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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: September 2013

Political Strategy Notes

First, the good news. Tuesday begins the reformation of health care in America. As the New York Times editorial board puts it, “…Millions of uninsured Americans who can’t get health insurance, or can’t afford it, to obtain coverage with the aid of government subsidies. It is a striking example of what government can do to help people in trouble…After decades of debate and bitter political battles, millions of uninsured Americans will soon be able to get health coverage they can afford, a right that has long been universal in other advanced nations.”
From Paul Steinhauser’s “CNN Poll: GOP would bear the brunt of shutdown blame” at CNN Politics: “According to the poll, which was conducted Friday through Sunday, 46% say they would blame congressional Republicans for a government shutdown, with 36% saying the president would be more responsible and 13% pointing fingers at both the GOP in Congress and Obama.”
For those who would like all of their shutdown reporting distilled into one headline that comes closest to nailing the nitty-gritty, try Greg Mitchell’s post at The Nation, “Media Coverage of Shutdown Threat: A Journalistic ‘Disgrace.'”
From Laurie Goodstein’s NYT post “Hispanics Grow Cool to G.O.P., Poll Finds,” here’s the skinny on a new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute on current politcal attitudes of Latinos: “More than 6 in 10 Hispanic respondents said they felt closer to the Democratic Party than they had in the past, while only 3 in 10 said they felt closer to the Republican Party. When Hispanics were asked to offer descriptions of the parties, 48 percent of the responses about the Republicans were negative associations like “intolerant” and “out of touch,” while 22 percent of the responses for the Democrats were negative.”
Please, Dems. Don’t forget the huge role of unfair trade policies in our economic troubles. Here’s a refresher from Robert E. Scott’s “Trading away the manufacturing advantage: China trade drives down U.S. wages and benefits and eliminates good jobs for U.S. workers” at the Economic Policy Institute.
Wanna reach young voters? Former Bush speechwriter David Frum notes at The Daily Beast that a new survey of young voters recently conducted for the college Republicans found that “44 percent of young voters cited Yahoo as a regular news source and 30 percent cited MSN…Something like half the country continues to use some version of Internet Explorer. Many of these people open up to whatever Microsoft has set for them as their home page, and they gather their news from whatever happens to show up there.”
Jonathan Martin’s “Populist Left Makes Warren Its Hot Ticket ” reveals that the Massachusetts senator is setting fund-raising records for Democratic senators, concurrent with her emergence as the Dems’ most popular champion of economic justice “…in seizing on issues animating her party’s base — the influence of big banks, soaring student loan debt and the widening gulf between the wealthy and the working class — Ms. Warren is challenging the centrist economic approach that has been the de facto Democratic policy since President Bill Clinton and his fellow moderates took control of the party two decades ago.”
The Democratic Party already has an impressive number of presidential-caliber women serving as U.S. Senators, including Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Claire McCaskill, to name a few. But the list of formidable women senators could be even more impressive after the 2014 elections, according to James Hohmann’s Politico post, “Democrats recruit women to compete in red states,” which includes updates on the campaigns of Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, Michelle Nunn in Georgia and Natalie Tennant in West Virginia.
Re David Corn’s Mother Jones suggestion, “Should Obama Reveal His Inner Pissed-Off President?,” maybe a few well-crafted zingers a la Bill Maher or John Stewart would be good.


The Extremist Conquest of the GOP: Five Years of Strategy Memos from The Democratic Strategist

A Message from Ed Kilgore, James Vega and J.P.Green
Dear Readers:
The GOP is not engaged in a struggle between moderates and extremists. The entire Republican Party has been infiltrated and transformed by advocates of an extremist political philosophy who now hold it captive. Denying this reality does a profound disservice to democracy.
As negotiations regarding the basic operation of the federal government reach a critical stage, the mainstream media is once again desperately revising its definition of what constitutes a Republican “moderate” in order to maintain the fiction that the GOP still has both moderate and extremist wings. This fits the unwritten rule of mainstream journalism that powerful conservative political and economic elites and establishments must always be described as basically “moderate” or “reasonable” in some sense or other while right-wing or conservative “extremism” must always be portrayed as a disreputable fringe aberration.
But this is deeply and fundamentally false. Today’s GOP is not engaged in a struggle between moderates and extremists. The entire Republican Party has been infiltrated and transformed by the advocates of an extremist political philosophy who for all practical purposes now hold it captive.
It is profoundly dangerous to refuse to recognize and confront this simple reality. For the last five years The Democratic Strategist has been tracking this profoundly disturbing trend and has repeatedly called attention to the fundamental changes that have been occurring.
During the last five years we have argued the following:

