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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: May 2013

Political Strategy Notes

Ari Shapiro reports at npr.org on “Obama’s Next Big Campaign: Selling Health Care To The Public,” leading up to October 1, when 7 million uninsured Americans will be able to purchase health insurance on the public exchanges implemented by the AffordableCare Act.
At The Plum Line, Jonathan Bernstein explains why it makes sense to ignore the latest CNN poll finding that 54 percent oppose Obamacare: “Yes, 54 percent oppose the ACA, but almost half of those think it’s not liberal enough…it won’t really matter what people thought they were going to get in the many long months before the law was fully implemented. So if you want to know what people will think of Obamacare next year, follow the news on implementation — not the current polls.”
Also at The Plum Line, Jamelle Bouie has some sobering advice for Republicans regarding the ACA: “…At this point, repeal is unlikely. With President Obama’s reelection, we crossed a point of no return. States have already begun to implement major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and governors of all stripes — including conservatives like Arizona’s Jan Brewer — are pressuring their legislatures to sign on to the program. Within a year, large numbers of Americans will begin to see concrete benefits from the law, giving them reason to support the system as a whole…Even if a Republican wins the White House in 2016, the Affordable Care Act is likely to survive, for the simple reason that people don’t like to lose benefits. Republicans will have to accept Obamacare as part of the political landscape and move on.”
Joshua Holland’s Alternet post “How America’s Retirement Crisis Is Crushing the Hopes of a Generation of Young People” merits a thoughtful read, especially by Democratic policy-makers and strategists.
Former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has cited the GOP’s gridlock strategy in congress in saying his party should be “closed for repairs.” In some states, however, Republicans are actually reversing social and economic reforms. As Michael A. Fletcher reports at The Washington Post, North Carolina has become the new laboratory for right-wing “reforms.” He quotes Rev. William J. Barber II, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP: “Most of the laws that take us backwards do not come out of Congress but out of state legislatures.” Barber is leading a growing protest movement against the GOP assault on social programs and voting rights in the state capitol.
For more on the NC protests, check out Sue Sturgis’s by-the-numbers post at Facing South.
TNR’s Alec Macgillis writes on the arrival of a much tougher gun-control movement.
In his WaPo column on “The Obama Riddle,” D. J. Dionne, Jr. shares a perceptive take on the President’s leadership style: “He’s an anti-ideological leader in an ideological age, a middle-of-the-road liberal skeptical of the demands placed on a movement leader, a politician often disdainful of the tasks that politics asks him to perform. He wants to invite the nation to reason together with him when nearly half the country thinks his premises and theirs are utterly at odds.”
Do share Paul Krugman’s review article “How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled” at the New York Review of Books with your swing voter friends and acquaintances.
Media Matters’ Tyler Hansen’s “Collapsing Bridges, Collapsing Spending, And Neil Cavuto’s Infrastructure Denialism” shows just how distorted MSM reporting can be on an issue of public safety. Or, as one of the post’s commenters puts it: “this is why we can’t have nice things.”


Are Republicans Giving Conservatism a Bad Name?

In a more rational Republican Party, here’s a headline that would encourage the leadership to stop and rethink a few of their assumptions: “Fewer Americans Identify as Economic Conservatives in 2013: Thirty percent say they are liberal on social issues, a new high.” The headline comes from Andrew Dugan’s report on Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 2-7.
The percentage of Americans who identify themselves as “economic conservative” has declined 5 percent, to 41 percent from 46 percent in the 2012 edition of the Values and Beliefs poll. Those who identify themselves as economic moderates picked up the gain, increasing their percentage from 32 to 37 percent. Those who call themselves economic liberals declined a point, from 20 to 19 percent, a figure that “has not fluctuated much since 2001”.
But there is some good news for liberals in the poll, as Dugan reports:

While economic liberalism remains stagnant, the percentage of Americans describing their social views as “liberal” or “very liberal” has achieved a new peak of 30% — in line with Gallup’s recent finding that Americans are more accepting on a number of moral issues. Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are conservative or very conservative on social issues and 32% self-identify as socially moderate.
Most Americans are ideologically consistent in their views of economic and social issues. For individuals who gave an answer to both questions, 75% of social conservatives also considered themselves economic conservatives, while 60% of social moderates were also economic moderates. Social liberals were less “consistent,” with a slim plurality, 44%, saying they were also economically liberal.
“Pure” conservatives — individuals who say they are conservative in both policy spheres — make up a substantial portion of self-identified or leaning Republicans, 63%. Pure liberals, by far less common than their ideological polar opposites, are a less sizable contingent of the Democratic Party, constituting 28% of its overall base.

