relative to disposable income. The administration’s program has done little to address the epicenter of the debt crisis–burdensome mortgages–a gaping hole that conservatives such as Glenn Hubbard and Martin Feldstein have urged the administration to fill. And young unemployed or underemployed college graduates are struggling with their own debt crisis–large students loans that they can’t repay. While saving the financial system imperfectly was preferable to letting it collapse, the failure to act with equal urgency to save the middle class will go down as a strategic error that ensured a populist reaction, which duly transpired–first on the right, now on the left.
A deeper issue underlies this outburst of discontent. Every community of any appreciable size has an elite–often more than one. Elites are tolerated, even respected, if the rest of the population sees them as using their wealth, power, prestige, and talents on behalf of the community’s interests, as well as their own. Elites are not expected to be saintly altruists, but they are expected to care about the rest of society, not just themselves.
And that is the nub of today’s populist revolt. It is very difficult to find anyone outside a couple of Manhattan zip codes who believes that the financial sector has added value to America’s economy and society over the past two decades. Financial “innovations” ended up expanding risk, not opportunity; the Masters of the Universe redivided the pie without noticeably expanding it. While wages stagnated, financial elites became untethered from the real economy and sailed off into the stratosphere of nine and ten-figure wealth. A capitalist economy loses credibility when its results diverge too far from public sentiments about decency and fairness.
That’s where we are today. The most recent Time Magazine survey found that 86 percent of Americans think that Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington, while 79 percent think that the gap between rich and poor has grown too large. Of those with at least some awareness of the OWS movement (about three quarters of those surveyed), 68 percent believe that the rich should pay higher taxes, and 71 percent that financial executives responsible for the financial meltdown should be prosecuted.
The task of political leadership is not to mirror or pander to these sentiments, but rather to articulate the important truths that underlie them. History shows that when elites fail to discharge the responsibilities their privileges entail, they sow the wind. America’s elites ignored this time-honored truth, and they are now reaping the whirlwind of their heedlessness.
In 2009, at a time when one might have expected maximum feasible humility from financial leaders, Lloyd Blankfein opined that Goldman Sachs was doing “God’s work.” While he was limning a previously unnoticed theological equivalence between himself and Mother Theresa, Brian Griffiths, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International and also chairman of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth Fund, was invoking John Rawls’s Difference Principle. In a 2009 discussion at St. Paul’s Cathedral, he had this to say about compensation in the financial sector: “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” And so we would, if it did. But where is the evidence that it does? I’m not even sure that Griffiths’ proposition was intended as a statement of fact. It seems, rather, like a ritual incantation designed to ward off evil spirits. If so, it has lost its protective powers.
It is time for a new American discussion about the responsibility of elites. Their role in helping to rebuild a sustainable fiscal course for our country would be a good place to start. Someone on Wall Street should circulate a petition endorsing the Senate Democrats’ call for a 5.6 percent surtax on the earnings of millionaires. It would be interesting to see how many banking and financial executives would sign it.

Rob Stein, Founder of the Democracy Alliance, has a sobering, must-read for Democrats in his HuffPo article “The Grand New Alliance.” Stein skillfully dissects the component elements of the right wing coalition of his post’s title (‘GNA’ in shorthand), provides a thoughtful assessment of their cumulative power and makes a compelling argument that it promises serious trouble for Democrats and Progressives in 2012 — and beyond.

A profoundly significant new political alignment within the right flank of the Republican Party is becoming entrenched in American politics.
For the modern, somewhat more mainstream economic and neo-conservative Reagan-Bush-Bush-Cheney Republican Establishment, it is a threat far more dangerous to its control of the Conservative-Right than, in their time, were the rambunctious John Birch Society, the youthful Goldwater Rebellion, or the Lee Atwater upstarts who orchestrated the Reagan Revolution.
For Independents, moderate Republicans and Democrats this new alignment should be a wake-up call that the foundations of Democracy are always fragile and the promises of America must never be taken for granted…An harmonic convergence — a “grand new alliance” — is occurring among Libertarians, the Christian Right and the disparate legions of Tea Party activists that is transforming politics as we have known it.

