washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: April 2016

Political Strategy Notes

Ed Kilgore’s “Not Much Evidence Donald Trump Can Win the Presidency on the Shoulders of the White Working Class” at New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer provides some awfully bad news for the Trump campaign. Among Kilgore’s onbservations: “Andrew Levison has examined the relative performance of all candidates from both parties in three recent midwestern open primaries, and shown that Trump’s share of the total white working-class vote ranged from 26 percent in Illinois to 30 percent in Ohio (where he actually lost the primary to John Kasich).”
At Esquire Charles Pierce explains how “Your Taxes Are Being Spent on Making It Harder for Americans to Vote” through “the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an institution created with good intentions in the aftermath of the Great Florida Heist in 2000. One of the things the commission is tasked with is overseeing the national voter registration form. It is supposed to be staffed by two members from each party. Now, however, to the surprise of approximately nobody, there are two Republicans and one Democrat because a vacancy has gone unfilled.”
From Daniel Dale’s “New ID laws, long lines raise allegations of U.S. voting discrimination” at The Toronot Star: “Canada had its own voter ID controversy when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives tightened the law in 2014. But Canada still allows more than three dozen kinds of identifying documents, including bank cards, library cards, even blood-donor cards….In Wisconsin, only a few kinds of identification are now accepted: a licence, a passport, a military card, a college student card, or the free non-driver ID. And some would-be voters still have no idea they need these kinds of ID at all. Wisconsin’s Republican government, led by Gov. Scott Walker, has failed to fund the public education campaign that was promised under the new law.”
With less than 9 months to go in President Obama’s second term, Nobel laureate/NYT columnist Paul Krugman takes a look at his presidency and offers a well-documented set of conclusions about the Administration’s accomplishmens regarding the economy, financial reform and health care that will set Republican teeth to grinding, especialy Krugman’s summation that: “All in all, it’s quite a record. Assuming Democrats hold the presidency, Mr. Obama will emerge as a hugely consequential president — more than Reagan.”
NYT columnist Frank Bruni addresses “The Republicans’ Gay Freakout” and illuminates another demographic wedge in the GOP rank and file: “While the marriage of the party’s evangelical and business wings has never been a cuddly one, it’s especially frosty now, their incompatible desires evident in the significant number of prominent corporations that have denounced the North Carolina law and that successfully pressed the Republican governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, to veto recent legislation that would have permitted the denial of services to L.G.B.T. people by Georgians citing religious convictions… Corporations want to attract and retain the most talented workers, and that’s more difficult in states with discriminatory laws. They want to reach the widest base of customers and sow loyalty among young consumers in particular, and the best strategy for that is an L.G.B.T.-friendly one, given that eight in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 support non-discrimination laws, according to a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute survey.”
David M. Herszenhorn’s NYT article, “Largely Forgotten and Hugely Influential: The Race for Marco Rubio’s Senate Seat” provides a reminder of the importance of a U.S. Senate race in a key state, and this one is full of drama.
At The Upshot Lynn Vavreck writes, “The increasing alignment between party and racial attitudes goes back to the early 1990s. The Pew Values Survey asks people whether they agree that “we should make every effort to improve the position of minorities, even if it means giving them preferential treatment.”…Over time, Americans’ party identification has become more closely aligned with answers to this question and others like it. Pew reports that, “since 1987, the gap on this question between the two parties has doubled — from 18 points to 40 points.” Democrats are now much more supportive (52 percent) of efforts to improve racial equality than they were a few decades ago, while the views of Republicans have been largely unchanged (12 percent agree)…But recent work by Stanford University’s Shanto Iyengar and his co-authors shows something else has been brewing in the electorate: a growing hostility toward members of the opposite party…Democrats and Republicans like each other a lot less now than they did 60 years ago in part because they have sorted into parties based on attitudes on race, religion and ethnicity.”
Seung Min Kim and Burgess Everett have an update on the Merrick Garland confirmation battle at Politico, which notes “On Friday, one of the three GOP senators who had said Garland deserves a confirmation hearing — Jerry Moran of Kansas — backtracked after a firestorm of criticism from the right. The other two are the most moderate Republicans in the chamber: Maine’s Susan Collins and Illinois’ Mark Kirk, who faces the longest odds of getting reelected this year of any senator in the country. Despite the lack of momentum for the nomination, the Democrats’ “Do Your Job” campaign provides a handy cudgel for publiciizing the obstructionist policy of Republican senators.
With about 7 months left in campaign 2016, the front-runner for the quadrennial ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ award has to be Gov. John Kasich for this observation.


