This item by Jonathan Bines, staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live appears in the Huffington Post
As we all know, 2011 was a difficult year in Washington — a year of gridlock, dysfunction and extremism. And, as we all also know, Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame. How do we know this? Because we have David Brooks, looking down upon the political scrum from his skybox high above midfield, to show us the symmetry lurking beneath the apparent chaos.
Call it Brooks’s Law of Political Equivalency: For any Republican/conservative/right-wing culpability, there is an equal and opposite Democratic/liberal/left-wing culpability: If the Republicans are beset by extremism and fanaticism, then the Democrats are beset by extremism and fanaticism. If the Republicans display intransigence, the Democrats display intransigence. If the Republicans are in thrall to a discredited economic theory, then the Democrats are in thrall to a discredited economic theory. If the Republicans exist in a media echo chamber, then the Democrats exist in a media echo chamber. And so on.
2011 offered a banner year for Brooks to expound his Law, and he did so brilliantly, as seen in the following 19 examples from this year’s columns:

The following overview of a survey of 1000 likely 2012 voters in 60 Republican battleground districts conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner 12/4-7 for Democracy Corps and Women’s Voice Women Vote Action Fund, is cross-posted from democracycorps.com:
A new Democracy Corps/Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF) survey shows incumbents in 60 Republican-held battleground districts badly out of touch with voters — especially with the Rising American Electorate (RAE). These voters–unmarried women, African Americans and Hispanics voters and youth–account for a majority of the nation’s voting eligible population (53 percent). They drove progressive victories in 2006 and 2008, delivering 69 percent of their vote to congressional Democrats in national surveys. Opportunities in 2012 for progressive candidates would be much broader if the RAE vote was consolidated and achieved those historic support levels.
Voters, including the RAE, believe Republicans are out-of-touch on taxes and the deficit and prefer a more cooperative approach to governance from the Republican majority, rather than a strategy of obstruction and delay.[1] As a result, this class of battleground Republican incumbents enters the election year from a position of profound weakness. Electorally, they are held under 50 percent in a named trial heat for Congress; less than 40 percent commit to reelecting their incumbent “because he/she is doing a good job and addressing issues that are important to us.”
Unlike the 2008 election where the RAE posted record turnout, the RAE in this survey seems unengaged and uninspired compared to other voters in this electorate. A serious push among these voters will further weaken the Republican hold on the battleground and call into question current conventional wisdom that the House majority is out of play in 2012.
Much of the challenge for Democrats is highlighting the contrast between the two parties. Voters in the RAE deliver higher support for President Obama and the Democrats than other voters; there is less differentiation in their support for Republicans. Notably, after voters hear balanced criticism of both sides, key segments of the RAE, most notably unmarried women, move to the Democrats.
The Out-of-Touch Majority
Republican incumbents in these battleground districts stand crosswise with voters on the core issues of this election, most notably, taxes, the deficit and, more broadly, their relationship with the Obama administration. This disconnect is amplified further among voters in the Rising American Electorate.
Real legislation has ground to a halt in Washington to the growing frustration of the country. A 60 percent majority of voters in these Republican-held districts want their incumbent “to try and work with President Obama to address the country’s problems,” this jumps to 66 percent among voters in the RAE. Just a third (34 percent; 27 percent in the RAE), want their Representative to block the President.
These House incumbents are woefully out-of-touch on the historic debate over taxes. A 57 percent majority wants “to vote for a Member of Congress who will ask the wealthiest to pay a greater share of taxes to address our problems and the deficit.” By nearly a 2:1 margin, RAE voters violate Republican orthodoxy and argue for higher taxes on the wealthy. (additional content here)

Laura Meckler has a sobering article at The Wall St. Journal, “Democrats Lag in Voter Registration.” According to Catalist, a group with Democratic ties that studies voting, “In North Carolina, half of all people who registered to vote in 2008 were oriented toward the Democrats, and about 20% were oriented toward Republicans, a 30-percentage-point advantage for Democrats…Since then, that advantage has been erased. Republican-oriented voters have run slightly ahead of presumed Democratic voters in new registrations in North Carolina throughout 2010 and 2011…The picture is similar among new registrations nationally. Democrats had a 2-to-1 advantage in 2008, but in the most recent quarter, Republicans were slightly ahead, Catalist found.”

