Paul Kane’s WaPo survey, “Democrats have real chance to hold on to Senate majority” cites Sen. Lugar’s defeat by Richard Mourdock as a big break for Dems.
According to the latest update on the battle for control of congress by Larry J. Sabato and Kyle Kondik, “A good early bet is for the margins of control to narrow in both houses of Congress. Republicans should win the House of Representatives again, but Democrats will pick up some seats, maybe cutting the GOP majority of 25 by a third or (only if Obama wins handily) by as much as half. The Senate appears likely to be very narrowly divided, with Democrats holding on by a seat or, more likely, Republicans gaining technical control by a seat or two. It might even come down to a tie-breaking vote by the newly elected vice president or the eventual party-choice decision of Maine’s Angus King, the Independent frontrunner for Republican Olympia Snowe’s Senate seat. We believe he’ll ultimately caucus with the Democrats, but there’s a lot that can happen between now and next January that might change that calculus.”
Mourdock is a tough, experienced campaigner, as Politico’s David Catanese points out. But he has some huge vulnerabilities, as Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, notes in Paul Steinhauser’s CNN.com report: “Richard Mourdock is a right wing Tea Party ideologue who questioned the constitutionality of Medicare and Social Security, says there should be more partisanship and less compromise in Washington, and actually compared himself to Rosa Parks.”
Although some Dems lament the defeat of Lugar (see here) as the loss of a “model for collegiality,” Michael Tomasky argues at the Daily Beast that it’s not such a great loss for bipartisanship, since Sen. Lugar caved to wingnut lunacy when he could have provided leadership for moderation. “Lugar did not support a single really major Obama initiative,” notes Tomasky. “What today’s GOP needs is a Margaret Chase Smith moment. Smith, the moderate GOP senator who was the first of her party to denounce the demagoguery of Joe McCarthy. In fact, take few minutes right now if you can and read the “Declaration of Conscience” by Smith and six other Republican senators from June 1, 1950, and consider whether you can imagine any national Republican voicing such sentiments today, being so critical of her or his own party.”
Tim Jones points notes in his Bloomberg Businessweek post, “Wisconsin Republican Voters Rival Democrats in Recall” that Gov. Scott Walker that Republicans had a strong GOTV effort in their primary, more than matching the Democratic turnout for all candidates in their primary. Democratic candidate Tom Barrett needs more dough to beat Gov. Walker in the recall election, and Dems who want to help recall Walker can make contributions at his ActBlue web page.
Yes, it’s just a snapshot, but this AP-GfK Poll suggests that President Obama might pick up some votes by moving a little more strongly toward disengagement from Afghanistan between now and November.
I don’t see a huge downside for President Obama because of his new position on same-sex marriage. Half of Americans support same-sex marriage, and at least some opponents of same-sex marriage will be OK with his leaving marriage legislation up to the states. And most of those who feel strongly that he shouldn’t even express personal sympathy with gay and lesbian couples who want to marry aren’t going to vote for him any way. It could be a net plus in terms of energizing a large constituency (4% self-identified as gay, lesbian of bisexual in 2008 exit polls, with an estimated 601,209 “same-sex, unmarried partner households” in the U.S.).
Apparently Romney gets very uncomfortable with questions about medical marijuana, which could reflect his fear of alienating young voters.
In a welcome counter-attack against voter suppression, the Connecticut state legislature has passed a bill providing for same-day and on-line voter registration, which is expected to increase voter turnout by 4-5 percent overall, more for people of color, youth and other groups.

The latest national survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Public Campaign Action Fund [overview here] shows that voters care about money in politics and are prepared to vote for candidates who prioritize reform. All voters, and especially swing voters, support reforms that would limit big money, encourage small donors, and close the revolving door between government service and lobbying. Neither party currently owns this issue and with voters up for grabs, candidates who are willing to tackle money in politics could benefit at the ballot box.
Key Findings:
Money in politics is not a distraction from the economy, it is the economy. For ordinary Americans, this is not an either/or proposition; it is not a question of addressing money in politics at the expense of talking about pocketbook problems. Voters believe that Washington is so corrupted by big banks, big donors, and corporate lobbyists that it no longer works for the middle class. A large majority (60 percent) says candidates ought to tackle money in politics in order to make government work for the middle class.
As a result, voters from both parties, but particularly swing voters, feel strongly about reducing the influence of big money in politics. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of all voters, and majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, believe there should be common sense limits on the amount of money people can contribute to political campaigns. And a large majority (59 percent) is intensely committed to such limits. Voters do not believe that there are two equal sides to this debate; just a fifth (21 percent) of all voters say that limits on campaign contributions violate free speech.
Voters will strongly support candidates – from both political parties – who seize this issue. Voters do not currently trust either party to tackle money in politics. All voters, and swing voters in particular, strongly support candidates who are willing to take on money in politics as a serious campaign issue.
More detailed analysis can be found at Democracy Corps.