DCorps: Edging Toward an ‘Earthquake Election’

The following article is cross-posted from Democracy Corps:
Democracy Corps’ new poll on behalf of WVWVAF shows the country edging toward an earthquake in November.[1] Hillary Clinton already holds a 13-point margin against Donald Trump and a 6-point lead over Ted Cruz, just a point short of Obama’s margin in 2008. But seven new findings in this survey suggest something even more disruptive electorally.
The GOP brand has reached a new historic low, putting the party at risk in swing segments of the electorate.
The GOP civil war is producing an eye-opening numbers of Republicans ready to punish down-ballot candidates for not making the right choice with respect to how to run in relation to the front-runner. Moderate Republicans are already peeling off.
The disengagement pall has been lifted. Our focus groups with white unmarried women, millennials and African Americans showed a new consciousness about the stakes in November. In this poll, the percentage of Democrats giving the highest level of engagement has increased 10 points. The biggest increase in engagement came with college-educated women, putting them on par with Republicans and seniors.
The Trump white working-class strategy is faltering because every white working-class man abandoning the Democratic candidate is being erased by Republican losses with the white working-class women. As you will see, it is statistically impossible for Trump to turn out enough angry white working class men to surpass Clinton.
The Rising American Electorate (RAE) is producing high Democratic margins, with unmarried women producing the highest Democratic vote – and widest marriage gap – we have measured.
After years of stagnating Democratic congressional performance, the Democrats have opened a 6-point lead in the named congressional vote. That is not enough to produce Democratic control, but this trend corresponds to when Democrats began to show life in 2006 and 2008 when they picked up seats. If the Democrats simply reproduced Clinton’s margin with the RAE, the Democratic congressional vote would be at a much higher point. That creates obvious targets to cause an earthquake.
The Democratic “Level the Playing Field” message dominates the Trump nationalist economic message, particularly if it incorporates reforming campaigns – which appeals to progressive base voters – and reforming government – which appeals to swing voters. This bold and populist economic message increases the vote, turnout, and support for congressional Democrats. It is much stronger than Clinton’s current “Ladders of Opportunity” message, which limits her vote in the primary and general. The success of the “Level the Playing Field” message also suggests a united Democratic Party can make further gains.
READ THE FULL MEMO
[1]This national survey took place March 17-24, 2016. Respondents who voted in the 2012 election or registered since were selected from the national voter file. Likely voters were determined based on stated intention of voting in 2016. Margin of error for the full sample is +/-3.27 percentage points at 95% confidence. 65 percent of respondents were reached by cell phone, in order to accurately sample the American electorate.


April 1: Rule 40(b) As the Means for Preventing an “Open” GOP Convention

Everyone loves a good “contested convention” fantasy flowing from the decent odds that no one candidate will arrive at the Republican National Convention in July with a majority of bound delegates. But it’s important to understand how convention rules can make a wide-open convention impossible, and how the contending forces in the party have the power to make those rules stick. I wrote about this issue and the historical context extensively at New York this week:

As conventions became more tightly controlled and their managers worried about things like ensuring that the balloting and acceptance speeches occurred before East Coast television viewers were asleep, nonserious candidacies were sacrificed to efficiency. Among Republicans, the tradition developed that no one’s name could be placed in nomination without support from at least three delegations; that cut off the pure favorite-son candidacies. Beyond that, the status of conventions as ratifying rather than nominating events exerted its own pressure on “losers” who typically succumbed to the pressure to unite behind the nominee and grin for the cameras.
That was before the Ron Paul Revolution appeared on the scene. In 2012, the Paulites shrewdly focused on winning fights for delegates that occurred after primaries and caucuses in hopes of making their eccentric candidate and his eccentric causes a big nuisance at Mitt Romney’s convention. And so the Romney campaign and its many allies reacted — some would say overreacted — by using its muscle on the convention Rules Committee (meeting just prior to Tampa to draft procedures for the conclave) to change the presence-in-three-delegations threshold for having one’s name placed in nomination to this one:

Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.