Many progressives applaud the retirement of Dem Sen. Ben Nelson. Others worry that the GOP may have just clinched a Senate takeover.

Salon’s Jefferson Morley interviews Thomas Frank about his new book, “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right.” Frank addresses the failure of liberalism and Democratic messaging, the rise of the tea party, “a cognitive withdrawal from the shared world” and ‘utopian market populism’ as chasing “the dream more vivid than life itself.”

It’s still a little gimmicky, but here’s the first thing I’ve read that makes an Obama-Clinton ticket sound interesting.

Recent polling in Iowa suggests Paul has not been damaged by reports about his racist newsletters, according to Slate.com’s Dave Weigel. My guess is Paul’s largely low-information constituency doesn’t read, know or care much about racial injustice and many simply have a high tolerance for bigotry in general. Newt and Bachmann, to their credit, have denounced Paul’s newsletters, while Mitt, as usual, cowers in the shadows.

Am I alone in thinking this endorsement smells a little like a set-up?

David Lauter of the L. A. Times Politics Now reports that “Latinos by a 2-to-1 margin disapprove of how President Obama is handing deportations of illegal residents, but by an even larger margin, Latino voters favor him over Mitt Romney, according to a new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center..Among the registered voters in the survey, Obama led Romney in a hypothetical matchup by 68%-23% — about the same margin by which Obama defeated John McCain among Latino voters in 2008, according to exit polls.”

Emily’s List has just published a “GOP Presidential Scorecard,” rating the Republican candidates according to their positions on five major issues of concern to women. Hint: Newt flunked worst.

It isn’t all about electoral politics. Dara O’Rourke writes at The Boston Review about another track for progressives activists, the awakening of the “Citizen Consumer.”

Jeffrey Toobin’s “Holder’s Legacy” at The New Yorker urges the A.G. to accept a worthy challenge: “…To define his legacy as Attorney General–as something more than the guy who tried, and failed, to have Guantánamo Bay detainees tried in federal court in New York. There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae. It’s about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. The laws are, quite literally, indefensible–so Holder ought to make the states that have them try to defend them. That would be a legacy that would make any Attorney General, and any American, proud.”

Time out for a little levity at Op-Ed News, where Rev. Dan Vojir’s “Driving The Clown Car: A (Serious) Look At GOP Campaign Managers With Nonetheless HILARIOUS UDATES!” reviews the latest Republican shenanigans.

Writing at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, TDS Advisory Board member Alan I. Abramowitz lays into the theory that an “anti-incumbent mood could produce an historic triple flip in the 2012 elections with control of both houses of Congress and the presidency all changing hands,” resulting in the election of a Republican president, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate.
The theory is wedded to the ‘false equivalency’ meme, arguing that the public finds both parties equally at fault — sort of a generalized ‘anti-incumbency.’ Abramowitz doesn’t buy it:

OK, time to get back to reality. There has never been a triple flip election and there is not going to be one in 2012. Not only that, but despite the abysmal approval ratings that Congress has been receiving, 2012 will not be an anti-incumbent election. That’s because opinions about the performance of Congress and opinions about whether most congressional incumbents deserve to be reelected have little or no influence on the outcomes of congressional elections.
Political scientists have long recognized that Americans generally make a distinction between Congress as an institution and their own representatives in Congress. They usually rate their own representative (and their own senators) much more favorably than they rate Congress. The renowned congressional scholar Richard Fenno observed that incumbent members of Congress actively encourage this sort of thinking by regularly criticizing the performance of the institution in their own campaigns. As Fenno put it, members “run for Congress by running against Congress.”
This distinction between Congress as an institution and its individual members is alive and well today. For example, in the same Gallup Poll that found that only 20% of Americans feel that most members of Congress deserve to be reelected, 53% of the respondents felt that their own representative deserved to be reelected. And this percentage would undoubtedly have been even higher if respondents had been asked about their own representative by name.