Stein acknowledges significant “tensions and fissures” in this multi-tentacled right-wing coalition, “around the environment, the legitimacy of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and gay marriage.” He adds, however, that,

Today, the Libertarian-Religious-Tea Party Alliance is a consciously strategic federation of separate, but inter-connected, wings of a potent right-wing political machine that is energized by the frightening uncertainties of the economic downturn, mobilized in rigid opposition to a President they cannot abide, emboldened by confrontation with some of their historic allies within the broader Republican conservative movement, and fueled by a new avalanche of post-Citizen’s United-inspired financial resources.
Its political power has risen rapidly and dramatically. In just the past twelve months, the GNAs’ successes have affected virtually every nook and cranny of American politics – sweeping victories in the 2010 Congressional and state elections, grid-locked legislative stand-off with Congressional Democrats and President Obama, scorched earth political wars in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and other states with overwhelming Republican elected majorities, and a dramatic hijacking of the current Republican Presidential Primary process through the candidacies of Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Stein goes on to describe the three key elements of the GNA — libertarians, the religious right, and the tea party — their numerical strength, what they believe, how they get funded, work together and resolve their differences. He notes that the dominant element, the tea party, successfully projects a “powerfully resonant right-wing populist economic (anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-government, anti-Obama) message that is drowning out reasoned debate, causing legislative gridlock, and strengthening reactionary forces.” Worse,

Read more…

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira sheds light on public attitudes toward the Occupy Wall St. protests in his current ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages: “To conservatives such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), they’re a “growing mob.” But the public feels quite differently about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the issues they’re raising.” Teixeira explains:

In a new Time/Abt SRBI poll, 54 percent say they’re favorable to the movement that has been protesting policies that “favor the rich, the government’s bank bailout, and the influence of money in our political system.” Just 23 percent are unfavorable, and 23 percent say they don’t know enough to have an opinion. The movement’s favorability rating is actually twice as high as that of the conservative Tea Party movement: Just 27 percent are favorable to the Tea Party, compared to 33 percent who are unfavorable and 39 percent without an opinion.

Regarding the issue concerns of the protesters:

The poll also gauged the public’s level of agreement with a number of positions associated with Occupy Wall Street. In each case, the poll found overwhelming agreement among those familiar with the protests: 86 percent agreed that Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington; 79 percent agreed that the gap between rich and poor in the United States has grown too large; 71 percent agreed that executives of financial institutions responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008 should be prosecuted; and 68 percent agreed that the rich should pay more taxes.

Teixeira concludes:

Obviously, “mob” is in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives never seemed too worried when Tea Party activists were raising a ruckus, but now that protesters are daring to call out conservatives’ rich and powerful friends, it suddenly becomes a different story. If Occupy Wall Street is a mob, what does that make the public–mob sympathizers? It will be interesting to see conservatives try to wiggle out of that one.

Indeed, the squirming has already begun.

Most fair-minded observers would agree that Democrats are seriously screwed by the present system of financing political campaigns, all the more so after the Citizens United decision. Reform proposals, post McCain-Feingold, go nowhere in congress, thanks to GOP intransigence.
Writing in The American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias, has an interesting critique of Lawrence Lessig’s new book about campaign finance reform, “Republic, Lost.” Yglesias, author of “Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats,” calls Lessig’s book “must-reading for anyone who’s tuned out the campaign-finance debate,” but adds:

Lessig moves beyond quid pro quo corruption of the sort that typified the Gilded Age and recently ensnared such congressmen as Duke Cunningham of California and William Jefferson of Louisiana. Taking a broader view of the problem, Lessig develops a concept of dependence and independence that draws on the Founding generation’s obsession with the alleged corruption of Parliament at the hands of a monarchy that dispensed pensions and offices to compliant representatives. As part of this analysis, Lessig cites the anthropological concept of a “gift economy” to argue that a person can become indebted to another without any explicit agreement of a quid pro quo.
…Without anyone necessarily being bribed, Lessig argues, a dangerous and unseemly economy of influence has arisen in Washington that renders legislators dependent on lobbyists and all too independent from their constituents or the national interest.
Lessig takes on the model of lobbying as “legislative subsidy” developed by political scientist Richard Hall and economist Alan Deardorff as an alternative to the naive lobbying-as-bribe model. Legislators come to Washington passionate about several issues. Quickly, though, they come to depend on the economy of influence for help in advancing an agenda. They need the policy expertise, connections, public-relations machine, and all the rest that lobbyists can offer. Since this legislative subsidy is not uniformly available, the people’s representatives find themselves devoting more of their time to those aspects of their agenda that moneyed interests also support. No one is bribed, but the political process is corrupted.

