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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: March 2015

Political Strategy Notes


This week the media is full of coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights, and many Democratic office-holders will be heading to Alabama for the commemorative activities. If you haven’t done so yet, do see “Selma,” if only to better appreciate the great courage, sacrifices made and the blood that was shed so African Americans could exercise the most basic of democratic rights, which white Americans took for granted. Then think about Chief Justice John Roberts’s role as a voter suppression guru in the Reagan white house, his leadership (author of the majority opinion) of the 2013 decision gutting the Voting Rights Act and why every American who cares about democracy should support the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 (more valuable information about the Act right here). For a list of House Reps and Senators now supporting the Act, click here.
And, speaking of Reagan, there has been a fair amount of scribbling lately about why the sainted Reagan would be too liberal for today’s tea party, given his record on certain issues, like immigration. But let’s not forget how destructive Reagan’s legacy has been overall, a reality that is well-summarized in “Reagan started our fall into abyss of greed,” a letter to the editor by James V. Burke.

For an essential guide to understanding America’s political future, study the Center for American Progress publication, “States of Change: The Demographic Evolution of the American Electorate, 1974-2060” by TDS co-founding editor Ruy Teixeira, William H. Frey and Rob Griffin.

WaPo syndicated columnist Dan Balz puts the study in context of the current political moment.

Hard to lose one of the greatest U.S. Senators, retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski. But Dems have an extremely-strong menu of potential senatorial candidates in Maryland, including Reps. Donna Edwards, Chris Van Holland and Elijah Cummings, Sec’y of Labor Thomas Perez, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and several other formidable state leaders.

Brendan Nyhan’s “Voters Unlikely to Care Much About the Hillary Clinton Email Furor” gets it right at The Upshot and shares a good quote from John Sides, “In October 2016, no persuadable voter will be thinking about Hillary Clinton’s email account.” The Hillary-haters are going to have to come up with something a tad more substantial to keep voters awake.
Also, Phillip Bump explains “Why Hillary Clinton probably isn’t sweating this email stuff, in three charts.”

There’s clue or two for Dems interested in getting more of that high-turnout senior vote in Helaine Olen’s Slate.com post “The Semi-Retirement Myth: Don’t buy the tales of meaningful work into your 70s. Your retirement is inevitable–and bleaker than the last generation’s.” Here’s a hint from Olen: “Congress could pass legislation strengthening age discrimination laws, not to mention heeding the call by senators like Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown to increase Social Security checks. A poll conducted last year found 79 percent of Americans agreed Social Security benefits should be increased, with the bill paid by the wealthy.” Whether congress passes such legislation or not, Dems should be highly-visible in support of these reforms. Dems should also consider that when seniors are compelled to take entry-level jobs to survive, fewer of those jobs will be available for younger workers.


March 4: Gridlock and the Craving for Big Elections

As part of a debate touched off by Matt Yglesias at Vox, who expressed doubts about the sustainability of the U.S. political system given the frustrations and Constitution-stretching associated with partisan gridlock, I wrote a column at TPMCafe suggesting a much more realistic problem: that gridlock is already creating a craving for big, consequential elections producing transformative governing agendas, which in turn undermines the willingness to do anything about day-to-day gridlock. I also alluded to a piece by Jonathan Chait at New York arguing that gridlock would likely be undermined by demographic changes that made Republicans less reliant on government-hating southern white voters.