1. That the core ideology of modern GOP extremism is the ethos of “politics as warfare” and the view of opponents as literal enemies. This perspective, which has gained major traction within the GOP, represents a fundamental change from a traditional conservative and Republican view of American political institutions as designed and intended to foster negotiation and compromise.
2. That the current “extremism” of the GOP is not confined to extreme positions on issues. It also rejects and undermines basic democratic norms of behavior and democratic institutions and embraces tactics used by European extremist parties.
3. That GOP extremism is not confined to a “fringe” of the GOP, a small minority of officeholders or only to the party’s grass-roots base. On the contrary, it is now supported by major elements of the conservative political and economic establishment and is as financially and organizationally powerful as the traditional Republican “establishment” of previous years. The fact that the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives now regularly and systematically capitulates to extremist demands dramatically illustrates the degree to which the entire party is now effectively controlled by the “extremists”.
4. That the mainstream media has played a deeply destructive role in minimizing and even denying the facts about the rise of Republican extremism. Over the last four years the media have evolved from first consistently asserting a spurious “false equivalency” between the two political parties to more recently demonstrating a willingness to continually redefine the term “GOP moderate” so that the extremist leader or extremist position of two years ago suddenly becomes the more “moderate” leader or position today.

Listed below are some of the major TDS Strategy Memos we have published during the last five years about republican extremism. They can be read separately by clicking on the title of each individual memo or downloaded as a single collection by clicking HERE.
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1. April 30, 2009
What is Right-Wing Extremism?
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2. November 30, 2010
Beyond “sabotage” The central issue about the growing political extremism of the Republican Party is that it is undermining fundamental American standards of ethical political conduct and behavior.
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3. Oct 26, 2011
Wake Up Commentators: The most dangerous group of “right-wing extremists today is not the grass-roots tea party. It is the financial and ideological leaders of the Republican coalition who have embraced the extremist philosophy of “politics as warfare.”
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4. Nov 12, 2012
It’s time to face a harsh reality: The GOP no longer behaves like a traditional American political Party. It has become an extremist party. Moderates and sensible conservatives need to firmly reject and condemn this deeply disturbing and dangerous trend.
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5. February 7, 2013
The Real GOP Split isn’t between tea party extremists and establishment moderates. It’s between extremists who want to restore the Bush strategy of running parallel covert and overt agendas vs. extremists who want to openly assert a radical right wing agenda.
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6. May 2, 2013
Democrats: it’s time to change how we deal with mainstream political commentators. It’s not just false equivalence any more. They are in deep denial about the reality of the GOP’s dangerous extremism and are increasingly displaying symptoms that resemble Stockholm Syndrome.
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These are two recent commentaries by Ed Kilgore in his Washington Monthly Political Animal column:
7. July 22, 2013
Yes, this is a different GOP
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8. August 5, 2013
The Fiscal Con
We believe you will find this collection quite useful and important.
Sincerely Yours,
Ed Kilgore
James Vega
J.P.Green


Gerson: Tea Party War on Compromise Makes GOP Look “Unserious and Incapable of Governing”

Here’s a description of the tea party Republicans’ strategy from a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor to George W. Bush:

This, in the end, was the strategy: For procedural reasons, senators needed to vote against a House spending bill defunding Obamacare — in order to force a government shutdown, in order to cut off federal spending unrelated to Obamacare, in order to trigger a wave of public revulsion against Obamacare, in order to force President Obama to trade away his signature legislative accomplishment. And any elected Republican, by the way, who questions the practicality of this approach is a quisling.
It is the fullest expression (so far) of the view of leadership held by the new, anti-establishment conservative establishment: Exploit a legitimate populist cause to demand a counterproductive tactic in an insufferable tone, then use the inevitable failure to discredit opponents in an intra-party struggle. More Pickett’s charges, please. They are emotionally satisfying (and good for fundraising). And the carnage may produce new generals, who are more favorable to future Pickett’s charges.
In the process, the GOP is made to look unserious and incapable of governing.

Gerson goes on to say that the Republican shutdown-the-government advocates will probably damage their party’s future:

…An anti-compromise ideology can make for bad politics. In our system, Obamacare will not be overturned by one house of Congress. A tea-party shutdown strategy — if implemented — would make securing the other house and the presidency less likely for Republicans. And the political energy consumed by Cruz and crew has not been available to promote incremental limits on Obamacare that might have aided GOP political prospects.