While the poll may not reflect a political earthquake in the making, there is no good news here for the GOP. As Dugan concludes, “… The trend suggests that ideological attitudes in the country may be shifting. Social liberalism has grown by six points since 2001 and now attracts half of rank-and-file Democrats and Democratic leaners. It is possible that Americans are returning to a certain sense of normalcy on economic ideology, while social ideology continues to charter new ground.”
Perhaps the more interesting possibility is that Republican Party obstructionism has reached the point of diminishing returns — that the “conservative” brand has been tainted by association with the GOP, and growing numbers are more comfortable calling themselves something else.


DCCC Chair Israel: How Dems Can Regain House Majority

From Susan Page’s USA Today interview with DCCC Chair Rep. Steve Israel, who likened the 2014 upcoming election to the situation Dems faced in 1998:

“It was very similar to the climate that we have now,” Israel said. “The president gets elected, re-elected, in 1996. The Republicans in the House of Representatives make a decision to do everything they can to bring him down. … They launched 35 separate, partisan, witch-hunt investigations — and the Democrats won seats in the second midterm election of the Clinton presidency; won five seats.”
Democrats need to pick up 17 House seats to regain the control they lost to Republicans in 2010. Israel says there are 52 House seats “in play.” The non-partisan Cook Political Report now identifies 37 Democratic-held seats and 30 Republican-held seats as competitive or potentially competitive.
One big target for Democrats: Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who for a time sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 but only narrowly held on to her House seat in November. She faces a rematch against businessman Jim Graves. Israel said a campaign poll taken last week by the firm PPP for the Graves campaign put him ahead of Bachmann, 47%-45% — within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points but a sign of a close contest.

In the interview, Israel adds “”If the economy shows signs of health, then I think we have a much better climate in which to win the House.” In addition, Rachel Weiner reports at The Fix that Dems have a 48-40 edge in generic ballot preference, according to the latest WaPo/ABCNews poll.


GOP’s Norquistian Nightmare Becoming Reality?

Grover Norquist was not kidding when he said “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” His intentions became quite clear later on when he made his equally infamous pledge an oath of faith for conservatives.
But Norquist’s nightmarish vision may now be becoming a political reality. As Noam Scheiber writes in his disturbing post, “Hunger Games The conservative plan to starve government has paid off with the IRS scandal” at The New Republic.

The more we learn about the IRS vetting of conservative groups, the less it looks like an abuse of power than something much more mundane–a beleaguered agency with too few resources to handle its work-load…As The New York Times reported this past weekend, the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups was chronically understaffed and overwhelmed even before a surge in applications from political groups in 2010. Once the dodgy applications started piling up (dodgy because political groups that don’t reveal their donors aren’t supposed to get tax exemptions), it’s not surprising that the IRS cut corners, adopting search terms like “patriot” to help flag the conservative groups who were largely behind the increase. This was insensitive and inexcusable–a real crime against political correctness. But it was the kind of mistake people make when they’re overworked, not on a witch hunt.

However, explains Scheiber,

…The scheming is on the right and not the left. Since the Republican House takeover in 2010, conservatives have laid the groundwork for a cynical two-step: First, squeeze funding for government programs, making it harder for civil servants to do their jobs. Then, when the inevitable screw-up comes, use it as further justification for cuts. Against this backdrop, the IRS scandal looks like only the latest step in the conservative long-game.