Noting that “the reelection rates for House and Senate incumbents are generally quite high, averaging over 95% for House incumbents and over 80% for Senate incumbents in recent years,” Abramowitz adds that even 2010 was an “anti-Democratic election, not an anti-incumbent election.” it was a fairly typical ‘wave election’ in which “A large number of incumbents lose their seats but almost all of the defeated incumbents come from one party.” only 2 Republicans lost their seats in 2010, and in the ’06 mid-terms, another wave election in the opposite direction, no Dems lost seats. “Throw the bums out” is more partisan in practice, not an anti-incumbent sentiment.
Abramowitz presents historical data to back up his argument, and says that “Based on the historical record we can confidently predict that if a large number of incumbents lose their seats next November, it will be because 2012 is a wave election and that almost all of the defeated incumbents will come from the party on the losing side of the wave.” The most likely scenario, according to Abramowitz:

The fact that Republicans currently hold 242 House seats, the largest number that they have held in the past 60 years, suggests that Democrats are likely to make at least modest gains in 2012. On the other hand, the fact that 23 of the 33 Senate seats that are up for election in 2012 are currently held by Democrats almost guarantees that Republicans will pick up some seats in the upper chamber.
We also know that 2012 is a presidential election year so Republicans will not have the advantage they enjoyed in 2010 of being the opposition party in a midterm election. Beyond these basic facts, it is likely that the results of the 2012 House and Senate elections will depend on the outcome of the presidential election.

Under Abramowitz’s most optimistic (for Dems) scenario, “Even with the advantage of having only 10 of their own Senate seats at stake in 2012 vs. 23 Democratic seats, if Republicans lose 25 seats in the House, the minimum number required for Democrats to regain control of that chamber, the expected GOP seat gain in the Senate would be reduced to zero.”
In any case, concludes Abramowitz, “The chances of a double flip election, let alone a triple flip election next year can best be described as slim to none . . . and slim just left town.”

In the New Republic, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has an important analysis of recent polling data as it relates to generational differences, illuminating a clear path to re-election of President Obama. As Teixeira sets the stage:

…President Obama has astoundingly consistent support from Americans less than 30 years old, the so-called Millennial generation. In a recent Pew survey, this cohort favored Obama over Romney by 24 points, 61-37. The generation least likely to support Obama, on the other hand, is the “Silent generation”–the generational group slighter older than Baby Boomers, and the group now dominant among the ranks of seniors. He trails Mitt Romney in this generation by 13 points, 41-54. This is the same generation that moved so sharply against Democrats in the 2010 election, contributing heavily to the GOP wave that swept the country.
Those polling numbers clearly dictate an electoral strategy: What Obama needs to do is perform a kind of generational pincer movement on the GOP, driving up support and turnout among the Millennial generation while breaking into GOP support among the Silent generation. There’s also a straightforward way for him to accomplish both goals.

Even better, President Obama’s campaign is on the right track for implementing this strategy, as Teixeira explains:

Fortunately, the White House already seems to be thinking along these lines. On the Millennial side, Obama’s recent Osawatomie speech may be read as an opening bid to establish a campaign narrative with special appeal to this generation. Millennials are exceptionally sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement and its goals. Obama’s attack on inequality and the way that an unfair economy thwarts economic mobility strikes a very responsive chord among these voters.