Gerson notes the folly of the GOP’s tea party faction’s war against compromise:

…It is a revealing irony that the harshest critics of compromise should call themselves constitutional conservatives. The Constitution itself resulted from an extraordinary series of compromises. And it created the system of government that presupposes the same spirit. “Compromise,” says Rauch, “is the most essential principle of our constitutional system. Those who hammer out painful deals perform the hardest and, often, highest work of politics; they deserve, in general, respect for their willingness to constructively advance their ideals, not condemnation for treachery.”

Hard to say if the new signs sanity emerging here and there in the GOP will do any good and help them avoid a potential rout in 2014. But Gerson’s column further indicates that the rift in the GOP may get a lot deeper before it gets better. “Unserious and incapable of governing” — not a bad meme for Dems to mine for 2014.


Why the GOP is Stuck with Kamikaze Republicans Who Betray Real Conservatism

Thomas B. Edsall has an excellent New York Times Opinionator post probing the psychology underlying the modern Republican party’s sharp turn toward extremist goals and methods. Edsall’s post, “How Did Conservatives Get This Radical?” should be of interest to journalists who want to elevate the nation’s political discourse and enlighten their readers.
Many of today’s self-described “conservatives” are in reality embracing a radical extremist agenda, threatening crisis after crisis and seeking to make economic brinksmanship the new norm. Edsall quotes veteran GOP operative Peter Wehner who puts it succinctly:

This is not conservatism either in terms of disposition or governing philosophy. It is, rather, the product of intemperate minds and fairly radical (and thoroughly unconservative) tendencies.

Edsall has an eagle eye for the apt quote, and offers this from a recent Wall St. Journal editorial:

Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots…We’ve often supported backbenchers who want to push G.O.P. leaders in a better policy direction, most recently on the farm bill. But it’s something else entirely to sabotage any plan with a chance of succeeding and pretend to have “leverage” that exists only in the world of townhall applause lines and fundraising letters.

Turning to social scientists to illuminate the underlying attitudes behind the Republicans’ abandonment of real conservatism, Edsall quotes from an email he received from University of Washington political scientist Christopher Parker, which limns the parameters of authentic conservatism:

Ultimately, a conservative — in the classical sense — wishes to preserve a stable society. Of course, this includes stable institutions and observing the rule of law. For these reasons (and several more), a conservative prefers evolutionary, more incremental change to revolutionary change: revolutionary change threatens the stability conservatives seek to conserve. Hence, conservatives reluctantly accept change — so long as it isn’t revolutionary. They do so for the sake of stability and order. Moreover, for the sake of order and stability, real conservatives are amenable to political compromise with their opponents.

But then there’s the “reactionary conservatives” of today, who Parker explains are,

…backwards looking, generally fearful of losing their way of life in a wave of social change. To preserve their group’s social status, they’re willing to undermine long-established norms and institutions — including the law. They see political differences as a war of good versus evil in which their opponents are their enemies. For them, compromise is commensurate with defeat — not political expediency. They believe social change is subversive to the America with which they’ve become familiar, i.e., white, mainly male, Protestant, native born, straight. “Real Americans”…

Edsall presents charts revealing data showing a major difference in attitudes of ‘tea party conservatives’ and and ‘non-tea party conservatives’ on immigrant equality, civil liberties and President Obama, with tea party respondents consistently embracing less humane views. He cites a test developed by psychologist Robert Altemeyer which Avi Tuschman, author of “Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us,” uses to reveal “three clusters of measurable personality traits that correlate with political conservatism or liberalism,” including:

1) Tribalism vs. xenophilia (an attraction to outsider groups); religiosity vs. secularism; and different levels of tolerance of “non-reproductive sexuality”;
2) opposing moral worldviews concerning inequality, one based on the principle of egalitarianism, the other based on ordered hierarchy, what people used to call “the great chain of being”; and
3) perceptions of human nature, people who see human nature as more cooperative vs. others who see it as more competitive.

Edsall references another study, “Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Affinities,” which found,

Specifically, death anxiety, system instability, fear of threat and loss, dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, and personal needs for order, structure, and closure were all positively associated with conservatism. Conversely, openness to new experiences, cognitive complexity, tolerance of uncertainty, and (to a small extent) self-esteem were all positively associated with liberalism.

Another social-psychological measurement, “social dominance orientation,” explains Edsall, measures “preference for inequality among social groups,” He relates it to political beliefs, noting Parker’s data indicating that “there are more Tea Party conservatives with high measured levels of social dominance orientation (39 percent) compared with non-Tea Party conservatives (30 percent).”
Edsall concludes that “Until more white voters come to terms with their status as an emerging American minority, the forces driving voters to support Tea Party candidates and elected officials who adamantly reject compromise will remain strong — and the Republican Party will remain fractured.”


Now you’re running. Now you’re running.