Scheiber adds that the same tactics have been leveraged to undercut the Affordable Care Act, and the enforcement powers of the FEC and CFTC, and weaken government by drastic cuts in discretionary spending. As Scheiber says, “the GOP’s entire budget strategy for the last two-and-a-half years only really makes sense as an effort to discredit government…The budget strains prevented the agency from staffing up appropriately across the board, increasing the chances of a major snafu somewhere in its vast organization chart.”
Worse, adds Scheiber:

The just and logical result of this chain of events would be to discredit the people intent on starving government. Instead, the scandal has become a convenient talking point for opponents of government itself. The IRS uproar “probably represents the last shovelful of dirt on the central mission of Barack Obama’s presidency: rehabilitating Big Government’s reputation as a necessary first step toward a new Progressive Era,” wrote the economics commentator James Pethokoukis in National Review. More alarmingly, mainstream pundits are echoing this conclusion. “The IRS flap eats away at the underpinnings of what President Barack Obama promised when he first ran in 2008,” wrote the centrist columnist Jerry Seib the following week. “A revival of confidence that government is capable of solving problems in a smart and nonideological manner.”
I’m afraid Seib is right. As it’s currently playing out, the scandal probably is sapping confidence in government. But how we got to this point is no accident. It was the plan all along.

What the GOP could not completely achieve with gerrymandering and voter suppression, they are accomplishing through legislative obstruction and paralysis — rendering government incapable of functioning effectively. Whether they can hoodwink enough voters into agreeing with them remains to be seen. What voters must decide on November 4, 2014 is whether government is inherently evil and incompetent — or is it just the Republicans in congress.


Political Strategy Notes

Alex Altman posts on “For Republicans, Oklahoma Tornado Revives Questions About Disaster Relief” at Time Swampland, noting that Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe, who opposed emergency aid for new England in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, are catching heat for their position on emergency aid for their state. Coburn is insisting of offsetting cuts in the federal budget elsewhere, while Imhofe is trying to sell a double standard, arguing that there will be no pork in aid for Oklahoma, so it’s OK.
NY Republican Rep. Peter King ain’t having Imhofe’s equivocating: “We know the type of suffering that people go through during these types of crises and we’re not going to hold – I’m certainly not going to hold the good people of Oklahoma hostage because they may have some hypocrites in their delegation,” King told WCBS 880′s Steve Scott on Wednesday…We had to wait over 100 days before we even got the aid approved to New York and New Jersey. Now, we find the senator from Oklahoma who voted against aid to New York and New Jersey saying that aid should be sent to Oklahoma because there’s a difference between tornado assistance and hurricane assistance,” King told Scott. “This is absolute hypocrisy.”
But Joan Walsh’s Salon.com post “Inhofe and Coburn: Red state hypocrites” hits the core issue most squarely: “Especially in the wake of the sequester cuts, the notion that the federal budget is larded with easily eliminated spending is ludicrous. Would Coburn like to see more kids thrown out of Head Start? More seniors losing Meals on Wheels? The federal deficit is shrinking faster than at any time since just after World War II, but Coburn is going to insist that someone, somewhere, must lose their federal help so Oklahoma can get it instead…We now apparently have deserving and undeserving disasters. When tragedy strikes, most Americans tend to want to pull together, but many Republicans look to pull us apart, placing their own constituents’ needs above everyone else’s.”
At PolitcusUSA Sarah Jones adds a little clarity to the I.R.S. ‘scandal,’ noting that “Conservative Nonprofits That Received Tax Exempt Status Outspent Liberals by 34-to-1.”
So, “Is the Economy Saving Obama’s Approval Ratings?” at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver says “…It may be that the talk surrounding Benghazi, the I.R.S. and the Justice Department has negatively affected Mr. Obama’s approval rating by two or three percentage points, but that the economy has lifted his numbers by about the same amount.” In a word, yes.
Michael Tomasky makes a convincing argument that Dems should resist all calls for a special prosecutor. “Just say no, and say it firmly,” says Tomasky.
At The Daily Beast Eleanor Clift explains how “Obama’s Minimum-Wage Gambit Puts Republicans on Defensive” and explains: “Democrats and Republicans disagree about the economic consequences of a higher minimum wage, but they do agree on the politics, that it’s a loser for Republicans and mostly a winner for Democrats. “It should resonate,” says Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “No one will win an election on this, but it rounds out with some base voters that he’s focused on their needs, too.” Democratic pollster Stefan Hankin agrees that it speaks to the Democratic base, but warns that it also risks deepening the divide between the business community and Democrats at a time when the GOP is in such disarray that an olive branch to business might be better politics. Either way, Democrats have set a proposal in motion that if it doesn’t pass in this Congress, it likely will in the next.”
The common wisdom has it that Huntsman can’t get nominated in his party, since right-wingers now have veto power. But Dems should keep an eye on him, just in case the wingnut base of the GOP’s House of Cards is ready to implode. His new PAC appears to be a well-planned base-building vehicle.
Greg Sargent reports at The Plum Line that “Harry Reid escalates `nuclear’ threat” as the only reasonable response left to GOP obstruction of nominations that ought to be routine.
Diogenes can finally stop looking. We found an honest man right here.