Writing in the Washington Monthly ‘Political Animal’ blog, Ed Kilgore argues persuasively that the tea party is not the sole or necessarily the primary cause of “The Slow But Very Steady Demise of Republican Moderates“. Noting that “The steady drift to the Right in the GOP Senate Caucus is more a matter of generational replacement than of “purges,” supplemented by the concentration of “conservatives” in states relatively invulnerable to general election swings,” Kilgore explains:

…Some political observers still seem to think the current ideological rigidity of the Republican Party is a sudden phenomenon created by the startling appearance of a Tea Party Movement in 2009. The often-unstated premise is that the GOP can be returned to its senses by a healthy general election defeat or two–or perhaps a win if it forces Republicans to come to grips with the responsibilities of governing.
Sorry, but I see no reason to think any sort of “course correction” is inevitable. The latest ideological lurch of the Republican Party came after two consecutive cycles in which the party was beaten like a drum. But it also drifted to the right during every recent Republican presidency; there’s a reason that GOPers were muttering about the “betrayals of conservative principle” their chieftains were exhibiting during W.’s, second term, his father’s one term, and yes, even Ronald Reagan’s second term. Like the tax cuts for the wealthy that are their all-purpose economic policy proposal, a shift to the right has become the all-purpose response to any political development over more than three decades. The Tea Party Movement is simply the latest incarnation of the conservative movement, which has been thundering against RINOs all the way back to the days when they actually existed.
There’s nothing new here, folks. There may be limits to how far the ideological bender of the GOP can be taken, but the idea that it will end next year or the year after is completely without empirical foundation.

It’s a useful insight, especially for Dems who may be entertaining the delusion that the Republican party will likely recover a semblance of the bipartisanship of earlier decades, once the tea party dissolves. More likely it will morph into something else, equally, or even more obstructionist.

While many believe that Senator Lugar’s defeat by a right-winger, who believes Paul Ryan’s budget is not conservative enough, gives Dems a good shot at a pick-up, yesterday’s elections were generally hailed by conservatives, especially in NC, where voters approved a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage. Campbell Robertson of The New York Times got it right in his lede; the big story in NC was the record turnout.

As expected, North Carolinians voted in large numbers on Tuesday for an amendment that would ban same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions, becoming the 30th state in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on gay marriage in the state constitution…About half a million people voted early, a record for a primary in the state, and turnout on Tuesday was unusually high as well.

Further down in Robertson’s article, he notes, “Opponents had raised almost twice as much money as the amendment’s supporters and had a robust network of volunteers and get-out-the-vote workers.”
The ad war was also fierce in NC, and no doubt GOTV muscle is even more effective in non-presidential elections, in which overall turnout is normally smaller. There was also a lot of interest in the gubernatorial primary and some congressional races — Republicans hope to pick up as many as four congressional seats in NC alone. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the NC vote supports the argument that investing significant financial resources into GOTV is cost-effective, even for conservatives. And it’s clear that tea party GOTV in Indiana was instrumental in defeating Lugar.
Despite Democratic chest-beating about our superior ground game, one of the lessons of yesterday’s elections is that Republicans can leverage it to good effect also. Yes, Dems have a GOTV edge, particularly with experienced union campaign and turnout workers. But Republicans are not clueless about campaign warfare. They will also be investing heavily in GOTV in the months ahead.
Also in The Times, Jeff Zeleny reports on the intensifying debate among Dems regarding the strategic deployment of financial resources in ads or GOTV. As Zeleny reports, key Dems leaders are concerned that a $100 million plan by liberal donors to lift voter turnout could duplicate Obama campaign efforts already in place and undermine Dems air war:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and other officials conveyed concern that Democratic candidates could be at a disadvantage if the contributors, many of whom had stayed on the sidelines of the 2012 campaign until now, decide not to spend money on television ads that push back against a torrent of attacks from conservative “super PACS” in the presidential election and Congressional races.
…”The idea that these progressive groups are essentially re-creating the wheel is perplexing and troubling,” said David Krone, the chief of staff to Mr. Reid. “Why go off and build a redundant grass-roots and get-out-the-vote organization that the Obama campaign is clearly invested in?”

