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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: January 2013

Lux: A Great Progressive Speech…And Now We Make Them Do It

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Barack Obama’s second inaugural address was steeped in the progressive traditions of our nation’s history. His speech built on the legacy of our country’s past giants, and added to that legacy.
Like Martin Luther King in his “I Have a Dream” speech, and Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, Obama started where it all began, with Thomas Jefferson’s stirring prelude to the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Lincoln built directly on Jefferson’s opening line as well, referencing the great event in his speech’s opening line:


Political Strategy Notes – MLK Day/Inauguration Editon

At the Washington Post, Wil Haygood comments on the confluence of MLK Day and the Inauguration, noting a quote from Jesse Jackson: “King broke down the walls, and Barack ran across the bridge. The rocks from the broken walls created that bridge.”
Also at The Post, this editorial says it well: “Today, on the national day set aside to honor Dr. King, an African American president will ceremonially begin his second term. …There is, to be sure, an element of bigotry among some of his enemies, but in general it has had a kind of cowardly, subterranean quality to it. President Obama was assailed mostly for what his critics thought were wrong policies or judgments. In the end, as always, the final verdict was given at the polls; the president was reelected, and his inauguration will be celebrated today — not quite with the rapturous enthusiasm of four years ago but rather with something resembling blessed normality.”
As usual, some Republicans are trying to distort Dr. King’s views to dovetail more with their agenda, often using King’s “content of their character” quote to argue that he was opposed to affirmative action and quotas etc., and some even argue that he was a Republican. At CNN.com, John Bake’s “Why conservatives call MLK their hero” has a good update about the distortion of MLK’s views.
To find out what MLK really thought about the Republicans of his day, however, my TDS post a year ago should suffice,
2013 will also be marked as the 50th anniversary year of MLK’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he challenged American to embrace racial equality. When King was assassinated he was leading a movement, ‘The Poor peoples’ campaign to end poverty for Americans of all races. At the New York Times Opinionator, Nobel Prize-winning economist and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Joseph E. Stiglitz makes the case for escalating the struggle to reduce inequality between the wealthy and working people. “It will be up to all of us — our leaders included — to muster the courage and foresight to finally treat this beleaguering malady.”
Julie Mason has an interesting Politico post on President Obama’s relationships with MLK’s associates in the Civil Rights Movement, summed up by King’s closest living aide, Ambassador Andrew Young: ” “He is very well-respected in most of the world. He is smart and he works hard — he is amazingly humble. I don’t think we can do any better.”
William Douglas and David Lightman write in the McClathchey Newspapers article, in “MLK and Obama: a day of similarities” that “Both battled enormous odds to build historic multiethnic, multiracial coalitions, one to advance the cause of civil rights, the other to win the nation’s highest office. Both won the Nobel Peace Price. Both could use soaring rhetoric to inspire millions. Both also had to overcome critics who accused them of socialist or communist sympathies, as well as black activists who maintained that they weren’t strong advocates for African-Americans…”Making America better in 1968 is different than making America better in 2013. I think they take different paths, but their goal is to use their strengths to help America be America,” said Lonnie Bunch, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Many activists are doing good work in keeping with King’s legacy, but this title is a bit of a stretch.
For those who are wondering what Dr. King thought about gun violence and its sources, this MLK quote from The King Papers Project may have some resonance: “By our silence, by our willingness to compromise principle, by our constant attempt to cure the cancer of racial injustice with the Vaseline of gradualism, by our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim, by allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing, by allowing all these developments, we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.”
Susan Donaldson James sets the stage for the inauguration and President Obama’s second term with “Martin Luther King’s Dream for Justice Challenges Obama ” at ABC News, with insights from Rev. Joseph Lowery, Julian Bond, NAACP National President Benjamin Jealous, King’s sister, Christine King Farris and San Diego Mayor Robert Filner, who was jailed in desegregation protests in Mississippi in 1961 and whose family raised funds for the Civil Rights Movement.


Kromm: ‘Map Mischief’ Screws Dems in South

Readers who would like to probe a little deeper into the reasons behind GOP domination of southern politics should check out Chris Kromm’s post, “Map Mischief: How gerrymandering has undercut Southern Democrats in Congress” at Facing South. Kromm, one of the savviest reporters covering social struggle and change in the southern states, explains:

In North Carolina, more than half (51 percent) of the state voted in 2012 for a Democrat to represent them in Congress. But this month, less than a third (31 percent) of the U.S. Representatives who will be sworn into office from North Carolina will be Democrats.
The mismatch between votes and representation is even more striking in South Carolina, where more than 40 percent of the state’s voters chose a Democratic representative, but only one of the state’s seven-member delegation is a Democrat.
In Arkansas, nearly 30 percent of voters picked a Democrat for the U.S. House. The number of Democrats who will represent Arkansas? Zero.