Here’s the latest political commentary from the alternate universe where the GOP is not paralyzing the government

New York Times op-ed writer Bill Keller arguing for appointing a special counsel to investigate the IRS affair:

The third reason for a special counsel is that the government has serious business to conduct, and the scandal circus on Capitol Hill is a terrible distraction. Oversight, so-called, is what we do these days instead of passing a budget, reforming the immigration system, or processing the countless government and judicial appointments awaiting confirmation. Handing off the I.R.S. problem to a special counsel and putting congressional hearings on hold would allow everyone, including journalists, to turn their attention to all that unfinished business.

In Keller’s alternate universe, one nust assume, the GOP is not refusing to pass a budget, not blocking appointees, not filibustering every bill and not refusing to fund programs already on the books. In this universe, on the other hand, the only thing the scandals are distracting the GOP from doing more of is obstruction.


Kilgore: GOP’s I.R.S. Meme Headed ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’

In his Political Animal post “Losing the Thread on the IRS Mess” at Washington Monthly, Ed Kilgore illuminates the shifting GOP rationale for amping up the I.R.S. ‘scandal.’ Kilgore cites Steve Benen’s Maddow Blog post, noting that ‘the goalposts have moved rather quickly” and Jeffrey Toobin’s New Yorker observation that the White House seems to be rather more engaged in “the opposite of a cover-up.” Kilgore adds that The Village scribes’ new meme is that the white house is guilty of, gasp, political incompetence. Kilgore observes further:

Well, whatever. It’s not exactly breaking news that this White House, like any White House, isn’t politically infallible. If the scandal is poor handling of the scandal, we are a very long way from the original claims, which are still being repeated every single second throughout conservative-land, that the administration has gotten caught deploying the IRS to destroy the First Amendment rights (which apparently includes the right not to pay taxes and to hide donors) of innocent activists who were minding their own business.
The ultimate howler here is that we are supposed to believe that IRS bureaucrats, in obedience to the “dog whistle” of the president’s demonization of conservative groups’ involvement in the 2012 presidential campaign, chose to ignore the groups that were actually involved in the campaign in a significant way, and instead go after small fry Tea Party organizations (who apparently could not express their views without a certificate of tax-exempt status), many undoubtedly operating in non-competitive states. This idea reflects the deeper delusion that the Tea Party Movement is perceived by Democrats as a deadly threat to their electoral prospects, instead of as the Democratic Party’s very best friend, driving the GOP into extremism and political cul de sacs every day. You know, like the one we’re all barreling down right now in inflating IRS stupidity in processing 501(c)(4) applications into the central issue of American politics (with the possible exception of Benghazi!).
But hey, forget all that: Lois Lerner (the same bureaucrat who came up with the brilliant idea of making this whole subject very public by planting a question about IRS “targeting” at a luncheon so that she could “apologize”) is taking the Fifth! Crimes must have been committed! To hell with those portions of the Bill of Rights that don’t involve the self-protection of Tea Folk! To hell with the law and logic! Down the rabbit hole we go, world without end!

