Ryan Cooper’s Washington Monthly post on “The Austerity Cultural Conspiracy” unloads on the destructive impact of austerity economics and the journalists who treat it as an apolitical value.
Flagging a Paul Krugman column showing that “government spending is shrinking faster than at any time since the post-WWII demobilization,” Cooper adds, “This would be notable in and of itself, but coming when the economy is so weak–when aggregate demand has been chronically insufficient for so long–it’s horrifying. It’s unprecedented austerity at the worst possible moment.” Cooper then quotes a Brendan Nyhan post from the Columbia Journalism Review:

Under the norm of objectivity that dominates mainstream political journalism in the United States, reporters are supposed to avoid endorsing competing political viewpoints or proposals. In practice, however, journalists often treat centrist policy priorities–especially on fiscal policy–as value-neutral. That’s wrong. While it’s widely accepted that the federal government faces limits on what it can borrow in the financial markets, there is significant disagreement, including among experts, over the priority that should be given to reducing current deficit and debt levels relative to other possible policy objectives. It is, in other words, a political issue. Reporters often ignore this conflict, treating deficit-cutting as a non-ideological objective while portraying other points of view as partisan or political…

Cooper elaborates: “These reporters aren’t just picking sides, they’re advocating in favor of a horrible policy. Since the Great Recession, austerity has failed at its stated goals almost everywhere it has been tried, and the intellectual case for it has completely collapsed.” He quotes Nyhan again:

The root of these problems is the philosophy of “objective” journalism itself, which forces reporters to try to draw lines between opinion and fact that often blur in real life. But even if reporters aren’t willing to rethink objectivity, they should try to understand why prioritizing deficit reduction over other competing values is a kind of ideology of its own.

Cooper concludes: “Writers build austerity into the background, and you can’t get at the argument because no one will acknowledge disagreement; instead, it’s just what “everyone says.” Meanwhile, the country is slowly falling to bits.”
Reporters who fail to acknowledge the ideology behind “deficit reduction” and treat it as an apolitical value are doing a disservice to their readers — and to a serious topic that deserves more thoughtful discussion. Editors who allow it are even more responsible.

Ever since the internal Republican argument over best strategy for dealing with the October/November government shutdown and debt default crisis, it’s become fashionable in the MSM to talk of a “GOP Civil War.” It’s become an even more common theme after congressional Republicans cut a small appropriations deal with Democrats, with Speaker John Boehner loudly denouncing “outside” conservative groups (presumably like the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and the Senate Conservatives Fund) that have been trying to intimidate Members to defy the leadership on key votes.
But the idea that Republicans are engaged in a “struggle for the soul of the party” over fundamental ideology, and that “pragmatists” or “moderates” are winning the fight, is a gross overstatement at best, as I argued in a recent column for TPMCare:

[N]on-Republicans need to accept that the GOP knows exactly where its “soul” is located, and has an agenda that is impervious to significant change. What keeps getting described as a “struggle for the soul” of the party or a “civil war” is generally a fight over strategy, tactics and cosmetics, not ideology. For the foreseeable future, the conquest of the Republican Party by the conservative movement, itself radicalized by the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, is the prevailing reality of politics on the Right, and the GOP’s practical options are accordingly limited to one flavor or another of that persuasion.
Why is that the case? There are a lot of contributing factors, including the GOP’s shrinking but homogeneous “base,” the supremacy of conservative ideological media, and the rise of heavily funded political players determined to root out heresy. But the most important source of rigidity is conservative ideology itself, which does not aim (as do most European conservatives) at “moderating” or countering the bipartisan policies of the past or the Democratic policies of the present, but aspires to a counterrevolution that “restores” what conservatives regard as immutable principles of good government and even culture.
It its most explicit form, that of the “constitutional conservatives” who really dominate discussion within the GOP and who are likely to produce their next presidential nominee, the only genuinely “American” policies, designed by the Founders according to both natural and divine law, involve a free-market economy with extremely limited government and a traditionalist, largely patriarchal culture. These policies, buttressed by an increasingly chiliastic view of the status quo (e.g., the “Holocaust” of legalized abortion, and the social policy “tipping point” at which an elite-underclass alliance will destroy private property and liberty entirely), simply are not negotiable.