The millennials also want government to play a “strong role” in the economic recovery, explains Teixeira. “…Indeed, they believe spending should be a higher priority for the federal government than deficit reduction.” They want more government services and “a whopping two-thirds of this generation believes the Affordable Care Act should either be expanded or left as is, rather than repealed.”
To win a healthy share of high-turnout seniors, Teixeira argues also that President Obama should “draw a very strong contrast between his approach and that of the GOP, which proposes to replace the current Medicare system with underfunded vouchers.” He notes that 64 percent of “silent generation” voters prefer keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits “as they are,” while only 27 percent say reducing the budget deficit should be more of a priority. Crunching the latest poll number, Teixeira adds:

This pincer movement will be key to Obama’s chances, both nationally and in a wide variety of target states. Nationally, he could break-even or a bit worse among middling age groups (30-64) but still win if he carries 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly more than he loses seniors, as he did in 2008, since the two groups tend to be of roughly similar size in presidential elections. But if he carries 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly less than he loses seniors, as congressional Democrats did in 2010, he will lose. Hence the need for both parts of the pincer movement.

In bellwether Ohio, for example, Teixeira notes that “Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds with 61 percent against John McCain’s 26 percent in 2008, while losing seniors 44-55. Both groups were 17 percent of Ohio voters.” If Obama can split the 30-64 year-old age group and carry a strong majority of the youth vote, argues Teixeira, he should take Ohio’s electoral votes. As for Virginia, “Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds by 60-39 while losing seniors 46-53 in Virginia. Keep that relative relationship, fight the GOP candidate to a draw among middling age groups, and the state is his.” As Teixeira concludes,

All over the country, in other words, from the Midwest to the New South to the new swing states of the Southwest, Obama’s generational pincer movement could be key to his electoral prospects. Motivate and inspire youth while giving seniors second and third thoughts about the GOP. It’s a good game plan and Obama’s already made an excellent start at implementing it.

With such a favorable intersection of demographics and polling in place, It’s critical that Obama’s messaging and turnout mobilization rise to the challenge. With that assured, Dems can hold the white house and do better than expected in the House and Senate.

From a James Vega post in the August 1, 2009 Democratic Strategist:
The Conservative movement has created a Frankenstein called the Tea Party. It has broken out of the laboratory and now threatens the people who brought it to life.
…the creature the official conservative/Republican movement has nurtured all these years has broken out of the laboratory and is beginning to ravage the countryside…
…Hence the sudden desperation in official conservative and Republican circles to drive the creature they have created back into the lab where it can be restrained. The problem, however — as every horror movie since the classic 1931 version of Frankenstein depicts — is that the creature never actually does get recaptured. With the uncontrollable nature of the internet and the desperate struggle for ratings among conservative TV commentators, there are now simply too many independent forces providing support for “tin-foil-hat” extremist views for either the Republican Party or the official conservative commentators to regain control.
All one has to do is remember the movies. The lab-coated mad scientist who creates the creature always ends up getting thrown off the windmill, blown up in the laboratory explosion or gobbled up by the flesh-eating zombies he was in the process of creating as his personal army. Republican leaders are starting to feel an uncomfortable resemblance to those movie characters these days when they come face to face with their “tin-foil-hat” conservative base.
Hey, I wonder if George Romero is available to take a meeting…….

Been wondering, just who are these mighty “job-creators” who Republicans keep referencing in their never-ending quest to fatten the incomes of millionaires? Rick Newman has a pretty good primer on the term — and its abuse, “What ‘Job Creators’ Really Want” at U.S. News Politics.

The Prez has +2 approval margin in the latest Gallup poll, an impressive improvement over -16 in October.

Newt compares his exclusion from the Virginia primary ballot to the attack on Pearl Harbor in which more than 2,400 Americans were killed and left another 1,200 wounded. “I’m not sure the analogy does justice to the grandness, the immensity of Newt,” conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer observes dryly. “I think the better analogy is 1066 — the Battle of Hastings. And I think King Harold is dead and William the Conqueror has landed. And Newt is going pick up the crown of the last king of the Saxons and lead a trusty band of Saxons fueled with money from Freddie Mac and will retake Britain from William and change the course of European history. I think that that kind of analogy captures the cosmic importance of the Newt campaign.”