My most immediate concern, because we can already see it happening, is that partisan/ideological gridlock will feed on itself. As routine policy accomplishments achieved piecemeal via the normal legislative process fade, people in both parties will increasingly focus on taking full advantage of rare governing opportunities produced by exceptional electoral victories to shoot for the moon. After all, as Democrats discovered in 2010, House majorities and Senate supermajorities can be lost instantly. So a maximalist approach when in power–as ideologues of the left and the right invariably call for–could become routine, encouraging the “losing” party at such junctures to obstruct as much of the governing party’s agenda as possible and to pursue their own shoot-the-moon strategies in the future.
Call it the Big Bang Theory of Polarization. The only limitation on its operation, of course, is that winning the big electoral victories necessary to pull off an ideological Big Bang could require the kind of flexibility that thwarts ideologues. That is indeed Chait’s hope. But it ignores the possibility of a two-track partisan strategy based squarely on deception.
In 2012, for example, Republicans were planning a post-election agenda based on implementing the audacious Paul Ryan budget and the repeal of Obamacare in one budget reconciliation bill–even as Mitt Romney was on the campaign trail posing as the soul of moderation. Something very similar actually happened in 2001, when the “humble” and “pragmatic” George W. Bush, that supposed paragon of bipartisanship in Texas, took office after a disputed presidential campaign and immediately pursued a tax package that shaped all domestic politics for at least a decade.
And after 9/11, of course, Bush also launched one or two (depending on how you reckon Afghanistan) “wars of choice”–because he could. Perhaps Chait is right that the demographic foundation for this kind of Rovian politics of saying one thing on the campaign trail and then doing five things in office is eroding. But don’t forget the power of Republicans at the state level to continuously shore up that foundation by making it harder for young people and minorities to vote. And it’s also worth remembering that governance-enabling landslides are as often the product of external circumstances and coincidences–you know, the much-discussed fundamentals–as of moderate appeals to swing voters that are implemented by bipartisan governance.

I don’t think Democrats are as addicted to the idea of a great gettin-up morning that will enable them to implement all their dreams; indeed, there’s a lot of sentiment that aside from the Affordable Care Act, Democrats did not get a lot out of their 2008 landslide (short-circuited to a considerable extent by Scott Brown’s Senate victory early in 2010). But assuming gridlock continues, and Obama shows the limits of what can be achieved by executive actions, the craving for a landslide may spread through both parties.


Gridlock and the Craving for Big Elections

As part of a debate touched off by Matt Yglesias at Vox, who expressed doubts about the sustainability of the U.S. political system given the frustrations and Constitution-stretching associated with partisan gridlock, I wrote a column at TPMCafe suggesting a much more realistic problem: that gridlock is already creating a craving for big, consequential elections producing transformative governing agendas, which in turn undermines the willingness to do anything about day-to-day gridlock. I also alluded to a piece by Jonathan Chait at New York arguing that gridlock would likely be undermined by demographic changes that made Republicans less reliant on government-hating southern white voters.

My most immediate concern, because we can already see it happening, is that partisan/ideological gridlock will feed on itself. As routine policy accomplishments achieved piecemeal via the normal legislative process fade, people in both parties will increasingly focus on taking full advantage of rare governing opportunities produced by exceptional electoral victories to shoot for the moon. After all, as Democrats discovered in 2010, House majorities and Senate supermajorities can be lost instantly. So a maximalist approach when in power–as ideologues of the left and the right invariably call for–could become routine, encouraging the “losing” party at such junctures to obstruct as much of the governing party’s agenda as possible and to pursue their own shoot-the-moon strategies in the future.
Call it the Big Bang Theory of Polarization. The only limitation on its operation, of course, is that winning the big electoral victories necessary to pull off an ideological Big Bang could require the kind of flexibility that thwarts ideologues. That is indeed Chait’s hope. But it ignores the possibility of a two-track partisan strategy based squarely on deception.
In 2012, for example, Republicans were planning a post-election agenda based on implementing the audacious Paul Ryan budget and the repeal of Obamacare in one budget reconciliation bill–even as Mitt Romney was on the campaign trail posing as the soul of moderation. Something very similar actually happened in 2001, when the “humble” and “pragmatic” George W. Bush, that supposed paragon of bipartisanship in Texas, took office after a disputed presidential campaign and immediately pursued a tax package that shaped all domestic politics for at least a decade.
And after 9/11, of course, Bush also launched one or two (depending on how you reckon Afghanistan) “wars of choice”–because he could. Perhaps Chait is right that the demographic foundation for this kind of Rovian politics of saying one thing on the campaign trail and then doing five things in office is eroding. But don’t forget the power of Republicans at the state level to continuously shore up that foundation by making it harder for young people and minorities to vote. And it’s also worth remembering that governance-enabling landslides are as often the product of external circumstances and coincidences–you know, the much-discussed fundamentals–as of moderate appeals to swing voters that are implemented by bipartisan governance.