So what’s all the arguing about in GOP circles? It’s not matters of the “soul:”

[A]ll Republican elected officials and operatives do not share a full commitment to constitutional conservatism, and naturally wish “the base” and its activist groups and agitprop centers would tone down their ferocious views so that their bettors could enjoy the fruits of political power. But movement conservatism is the context within which they must operate. And so we see the Karl Roves and the Mitt Romneys who just want the Oval Office, and the business leaders who just want to make money with less state interference, constantly alternating between signing every right-wing litmus test in sight and urging their dogmatic allies to be a little more pragmatic in order to appeal to this or that allegedly detachable constituency of women or Latinos or millennials who don’t share the dreams of The Movement. This inherently unequal struggle is what passes for “civil war” within today’s GOP. It’s a million miles away from the genuinely fraught intraparty battles of yore between Rockefeller and Goldwater or Ford and Reagan.

Skirmishes and power struggles? Sure, today’s Republicans and entirely capable of that. But let’s stop calling it “civil war.”

I mean, wow, when you think about it, it’s really pretty rare when Democrats from virtually every single sector of the party can find a solid common ground. After all, when’s the last time can you remember a single analysis being attacked in The New Republic, The American Prospect and The Nation, all at the same time? When’s the last time you remember a thesis being rejected by Democratic-oriented Think Tanks ranging all the way from the generally pro-Obama Center for American Progress to the very progressive Economic Policy Institute? When was the last time one Washington Post Op-Ed was not only repudiated by essentially all progressives in the Democratic coalition but also by a wide range of Democratic “centrists” including (implicitly) Obama himself, former members of DLC and the Clinton inner circle and even by Democratic politicians who are formal honorary co-Chairs of the same organization that penned the analysis.
It really is a genuinely unique achievement. Those Third Way guys really did nail those crazy lefties. To quote Woody Allen, they punched them solidly in the fist with their nose and kicked them right in the knee with their groin.
Now granted, the Third Way guys have back-pedaled with admirably breathtaking speed. In a concession that must have caused them genuine and acute physical pain, they now insist that they really do respect and admire Elizabeth Warren and Bill DeBlasio as valuable members of the democratic coalition (although they have carefully refrained from explicitly repudiating the view implied in the Op-Ed that Warren is probably more than a little nuts and wants to drive the Democratic Party over a “populist cliff”). They now unctuously complain– in faux-humble “aw, gee wiz, come on guys” style–that all they really wanted to do with that editorial was just to present their very serious perspective about Democratic economic policy.
Well, OK, let’s take them at their word. If that’s really, really, really what Third Way wants to do, then here are two things that they should immediately and permanently stop doing:

1. Stop name calling. Calling the Obama-centric Center for American Progress “the left”, as they did in one recent Washington Post op-ed is not just so damn silly that to any informed Democrat it’s laughable; it’s also deliberately intended to brand CAP’s ideas with a false political label that will discredit them with people who know nothing at all about the groups’ actual positions. Equally, saying that Elizabeth Warren and Bill DeBlasio represent “fantasy-based Blue-state populism” and are pushing the party over a “populist cliff” isn’t debating their specific views on policy, it’s deprecating them as individuals.
2. Stop creating straw men. In Third Way’s recent Op-Ed pieces, one common thread is that they never directly attack the specific policy proposals issued by actually-existing pro-Democratic groups like the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, the Congressional Progressive Caucus or any of the other real-world center-left or progressive-left think-tanks and organizations. Instead their repeated modus operandi is to create an exaggerated caricature of an imaginary “crazy left-wing” position that they wish their opponents actually held, slap a label on it they themselves invent (e.g. the “Have It All” philosophy) and then proceed to wallop the straw man they themselves have created.