Zeleny adds that many Dem strategists still believe that “television advertising was the most powerful way to win races. Democratic strategists have spent months trying to lure Mr. Soros and other donors into the fray of election spending…”Why would they rule out this tried-and-true medium?” Mr. Krone said on Tuesday. “I can guarantee the Republicans are covering all bases and will have a coordinated plan.”
The Obama campaign is reportedly in pretty good shape in terms of preparations for the ad campaign, with Jim Margolis as chief ad guru (profile of Margolis and his strategy here). But down ballot, many Dem candidates are in urgent need of funding for ads.
The debate will likely continue until all possible ads buys are made. No one really knows what is the optimum allocation of pro-Democratic funds into the air war and ground game. But Krone is right that it would be folly to assume that the GOP will come up short in funding either offensive.

This item, from TDS Contributors Sherri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin (of Peter D. Hart Research Associates) is cross-posted from CenteredPolitics.com.
Unless things change dramatically (it would take something like a new war) there will be only one issue in the 2012 election for president and most other government offices. The issue of which candidate has the best ideas to get the economy moving is the most important question in most elections and there are good reasons for this. Real wages have been stagnant for American middle class families even through boom and bust business cycles for decades going back to the 1970s. Rising standards of living for the middle class have been earned only by more members of the family entering the workforce (especially women) and people working multiple jobs and longer hours, when they are able to find employment.
Two Candidates in Search of an Economic Message
Even though Mitt Romney successfully identified himself as the “economy candidate” against a weak Republican field, he has yet to articulate an economic vision that gives voters a sense of what he would do differently than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush to create good jobs and opportunity. If Mitt Romney had something to say about the economy, we mean really had something to say about the economy, he would not have remained in the tough fight he slogged through for many months to secure the nomination.
President Barack Obama would also be in a lot better position if he could clearly articulate a confidence inspiring economic vision. The President has been struggling, with mixed success, to shore up this weakness and find a compelling economic message. Often it seems Mitt Romney does not even realize he doesn’t have much of an economic message at all.
“Obama Has Failed”
During the primary campaign Romney succeeded in establishing himself, at least among the press covering the race, as the “economy candidate” because he talks about the economy all of the time, but his emphasis is almost entirely on current economic woes and very little on his economic proposals. The message is simply: Obama promised to fix the economy; the economy is not fixed. I was a businessman; I will fix the economy. God Bless America.
When Romney does speak at length about his proposals, there is little outside of Republican economic orthodoxy – less government regulation (especially environmental regulations), a bit of union bashing, lots of specific tax cuts, much less specificity on spending cuts, and a promise of lower national debt. In other words, there is almost nothing in Romney’s economic playbook that was not in George W. Bush’s campaign speeches in 2000, and we all know how that worked out for the economy.
Like most Republicans, Romney wants a semi-permeable embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget; wanting to claim a share of credit for the idea of major budget cuts, but not willing to stand with specific proposals. We see this when Romney continues to attack Barack Obama for proposing cuts in Medicare, even while praising Ryan’s budget that starts with these Obama cuts in its assumptions and proposes dramatically deeper reductions in Medicare spending.
A relatively new element in Romney’s speeches is multiple versions of the Reagan question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The danger is many middle class families may remember what the economy was really like fours ago, when financial markets were in free fall and seizing up, home values were crumbling, and the economy was shedding hundreds of thousands of job per month. The question invites Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs’s effective response, that the essential Republican argument is that Obama did not clean up the mess Republican policies made of the economy fast enough.
So voters are correct when by 58% to 31% they tell a recent FOX News poll they do not think Mitt Romney has a clear plan for fixing the economy. But despite Romney’s weakness, Obama fares no better in the FOX poll with 36% saying Obama has a clear plan to fix the economy and 61% saying he does not. In two other recent polls for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal and for CBS News and the New York Times, Romney leads Obama on the question of who has better ideas to fix the economy.