Kromm provides a chart showing the breakdown for 13 southern states states, and adds, “…The gap between the number of voters who vote Democratic for Congress and the actual number of Democratic representatives who will take office this month is four times greater in the South than the national average — a situation that exaggerates the power of Republicans in the South and fuels perceptions of the region as a monolithic conservative stronghold.”
Clearly Democrats would do much better in the south under nonpartisan design of congressional districts. But that will not happen in states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures. The best hope for fair representation for Democrats in the southern congressional districts remains a larger investment in recruitment and training of better candidates, along with more aggressive voter registration of African and Latino Americans in the region.


Billion Dollar Democracy Invites Abuse, Needs Reforms

It’s been widely reported that the 2012 national elections were the most expensive in history. For more revealing details about where the money came from and who got it, however, read “Billion-Dollar Democracy: The Unprecedented Role of Money in the 2012 Elections” by Adam Lioz and Blair Bowie at Demos. Among their revelations:

Newly minted Super PACs dominated outside spending reported to the FEC, aggregating huge sums from millionaires and billionaires.
The top 32 Super PAC donors, giving an average of $9.9 million each, matched the $313.0 million that President Obama and Mitt Romney raised from all of their small donors combined–that’s at least 3.7 million people giving less than $200.
Nearly 60% of Super PAC funding came from just 159 donors contributing at least $1 million. More than 93% of the money Super PACs raised came in contributions of at least $10,000–from just 3,318 donors, or the equivalent of 0.0011% of the U.S. population.
It would take 322,000 average-earning American families giving an equivalent share of their net worth to match the Adelsons’ $91.8 million in Super PAC contributions.
Super PACs accounted for more than 60% of outside spending reported to the FEC.
For the 2012 cycle, Super PACs received more than 70% of their funds from individuals, and a significant percentage (12%) from for-profit businesses.

The authors have many more such nuggets addressing the edge provided incumbents and special interests and the role of secrecy in funding candidates. As for the reforms needed to restore fairness to the system, they conclude:

A campaign finance system that empowers average citizens–by providing incentives for small contributions and strictly limiting both contributions to candidates and outside spending, for example–can promote political equality, enable candidates and elected officials to spend more time reaching out to a broad range of constituents, and better align policy outcomes with public preferences…

You can download the entire report (pdf) right here.


New Study Shows Roots of Republican Obstructionism

Aaron Blake’s “Why Republicans have no incentive to compromise” at WaPo’s ‘The Fix’ explains it well:

…Republicans in Congress have very little incentive to come to the middle on the big issues before the country.
And a new poll from the Pew Research Center says it all: Quite simply, it’s because the GOP base demands principles over compromise…According to the new national Pew survey, 50 percent of Americans would rather that their elected officials “make compromises with people they disagree with” rather than “stick to their positions” (44 percent).
But when you break it down by party, you see the reason we have gridlock.
While 59 percent of Democrats prefer compromise to principled stands, just 36 percent of Republicans say the same (compared to 55 percent who want principled stands).
For Republicans, that’s actually up slightly from the 32 percent who wanted compromise two years ago, after the 2010 election in which the GOP reaped huge gains by standing resolutely against Obama’s agenda. But over the same span, the percentage of Democrats calling for compromise has risen significantly — from 46 percent to 59 percent. And independents have also moved by double digits toward favoring compromise.

In other words, the Republicans in Congress who refuse to compromise are not betraying a majority their supporters. They are reflecting the views of the voters who elected them, often in gerrymandered districts. All of which leaves the GOP in a bit of a dilemma.
As Blake concludes, “Their base demands that they resist compromise, but doing so causes the party as a whole to fall out of favor with the American public.”