This unsigned Economist article on “The faith (and doubts) of our fathers: What did the makers of America believe about God and religion?” should be of interest to Democratic candidates challenging GOP theocrats who jabber on about their oneness with the Founding Fathers.

Newt’s failure to get the requisite 10K signatures to get on the VA ballot — even with paid staffers gathering signatures — in his home state and an important swing state, indicates that there may be serious incompetence afoot in his campaign. It gets worse, as CNN’s Steve Brusk reports, quoting Newt’s campaign director Michael Krull: “We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice.”…Problem is, notes Brusk, “Virginia state law specifically prohibits voters from writing in candidates not on the ballot in primary elections.”

WaPo’s Josh Hicks gives Ron Paul three Pinocchio’s for his evasive comments about who wrote the many racist comments in his newsletter. Too generous, imho. For a revealing look at the “white supremacists, survivalists and anti-Zionists” who have embraced Paul, read the Times’s “Paul Disowns Extremists’ Views but Doesn’t Disavow the Support” by Jim Rutenberg and Serge F. Kovalesky.

Democratic activists have an article to read at Demos about a significant constituency, “From Citizenship to Voting: Improving Registration for New Americans” by Tova Andrea Wang and Youjin B. Kim. The authors explain: “The significant difference in turnout rates between native-born and naturalized Americans is due, to an enormous degree, to a parallel gap in voter registration rates. For naturalized citizens who surmount the barrier of voter registration, turnout rates are very similar to or even higher than among registered native born citizens. Thus, the key to increasing participation of naturalized citizens is to make voter registration more accessible.”

Robert Farley, Lori Robertson, D’Angelo Gore and Brooks Jackson have put together a fairly thorough USA Today report, “Fact Check: Many attacks on Gingrich are true,” which could be helpful to Dems in ’12.

John Nichols makes an important observation in The Nation about a recent Politico report on the Wisconsin movement to recall Governor Walker: “Politico errs when it sees the fight in narrowly partisan terms. What is happening in Wisconsin and, frankly, a lot of other states, goes beyond Democratic and Republican positioning. The overwhelming support for the recall drive in rural counties that backed Walker in 2010 offers a strong indication that of the more than 500,000 signatures already collected on petitions seeking to recall Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, tens of thousands have come from voters who have until recently identified themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, and who still think of themselves as conservatives…Walker did not merely pick a partisan fight when he attacked public-sector unions, public services and public education. Rather, he attacked the underpinnings of civil society.”

E. J. Dionne’s column “Obama: The conservative in 2012” makes an interesting argument that Dems should find helpful in appealing to moderates, the idea that the GOP field is pushing a radical right-wing agenda, positioning Obama squarely in the political center “For the first time since Barry Goldwater made the effort in 1964,” writes Dionne, “the Republican Party is taking a run at overturning the consensus that has governed U.S. political life since the Progressive era…Obama is defending a tradition that sees government as an essential actor in the nation’s economy, a guarantor of fair rules of competition, a countervailing force against excessive private power, a check on the inequalities that capitalism can produce, and an instrument that can open opportunity for those born without great advantages.”

There’s an insightful read at CenteredPolitics.com, “The Moderate Case Against Republicans In 2012” by Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin. Regarding the recent GOP cave on extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut, the authors point out:

…The political importance of the Republican faux-pas is tremendous, because it brings into crystal clear focus, an accurate picture of the positions of the two parties. The House Republicans over-reached and rejected a short term deal between President Obama and the Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate that passed the Senate with 89 votes including 39 Republicans, because being non-compromisers has become the definition of who they are.
…Ill timed during the season of good cheer, the House Republicans snatched discord from the jaws of harmony in the Senate, rejecting a compromise and issuing new ultimatums and threats that put them so far from the center of American opinion that they were getting public criticism from all quarters, including John McCain, the Wall Street Journal, and Carl Rove.
The whole mess serves to make something clear to casual observers of the goings on in Washington (that is, most voters) what close observers have known all year – Republicans have been blocking all attempts at compromise. If it was not clear that Republicans were causing the rise in conflict in Washington after two budget standoffs and a showdown over raising the debt ceiling, it should be painfully obvious now. Like the Year-in-Review wrap-ups, Republicans have taken a year’s worth of political brinksmanship and repeated the whole pattern in the span of just a few days.