Obama Needs Clarity (and Charts and Graphs)
At this point President Obama has been favoring tactical economic proposals like the Buffet Rule and student loan financing over offering a strategic view of his economic proposals to help create economic opportunity for middle class families. Voters are confused because they do not know whether Obama is the big spender Republicans have been telling them he is (and they are pretty sure they saw, at least until Democrats lost the 2010 election) or the budget cutter he has been for the past two years in his efforts to make deals with the Republicans.
We have argued for some time that if Democrats believe they have a better grasp of economic policy, and they do, then they should join the battle and debate the issue full on. Obama has consistently shied away from the challenge of explaining his basic economic philosophy of balanced, fiscally responsible Keynesianism – that during a major economic downturn short term budget deficits are good even though long term deficits threaten disaster – believing that it is just too complex of an argument. But it is what the President truly believes and to earn reelection, he has to own it. These economic principles underscore the basic premise of the Simpson Bowles Commission, and they are the heart of “Grand Bargain” on taxes and spending Obama tried to negotiate with Speaker of the House John Boehner.
But instead, Obama’s arguments for the “Grand Bargain” were made behind closed doors, rather than clearly before the people the economic policies are intended to help. The individual elements each got their week of promotion by the President and his surrogates, but rarely (perhaps with the exception of the economic section of the State of the Union address)was there an effort to explain the whole economic vision. Obama needs to own his economic views, and explain why he believes they offer middle class families the best hope to reverse the long term trends and provide the economic opportunity for middle class families and their children.
If the argument is simple enough for a bumper sticker, that’s great, but if not that is ok too. With millions of dollars in the bank, Team Obama can afford longer format communications including charts and graphs like H. Ross Perot or Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. With Republicans continuing to push a supply side economics theory that failed to deliver on its promise that tax cuts would lead to lower deficits for Ronald Reagan (so he raised taxes 11 times), and George H. W. Bush who had to break his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, and George W. Bush who had to abandon his small government philosophy with billions in bailouts for the financial sector to avoid a financial meltdown and a global depression, and Bill Clinton the only recent president that delivered real wage gains for the middle class and balanced the budget, this should be a debate that Team Obama can win on the merits.
Just recently there have been some encouraging signs that the Obama team gets it and some discouraging signs as well. Team Obama just released a new long format ad titled “Forward” that includes charts and graphs and was even made by the director of “An Inconvenient Truth.” It starts with a reminder of the mess George W. Bush created with his economic philosophy of small government, low taxes and antipathy toward regulation, and it has all of the star power of Bill Clinton and Tom Hanks.
But there is one element missing – middle class families. All of the emphasis is on the bailout of the financial sector, and the auto industry and the tough choices Obama made passing bills in Congress. The stories are told by senior advisors like Austin Goolsbee and Rahm Emanuel. What the video is missing is the stories of middle class families that were able to renegotiate loans and stay in their homes, small business owners that were able to get loans and hire employees, students that were able to finish college and get a job, construction workers that went to work building roads. And we need to hear from families that worry about long term deficits that appreciate Obama’s persistence in seeking balance and compromise even when the other side has all signed a pledge to never compromise, and Mitt Romney and every other Republican candidate for President raised their hand to promise that they would not compromise even for a deal that offered 10 dollars in spending cuts for every dollar raised in taxes.
This election is going to be won among independent and moderate, middle class voters. Barack Obama can win their confidence if he has confidence in who he is and how he approaches the economy. He has been seeking balance between short term and long term needs of the economy for his whole term. If he can talk to middle class voters and explain his economic vision in terms of people as much as policies, and explain how he will ultimately help families realize economic opportunity and long term prosperity, he will earn their support.

Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the New York Times, gives Governor Romney a richly-deserved skewering over his “spineless” refusal to challenge a woman who said President Obama should be “tried for treason” at a Romney town hall gathering in Ohio. Rosenthal notes that former Sen. Santorum also wimped out when he had the chance to correct another woman in a Florida coffee shop who had called President Obama an “avowed Muslim.”
Rosenthal points out that Romney later said he did not agree with the woman, when he was called to account for his lack of response at the time.
Both of these incidents stand in stark contrast to Sen. McCain’s stepping up to correct a supporter who said that the President was a Muslim back in 2008. Whatever else can be said of McCain during his campaign, on that day he showed a streak of decency and a commendable commitment to honesty. Today, such a gesture on the part of any Republican would be cause for considerable surprise.
It’s a disturbing incident because it reveals a shameless willingness on the part of the GOP nominee-in-waiting to exploit a vicious distortion. Worse, since no other Republican leaders spoke out about the incident, it suggests a party-wide decency deficit.

Brian Beutler has an excellent post up at Talking Points Memo, debunking an alarming Washington Post report that “The number of black and Hispanic registered voters has fallen sharply since 2008, posing a serious challenge to the Obama campaign…” Here’s the crux of Beutler’s take-down:

In recent years, according to Michael McDonald, a government and politics professor at George Mason University, the Census’ Current Population Survey statistic the Post relied on has varied in a troubling way with the ultimate turnout figures. Whether you compare presidential years (2004 and 2008) or midterm-years (2006 and 2010) the CPS measure has found turnout decreasing. The opposite has been the case.
That, McDonald argues, is because of a peculiarity in the way Census compiles its registration and turnout figures. It asks one adult to answer for all members of a household, and counts those who fail to respond “yes” or “no” to the voting survey question as having not voted.
When you revisit the numbers after throwing out all the non-respondents, the results track the official figures much more closely.
What does all this have to do with registration (as opposed to turnout)? When you perform the same correction to the registration results — the ones the Post used — the problem goes away.

You can almost hear a collective ‘ouch’ coming from WaPo’s HQ. Beutler quotes McDonald’s conclusion:

“The Obama campaign appears better situated in terms of registering of Blacks and Hispanics in the wake of the 2010 election than in the wake of the 2006 election. That these minority populations are also growing in size relative to the non-Hispanic White population should give more worry to the Romney campaign than to the Obama campaign.”

Apparently the sky isn’t falling on the Obama campaign after all. Nice catch for Beutler and TPM.

