Matthew D. Lassiter, author of “The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South.” has a New York Times op-ed, “Who Speaks for the Silent Majority” arguing that “Mr. Obama’s challenge in 2012 is not the ideological fervor of Tea Party conservatives, but rather the recognition by many working-class and middle-class voters that both parties favor Wall Street over Main Street. While activist groups on the right and left compete to portray big government or big business as the enemy, the silent majority is still out there in the volatile political center, up for grabs.” Since not all Dems “favor Wall St over Main St.,” Lassiter’s point would be more credible if he said “perception” instead of “recognition.”
Peter Beinhart’s “The GOP’s War Hypocrisy” at The Daily Beast puts to rest any worries anti-war Dems may have entertained about the GOP presidential candidates coming up with a coherent alternative to the Administration’s Afghanistan policy.
The fate of same-day voter registration in Maine is on the line next Tuesday, when voters will cast ballots affirming or rejecting the restoration of the measure. Chris Bowers reports that it’s a close call, with 48 percent rejecting a measure to require voters to register at least two days in advance, and 44 percent supporting it, according to a recent Public Policy Poll. As you might guess, supporters of same-day registration are being outspent by the voter obstruction crowd. Those who want to help correct the imbalance can contribute here.
Marco Rubio (R-FL) is down, but not out, as a possible GOP veep candidate, according to George Bennett’s Palm Beach Post report on a new Suffolk University/WSVN-TV poll.
But Rubio’s “anti-Latino record” is far too problematic for him to do the GOP ticket any good, according to Democratic strategist Maria Cardona’s well reasoned post at CNN politics.
There are encouraging numbers for President Obama in the new Quinnipiac Poll, reports Kyle Leighton at Talking Points Memo, with “big gains among the groups with whom he has had the most problems – whites and men. Women also shift from a five-point negative to a four-point positive,” according to Quinnipiac Institute spokesman Peter Brown…The President leads all his possible GOP challengers outside the poll’s margin of error…Romney is the only GOP candidate that pulls more support from independent voters than Obama, although Cain comes within one point. The key against Romney is female voters — Obama gets 50 percent against Romney’s 38, while they evenly split males.”
Apparently not all rich guys are financial wizards. Mayor Bloomberg popped off on Tuesday, loudly parroting the conservative meme that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act caused the financial meltdown. Krugman shreds the meme, noting that Fannie and Freddie accounted for “very little subprime lending” and adding “this is cheap, politically motivated stuff, motivated by a deliberate desire to mislead. And if Bloomberg actually believes this stuff, he has very bad judgement, not just about the facts, but about who he should trust.”
Dems who want to get a better understanding of the living standards and concerns of young voters should check out a new report posted by Demos, “The State of Young America: the Databook,” especially its splashy Charts and Graphs.
Chris Isidore reports at CNN Money that Harvard student supporters of Occupy Wall St. walked out of an Intro Econ class being taught by Bush economic advisor Greg Mankiw. A student statement said that the protest was being conducted “to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course.” Perhaps it’s time for OWS to hold teach-ins on income inequality on America’s campuses — with strong Democratic support.
Redistricting is serious biz for political junkies, but ProPublica gooses a little levity out of the topic in their catchy ditty “The Redistricting Song.”
Kim Geiger of the L.A. Times Washington Bureau reports that a third party advocacy group funded by secret donors, ‘Americans Elect,’ has just announced that it has secured 1.9 million signatures needed for a spot on the Ohio presidential ballot for 2012. The group has already qualified in Florida, Michigan and Nevada, Arizona, Alaska and Kansas — “and is awaiting certification in California, Utah, Hawaii and Arkansas.”

This item is a guest post by Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin, Co-Editors of CenteredPolitics.com, from which it is cross-posted. Allan Rivlin is also a Partner with Hart Research Associates/Garin Hart Yang.
The Occupy Wall Street message: “We are the 99%” has the benefit of simplicity but conveys a deep and complex message that is likely to find acceptance far beyond the mostly young people camping in urban centers around the world. The slogan is a challenge to rebalance a system of democratic capitalism that has lost its equilibrium and no longer seems to be delivering on its promises for the majority of participants. The social contract offering a middle class life for workers, a secure retirement, and a better life for the next generation now seems to be a broken promise except for those at the very top. But beyond this breakdown of the economic system, the breakdown of the political system presents an even greater challenge to what it means to live in, and believe in, a country based on democratic capitalism.