The authors roll out the appeal to political moderates in a succinct outline that should also help MSM reporters see through the false equivalency smokescreen:

A. Republicans have their strongly held views,
B. Democrats have their strongly held views,
C. Democrats have offered to split the difference, or go further toward their adversary’s position in order to get compromise and progress, while
D. Republicans have rejected all compromise
E. Therefore we have not principled gridlock but instead we have partisan road block caused by the intransigence of not both political parties, but rather just one, the Republicans.

President Obama has taken a lot of heat from progressives for “a pattern of appeasement with Republicans,” note the Rivlins. “Throughout a year filled with standoffs, showdowns, and threatened government shut downs, the President seems always to be offering more concessions while the Republicans seem to keep adding demands…”
Moderates, on the other hand, have expressed frustration with the President, who has “failed to exhibit a mastery of negotiation leverage” and “for negotiating badly and giving compromise a bad name.” The authors offer what may prove to be a breakthrough insight for Democratic leaders:

Republicans are good at bluffing but they would agree to almost anything if pressed to avoid a government shutdown because they know it would end in embarrassing defeat for Republicans as Newt Gingrich learned in 1995-1996.

If they are right, and the white house takes advantage of it, 2012 may yet shake out much better for Democrats than many now believe. As the Rivlins conclude:

Liberals and moderates can agree that Obama has paid a very high price, but he has purchased a strong argument against Republicans in the 2012 election. If you want to see the parties work through their differences, and come together in a spirit of compromise (and a strong majority of Americans do want this) then vote for President Obama and other Democrats because Republicans have rejected every Democratic offer of compromise…
…This newest episode, where Republicans and Democrats negotiated the compromise deal only to see other Republicans reject it again should remove any doubt for moderates who would like to see America’s political leaders getting along and getting their work done. If you are a moderate who wants to see Republicans and Democrats working together, vote out the Republicans this time around. The Democrats have been trying to work across party lines. The Republicans have been blocking progress.

The Republicans’ obstructionist posturing and mismanagement of the extension of payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, followed by the House GOP leadership’s cave, have made it embarrassing for thinking moderates to express support for them. With House GOP leaders still groveling at the feet of the tea party, it seems unlikely that they will learn the lesson and begin negotiating in good faith. For all but the most “low information” of political moderates, their game is now done.