I don’t think Democrats are as addicted to the idea of a great gettin-up morning that will enable them to implement all their dreams; indeed, there’s a lot of sentiment that aside from the Affordable Care Act, Democrats did not get a lot out of their 2008 landslide (short-circuited to a considerable extent by Scott Brown’s Senate victory early in 2010). But assuming gridlock continues, and Obama shows the limits of what can be achieved by executive actions, the craving for a landslide may spread through both parties.


Sabato: Dem Senate Takeover in 2016 “Doable”

From Larry J. Sabato’s Politico post, “Can Democrats Retake the Senate in 2016?“:

It’s still too early to predict the Senate’s makeup in 2016, but it’s not too early to start thinking about who could land on the list of endangered senators. And in the 2016 cycle, it’s more likely to be a Republican than a Democrat.
…Republicans must defend seven incumbents that represent states carried by President Obama in 2008 and 2012: Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. An eighth state Obama carried in 2008 but narrowly lost in 2012–North Carolina, home to two-term Republican Richard Burr–also merits mention with these other states.
…under the right conditions–i.e., strong Democratic Senate candidates combined with a solid national lead for the Democratic presidential nominee–all seven of the other seats are vulnerable. Three of the states (Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) are more Democratic than the nation as a whole and have a history of voting Democratic for president even when the party loses a close race nationally, as in 2000 and 2004. This reality has placed Kirk, Toomey and Johnson at the top of the endangered senators list.
In recent presidential cycles, there has been a consistent uptick in the correlation between Senate and presidential election outcomes. That is to say, the Senate result in a state has tended to be increasingly aligned with the state’s presidential result. Excluding Maine and Vermont (where independents Angus King and Bernie Sanders won, respectively), the correlation in 2012 between Senate and presidential results was a strong .78 (1.0 would be strongest). This was the third straight cycle to see an increase in this correlation, and it is the highest since 1956…

Sabato adds, “More and more, voters are inclined to cast straight-ticket ballots when they enter the voting booth.” He explains that “the most competitive races–the three toss-ups and the six leaners (two Democratic seats and four Republican ones) also take place in what should be among the most competitive presidential states.”
“This,” Sabato concludes, “is a recipe for Senate elections that are mainly tied to the presidential results.” It’s early yet, but, given Sabato’s impressive track record in political predictions, Dems should allocate resources with his insights in mind.


Lux: How Progressives Can Win Marathons While Running Uphill

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 easy to get discouraged about the American political scene. Billionaires and big business keep spending absurd amounts in buying up politicians and making sure they win elections. Republicans keep moving to the more and more extreme edges of the right. A lot of Democrats are either bought off by Wall Street, ineffectual, or both. The Supreme Court is as conservative and pro-big business as it has ever been. The media is cynical and all too often in bed with corporate interests. Gridlock reigns over all.
And yet…somehow, some way progressives are breaking through and winning some really important victories. It is like running a marathon while having to go the entire way steeply uphill, yet still winning.
Let’s start with the astonishing concession by Walmart to raise the minimum wage it pays its workers to $9.00 in April and $10.00 next year. Walmart is one of the richest and most powerful corporations in the history of the world. They have ruthlessly squashed every union organizing drive ever mounted against them, and they are happy to buy off government officials around the world whenever they need to. The Walton family, the wealthiest in the world, are for the most part very right wing, supporting politicians and organizations opposed to the minimum wage and to any discussion of economic inequality. And with the Republican party having swept the last election and in control of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, they certainly aren’t feeling heat from the government to do more for their workers.
Beyond all that, Walmart’s entire business model has always been about keeping the wages of their workers and the workers of their product suppliers as low as possible, both to keep their costs as low as possible and to drive down wages overall so that more people would need to shop for the low cost goods they offer. Remember how Henry Ford doubled the wages of his workers so that they could afford to buy his cars? Walmart’s philosophy has always been a sort of reverse-Fordism- drive down wages so that the only place people can afford to shop is Walmart’s.
The bottom line here is that this wage concession is a huge change in the way they do business. Their ideology and entire business model scream against doing it; their history is to resist any such concession in the ugliest kind of way; their immense power and the electoral trends certainly don’t suggest they would have had to do it. And needless to say, they aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their collective corporate hearts. So what gives here? Well, simply put, the 99% are starting to rise up, and it is creating a very big problem for even so powerful a company as Walmart. The incredible organizing work of UFCW, Change to Win, the AFL-CIO, My Walmart, the Corporate Action Network, and the Netroots movement has lit a fire that continues to build. No matter how many times they were slammed down, no matter how many politicians sided with Walmart, no matter how many years Walmart tried to ignore them and brush them aside, the organizers of this movement didn’t give up. And now with the media finally beginning to cover the issues of low wage workers, with so much anger rising that even Republicans are starting to talk about the problems of low wage work, the executives at Walmart saw the writing on the wall. Their brand was taking a beating; their workers were getting more and more feisty. They had to do something to take the pressure off.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t nearly enough. Walmart wages and benefits are still way too low. And if the pressure doesn’t stay on, Walmart will start looking to quietly roll back even these small increases. But this was still an important victory, and it shows what persistent, gutsy, creative organizing can do.
Let me add one final note before moving on to the next big victory: this was done without government’s help. Reporters, pundits, and progressive movement strategists themselves need to be very clear on the fact that the progressive movement’s goal is not a bigger government or the electing of more progressive politicians. Instead, our goal is to improve the lives of everyday folks through collective action. We didn’t get this victory because government passed a new law or regulation, or because politicians pressured them to do something. Government had nothing to do with this victory. We won because progressives and workers built a movement and sustained it through hard times over a long period. Would it be a good thing if government was actively on the side of Walmart’s workers? Hell, yes. But even when they are not, progressive organizing can win improvements in people’s lives. Collective bargaining, civil disobedience, community organizing, consumer boycotts, and online pressure have won major concessions from the powers that be without the help of government many times over the last century, and until government starts being on the side of working people more aggressively again that is how many of our victories will have to be won.