Messaging and policies at the edge of the fiscal cliff

Today Democracy Corps released results for addressing the fiscal cliff and policies and messages that get the country to the best short and long-term result. Because voters do not trust the Republicans’ priorities and judgment and see them as so extreme in protecting millionaires at the expense of the middle class and poor, our messages and policies get more than a fair hearing.
For the short term and fiscal cliff, do not forget that the economy is still tough (incomes, finances, and jobs) and progressives’ best messages begin with the struggling middle class that both parties promised to help, and that means above all making sure there are no cuts in benefits for Medicare and Social Security. We should get health care costs down, tax the richest, and get rid of special interest subsides but we can’t ask the middle class and seniors to pay what they can’t afford.
The Republicans are mostly on the defensive when progressives advocate protecting benefits and Republicans argue for ‘reforming entitlements’ — that is, cutting Medicare and Social Security in order to protect the richest from higher taxes.
For the longer term, voters are very open to investing for growth now, avoiding the immediate, drastic cuts in spending that hurt the economy, and a plan that addresses jobs in the short-term and deficits in the long.
The poll’s principal findings are summarized below:

  • The Republican Party is viewed as too extreme on many critical issues – both fiscal and cultural – including aid to the poor, the rights of gays, women’s issues, and taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
  • The Republican brand is in trouble, based on a real pull-back among moderate-to-liberal Republicans who question the party leadership’s priorities in the budget negotiations.
  • The strongest proposals to reduce the deficit are all progressive policies, including raising taxes and reducing deductions for the wealthiest, lifting the payroll tax cap, and raising Medicare premiums for those who can afford to pay more.
  • The least popular policy proposals are those that would hit the middle class and working people hardest, including benefit changes to Medicare and Social Security, raising the Medicare eligibility age, and adjusting the way Social Security cost of living assessments are calculated.
  • Progressives’ best messages are situated in the economy: what’s happening to the middle class and middle class families’ inability to afford benefit cuts. Above all progressives should want a debate over entitlements with the goal to make sure the middle class is whole. This message cuts across groups and clearly frames what each side aims to get out of these negotiations.
  • Americans have moved toward progressive economics on investment. An investment message does not hurt the progressive argument and has the power to reinforce basic tenets of progressive economics for key groups – especially those who have been hardest hit in this economy.
  • Unemployment and long-term deficits remain problems, so a message focused on getting jobs and growth in the short-term and addressing debt in the long-term is also strong.
  • But the conservative message focused on spending is still very attractive and makes sense to voters. It is important to reframe the conservative position through entitlement cuts and the impact on the middle class and poor.

Read the entire results here.


Political Strategy Notes

The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Ed O’Keefe have the early take on Obama’s prospects for enacting his gun proposals. For the time-challenged, Slate’s Dave Weigel lists Obama’s executive orders on guns.
At The Atlantic Molly Ball considers the political ramifications of using — and not using — the term “gun control” and various alternatives.
Alex Roarty of the National Journal has acquired a GOP memo naming seven Democratic House members they are targeting for defeat in 2014. Roarty explains: “Reps. Ron Barber and Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, John Barrow of Georgia, Jim Matheson of Utah, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Nick Rahall of West Virginia. Each represents a district that has voted for the Republican nominee in the last three presidential elections…In all, 15 Democrats represent right-leaning districts, the memo says, compared with just four Republicans who represent left-leaning districts.”
Again at The Atlantic, Mohamed A. El-Erian, author of “When Markets Collide,” explains “How Game Theory Explains Washington’s Horrible Gridlock.”
In France, however, labor and business have somehow found a way to negotiate a ‘grand bargain.’ “The deal should help create new jobs while protecting workers, and should also help stabilize the government of President François Hollande, which has been struggling to reenergize the economy,..The most sweeping change will give businesses the ability to negotiate reduced working hours and wages during economic slowdowns, an idea borrowed from Germany, which used a similar system of shortened work hours to avoid massive layoffs in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In exchange, workers will get better unemployment insurance and health care coverage and a seat on the boards of large companies,” reports Vikas Bajaj in the New York Times.
A poll of 38 economists by The University of Chicago Booth School of Business’s Initiative on Global Markets finds just one of them thinks the “debt ceiling” is a good idea, reports National Journal’s Catherine Hollander. One of the other 37, UC’s Richard Thaler, puts it like so: “The debt ceiling is a dumb idea with no benefits and potentially catastrophic costs if ever used.”
At Rolling Stone, Steven Hsieh’s “Everything You Need to Know About Filibuster Reform” updates the struggle ahead between the Merkley-Udall-Harkin plan vs. the McCain-Levin plan. But the window for a united Democratic coalition is shrinking. As Josh Marshall notes at Talking Points Memo “… it happens next week or there’s not another chance until 2015.”
Also at TPM, Sahil Kapur has an insightful report on the filibuster reform endgame. Meanwhile, ‘talking filibuster’ advocates can sign the petition right here.
Although prospects for passage may be dim at the moment, the Public Option Deficit Reduction Act, “which would “would offer the choice of a publicly-run health insurance plan, an option that would save more than $100 billion over 10 years.” just introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s (D-Ill.), along with 44 other cosponsors, has merit for educating voters about the real causes of the deficit. It can also lay the groundwork for the bill’s enactment when Democrats reach a critical mass in congress. Molly Reilly reports on the bill at HuffPo. Peter Orzag explains the economic benefits of the reform in a video clip at the bottom of the story.
Far be it from moi to demonize a political adversary, but this headline has a certain je ne sais quoi.