This Rule 40(b), moreover, was interpreted to mean that no candidate who did not meet the threshold could have votes for the nomination recorded in her/his name.
Rule 40(b) succeeded in keeping the Paulites under wraps in Tampa, but as is generally the case, it remained in effect as a “temporary” rule for the next convention, subject to possible revision by a new Rules Committee meeting just prior to the 2016 gathering, and by the convention itself, which controls its own rules. In fact, its drafters may have intended to keep the rule in place to head off some annoying convention challenge to President Romney’s renomination.
Back in the real world, Rule 40(b) may have been in the back of some minds early in the 2016 cycle as a way to keep the convention from being rhetorically kidnapped by noisy supporters of Rand Paul, or of the novelty “birther” candidate Donald Trump.
Now, obviously, the shoe is on the other foot, and there is a growing possibility that the two strongest candidates for the GOP nomination, Trump and Ted Cruz, could join their considerable forces to insist on maintenance of Rule 40(b) or something much like it to prevent their common Republican Establishment enemies from exploiting a multi-ballot convention to place someone else at the top of the ticket.
Trump is currently the only candidate who is beyond the eight-state-majority threshold for competing for the nomination under the strict terms of Rule 40(b). But Team Cruz is confident enough that its candidate will also satisfy the rule that he’s the one out there arguing that Rule 40(b) means votes for John Kasich are an entire waste because they won’t be counted in Cleveland. And with both Trump and Cruz repeatedly claiming that the nomination of a dark horse who hasn’t competed during the primaries would be an insult to the GOP rank and file, maintaining Rule 40(b) is the obvious strategy to close off that possibility. A good indicator of the new situation is the evolving position of Virginia party activist and veteran Rules Committee member Morton Blackwell, a loud dissenter against Rule 40(b) before and after the 2012 convention, who now, as a Cruz supporter, is arguing that changing the rule “would be widely and correctly viewed as [an] outrageous power grab.”
But can the Republican Establishment stack the Rules Committee with party insiders determined to overturn Rule 40(b) and keep the party’s options wide open going into Cleveland? Not really. That committee is composed of two members elected by each state delegation. No likely combination of Kasich and Rubio delegates and “false-flag” delegates bound to Trump or Cruz but free to vote against their interests on procedural issues is likely to make up a majority of the Rules Committee, or of the convention. Indeed, most of the anecdotal evidence about “delegate-stealing” in the murky process of naming actual bodies to fill pledged seats at the convention shows Team Cruz, not some anti-Trump/anti-Cruz cabal, gaining ground. If Trump and Cruz stick together on this one point no matter how many insults they are exchanging as rivals, they almost certainly can shut the door on any truly “open” convention and force Republicans who intensely dislike both of them to choose their poison.
That would leave Kasich with his fistful of general-election polls and the proliferating list of fantasy “unity” candidates on the outside in Cleveland, playing to the cameras but having no real influence over the proceedings. And you can make the case that this is precisely what the Republican “base” wants and has brought to fruition through the nominating process. It would, of course, be highly ironic if the Republican Establishment’s Rule 40(b) became the instrument for two candidates generally hated by said Establishment to impose a duopoly on the party. But there’s no President Romney around to put a stop to it.


Rule 40(b) As the Means for Preventing an “Open” GOP Convention

Everyone loves a good “contested convention” fantasy flowing from the decent odds that no one candidate will arrive at the Republican National Convention in July with a majority of bound delegates. But it’s important to understand how convention rules can make a wide-open convention impossible, and how the contending forces in the party have the power to make those rules stick. I wrote about this issue and the historical context extensively at New York this week:

As conventions became more tightly controlled and their managers worried about things like ensuring that the balloting and acceptance speeches occurred before East Coast television viewers were asleep, nonserious candidacies were sacrificed to efficiency. Among Republicans, the tradition developed that no one’s name could be placed in nomination without support from at least three delegations; that cut off the pure favorite-son candidacies. Beyond that, the status of conventions as ratifying rather than nominating events exerted its own pressure on “losers” who typically succumbed to the pressure to unite behind the nominee and grin for the cameras.
That was before the Ron Paul Revolution appeared on the scene. In 2012, the Paulites shrewdly focused on winning fights for delegates that occurred after primaries and caucuses in hopes of making their eccentric candidate and his eccentric causes a big nuisance at Mitt Romney’s convention. And so the Romney campaign and its many allies reacted — some would say overreacted — by using its muscle on the convention Rules Committee (meeting just prior to Tampa to draft procedures for the conclave) to change the presence-in-three-delegations threshold for having one’s name placed in nomination to this one:

Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, prior to the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination.