Creamer: Why Dems Should Skip Netanyahu’s NeoCon Mess

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will speak before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, will try to convince lawmakers to scuttle a potential agreement being negotiated between Iran, the U.S. and other world powers.
The agreement is intended is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.
It would gradually eliminate worldwide economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for actions that would prevent the country from using its civilian nuclear program to build a nuclear bomb.
In an unprecedented move, House Speaker John Boehner has invited Netanyahu to address Congress without consulting the president — or the Democratic leadership in Congress. The plan for the speech was hatched by Boehner and the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer — a former Republican political operative.
Boehner apparently hoped to score partisan political points by undercutting support for President Obama and Democrats among pro-Israeli Americans. If he is successful, he will shatter a decades-old tradition of bipartisan support for Israel. That, of course, would be terrible for Israel.
But Boehner, Dermer and Netanyahu also have another, even more destructive goal. They hope to tube the negotiations and prevent the potential agreement with Iran — and with it, the hope that Iran can be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon without a war.
In fact, precisely the same crowd of neocon foreign policy hawks that led America into the tragic War in Iraq is behind the current attempt to launch a war with Iran.
The fact is that if America and the rest of the world cannot negotiate an agreement with Iran that prevents that country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, it will be left with two bad options: either accept a nuclear Iran, or launch another war in the Middle East.
The neocon crowd — including Netanyahu — claims that they want us to impose even tougher sanctions. And they insist that Iran agree to terms that they know would never be accepted by the Tehran government. That’s because they don’t want a negotiated deal; they want the U.S. to launch a military strike against Iran that would effect “regime change.” This is exactly the same line of argument that led the U.S. into the Iraq quagmire.
The Iraq War kicked over the sectarian hornet’s nest in the Middle East and created the conditions that ultimately spawned al-Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before the U.S. invasion. And al-Qaeda in Iraq subsequently morphed into the Islamic State, which is now terrorizing millions of Iraqis and Syrians.
The War in Iraq killed and maimed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It created millions of refugees, cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars, and sullied America’s reputation around the world.
Finally, the War in Iraq massively strengthened the strategic position of Iran.
Brilliant.
The War in Iraq was the worst foreign policy disaster in half a century. Yet unbelievably, the neocons who promoted it are back — attacking the judgment of the president, who had the wisdom to oppose the Iraq War from the start — and holding themselves out as hard-nosed foreign policy “realists.”