Let’s be clear: an organization that aspires to be a genuine part of the Democratic coalition simply can’t engage in this kind of divisive behavior and then, when they are criticized, turn around and whine that all they really want to do is to seriously debate policy. It’s not just a transparently false claim, it’s deeply and profoundly insulting to the entire Democratic audience they are presumably trying to convince. It assumes Democrats – people like you, the readers of The Democratic Strategist — are so utterly stupid that you can’t tell the difference between schoolyard taunts and make-believe battles with fabricated straw men on the one hand and serious policy debates and honest engagement with opposing ideas on the other.
I mean, really, it’s not at all hard to tell the difference between the two approaches. As Ed Kilgore pointed out in his response to the latest Third Way op-ed, institutions with serious reputations as centers of thoughtful moderate or “centrist” thinking – groups like the Brookings Institution — have played a constructive centrist role for decades. Progressives frequently and passionately disagree with their conclusions but they continue to respect their intellectual honesty and commitment to reasoned debate.
So here’s a very simple acid test for Third Way: the next time you guys want to go out and write an op-ed, hire an outside copy-editor to remove every single damn instance of name-calling and every single fabricated, straw-man opponent from your piece. Instead, identify the very specific policy proposal or legislative bill you disagree with, demonstrate that it really represents a significant point of view within the Democratic coalition, quote directly from the document you are criticizing and then explain your dissent without directly attacking the individuals or group who wrote the document but focus rather on the specific ideas you believe wrong in the proposal itself.
If you can’t do this, then don’t complain if no one takes you seriously when you claim that all you really want to do is to seriously debate Democratic policy.
On the other hand, of course, now that I think about it for a moment, maybe I’m really wrong about this. Maybe you guys should just keep on doing exactly what you’re doing. There are all kinds of important policy issues that currently divide the Democratic coalition and which inevitably but unfortunately weaken Democratic unity. It’s a real and important contribution to the Democratic coalition to generate the kind of massive intra-party unity that you guys have generated as a counter-weight to these divisive pressures – even if it is a massive intra-party unity that is directed directly against yourselves.
P.S. Oh, and by the way, if you want to create a serious dialog with Democrats, you might also want to consider using a different platform than the Wall Street Journal. The sincerity and plausibility of your critique is not particularly enhanced when it appears alongside editorials channeling old Ayn Rand novels and paid ads promoting offshore bank accounts in remote Pacific islands.

Ezra Klein yesterday obtained and published a document Patty Murray has been circulating among Senate Democrats that explains her stance in the just concluded negotiations. It lays out three basic negotiating positions that Senate Democrats seem to have agreed on as the basic foundation for their discussions with the GOP. They are:

(1) No changes to entitlements absent tax increases
(2) No changes to sequestration without revenues
(3) No restoration of defense spending without an equal restoration of domestic spending.

Now obviously firm progressives would like to see the Dems win upper-income tax increases and the abandonment of sequestration without making any concessions at all in return. But, given the current balance of power, the reality is that Dems simply do not have the leverage to force Republicans to grant such concessions.
This then presents progressives with a more specific question that is worth considering more carefully than is often done: are these three stances actually the best negotiating positions that are available to Democrats given the current balance of power between the two parties or are there other positions that could form a superior basis for negotiation – particularly given the fact that negotiations to agree on a budget cannot be avoided and do indeed have to occur?
There is no simple answer to this question but it is a very useful one for progressives to consider. The difference between successful and unsuccessful political strategies is often best determined not in comparing the results of one specific strategy with a groups’ basic long-range goals and objectives but rather by comparing it with the alternative strategies that might actually be available in a given situation.