This article, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
It’s great news for us Democrats that former Romney partner in Bain Capital — Edward Conard — is out with a new book on economics, Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy is Wrong. My first guess when hearing about the book was that some devious liberal in the publishing industry talked Conard into this timing, telling him that his arguments were so compelling that the book would no doubt help Romney win the election if it came out in the spring of 2012. However, having read more about Conard, I am now convinced that he really is arrogant enough to believe that making his case would help Mitt’s cause. God bless him for it. The more attention we can give to the starkness of his celebration of Romneynomics, the better.
Conard’s book is essentially Ayn Rand with more math. (He might say with more economics, but as the title of his book suggests, the theories he describes are far more theological in nature than economic, as he essentially ignores most of the well-grounded economic research of the last 70 years.) Conard believes that growing concentration of wealth is not just a good thing, but a fantastically great thing. The only problem our economy has, he suggests, is that we need a lot more of it. The mind-blowing gains in wealth over the last 30 years by the top 1 percent, the dazzling fortunes of a very few while most people’s incomes and salaries have flat-lined, the fact that 95 percent of the gains in wealth the last four years have gone to those top 1 percent or that they now own over 40 percent of the wealth in this country: the only downside according to Conard is that it is not enough. Because, as he says, “It’s not like the current payoff is motivating everybody to take risks.” He suggests that if the wealth concentrated at the top were twice as large, more unproductive people (“art history majors,” as he derisively refers to non-rich people) would be motivated to become risk-takers.
It’s big of Conard to admit that this is counterintuitive (one of the few things I do agree with him on). But, he insists, only by the super-wealthy people getting rewarded (deeply, richly, extravagantly, overwhelmingly rewarded apparently) does society advance. Their investments are, he says, what makes our economy more efficient and more productive, saving money for everyone. In true Ayn Rand form, he even criticizes Warren Buffet for giving money to charities rather than investing it in new products and companies, arguing that the latter is far better for society than curing disease or feeding children or educating people. And here’s a shocker: he doesn’t blame Wall Street bankers at all for the financial crisis in 2008. Just bad luck, he says, one of those “run on the bank” things that happen from time to time in a capitalist economy.
The economic history you have to ignore to believe all this is pretty extraordinary. You have to ignore that of the three most prosperous decades of the last century, two (the 1950s and ’60s) were in an era with tax rates on the wealthy between 70 and 90 percent, and that the third (the 1990s) started with two rounds of tax increases on the rich. You have to ignore that the massive concentrations of wealth and tax cutting for the rich of the last three decades seem to have produced very little of the job creation or income enhancement for the middle class Conard says would come, as well as the fact that the last two periods of great wealth concentration in this country produced the worst economic depressions in our history (in 1929 and 1894). You would have to ignore the fact that there were no major financial collapses in the years between the passage of Glass-Steagall in 1933 and its repeal in 1999, and only nine years later we get one almost as big as those previous two. You would have to ignore the massive amounts of research that have shown the huge economic gains that resulted from investments in people’s education like the GI Bill, Head Start, school lunches and Pell Grants — as well as the huge impact that private charitable programs have had in turning people’s lives around and making them productive citizens.
In addition to ignoring history and research, Conard ignores common sense and simple facts. In the Adam Davidson article, he goes on and on extolling the investment he made that saves a fraction of a penny on every can of soda. He brags, “It makes every American who buys a soda can a little bit richer because their paycheck buys more.” Really? I’m sure the companies make a little more money because of that, but I haven’t noticed the price of soda dropping. And if paychecks keep losing ground, grocery bills keep going up, people keep getting laid off or having their hours cut, the company makes a little more on every can but the rest of us aren’t helped at all. But none of that bothers Conard at all, because to him if the rich are getting richer, all is well. As Davidson puts it, “Conard says that the merciless process of economic selection has assured that they have somehow benefited society.”
What does all this have to do with Romney, besides their close personal ties and the fact that Conard is one of Romney’s biggest supporters (he was the one that set up the phony corporation to funnel money into a pro-Romney Citizens United slush fund)? These views are at the core of Romney’s — and Paul Ryan’s, and the entire Republican Party’s — economic philosophy. One of Romney’s chief economic advisers, Glenn Hubbard, admitted that Romney and Conard share “beliefs about innovation and growth and responsible risk-taking.” The entire Romney-Ryan budget is a document built on these kinds of ideas: structure society so that the rich make more and more money, and everyone will benefit forever after.
This is bad economics, as history — including the recent history of the Bush years — has clearly demonstrated to us. But the values of this thinking are even worse. Here’s Conard’s summary of his philosophy: “God didn’t create the universe so that talented people would be happy. It’s not beautiful. It’s hard work. It’s responsibility and deadlines, working until 11:00 at night when you want to watch your baby and be with your wife. It’s not serenity and beauty.” No, it certainly isn’t. I prefer the thinking of another wealthy man whose family made lots of productive investments in the private sector, and who was part of an administration that presided over the most prosperous decade in American history, but who also knew there were other things that mattered in life:

“Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that — counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