A new Democracy Corps/Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF) survey shows incumbents in 60 Republican-held battleground districts badly out of touch with voters — especially with the Rising American Electorate (RAE). These voters–unmarried women, African Americans and Hispanics voters and youth–account for a majority of the nation’s voting eligible population (53 percent). They drove progressive victories in 2006 and 2008, delivering 69 percent of their vote to congressional Democrats in national surveys. Opportunities in 2012 for progressive candidates would be much broader if the RAE vote was consolidated and achieved those historic support levels.
Voters, including the RAE, believe Republicans are out-of-touch on taxes and the deficit and prefer a more cooperative approach to governance from the Republican majority, rather than a strategy of obstruction and delay.[1] As a result, this class of battleground Republican incumbents enters the election year from a position of profound weakness. Electorally, they are held under 50 percent in a named trial heat for Congress; less than 40 percent commit to reelecting their incumbent “because he/she is doing a good job and addressing issues that are important to us.”
Unlike the 2008 election where the RAE posted record turnout, the RAE in this survey seems unengaged and uninspired compared to other voters in this electorate. A serious push among these voters will further weaken the Republican hold on the battleground and call into question current conventional wisdom that the House majority is out of play in 2012.
Much of the challenge for Democrats is highlighting the contrast between the two parties. Voters in the RAE deliver higher support for President Obama and the Democrats than other voters; there is less differentiation in their support for Republicans. Notably, after voters hear balanced criticism of both sides, key segments of the RAE, most notably unmarried women, move to the Democrats.
The Out-of-Touch Majority
Republican incumbents in these battleground districts stand crosswise with voters on the core issues of this election, most notably, taxes, the deficit and, more broadly, their relationship with the Obama administration. This disconnect is amplified further among voters in the Rising American Electorate.
Real legislation has ground to a halt in Washington to the growing frustration of the country. A 60 percent majority of voters in these Republican-held districts want their incumbent “to try and work with President Obama to address the country’s problems,” this jumps to 66 percent among voters in the RAE. Just a third (34 percent; 27 percent in the RAE), want their Representative to block the President.
These House incumbents are woefully out-of-touch on the historic debate over taxes. A 57 percent majority wants “to vote for a Member of Congress who will ask the wealthiest to pay a greater share of taxes to address our problems and the deficit.” By nearly a 2:1 margin, RAE voters violate Republican orthodoxy and argue for higher taxes on the wealthy.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from Huffpo.
In recent American politics, every major shift in political momentum has resulted from an iconic battle.
In 1995 the tide of the 1994 “Republican Revolution” was reversed when Speaker Newt Gingrich and his new Republican House majority shut down the government in a battle over their attempts to cut Medicare to give tax breaks to the rich (sound familiar?). The shutdown ended with — what pundits universally scored — as a victory for President Clinton. That legislative victory began Clinton’s march to overwhelming re-election victory in 1996.
In 2010, Democrats passed President Obama’s landmark health care reform. But they lost the battle for public opinion — and base motivation. That turned the political tide that had propelled President Obama to victory in 2008 and ultimately led to the drubbing Democrats took in the 2010 midterms.
The Republican leadership’s collapse in the battle over extending the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits could also be a turning point moment that shifts the political momentum just as we enter the pivotal 2012 election year.
Here’s why:
1) Since the president launched his campaign for the American Jobs Act, he has driven Congressional Republicans into a political box canyon with very few avenues of escape. The jobs campaign has made it clearer and clearer to the voters that the “do nothing Republican Congress” bears responsibility for preventing the President from taking steps that would create jobs.
Until the payroll tax/unemployment victory, the president had failed to persuade the Republican dominated Congress to pass any provision of the bill — save one aimed at helping veterans. But the polling shows that the public has become more and more disgusted by Congressional intransigence. Since 64% of Americans believe that Congress is run entirely by the Republicans (and from the stand point of stopping legislation it is managed entirely by Republicans), the overall unhappiness with Congress has translated into distain for the “do nothing Republican Congress.”
Congress now has lower approval ratings (11% in the latest poll) than at any time in modern history. Senator Michael Bennett presented data on the Senate floor that showed that Congress is less popular than BP during the gulf oil spill. It is way less popular than Nixon during Watergate. About the same number of Americans have a positive view of Congress as support America becoming a Communist nation. That makes it the worst time imaginable for House Republicans to throw a political tantrum that threatened to increase the tax burden of everyday Americans by $40 per paycheck — $1,000 next year — right after Christmas.
Last weekend, the Senate Republican Leader thought he had blazed a path for Republicans that led out of that political box canyon — at least in so far as the extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment. The bipartisan agreement to temporarily extend the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance seemed to give Republicans a face saving option that — at least temporarily — took them off the political hook. But Tea Party stalwarts in the House threatened to mutiny if Boehner went along — and all week — there the House Republicans sat, at the bottom of that canyon with no escape.