Despite the headline, “Uninsured Skeptical of Health Care Law in Poll,” New York Times article by Abby Goodnough and Allison Kopicki notes that “In addition, 64 percent of the uninsured and 54 percent of the general public said they thought providing access to affordable health care coverage for all Americans was the responsibility of the federal government…At the same time, only 37 percent of the general public and 33 percent of the uninsured said the law was so flawed that it should be repealed. That marks a slight shift since the CBS News poll in November, when the federal insurance marketplace was still plagued with technical problems and 43 percent of Americans said the law should be repealed.”
Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan report at The Fix that, despite skepticism about the implementation of the health care law revealed in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, “…When you ask people whether they would rather see Obama or the GOP in charge of that implementation, 42 percent pick Obama, while 37 percent pick Republicans. That’s actually the biggest advantage Obama has had on that question since 2010 — marginally bigger than the narrow three-point difference for Obama in September, before the botched rollout.”
Dems have an excellent chance to pick up an important governorship, with PA Republican incumbent Tom Corbett trailing two of his potential Democratic opponents by 12 points each in a new Quinnipiac poll.
At Time Swampland, Jay Newton-Small explains the minimalist “House Republican Strategy for 2014 Victory: Think Small, Do Little.”
From Robert McCartney’s WaPo wrap-up of the Virginia election: “First, in statewide elections, it’s now beyond doubt that Democrats start with a significant advantage. It turns out the 2009 GOP landslide, led by Gov. Bob McDonnell, was an exception fueled by the initial, tea party-led backlash against President Obama…Since then, Democrats have won five straight statewide elections: for president and U.S. Senate in 2012, and for governor, lieutenant governor and now attorney general in November. Democrats hold every statewide elective office for the first time since 1969.”
Also at The Fix, Chris Cillizza spotlights “the Ad Every Democrat Should Be Afraid of.” Clever ad that it might be for this political moment, if Obamacare’s cost savings and success stories are more widely understood by the public by next November, the ad could look like yesterday’s sour grapes.
At Hotline on Call, Alex Roarty reports that “The White House’s out-of-the-blue decision to name Sen. Max Baucus the next ambassador to China means the state’s Democratic governor must appoint a replacement long before next year’s Senate election. And that will fundamentally change one of 2014’s biggest battleground races: Instead of a free-for-all, open-seat battle, Democrats will get to rally behind a better-entrenched incumbent seeking a full term.”
If you are looking for a bellwether House district special election, try FL-13 coming up in March. As Crystal Ballers Kyle Kondik and Larry J. Sabato explain, “If ever there was an apparent bellwether special election, the one coming up in FL-13 this March would seem to be it. The district went 50%-49% for President Obama in 2012, quite similar to his 51%-47% national edge over Mitt Romney. Not only that, but the district is located entirely in Pinellas County, which can fairly be described as one of the key presidential swing counties in the entire country (Obama won this Tampa-area county with 52% of the vote in 2012). The seat, held for decades by the late Rep. Bill Young (R), is probably a necessary part of any future Democratic House majority.” All of the usual caveats about unique local issues and over-generalizing about one election apply, as Sabato and Kondik point out.
Apparently not.

The following analysis is cross-posted from the Think Progress website

The group Third Way got sternly rebuked for its scurrilous attack on Elizabeth Warren, by several of its honorary co-chairs among others. But it would be a shame if the conversation stopped there. The real issue here is not Warren, but rather economic populism as a legitimate political strategy for progressives. Third Way says it isn’t one; it couldn’t be more wrong.
Start with how Americans feel about inequality today. In a newly released Bloomberg poll, by 64-33 percent they endorsed the idea that the country no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead. In the same poll, by 68-28 percent, they said the income gap between rich and poor is growing. And Americans overwhelmingly believe these trends are bad for the country.
So progressives are on firm ground when they denounce these trends and pledge to address them by overwhelmingly popular measures like raising the minimum wage, creating jobs through infrastructure spending, safeguarding Medicare, and expanding Social Security. Third Way, by contrast, suggests that progressives rally around massively unpopular policies like cutting Social Security and Medicare to address a non-existent fiscal crisis. To say this is bad advice is to considerably understate the case.
Even worse is Third Way’s insistence that progressives should never utter a discouraging word about big banks or the one percent. This is stupefyingly poor advice — as Judd Legum and Adam Peck have shown here, these policies are extremely popular.
But it’s about more than just the polling numbers on individual policies. Polling consistently shows that one of the biggest obstacles to building support for government action is the perception that government favors the wealthy and corporations, not the middle class. And topping Americans’ list of economic goals is the simple idea that the economy should work for everyone, not just the one percent and CEOs. It would be political malpractice not to acknowledge these sentiments and use them to promote a conversation about who government serves — far better turf for progressives than conservatives’ preferred debate about the size of government.
So going into 2014, progressives should intensify their advocacy for the 99 percent and be unafraid to link their campaigns and policies to a broad economic populism. This is their great weapon in a campaign season where the GOP hopes to put Democrats on permanent defense through their relentless attacks on Obamacare.
But the best defense is a good offense, and a sturdy economic populism is Democrats’ best bet. With such an approach, combined with an economy that finally seems to be getting into gear, Democrats have an excellent chance of beating back the GOP’s bid for unified control of Congress, not to mention setting themselves up for a successful election in 2016.