The Occupy movement has started a national conversation about inequality and, as noted by EJ Dionne, even Republicans are starting to address the phrase. House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor and House Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan raise the topic of income inequality as a legitimate concern before turning to accuse President Barak Obama of “class warfare.” We have said for a long time that when Republicans make this charge against Democrats the proper translation of “class warfare” is “Ouch! That hurts us.” For decades, Republicans respond quickly to anything uttered by a Democrat that remotely sounds like an appeal to class consciousness because they know just how threatening it could be to support for Republicans. It is not clear whether Republicans should be blaming President Obama, the Occupy movement or themselves, but despite their best efforts to avoid it, they seem to be on the wrong side of a class struggle in an election year.
Herman Cain’s response to the protesters was: “Don’t be jealous, don’t be envious. I don’t have much patience for someone who does not want to achieve their American dream the old-fashioned way.” But this is about much more than envy of the haves by the have-nots. The power of the movement, embodied in the four word slogan, is that it is an indictment of our economic system, our political system and especially the relationship between the two.
This is not just a story of economic disappointment. What has changed is the relationship between the economic and political spheres. The continual contradiction that is democratic capitalism, the tension between the one-dollar-one-vote capitalism, and the one-person-one-vote democracy, can be both the heart of its strength or the center of its weakness. When these forces are working in balance, as they did during the decades of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, the majority uses its democratic power to elect leaders who will restrain the natural tendency of capitalism toward concentrations of wealth and power. The “1%” may have both outsized wealth and political clout but the 99% have the votes. And the slogan challenges everyone who is not among the very rich, a category that includes the poor, the middle class, and even most of the upper-middle class, to vote as if votes still matter in our democracy.

Read more…

The New Republic brings together essays from 10 progressives in “Liberalism and Occupy Wall Street: a TNR Symposium,” which provides insightful and nuanced analyses of the Occupy Wall St. movement. It’s an excellent forum, in that it includes a full spectrum of Democratic thinking, pro to con and a range of perspectives in between.
After The New Republic published an editorial that took a skeptical view of the protests, several of its writers posted commentaries that took a favorable view of the demonstrations, including TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, John Judis and Timothy Noah. The subsequent forum features additional posts by TDS Co-Editor William Galston, Paul Berman, Will Marshall, Todd Gitlin, David Greenberg, Fred Seigel, Michael Kazin, Franklin Foer and Matt Yglesias. A sampling of excerpts:
Will Marshall’s “How Occupy Wall Street Will Hurt Liberals” provides a highly skeptical view, explaining, “…The protests don’t seem to be swelling into a mass movement. And they’re being hijacked by the usual congeries of lefty fringe groups, which are diluting the Occupiers’ most compelling message–that America is increasingly a land of unequal opportunity where hard work and self-reliance are no longer rewarded. Most important, though, the counterweight theory itself is flawed.”
In “Why I Support Occupy Wall St.,” Paul Berman writes “Occupy Wall Street and its sleeping-bag neo-hippies and its costumed street thespians and the touchingly hand-written placards and generally the display of eccentricity and impudence have focused America’s attention for a fleeting moment on economic wrongs and inequalities. How wonderful!”
“How Democrats Can Make Common Cause with Occupy Wall Street ,” by William Galston takes a different slant: “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.”
Fred Siegel casts his take with the skeptics, adding “In their zeal to recapture the spirit of the 1960s, the Occupy Wall Streeters are replicating the very processes that produced the current crack-up of liberalism…It’s not just that the Occupy Wall Streeters are filled with hopes of recreating the spirit of the 60s. It’s that they are literally recreating the follies of the 60s in miniature.”
Ruy Teixeira explains “Why a Majority of Americans Are Getting Behind Occupy Wall St.“, noting “…Among Americans who have heard of the OWS movement, favorable views outnumber unfavorable by a margin of more than two to one. OWS is saying out loud what a lot of Americans are already feeling. The time is right for an outbreak of aspirational populism–OWS is now twice as popular as the Tea Party–and liberals should hop on board.”