House Republicans bet that the president and Democrats were desperate enough to extend the payroll tax and unemployment that they could hold those provisions hostage the way they had held hostage the debt ceiling in August. In an act of unfathomable political ineptitude, they failed to appreciate that this time, Democrats occupied vastly higher political ground.
Failure to continue the payroll tax holiday would have immediately decreased the take home pay of 160 million Americans. By refusing to agree to the compromise that had passed the Senate with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, House Republicans made it certain that they would have been held responsible.
They might as well have hung out a huge flashing sign in Times Square that said: “Republicans are responsible for cutting your take home pay and eliminating your unemployment benefits.”
Even the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal called on them to throw in the towel.
Democrats had every incentive to hang tough. In the end by refusing to take the escape hatch opened for them by McConnell, the nation watched House Republicans dragged kicking and screaming to support the president’s popular payroll and unemployment extensions.
The outcome of the battle was unambiguous. No one could doubt who stood up for the economic interests of the middle class and who did not. And no one could doubt who won and who lost.
National Journal reported that, “House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the two percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.”
In the end, Republican intransigence transformed a moment that would have been a modest win for President Obama into an iconic victory.
2) Strength and victory are enormous political assets. Going into the New Year, they now belong to the president and the Democrats.
One of the reasons why the debt ceiling battle inflicted political damage on President Obama is that it made him appear ineffectual — a powerful figure who had been ensnared and held hostage by the Lilliputian pettiness of hundreds of swarming Tea Party ideological zealots.
In the last few months — as he campaigned for the American Jobs Act — he has shaken free of those bonds. Now voters have just watched James Bond or Indiana Jones escape and turn the tables on his adversary.
Great stories are about a protagonist who meets and overcomes a challenge and is victorious. The capitulation of the House Tea Party Republicans is so important because it feels like the beginning of that kind of heroic narrative.
Even today most Americans believe that George Bush and the big Wall Street banks — not by President Obama — caused the economic crisis. Swing voters have never lost their fondness for the President and don’t doubt his sincerity. But they had begun to doubt his effectiveness. They have had increasing doubts that Obama was up to the challenge of leading them back to economic prosperity.
The narrative set in motion by the events of the last several weeks could be a turning point in voter perception. It could well begin to convince skeptical voters that Obama is precisely the kind of leader they thought he was back in 2008 — a guy with the ability to lead them out of adversity — a leader with the strength, patience, skill, will and resoluteness to lead them to victory.
That now contrasts with the sheer political incompetence of the House Republican leadership that allowed themselves to be cornered and now find themselves in political disarray. And it certainly contrasts with the political circus we have been watching in the Republican Presidential primary campaign.
3) This victory will inspire the dispirited Democratic base.
Inspiration is the feeling of empowerment — the feeling that you are part of something larger than yourself and can personally play a significant role in achieving that goal. It comes from feeling that together you can overcome challenges and win.
Nothing will do more to inspire committed Democrats than the sight of their leader — President Obama — out-maneuvering the House Republicans and forcing them into complete capitulation.
The events of the last several weeks will send a jolt of electricity through the progressive community.
The right is counting on progressives to be demoralized and dispirited in the coming election. The president’s victory on the payroll tax and unemployment will make it ever more likely that they will be wrong.
4) When you have them on the run, that’s the time to chase them.
The most important thing about the outcome of the battle over the payroll tax and unemployment is that it shifts the political momentum at a critical time. Momentum is an independent variable in any competitive activity — including politics.
In a football or basketball game you can feel the momentum shift. The tide of battle is all about momentum. The same is true in politics. And in politics it is even more important because the “spectators” are also the players — the voters.
People follow — and vote — for winners. The bandwagon effect is enormously important in political decision-making. Human beings like to travel in packs. They like to be at the center of the mainstream. Momentum shifts affect their perceptions of the mainstream.
For the last two years, the right wing has been on the offensive. Its Tea Party shock troops took the battle to Democratic members of Congress. In the mid-terms Democrats were routed in district after district.
Now the tide has turned. And when the tide turns — when you have them on the run — that’s the time to chase them.
We won’t know for sure until next November whether this moment will take on the same iconic importance as Clinton’s battle with Gingrich in 1995. But there is no doubt that the political wind has shifted. It’s up to progressives to make the most of it.