Political Strategy Notes

Greg Sargent calls attention to the importance of the upcoming gubernatorial races, which will decide how much power Dems will have to check GOP gerrymandering. “The 2014 elections left Democrats in a deep state-level hole: Republicans control over 30 governorships and two-thirds of partisan legislative chambers; they are in total control of state government in 24 states, while Democrats can only say that about six states.” Sargent quotes from his interview with CT’s politically astute Gov. Dan Malloy, who will soon take over helm of the Dem Govs Association: “It’s going to take a four year cycle, not a two year cycle, to turn this back. Democrats have to adopt the Republican concept of constant campaigning. Democrats tend to think of elections as cycles. Republicans don’t. It’s ongoing and constant.”
From an AP report on the political fallout of the House votes to cut off Homeland Security funding (then later to restore it for one week) unless President Obama rescinds his executive order protecting millions of immigrants from deportation: “Bad tactics yield bad outcomes,” GOP Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania told reporters. Republican leaders, he said, have engaged “in tactical malpractice, and at some point we’re going to vote on the negotiated Homeland Security appropriations bill,” a bipartisan plan that most Republicans oppose but cannot kill…””We all know how this is going to turn out,” said an exasperated Republican, Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho. “Politically, it’s devastating.”
The NYT editorial The Phony Legal Attack on Health Care cites yet another example of conservatives’ excessive fondness for murderous imagery, in the vein of Norquist’s “drown the baby in the bathtub” : “This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene. I do not care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it.” Note that the speaker, a former chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute was not talking about ISIS; he was talking about legislation that has expanded health care coverage for millions, the ACA.
David Masciotra unravels the infantile psychology that underlays the Libertarian “philosophy” in his post, “You’re Not the Boss of Me! Why Libertarianism Is a Childish Sham” at Alternet.
Here’s an interesting nugget from Chris Turner’s post, “The 5 traits of Winning Grassroots Campaigns” at Campaigns & Elections: “Great grassroots operations no longer rely alone upon vote history to select targets. Instead, they enlist analytics experts like Evolving Strategies on the Right and The Analyst Institute on the Left to generate targets based on turnout propensity scores, persuasion scores, and now (new from Evolving-Strategies.com), essentially a “how engageable is this voter” score…Prices for voter file scoring have dropped significantly, making these tools very affordable. Great grassroots efforts knock on the doors of those voters who indicate they are most likely to actually engage, demonstrate a predisposition toward voting, and will vote your way.”
At Salon.com Sean McElwee reports on an important data-driven study of the effects of voter suppression laws and their linkage to racial motivations, “Vulnerability in Numbers: Racial Composition of the Electorate, Voter Suppression, and the Voting Rights Act” by by Ian Vandewalker and Keith Bentele at the Harvard Latino Law Review. From the abstract at the Social Science Research Network: “…We present new empirical evidence that the proposal and passage of restrictive voting laws, such as photo identification requirements and reductions of early voting opportunities, are associated with racial factors such as larger African American populations and increases in minority voter turnout. These results are consistent with the interpretation that restrictive voting laws have been pursued in order to suppress Democratic-leaning minority voters, and they are suggestive that racial discrimination is a contributing factor to this type of legislation….The evidence we present is relevant to litigation under remaining provisions of the VRA, especially the prohibition on voting laws with a discriminatory effect under Section 2…”
Margot Sanger-Katz’s Upshot post “High Rate of Shopping and Switching in Obamacare Plans Is a Good Sign” shows why those who really believe in market competition should be supporting the Affordable Care Act. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Republicans to put support for genuine market competition before their partisan hatred.
Suzanne Dovi asks and addresses a helluva good question at Talking Points Memo Cafe: “We Spend Billions On Democracy-Building Abroad. What If We Matched That At Home?” Dovi argues that investing in making America a more livable nation could be a more cost-effective way to persuade other nations to embrace democracy. Providing “a living, breathing example of a democracy that supports due process, reduces police brutality, provides a good and affordable education to its citizens, and economically thrives with cutting-edge technology would make other political regimes want to imitate our democracy. A matching funds program for U.S. democratic nation-building would be a small price to pay in the long run.”
Say g’nite, Rudy. This headline provides a fitting epitaph for his political career.