Lux: Tough Choices Ahead for Dems on ‘Grand Bargain’

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
It is a well-known fact that President Obama wants a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, a deal that would reduce future deficits both by raising tax revenues and cutting spending, including on the so-called “entitlement programs.” He has offered this idea up repeatedly to Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders in the 2011 debt ceiling talks and in the 2012 fiscal cliff debate, and media reports suggest that he is discussing the idea again with Republicans in the lead-up to the next perils of a budget crisis that is only a few weeks off.
Democrats in the progressive wing of the party (of which, full disclosure, I am a card carrying member) think the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits is terrible public policy because senior citizens who can least afford it will be badly hurt, and we have been working hard to convince the president to back away from this offer. This may be difficult to do, though, as the president has some strong (wrong, in my judgment, but compelling to the president’s political and legislative team) political reasons for wanting to do this grand bargain. But the politics of this deal are very different for the rest of the party, and it may well be that progressives can win over a lot more of those Democrats than conventional wisdom currently expects.
The Obama team’s logic is that they are sick and tired, understandably, of Republicans wanting to make every single issue, every policy debate, about the deficit issue, and they don’t want our country to keep lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis as Republicans continue to look for “leverage” to force more cuts. And the White House, to their credit, is eager to move on to other issues that will move the country forward, such as immigration reform and gun safety issues. They believe that if they can finally close the deal and get the grand bargain they have been searching for that they will be on strong political ground to be able to say regarding the deficit, “Hey, we’ve already done something big on that, it’s time to move on.”
Now I happen to believe their logic is wrong on the politics of the issue, as Republicans’ strongest political issue by far is the deficit, and they will never give it up — no matter what happens, they will keep demanding more and more cuts, and the deficit hawks in the media and well-funded groups like Fix The Debt will back them up. But even if you were to grant that the White House was right on the politics of this issue for them, for Democratic members of Congress the politics on this issue are completely different.
For starters, members of Congress are far more affected by what I call the intensity factor. Remember about 25 years ago when senior citizens surrounded Con. Rostenkowski’s car and started rocking it back and forth because of a bill they didn’t like on catastrophic health care? Think what seniors today might do if their Social Security benefits were cut. That kind of intensity drives bad media coverage back home, primary challenges, contributions to opponents — and it kills your contributors’ and volunteers’ and base voters’ enthusiasm levels.
The threat of a primary is not as great on the Democratic side as on the Republican, as the progressive movement has less money and capacity in general to mount many successful primary challenges. In the last several cycles, there has usually been one major primary challenge (some successful, some not) to an incumbent from the left, and that isn’t enough to strike fear into most Democrats’ hearts. The intensity factor, though, might change the dynamics on this, adding new money and volunteers to primary fights. Add to that the combination of progressive forces with older voters who have just had their Social Security cut, and incumbent Democrats might have something to worry about, especially in states like PA, OH, MI, WI and IA with both large numbers of seniors and large numbers of union members.
Beyond the primaries, though, the politics of cutting benefits is far worse for Democratic incumbents in an off year general election. Think about the demographics alone: in the past two presidential elections, the percent of the electorate that came from voters 65 and over was 16 percent, whereas in the 2010 off-year election it jumped to 21 percent. And seniors have been one of the most volatile demographic groups in the electorate in recent years, and one not inclined to like Democrats very well: Democrats lost them by 8 percent in 2008, by a whopping 21 percent in 2010, and by 12 percent in 2012.
But seniors are far from the only worry with a bad vote on Social Security or Medicare. The voters that Democrats have to turn out in big numbers in an off-year are base voters. Base voters hate the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and a Democrat who had to defend that vote would be looking square in the face at a base voter constituency that was likely to be very depressed. I’ve lived through two off-year elections where Democratic base voters were unexcited about voting — 1994 and 2010 — and I don’t relish living through that again.
What will be especially brutal in the off-year election for Democrats who believe they have cut a responsible bipartisan deal that will protect them from Republican attacks is that the unaccountable outside groups with their millions of dollars in attack ads won’t hesitate to do brutal ads on them for cutting Social Security and Medicare, just as they did the last two elections attacking them for “cutting” Medicare. It won’t matter that the Republicans wanted to cut even more, or that the money for the ads comes from millionaires who would love to see these programs privatized: the attack dogs will not hesitate to make political hay off such a vote.
Beyond rank and file members of Congress, there is another major force in the Democratic party for whom a grand bargain is potentially deadly, and that is potential presidential candidates. Try explaining your vote cutting Social Security to the heavily senior citizen and base activist dominated Iowa caucuses. Having been involved in 5 different presidential campaigns, I feel pretty confident saying that it would be extremely tough to win a Democratic presidential primary having supported cutting Social Security benefits.
Even if you grant that the politics of the grand bargain idea are good for President Obama, they are poison for Democrats in Congress who have to run again in 2014 and 2016. The president, who will never run for office again, may feel like his best political alternative is to ignore the wishes of both his base and the seniors, who have never voted for him anyway on an issue like Social Security cuts. For the rest of the party, they had better take a close look at how this will affect their own political well-being.