The following article is by Erica Seifert of DCorps:

The final Democracy Corps battleground survey of 2013 belies the conventional wisdom that Republicans have enjoyed a major rebound over the last few months. On the contrary, our survey of the 50 most competitive Republican House seats and the 30 most competitive Democratic seats shows that there has been no movement. Furthermore, the second tier of less vulnerable Republican target districts has actually destabilized — meaning that there may be more Republican seats up for grabs than many believe right now.
While the disastrous ACA website rollout has taken a toll on the president’s approval rating and image, we do not find that voters are willing to punish Democrats — or, more importantly, reward Republican incumbents — for these failures. Instead, this poll finds that Republican members are damaged by their total focus on Obamacare. Voters increasingly believe that these vulnerable Republican incumbents are part of the gridlock in Washington, are too focused on battles with Obama, and are too aligned with Speaker Boehner, whose plans have not helped the economy or the jobs situation. We tested a series of messages and attacks (both for and against Republican incumbents), and found that battling on Obamacare is their weakest case for re-election. In fact, it undermines it.
This survey also confirms what we have been tracking all year: Seniors are moving more solidly into the blue column. In this survey, Democratic challengers have a 4-point advantage on the named ballot against Republican incumbents. As a reminder, Democrats lost seniors nationally by a 21-point margin in 2010.
Make no mistake, both frontline Democrats and frontline Republicans are made more vulnerable by what is now a total anti-incumbent wave. Both parties in Congress fare poorly in the public’s mind, but let us be very clear: Voters — even in Republican districts — reserve most of their anger for the party in power, which is now totally despised in terms of public image. When these incumbents are connected to the party and its leadership, voters’ trust in them takes a sharp decline.
Tomorrow, Congress will leave town for the year. We wish them all happy holidays. But we would not want to trade places with the Republican incumbents returning home to their districts tomorrow.
The full results of the Democracy Corps 2013 battleground survey can be found here (PDF).

It’s a little early to get all horse-racey, but Kyle Kondik has a Crystal Ball update on how the struggle for control of the House and Senate is shaping up, vis a vis the 2014 elections. Kondik’s nut graph for the Senate:

Looking at the big picture, we wouldn’t predict Democrats to capture any seats the Republicans currently hold. Republicans, meanwhile, should capture the aforementioned open seats in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia and also defeat at least one Democratic incumbent (most likely that’s Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas). That would be a net Senate gain of at least four, with more than a puncher’s chance of netting two more seats and winning a majority.

And for the House:

At the moment, Republicans hold a lead of about three points in averages of House generic ballot surveys, a good measurement of the national mood in the race for the House. Those generic ballot figures would translate to a gain of roughly 10 House seats for the GOP in 2014, according to a model from the Crystal Ball’s Alan Abramowitz. That might be a bit too high on a map where there aren’t a ton of great targets for either side, but we’ve reverted to our pre-shutdown outlook: Republicans seem likelier to make a small gain in the House than Democrats. As we wait to see what happens to the national environment, we’re also mulling a number of other House ratings changes, most of which would be moves in the Republicans’ direction. Stay tuned.

Lots of wild cards still to be played, including Dems’ edge in the ground game and demographic transformation favoring Democrats. But we can be clear that now is not a good time for Democratic complacency. Do read Kondik’s post for illuminating particulars on individual races.