There is a funny moment in “Men in Black 2” where Will Smith runs though a subway shouting “Run, there’s a bug in the subway system” only to find that none of the passengers seems concerned. The camera then pulls back to reveal that a gigantic worm/centipede type-thing is devouring the subway, car by car. When the passengers suddenly become aware of this they quickly begin fleeing in terror.
Smith looks at them in utter disgust and says “Yeah, Now you’re running. Now you’re running.”
As I watch the “serious”, “mainstream” pundits and reporters of the Washington Post, the Times and other papers now suddenly discovering and piteously bewailing the dangerous extremism of the GOP – about which The Democratic Strategist has been stridently warning for close to five years — I feel just like Will Smith.
I’m thinking in utter disgust “Yeah, Now you’re running. Now you’re running.”


September 23, 2013 The Extremist Conquest of the GOP: Five Years of Strategy Memos from The Democratic Strategist The GOP is not engaged in a struggle between moderates and extremists. The entire Republican Party has been infiltrated and transformed

The Extremist Conquest of the GOP: Five Years of Strategy Memos from The Democratic Strategist. The GOP is not engaged in a struggle between moderates and extremists. The entire Republican Party has been infiltrated and transformed.

The GOP is not engaged in a struggle between moderates and extremists. The entire Republican Party has been infiltrated and transformed by advocates of an extremist political philosophy who now hold it captive. Denying this reality does a profound disservice to democracy.

As negotiations regarding the basic operation of the federal government reach a critical stage, the mainstream media is once again desperately revising its definition of what constitutes a Republican “moderate” in order to maintain the fiction that the GOP still has both moderate and extremist wings. This fits the unwritten rule of mainstream journalism that powerful conservative political and economic elites and establishments must always be described as basically “moderate” or “reasonable” in some sense or other while right-wing or conservative “extremism” must always be portrayed as a disreputable fringe aberration.

But this is deeply and fundamentally false. Today’s GOP is not engaged in a struggle between moderates and extremists. The entire Republican Party has been infiltrated and transformed by the advocates of an extremist political philosophy who for all practical purposes now hold it captive.

It is profoundly dangerous to refuse to recognize and confront this simple reality. For the last five years The Democratic Strategist has been tracking this profoundly disturbing trend and has repeatedly called attention to the fundamental changes that have been occurring.

During the last five years we have argued the following:

  1. That the core ideology of modern GOP extremism is the ethos of “politics as warfare” and the view of opponents as literal enemies. This perspective, which has gained major traction within the GOP, represents a fundamental change from a traditional conservative and Republican view of American political institutions as designed and intended to foster negotiation and compromise.
  2. That the current “extremism” of the GOP is not confined to extreme positions on issues. It also rejects and undermines basic democratic norms of behavior and democratic institutions and embraces tactics used by European extremist parties.
  3. That GOP extremism is not confined to a “fringe” of the GOP, a small minority of officeholders or only to the party’s grass-roots base. On the contrary, it is now supported by major elements of the conservative political and economic establishment and is as financially and organizationally powerful as the traditional Republican “establishment” of previous years. The fact that the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives now regularly and systematically capitulates to extremist demands dramatically illustrates the degree to which the entire party is now effectively controlled by the “extremists”.
  4. That the mainstream media has played a deeply destructive role in minimizing and even denying the facts about the rise of Republican extremism. Over the last four years the media have evolved from first consistently asserting a spurious “false equivalency” between the two political parties to more recently demonstrating a willingness to continually redefine the term “GOP moderate” so that the extremist leader or extremist position of two years ago suddenly becomes the more “moderate” leader or position today.

Democrats: it’s time to start thinking seriously about voter mobilization for 2014 — and particularly about the youth vote that will be critical to the outcome. But let’s start by avoiding one basic mistake.

Democrats: it’s time to start thinking seriously about voter mobilization for 2014 — and particularly about the youth vote that will be critical to the outcome. But let’s start by avoiding one basic mistake.

The 2014 elections are now just 14 months away.
If the results go the wrong way, these elections can have profoundly negative consequences — a GOP senate could even ramp up impeachment hearings as just one more concession to the right-wing activist base.
Democrats have been slow to face up to the challenge. There have been disturbingly few articles that seriously evaluate strategies and propose initiatives to motivate and mobilize the voters who will make the critical difference on election day.
The Democratic Strategist is therefore pleased to present the first of a series of Strategy Memos on voter mobilization for 2014.