New WaPo/ABC News Poll: Obama Soars, GOP Sinks

President Obama and Democrats should be encouraged by an article in today’s Washington Post, “Most see Obama as ‘strong leader,’ say deal on debt ceiling does not require cuts” by Jon Cohen and Peyton M. Craighill, who report on a new Washington Post-ABC News poll:

Fully 55 percent say Obama is doing a good job overall, more than double the 24 percent saying so of the Republicans in Congress. Among political independents, 54 percent approve of the president’s job performance; just 21 percent give good ratings to congressional Republicans. (At 37 percent overall and 30 percent among independents, the Democrats in Congress do little better.)
The GOP congressional leadership also takes flak for a perceived unwillingness to work with Obama on important issues: 67 percent of all Americans see them as doing “too little” to compromise with the president. Far fewer, 48 percent, say so about Obama’s willingness to compromise with the GOP.
The percentage of Americans seeing the Republican leadership as overly intransigent is up 13 percentage points since December 2010, just after the GOP reclaimed control of the House of Representatives. The biggest increases since that time have been among Republicans and conservatives, with roughly 20-point jumps in blaming their party’s leaders for not doing enough to strike deals with the president. Half of all Republicans say the GOP leadership is not doing enough to compromise.

Craighill and Cohen point out, however, that there is significant room for improvement as regards public opinions about Obama’s economic policies, and the “wrong track” numbers are too high. Overall, though, the rest of the authors’ nuanced analysis of the poll results in the article provides good news for Obama and very bad news for Republicans.


Gimme a break

Dana Milbank is now complaining that Obama is being just too darn mean and rude to the poor little GOP:

…Arguably, Obama’s no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy approach is good politics. His first-term experience made clear that he gained nothing from Republicans when he took a passive approach. When it comes to getting things done in Washington, there’s no substitute for forceful presidential leadership. Teddy Roosevelt, whose oil-on-canvas likeness gazed at Obama from an East Room wall, probably would have approved..
[But]It’s tempting to wonder whether Obama could achieve more if he could establish personal connections with Republicans on Capitol Hill…until recent years, sharp disagreements were smoothed by personal ties. On Monday, by contrast, Obama showed unrelenting hostility toward the opposition, accompanying his remarks with dismissive shrugs and skeptical frowns.

Now Milbank knows perfectly well that the Republicans in today’s extremist GOP are an entirely different breed than the more collegial Republicans of previous decades. He knows that they are threatening to severely damage the United States of America by forcing the nation to default on its obligations and he freely admits that Obama “gained nothing” from his previous attempts at compromise.
But the iron fist of beltway journalism still requires him to pretend to be suffering from amnesia and to innocently wonder if Obama couldn’t solve all this nasty squabbling by just being nicer.
In journalism schools there is a technical term for this: it’s called garbage.