That was Bobby Kennedy, and I will take his view of life over the ugliness of Romneynomics every day of the week.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic. The Update at the end is original, not cross-posted.
In 2008, nobody much cared what Ron Paul wanted: He was dismissed as a fringe candidate, someone defined by the decades he spent losing 434-to-one votes in the House and refusing to endorse his party’s presidential candidate. In this presidential cycle, however, questions about Paul’s intentions have risen, precisely because his performance has begun to resemble that of a conventional politician who can compete if not win. Indeed, it’s a sign of Ron Paul’s greatly enhanced influence that Republicans are still asking, this far into the primary season: What does the man want?
The primary season has consistently furnished evidence of Paul’s outsized influence. Of course, Paul has not won a single caucus or primary so far this year. But as Micah Cohen explained in early April, he more than doubled his vote as compared to 2008, despite spending less money. He attracted well over a million votes–about 10 percent of the aggregate vote in primaries and 20 percent in caucuses. Even as Rick Santorum and (finally) Newt Gingrich dropped out of the race, Paul has persisted.
And his intensely loyal supporters have dominated delegate selection processes in a number of states–including Iowa, Massachusetts, Colorado, Louisiana and Minnesota–that earlier held primaries or “beauty contest” straw polls. Most shockingly, thanks to their big wins in district conventions, Paulites could make up a majority of delegates from Mitt Romney’s home state of Massachusetts. Though these delegates will be pledged to vote for Mitt, they can support Paul on procedural votes–and if he wishes, help him obtain the five-state endorsement he needs to have his name placed into nomination. Paul could also win a majority of the actual delegate votes in Iowa, where delegates are not bound by the January caucus in which Paul finished third. A Paulite was recently elected state party chairman there, and his comrades are almost certain to control a majority of the state party committee.
It is increasingly clear, then, that the Paul campaign will achieve its goal of being visibly represented at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. While a full-on platform fight is unlikely (and anachronistic), Paul’s supporters have the potential to cause quite a commotion. The Romney campaign and the RNC, of course, would prefer to ensure that things stay quiet. And since Paul’s supporters are intensely loyal to their hero, he’s in a position to bargain for their good behavior in Tampa. Which brings us back to the original question: What does he want?
The underlying reality is that Dr. Paul and his fanbase have already won what they most craved from Republicans: respect. I don’t just mean his hard-earned inclusion in candidate debates, or the civil treatment he’s received from his rivals. In a very real sense, on domestic issues at least, the GOP has moved dramatically in Paul’s direction since 2008. That’s most apparent in discussions of monetary policy. While none of Paul’s rivals in the presidential contest embraced a gold standard or abolition of the Fed, the alleged perils of monetary inflation have been emphasized far more than one might expect in the midst of a recession. As National Review‘s Ramesh Ponnuru noted in February:

Many Republicans tell pollsters that they will not vote for Paul because of his foreign-policy views. Nobody says that his monetary views are a deal breaker; no pollster even bothers to ask. There is no organized opposition to Paulite views on money within the Republican party or conservative movement, and the people who hold those views hold them intensely.

More fundamentally, the entire edifice of “constitutional conservatism” that has become the preferred signifier for economic ideology within and beyond the Tea Party is pretty much boilerplate Paulism, reflecting his belief that much of twentieth-century governing practice in the United States represented an illegitimate expansion of federal power. The obdurate resistance to non-enumerated federal powers that made Paul, according to a detailed analysis by University of Georgia political scientist Keith Poole, the single most conservative member of Congress to serve between 1937 and 2002, is now firmly within the GOP mainstream.
But as Ponnuru indicated, there is one policy area where Paul’s views are still well outside his party’s mainstream: his staunch anti-interventionist philosophy and hardcore positions on civil liberties. It is probably fortunate for Paul that foreign policy was a relatively minor issue in the 2012 GOP nominating contest. But when it did come up, Paul sounded notes that would have been viewed as far-left had they been articulated in a Democratic candidate debate. In a party where “American exceptionalism” is a constant theme, the “threat” of Islamism abroad and at home is considered urgent, and unconditional support for Israel is axiomatic, Paul expressed empathy for the Iranian regime and apologetic regret for past meddling in Iranian domestic politics.
Attitudes like that are rarely expressed by GOP politicians–except by Paul’s son, Rand, the junior senator from Kentucky. In a move that would make his father proud, Rand Paul recently blocked a unanimous consent agreement on a resolution to ratchet up economic sanctions on Iran and Syria, demanding explicit assurances that it would not be used to justify a military intervention. But Rand Paul bears few of the scars of decades of ideological battle earned by his father. He enjoys a closer relationship with the GOP establishment in the Senate and elsewhere; according to some reports, he is already plotting a presidential candidacy of his own, if not in 2016 then in 2020. If anyone could bring anti-interventionist foreign policy into the mainstream of the GOP, it’s Rand.
This suggests a simple answer to what Ron Paul wants: He is ready, like Moses, to withdraw from the battleground having never entered the Promised Land, entrusting that task to his Joshua, his son. And whatever the doctor can do to make his son an accepted voice for a respected point of view on foreign policy–whether it’s securing a convention speech, a platform concession, or just a place at the table in hypothetical Romney administration deliberations–he will cash his last gold coins to make it happen.
UPDATE: Before the ink was dry on this report, Paulites pulled off coups at state conventions in Maine and Nevada, winning most of the delegate slots, though in Nevada, as in Massachusetts, delegates will have to actually vote in accordance with Romney’s earlier victories.