We encourage everyone interested in the OWS protests to read all of the contributions to the symposium. All in all, The New Republic deserves plaudits for doing something well that is not done enough — providing a broad array of views on a critical issue from some of the leading progresssive thinkers. In this way, supporters and critics alike can gain better understanding of adversarial viewpoints, while strengthening their own arguments.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
With little more than a year until the presidential election, two new reports–a survey from CBS/NYT and a CBO brief on household income–illuminate the treacherous terrain on which the campaign will be waged. The candidates will be fighting for the sympathies of an electorate that is utterly dispirited and in no mood for promises of uplift from either party. They say they want change, but they have lost confidence in the public sector as the agent of change.
That would seem to give the edge to the Republicans, but unfortunately for them, most people think they’re out to serve the interests of the rich, who already have too much. That would seem to move the edge back to Obama and the Democrats. But unfortunately for them, the people can’t figure out whose interests Obama and the Democrats want to serve–or whether they have a plan that could translate good economic intentions into tangible results.
Let’s begin with the latest CBS/NYT survey, which finds that only 10 percent of the electorate trusts the federal government to do what is right most of the time–by far the lowest level of confidence ever recorded. Only 9 percent approve of the way Congress is doing its job, which–as Senator John McCain is fond of stating–pretty much narrows its base of support to staff and family members.
Trust in the political system is low because the country is widely perceived as heading in the wrong direction and politicians aren’t seen as providing answers. From Barack Obama’s inauguration through the end of 2009, on average, 39 percent of the electorate thought that the country was generally heading in the right direction–not great, but much better than the 2008 average of 13 percent. But things have gone downhill ever since: The “right direction” choice averaged 33 percent in 2010 and 28 percent thus far in 2011. As of this week, it stands at 21 percent.
When it comes to the public’s faith in government providing effective answers, in mid-September, 43 percent of the people thought that Obama had a clear plan for creating jobs. Five weeks later, after a non-stop presidential jobs tour, that figure has fallen to 38 percent–unimpressive, but far better than the Republicans in Congress, who have persuaded only 20 percent of the electorate that they have a jobs plan. But the people aren’t grading the president on a curve: Only 35 percent approve of the way he is handling job creation, and only 38 percent approve of his handling of the economy as a whole. (By contrast, public approval of his handling of foreign policy and Iraq stands at 50 and 60 percent, respectively. But these aren’t likely to be voting issues next year.)
Such high levels of pessimism and mistrust should be political gold for Republicans. But the electorate has its own distinct worries about the GOP, and they center on the issue of income inequality. The CBS/NYT survey asked the people a blunt question: “Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly divided among more people?” 26 percent of the respondents thought that the current pattern is fair, versus 66 percent who thought the distribution should be more even.
This brings me to the second new report–from the Congressional Budget Office, on trends in household income. Its core finding can be stated simply: In the three decades from 1979 to 2007, the distribution of household income became substantially more unequal, even taking transfer payments and taxes into account. The bottom four quintiles saw their share of income drop, while the share going to the top quintile rose from 43 percent to 53 percent. And in that top quintile, near all of the gain went to the top 1 percent, whose share rose 9 percent points, from about 8 percent to 17 percent. Among that rarified group, average real household income after taxes rose by 275 percent, versus 35 percent for households at the median. When the “Occupy” movement talks about the 99 percent, they’re on to something. And so are the people as a whole.
CBO identifies the widening dispersion of income derived from the market–wages and salaries, capital and business income, and capital gains–as the major reason for the increasing inequality of household income. It turns out that all these sources of income have become less equal. In 1979, the bottom 80 percent of households received 60 percent of total labor income, 33 percent of business and capital income, and 8 percent of capital gains. By 2007, those figures had fallen to 50, 20, and 5 percent, respectively.
Simply put, people are justifiably worried that income inequality is too high, and they see Republicans as working to exacerbate it. For example, when asked whom they think the policies of Congressional Republicans most favor, 69 percent say the rich. Only 9 percent say the middle class, and only 2 percent say the poor. Only 15 percent believe that Republican policies treat all groups equally. Here are the comparable figures for the Obama administration: 28 percent say its policies favor the rich, 23 percent say the middle class, 17 percent say the poor, and 21 percent say Obama’s policies treat everyone equally. The American people know what Republicans stand for, and they don’t much like it. By contrast, they can’t figure out what Obama stands for–and they don’t much like that either.
In sum, while Americans sense that generating jobs and economic growth is an urgent task right now, they’re also concerned about the long-cycle trend toward increasing inequality and whether it’s compatible with either economic or civic health. But they still have no idea to whom they should turn to address those concerns. Unless the way the free market works changes dramatically, they know they can’t expect the “invisible hand” to reduce inequality. If the people want more equality, which they say they do, they can only get it through public policy. The catch is they don’t think they can trust the government to get the job done. They feel, in other words, that they’re stuck with a status quo they dislike.