Yglesias notes how members of congress live high on the hog as a collateral benefit of the myriad fund-raising activities conducted for their campaigns. He discusses another problem with Lessig’s proposal:

But for all that Lessig impresses with his wide-ranging and theoretically ambitious critique of the status quo, the solution he puts on the table is much less compelling. He argues for the creation of a publicly funded, clean elections system. Every voter would get a $50 “democracy voucher” and would be “free to allocate his or her democracy voucher as he or she wishes.” In addition, “voters are free under this system to supplement the voucher contribution with their own contribution–up to $100 per candidate.” To be eligible for the voucher money, a congressional candidate would have to agree not to accept any money beyond the $50-and-$100 system, meaning “no PAC money and no direct contributions from political parties.”
…It’s extraordinarily difficult to get money out of politics in a manner consistent with freedom of association and expression. Nothing in this proposal would prevent vast sums from being raised and spent by nominally independent groups with an interest in campaigns…Such spending would have a dependency–inducing influence regardless of the technical independence of the spending from the candidate.
The virtue of the voucher scheme is different. If enacted, it would flush more money into campaigns and make it easier for challengers to get off the ground in both primaries and general elections. Making electoral politics more competitive is a desirable outcome, though it might also make members of Congress more attuned than ever to opportunities for post–congressional employment.

Yglesias notes that interest group support of the Affordable Care Act produced no Republican votes, and suggests a broader set of remedies:

A sounder approach would acknowledge that the American political system suffers from multiple ills. Arizona, a state that’s adopted an admirable clean-elections campaign-finance law, is hardly free from special-interest influence. Instead, the combination of low-paid, part-time legislators with term limits and meager staff resources (in the Arizona House, some members get a half-time secretary) makes members dangerously dependent on the “legislative subsidy” that savvy lobbyists can provide. Problems of this kind are endemic to American state government, and Congress isn’t immune to them. Better ethics rules at all levels should be paired with efforts to professionalize legislative and staff work and provide better pay. Stronger leadership and tighter party discipline, though often bemoaned, also tend to reduce interest–group power relative to ideological agendas…Under conditions of strong discipline, partisan and ideological considerations trump the economy of influence on high-profile bills.
…Some of Lessig’s strongest passages remind us of the early candidacy of Barack Obama, who impressed some and frightened others with his emphasis on good government and procedural reform. That figure disappeared after Inauguration Day, replaced by a cynical dealmaker ready to do what it took to get a few key pieces of legislation over the finish line. Under the circumstances, it’s striking that he’s gone on to spend so much of his administration hamstrung by an increasingly broken Congress. Republic, Lost is a powerful reminder that this problem goes deeper than poor legislative tactics or bad character…

Yglesias concludes, “As progressives contemplate how best to pick up the pieces after recent setbacks, a robust agenda to change how business gets done in the capital needs to be part of the picture. This time, we’d better mean it.”

Arielle Kass has an instructive article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution “Banking customers switching over fees.” Kass reports on an awakening movement that Big Banks will find more than a little disturbing — depositors taking their money out of mega-banks and putting it into community credit unions that invest in, gasp, American jobs. This should be a central priority of the Occupy Wall St. protests.
In that same vein, check out Yves Smith’s post and accompanying video clip at Naked Capitalism “As Many As 24 people Arrested for Trying to Close Accounts at Citibank.” The overreaction of law enforcement to this protest in the video clip is stunning. It appears that the movement to transfer deposits from big banks to community credit unions is growing some legs.
Just in case you thought it has all been said on this topic, along comes Jonathan Chait in New York magazine with “Should Liberals Like Occupy Wall Street?,” with some fresh insights and linkages to what some of the interesting progressive writers are thinking.
Also, Eugene Robinson’s WaPo column “How Democrats can use Occupy protests to their advantage” offers a salient observation that “The Republican Party is trapped on the wrong side of this issue. Democrats should be moving boldly, not timidly, to claim the issue of economic justice as their own.”
Political map freaks alert: The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has a “Map of Shame” providing roll-over state-by-state updates on voter photo ID laws.
ProPublica.org has a “History of U.S. Government Bailouts,” put together by Jesse Nankin, Eric Umansky, Krista Kjellman and Scott Klein, and featuring a nifty color-coded chart so you can get a sense of the comparative size of the bailout for each corporate beneficiary. Most occurred during Republican administrations.
CNN’s Gustavo Valdez’s post, “Why Nevada’s Latino vote could make the difference in the 2012 election,” makes a strong case that NV’s electoral votes are Dems’ to lose, with Latinos now 26 percent of the population, accounting for 46 percent of the state’s population growth in the last decade.
I’ve always felt progressives could make more effective use of patriotic symbols — there’s a reason MLK always marched with the American flag behind him. In his American Prospect post, “The Constitution: A Love Story,” Garrett Epps argues that “It’s time for liberals to reclaim our founding document from fanatics who worship its name but not its meaning…too many progressives see only the imperfection and shame in the Constitution’s history and blind themselves to the promise of its text.”
Colin Woodard’s interesting geopolitical analysis, “A Geography Lesson for the Tea Party” at The Washington Monthly, divides the U.S. into more than a dozen cultural regions to conclude that the Tea Party’s “influence is melting away across vast swaths of America,” even though it still rules the GOP.
Mark Lander has a New York Times report on President Obama’s 3-day bus tour of North Carolina, a state the white house considers key to his 2012 prospects. Today the President begins day two of his tour. But if you really want to better understand the underlying political dynamics of the now pivotal tar heel state, you can’t do better than reading the articles by Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis at Facing South, particularly their reportage on the NC GOP’s Daddy Warbucks, Art Pope (see here and here, for example).
Greg Sargent addresses an important question in his Plum Line post, “What if working class Americans actually like Occupy Wall Street?” Unions are already on board and Sargent quotes Karen Nussbaum, executive director of Working America, which represents unorganized workers and is experiencing unprecedented growth in the wake of OWS: “if we keep the subject on jobs and democracy, we’ll keep those working class moderates in this fight…It’s crucial that we not let this moment evaporate, and we can do that if we tie the movement to a working class constituency.”