Nate Silver crunches some numbers relating presidential election prospects to average job growth per month, and reports at FiveThirtyEight that “…if 150,000 jobs are created in an average month from now through October, the regression equation projects a very close result, showing a victory for Mr. Obama in the popular vote by about 1 percentage point…Mr. Obama’s breakeven number on job creation is now slightly lower than when we had calculated it a few months ago — about 125,000 jobs per month rather than 150,000.”
A new USA Today/Gallup poll of swing states has some welcome news for Dems, according to Susan Page’s USA Today report: “For the first time, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting — a shift from a 14-percentage-point GOP advantage at the end of last year to an 11-point deficit now….By a yawning 27 points, those surveyed describe Obama as more likable than Romney — not a frivolous asset. The candidate viewed as more likable has prevailed in every election since 1980. Even among Romney’s supporters, one in four call Obama more likable…By 10 points, voters say Obama is more likely to care about the needs of people like themselves. By 7 points, they call Obama a stronger and more decisive leader.”
Brian C. Mooney’s Boston Globe article “Democrats doubling down on Swing States” has this interesting spending strategy note: “A Globe analysis of Democratic National Committee disbursements in recent months shows that the party is investing more money per electoral vote in New Hampshire than in any other state.”
At The Fix, WaPo’s Chris Cillizza does a good job of explaining why Arizona really is in play for Dems this year: “According to the 2010 Census, three in 10 Arizonans are Latino, up from roughly 25 percent of the state’s population 10 years ago. In both 2004 and 2008, the Democratic presidential nominee won the Hispanic vote convincingly — Kerry by 18 points, Obama by 15 — but there simply weren’t enough Latinos to counter the strong margins the Republican nominee enjoyed among white voters…The growth among the Latino population — along with the presence of [Democratic senatorial candidate Richard] Carmona, who is Hispanic, and outrage within the community over Brewer’s immigration law — makes Democrats optimistic that 2012 will be different…Democrats are also banking on moderate white Republicans — particularly women — being turned off by the conservative direction Brewer has taken the state, highlighted most recently by her signing a bill that would effectively defund Planned Parenthood.”
Adam C. Smith of the Tampa Bay Times (via Politico) has an update with some state-by-state stats on why the Latino vote is shaping up as the pivotal force in the 2012 presidential elections. “…If Romney can’t narrow Obama’s considerable lead among Latino voters, key battlegrounds including Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida could be out of reach for the Republican nominee.”
Virgil Dickson reports at PR Week that “Republicans are launching a door-to door outreach campaign targeting Latinos in the coming weeks to raise support for Mitt Romney in the general election,” but “Romney and the Republican National Committee have virtually ignored Hispanic media outlets, according to NBC/Smart Media Delta.”
Krugman riffs on the failure of austerity in the French and Greek elections, which indicate a popular preference for expansionary policies. Krugman doesn’t get into it here, but the end of “Merkozy” as a viable economic strategy for recovery in the real world makes austerity a little tougher for the GOP to sell.
David Gauthier-Villars’s “Voter Anger Sweeps Europe ” in the Wall St. Journal notes that the anti-austerity wave was also reflected in local elections in Germany: “…Ms. Merkel’s coalition of Christian Democrats and pro-business Free Democrats suffered defeat in a closely watched state election in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein Sunday, suggesting Ms. Merkel’s options for ruling beyond 2013 are narrowing. ”
In The New York Times, Thomas B. Edsall takes a sobering look at the GOP’s Super PAC edge, and he quotes David Axelrod to underscore the point: “No president has ever faced the kind of onslaught we are about to see. We expect the super Pacs, and their more insidious, non-disclosing cousins – the 501c4 front groups – to spend as much as a billion dollars. They will act as a tag-team with Romney, allowing his team to carry a positive message as the super Pacs rain negative ads down on the president. To date, they have dwarfed Priorities and other Democrat-leaning efforts, so we’ve had to spend millions of dollars responding to super Pac attacks.”