It will be the job of the presidential candidates, of course, to capture and appeal to this dispirited mood. In that way, one thing is already clear: It won’t be a campaign full of “hope and change.”

The GOP can no longer be defined solely by the acronymn terms “Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis.” The “sabotage” meme is also begining to stick, as Political Animal Steve Benen observes in the Washington Monthly: “…the “sabotage” question — concerns that Republicans are deliberately hurting the country, holding back the economy on purpose, for the express purpose of undermining the Obama presidency — is gaining mainstream traction.”
Stanley Greenberg, James Carville, and Erica Seifert have a DCorps report on a new GQR survey exploring attitudes toward the Occupy Wall St. Movement and revealing “an intensely anti-establishment, anti-Washington, anti-Wall Street moment.” The report also indicates “On our thermometer scale, voters give chilly ratings all around. Everyone has dropped substantially, but support for the Republican Congress has completely disintegrated. More than half of all voters give these Republicans a negative rating, with a mean rating under 40 degrees. With House Republicans getting a remarkable 65 percent disapproval, the race for Congress is now dead even, after Republicans won by 8 points in 2010.”
Julian Brookes has a Rolling Stone post, “People are Ditching Their Banks and Shredding Their Cards,” noting: “Efforts like the Facebook-based Bank Transfer Day,, which is urging depositors to switch to a (low-or no-fee) credit union before Nov. 5, and Move Your Money, are having an effect, and local news outlets are reporting an uptick in fund shifts from big banks and into nonprofit institutions. Understandably, credit unions are piling on with ad campaigns urging potential customers to “ditch their banks” and “shred their cards.” Some credit unions have seen a 30 percent bump; others have doubled their membership.”
David G. Savage of the L.A.Times D.C. Bureau has an update on the GOP’s nation-wide voter suppression campaign, “Election laws tightening in GOP-run states”
Ron Brownstein’s National Journal post, “The Stained Glass Divide,” shows Dems doing a little better among the faithful than I expected: “Looking then at all adults, Republicans lead Democrats in identification among the very religious by 49 percent to 36 percent; Democrats lead Republicans among the non-religious by 52 percent to 30 percent; and Democrats narrowly lead among the moderately religious by 44 percent to 38 percent.”
In his CNN opinion post, James Carville makes a pretty tight argument “Why Rick Perry’s presidential bid is toast.”
Daniel Stone has a clip ‘n share for Dems at The Daily beast, “The Tea Party Pork Binge,” hammering conservative politicians for the disonnect between their pious government-bashing on the one hand and their eagerness to grab all the pork they can for their constituents, Eric Cantor being exhibit ‘A.’: “But away from the cameras, Cantor sometimes pulls right up to the spending trough, including the very stimulus law he panned in public. Letters obtained by Newsweek show him pressing the Transportation Department to spend nearly $3 billion in stimulus money on a high-speed-rail project–not the one he derided in Nevada, but another in his home state.” More juicy revelations here.
Jessica Brady has an interesting post at Roll Call Politics, discussing how conservative challengers in GOP primaries are a potentially-powerful asset for Democrats in their quest to retake majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Chris Bowers reports how “One part of Republican plan to derail Wisconsin recalls collapses,” when Republican state Senator Dale Schultz took a stand against a bill requiring the recall effort to be conducted under new, redistricted state maps. Bowers notes, however, that the state GOP has another bill in the hopper, which could obstruct the recall by requiring that recall petititions be notarized.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The trouble Herman Cain is experiencing with Politico‘s scoop on an alleged past settlement of sexual harassment charges–as well as his initial reaction to it–was, in many respects, predictable. Ever since the pizza executive’s improbable rise to the top of Republican presidential polls, there have been vague but menacing predictions that the new scrutiny he would face could quickly burst the bubble of his candidacy.
Likewise, Cain’s pose as a victim of a politically, and perhaps racially, motivated smear was also predictable, but could prove remarkably effective. The deep resentments raised by the Clarence Thomas precedent, which Cain and his defenders are already invoking, are a powerful and living memory for the conservative rank-and-file. While the impact of the current allegations against Cain will ultimately depend on whether or not they can be proven, and if so, how deeply they contradict his own account of the affair, there is a strong possibility the candidate will use his own supposed victimization to turn the saga into a plus for his campaign and a direct challenge to his rivals and intraparty detractors. And in doing so, Cain may finally roll the dice and become a deadly serious aspirant to the presidency.