Nate Silver’s “The Geography of Occupation” should erase any doubt that the Occupy Wall St. protests are a nation-wide phenomenon which may yet surpass the tea party in size. Silver explains:

The nascent movement known as Occupy Wall Street had its largest single day of protests on Saturday. And a funny thing happened: most of the action was far from Wall Street itself.
No, I don’t mean at Zuccotti Park — which is not, technically, on Wall Street. Nor do I mean Times Square — all of 19 minutes away from Wall Street on the ‘C’ train — where large crowds of protesters gathered on Saturday.
Instead I mean Europe, where crowds in cities like Rome, Barcelona and Madrid were estimated at 200,000 to 500,000 per city (more, probably, than the protests in the United States combined). And I mean California and other parts of the western United States, where crowds were proportionately much larger than in the Northeast or elsewhere in the country.

Silver argues further that “…the distribution of protests throughout the United States may reveal something about the political orientation of the protesters.” He explains his methodology:

The way that I studied this was to search through hundreds of local news accounts for credible estimates of the crowd sizes for each gathering. Where possible, I used estimates provided by reporters or public safety officials rather than the protesters themselves as they are less subject to exaggeration. In some cases, there were multiple estimates of the size of the protest in a given city — they ranged, for instance, from about 5,000 to 15,000 for the New York protests — in which case I used the median estimate.
This exercise is meant, in part, to provide a comparison to the crowds that gathered for the first widespread Tea Party protests on April 15, 2009, for which I adopted a similar approach and came up with an estimate of at least 300,000 protesters across the country.

Silver concedes that “Saturday’s Occupy protests were probably smaller than that.” He found crowd size estimates for a total of at least 70K protestors, but he believes it could be as many as 100K in 150 cities across the U.S., which is impressive for a single day.
In terms of regional breakdown, Silver says most of the action was in the west, possibly because of the more liberal political attitudes in the region and abundance of tech-savvy youth mobilizing turnout. He presents a chart showing “protesters per 1 million population,” with the highest percentage turnout in the west, followed by the northeast, the midwest and the south. Notes Silver:

Over all, about 38,000 protesters — more than half of the documented total — turned out in the Western Census Bureau Region, which accounts for about 23 percent of the country’s population. On a per-capita basis, the West drew about two-and-a-half times more protesters than the Northeast, four times more than the Midwest, and five times more than the South. And it wasn’t necessarily in large cities — although places like Los Angeles and Seattle had large crowds, so did the wine-and-cheese town of Santa Rosa, Calif., and the college town of Eugene, Ore., among others.

Silver speculates that, “perhaps the protesters are more ideologically minded than they are interested in partisan politics,” which could be problematic for Democratic hopes of benefitting form OWS. If the protests keep growing at the current fast clip, they could easily approach and perhaps surpass the number of individuals who participated in tea party demos. It will be interesting to see if OWS does as well in terms of media coverage and influence on the political agendas of either party.