Sargent: Dems, MSM Should Not Cave to GOP Threat to Destroy the Economy

Greg Sargent’s “If Obama endorses his own impeachment, GOP will agree not to destroy the U.S. economy” at the Washington Post ‘Plum Line’ warns of a very real threat presented by the Republicans’ latest strategy:

Here’s my worry: By laying out a truly insane list of demands, Republicans could perversely succeed in reframing this battle — at least in the eyes of some in the Beltway press — as a standard Washington confrontation in which both sides are making demands and the impasse is the result of each side’s refusal to meet somewhere in the middle. You could easily see a scenario in which Republicans “agree” to drop some of their demands and argue they are trying to compromise, with some commentators then wondering aloud why the White House is refusing to negotiate in kind.
So let’s say it again: This is not a standard Washington negotiation, in which each side is demanding concessions from the other. Democrats are not asking Republicans to make any concessions. They are asking Republicans to join them in not destroying the U.S. economy. House Republican leaders — who have themselves conceded not raising the debt limit would jeopardize the full faith and credit of the U.S. government — are asking Democrats to make a series of concessions in exchange for not unleashing widespread economic havoc that will hurt all of us. But agreeing not to destroy the economy doesn’t count as a concession on the part of Republicans, and no one should expect it to be rewarded with anything in return. Just because Republicans are trying to frame this as a conventional negotiation doesn’t mean folks have to play along with it

As Sargent concludes, “…you’d think the basic absurdity of demanding multiple concessions in exchange for not destroying the economy would be apparent enough on its face….Hopefully the outsized and buffoonish nature of this round of GOP demands will change that. Hopefully.”


Political Strategy Notes

Even if there is a government shutdown, it won’t delay the implementation of Obamacare, reports Linda Feldman at The Monitor: “The ACA is funded mostly through multiyear and mandatory spending, so a failure to agree on annual appropriations wouldn’t touch its funding.”
So here’s the GOP’s equally-doomed “Plan B” for killing Obamacare, according to Linda Mascaro of the L.A. Times: “Top Republicans want to get the legislation back to the House in time to give Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) an opportunity to attach new healthcare repeal amendments that might have a better chance at achieving GOP policy goals.”
Meanwhile, Erika Eichelberger reports at Mother Jones that “The 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), known as the Motor Voter law, says that DMVs and other state agencies that provide public assistance have to provide voter registration services. The Obama administration has said that means that both the state-run exchanges, and the federally-run exchanges that are being rolled out in states where Republican governors have refused to set them up, will have to comply with the Motor Voter law. But now it appears that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is wavering on whether it will require the 35 federally-run exchanges to offer voter registration, according to a recent report by the left-leaning policy shop Demos and the voting rights organization Project Vote.”
At The Atlantic Molly Ball writes about the Heritage Foundation’s transformation from once-respected conservative think tank into a safe house for lowbrow partisan hackage.
From Emily Swanson’s HuffPo Politics post, “Americans Think GOP Mostly Helps the Rich“: “…According to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll…51 percent of Americans think Republicans are most interested in helping the rich, while 28 percent said they’re most interested in helping the middle class. Another 7 percent said the GOP is most interested in helping the poor….Americans overall were roughly evenly divided on what they think the Democratic Party is up to. Twenty-eight percent said the party works for the rich, 27 percent said the middle class, and 25 percent said the poor.”
In his Op-Ed at The Hill Former Republican Senator Judd Gregg says: “Most Americans these days are simply ignoring Republicans. And they should. The self-promotional babble of a few has become the mainstream of Republican political thought. It has marginalized the influence of the party to an appalling degree.”
At Mother Jones, David Corn explains why “Obama is the most wily tactician in the nation’s capital since Lyndon Johnson.
I’m not Sure Stefan Hankin has proved his thesis in his Washington Monthly post “How Democrats Lost the Colorado Recall Election.” But his argument is interesting: “A post-election analysis by the Atlas Project (here) determined that together the Democratic campaigns and outside groups had spent almost $2.3 million on both races, while their Republican counterparts merely spent a little over $500,000…This is not to say that the campaigns in Colorado should have given up TV advertising completely. However, in a low turnout election, in an off year, at an odd time, where mail ballots were not allowed, Democrats and their allies, decided to air 3,569 commercials instead of investing more resources in determining which voters they needed to turnout and which voters they needed to persuade to vote in these elections.”
The American Prospect’s Paul Waldman has a bit of a jaw-dropper in the title of his post, “Politico Published More than 30 Articles about Ted Cruz Today.” A good subtitle might have been “Bomb-Thrower Scams MSM with Nothingburger.” Waldman explains “most people who are not Republican activists/primary voters will within a few weeks forget what this whole thing was about. They’ll remember that that guy Cruz got up and talked for a long time, and it had something to do with Obamacare. And that’s about it.”