As the allegations against Cain unfolded, the insightful conservative-watcher David Weigel of Slate has sought to debunk the idea that there is any valid parallel between Thomas’ situation and Cain’s. For instance, law professor Anita Hill didn’t come forward with her allegations against Thomas until he was nominated for the Supreme Court, while Cain’s accusers came forward soon after the alleged behavior occurred, and when he was nothing more than the president of a prominent trade association. Moreover, the political context is different, because Thomas enjoyed universal support from Republicans and (initially) strong trans-partisan support from African-Americans, while Cain has a big target on his back within his party and has no visible black support.
But if that’s all true, there remain parallels between Thomas and Cain that go deeper than the mere facts of their “cases.” After the intervening decades of partisan polarization and “culture wars,” it is sometimes difficult to recall how shockingly powerful the emotions unleashed by the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings seemed at the time. The she-said he-said confrontation between Thomas and Hill polarized the entire country, with the murky facts of Thomas’ behavior towards Hill becoming crystal clear when viewed through the various prisms of gender, race, and ideology. It certainly became an article of conservative faith that the effort to defeat Thomas’ confirmation exposed a deep and unsavory hypocrisy among liberals about race, and a proprietary attitude about acceptably “authentic” African-American viewpoints.
Once installed on the Supreme Court, Thomas quickly became identified with radical ideas about the constitution’s connection to divinely endowed “natural rights” that in every important respect anticipated the Tea Party’s brand of “constitutional conservatism.” He also became a living symbol of the emotionally important link in the minds of social conservatives between their cause and the civil rights movement. That Thomas’ once-robust support from African-Americans quickly evaporated after his constitutional views became apparent simply confirmed his status as a rebel against his liberal-brainwashed brothers and sisters, and a brave crusader for the color-blindness that conservatives consider the true, if betrayed, legacy of Martin Luther King.
As an African-American who has cultivated a close relationship with the Tea Party, Cain was the heir to Thomas in the conservative imagination well before there was any question of comparing sexual harassment allegations. From the very beginning of the campaign, he has adopted the Palinesque persona of an anti-politician running an unconventional campaign that is deeply threatening to elites in both parties. A big part of his self-image, in this respect, derives from his unique status as an African-American conservative who is simultaneously “above race,” but is also determined to liberate his own people from the “plantation” of subservience to contemptuous liberals who keep black people in the bondage of dependence on Big Government. Cain has also long been fond of comparing himself to Clarence Thomas and bravely anticipating the kind of “high-tech lynching” the Supreme Court Justice narrowly survived during his confirmation hearings. It’s no accident that Thomas’ wife Ginni, a self-described Tea Party activist, had warm things to say about Cain back in June, when he was largely an afterthought in the presidential campaign.
So in coping with his potentially fatal current situation, it would be astonishing if Cain didn’t play the “Clarence Thomas card,” which may seem like the “race card” to liberals or to Cain’s Republican foes, but in the code of today’s movement conservatives is virtually the opposite. Via the rich symbolism of Thomas’ passion play, Cain can reinforce the sense that he is the victim of a concerted assault by all of the Tea Party’s hobgoblins: secretly racist white liberals, the real-America-hating media elites, and the RINO-ridden Republican Party establishment. Indeed, from the deeply conservative point of view, these forces have been itching for the chance to destroy the man who offers a living refutation of the claim that the Tea Party is motivated not by simple patriotism but by selfish and atavistic resentment of minorities and our current, half-black president. If these powerful, defensive emotions are properly harnessed by Cain, the timing of the sexual harassment allegations could turn out to be fortuitous rather than disastrous, certainly eclipsing doubts about the details of Cain’s tax plan or exactly what he said to Piers Morgan about abortion.
Best of all, for Herman Cain, seizing the mantle of Clarence Thomas gives him a way to prophesy his eventual vindication. After his confirmation, Thomas famously told friends a lifetime appointment to the bench was a great way to have the last laugh. Cain may be on the cross of persecution right now, but what a resurrection it would be if his troubles finally anoint him the true Tea Party champion against Mitt Romney and give him an actual shot at becoming the man who appoints Supreme Court justices!