If this is the best they got, 2014 just might pan out substantially better than expected — for Democrats.


Gov. Scott’s 180 on Early Voting Suggests Public Fed Up With Suppression in Bellwether FL

As one of the most important swing states, Florida’s election law reforms are of more than local interest. So, when Florida’s right-wing governor Rick Scott reverses his earlier opposition to early voting and suddenly signs into law reforms that actually improve voting rights, it may indicate that growing public discontent about voter suppression is making swing voters tilt Democratic. As Aaron Deslatte Tallahassee Bureau Chief of the SunSentinel, explains:

Gov. Rick Scott has signed an elections bill that allows more early voting, in an attempt to reverse some of the restrictions the Republican-controlled Legislature put in place in 2011…is a response to the ridicule Florida received in the days after President Barack Obama’s re-election, when votes were still being counted in a few counties…some urban counties like Miami-Dade, Broward and Orange saw lines that stretched for hours.
Miami-Dade, in particular, has been blasted for not re-aligning its voting precincts with updated population data, resulting in some polling sites that were slammed and others largely empty. Other counties like Palm Beach complained that vendors botched up ballots and software…The bill, HB 7013, lets the State Department fine vendors $25,000 for voting-machine problems that don’t get fixed.
…It also increases the allowable early voting hours, and goes from eight days to 14 days. The Legislature had reduced that early-voting window to one week in 2011, which some evidence has found decreased early-voting turnout last year — particularly among minorities.
And it expands the locations for early voting from just election offices and city halls to include courthouses, civic centers, stadiums, convention centers, fairgrounds and government-owned senior and community centers.
“…With this election reform package, Florida has achieved what many of us thought at one time might be impossible: a huge improvement to our democratic process and a giant step forward for Florida voters,” said Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.
…But Democrats and some voting-rights groups have been less-than-thrilled with the bill because it gives county election supervisors discretion in the number of hours of early voting they offer — as much as 168 hours — and whether or not to hold early voting on the Sunday before a general election. Some rural counties have said that Sunday is rarely used by voters, while it’s a main get-out-the-vote day among minorities in more urban counties…

The Republicans’ heavy-handed voter suppression may be backfiring with swing voters. Certainly the outrage about FL’s long lines at the polls in 2012 — 8 plus hours in some Miami precincts — aren’t helping the state GOP. Gov. Rick Scott seemed to be campaigning for poster boy for voter suppression before the election. Now he is all about expanding voter access, no doubt to save his political skin. He is running scared.
Looking toward 2014, polls taken in March by Public Policy Polling and Quinnipiac University showing Gov. Scott running 8 and 6 points, respectively, behind likely Democratic candidate for FL Gov. Charlie Crist.
Whether Dems can beat Gov. Scott or not in 2014, leveraging voting reforms in key states is a critical concern for Democratic GOTV. Florida is not only a key swing state with the 3rd largest electoral vote bloc (29 e.v.’s, tied w/ NY) ; it’s also a bellwether, having picked the winner in 12 out of the last 13 presidential elections (12 of the last 14, for those who believe the 2000 election was stolen). The DNC, major party contributors and progressives in general should gladly provide whatever help the Florida Democratic Party needs to take full advantage of the reforms.


Cook: GOP Obsesses About ‘Scandals,’ as Public Yawns

If you have noticed a growing disconnect between the loudly trumpeted priorities of Republican political leaders and the reality-based community, you are in pretty good company. Charlie Cook’s National Journal post, “Republicans’ Hatred of Obama Blinds Them to Public Disinterest in Scandals” explains it well:

Red-faced Republicans, circling and preparing to pounce on a second-term Democratic president they loathe, do not respect, and certainly do not fear. Sound familiar? Perhaps reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s second term, after the Monica Lewinsky story broke? During that time, Republicans became so consumed by their hatred of Clinton and their conviction that this event would bring him down that they convinced themselves the rest of the country was just as outraged by his behavior as they were. By the way, what was Clinton’s lowest Gallup job-approval rating in his second term, throughout the travails of investigations and impeachment? It was 53 percent. The conservative echo machine had worked itself into such a frenzy, the GOP didn’t realize that the outrage was largely confined to the ranks of those who never voted for Clinton anyway.
These days, the country is even more polarized, and the conservative echo chamber is louder than ever before….Although the Republican sharks are circling, at least so far, there isn’t a trace of blood in the water. A new CNN/ORC survey of 923 Americans this past Friday and Saturday, May 17-18, pegged Obama’s job-approval rating at 53 percent, up a statistically insignificant 2 points since their last poll, April 5-7, which was taken before the Benghazi, IRS, and AP-wiretap stories came to dominate the news and congressional hearing rooms…
In Gallup’s tracking poll, Obama’s average job-approval rating so far this year is 50 percent. For this past week, May 13-19, his average was 49 percent, the same as the week before. The most recent three-day moving average, through Sunday, May 19, was also 49 percent. Over the past two weeks, even as these three stories/scandals have dominated the news, they have had precisely zero effect on the president’s job-approval numbers. His ratings are still bouncing around in the same narrow range they have been for weeks.

Cook acknowledges that “things could change” and the public might care more about the scandals later on. However, Cook notes that economists expect the economy to perk up at least a little in the second half of this year. Regarding the GOP’s scandal-mongering, Cook observes:

One wonders how long Republicans are going to bark up this tree, perhaps the wrong tree, while they ignore their own party’s problems, which were shown to be profound in the most recent elections. Clearly none of these recent issues has had a real impact on voters yet. Republicans seem to be betting everything on them, just as they did in 1998–about which even Newt Gingrich (who was House speaker that year) commented recently to NPR, “I think we overreached in ’98.”…Republicans and conservatives who are so consumed by these “scandals” should ask themselves why, despite wall-to-wall media attention and the constant focus inside the Beltway–some are even talking about grounds for impeachment–Obama’s job-approval needle hasn’t moved.

It’s a good question. But don’t expect a coherent answer from leaders of a political party that prefers pandering to hatred and wallowing in self-delusion to addressing the economic priorities of middle-class Americans with credible reforms.


Boy I’m glad Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan weren’t writing in the early 60’s. I tremble to think how they would have covered Martin Luther King.

In a new piece titled provocatively titled, “Obama the Uniter? Not Really”, the Washington Post’s resident dispensers of inside the beltway common wisdom have once again managed to concede the reality of Republican extremism as the source of political polarization in one sentence and then turn around and lay the responsibility for it on Obama in another.
Just watch how this world Olympic-class “it’s not really his fault except it really is” gymnastic logical summersault is performed:

“Obama the Uniter? Not Really”,
…there’s little question that Republicans in Congress have been driven to the ideological right over the past few years due in large part to a series of primary victories by conservative insurgents over incumbents viewed as insufficiently loyal to party principles.
But, Obama is still the president who pledged — loudly and repeatedly — to change how Washington works. That has not happened. The economic stimulus bill and the healthcare law passed on party line votes in his first term. The gun bill failed on party lines in his second term. And, with a series of scandals and investigations now mounting, it seems more likely that partisanship will grow rather than shrink in the coming months…
None of that is Obama’s fault and there is nothing — or virtually nothing — he can do to change it. But, add it all up and you are left with one inescapable conclusion: The president who pledged to change Washington is almost certain to come up short on that promise.

Wow. I sure am glad Cillizza and Sullivan weren’t writing in the early 60’s. They probably would have evaluated Martin Luther King something like this:

Martin Luther King, Man of Peace? Not Really
…there’s little question that segregationists have been driven even further to the ideological right over the past few years due in large part to the growing demands for equality …But Martin Luther King is still the leader who pledged — loudly and repeatedly — to seek civil rights without violence.
That has not happened….A church in Birmingham has been bombed, civil rights workers have been murdered and John Kennedy has been assassinated.
None of that is King’s fault and there is nothing — or virtually nothing — he can do to change it. But, add it all up and you are left with one inescapable conclusion: The leader who pledged to seek civil rights without violence is almost certain to come up short on that promise.

Does anybody except me think that this is just world class crazy? I sure do hope so.