This Rule 40(b), moreover, was interpreted to mean that no candidate who did not meet the threshold could have votes for the nomination recorded in her/his name.
Rule 40(b) succeeded in keeping the Paulites under wraps in Tampa, but as is generally the case, it remained in effect as a “temporary” rule for the next convention, subject to possible revision by a new Rules Committee meeting just prior to the 2016 gathering, and by the convention itself, which controls its own rules. In fact, its drafters may have intended to keep the rule in place to head off some annoying convention challenge to President Romney’s renomination.
Back in the real world, Rule 40(b) may have been in the back of some minds early in the 2016 cycle as a way to keep the convention from being rhetorically kidnapped by noisy supporters of Rand Paul, or of the novelty “birther” candidate Donald Trump.
Now, obviously, the shoe is on the other foot, and there is a growing possibility that the two strongest candidates for the GOP nomination, Trump and Ted Cruz, could join their considerable forces to insist on maintenance of Rule 40(b) or something much like it to prevent their common Republican Establishment enemies from exploiting a multi-ballot convention to place someone else at the top of the ticket.
Trump is currently the only candidate who is beyond the eight-state-majority threshold for competing for the nomination under the strict terms of Rule 40(b). But Team Cruz is confident enough that its candidate will also satisfy the rule that he’s the one out there arguing that Rule 40(b) means votes for John Kasich are an entire waste because they won’t be counted in Cleveland. And with both Trump and Cruz repeatedly claiming that the nomination of a dark horse who hasn’t competed during the primaries would be an insult to the GOP rank and file, maintaining Rule 40(b) is the obvious strategy to close off that possibility. A good indicator of the new situation is the evolving position of Virginia party activist and veteran Rules Committee member Morton Blackwell, a loud dissenter against Rule 40(b) before and after the 2012 convention, who now, as a Cruz supporter, is arguing that changing the rule “would be widely and correctly viewed as [an] outrageous power grab.”
But can the Republican Establishment stack the Rules Committee with party insiders determined to overturn Rule 40(b) and keep the party’s options wide open going into Cleveland? Not really. That committee is composed of two members elected by each state delegation. No likely combination of Kasich and Rubio delegates and “false-flag” delegates bound to Trump or Cruz but free to vote against their interests on procedural issues is likely to make up a majority of the Rules Committee, or of the convention. Indeed, most of the anecdotal evidence about “delegate-stealing” in the murky process of naming actual bodies to fill pledged seats at the convention shows Team Cruz, not some anti-Trump/anti-Cruz cabal, gaining ground. If Trump and Cruz stick together on this one point no matter how many insults they are exchanging as rivals, they almost certainly can shut the door on any truly “open” convention and force Republicans who intensely dislike both of them to choose their poison.
That would leave Kasich with his fistful of general-election polls and the proliferating list of fantasy “unity” candidates on the outside in Cleveland, playing to the cameras but having no real influence over the proceedings. And you can make the case that this is precisely what the Republican “base” wants and has brought to fruition through the nominating process. It would, of course, be highly ironic if the Republican Establishment’s Rule 40(b) became the instrument for two candidates generally hated by said Establishment to impose a duopoly on the party. But there’s no President Romney around to put a stop to it.


Clinton’s Speech on U.S. Supreme Court Clarifies 2016 Stakes

On the eve of the Wisconsin Primary, Hillary Clinton has delivered what The Nation’s John Nichols has termed “the strongest speech of her campaign.” Clinton made important points which merit consideration from all voters, regardless of who they support at this juncture, particularly because the mainstream media is so distracted by the Trump sideshow. As Nichols writes,

Madison, Wisconsin–Hillary Clinton delivered the strongest speech of her 2016 campaign in Wisconsin this week, and the media barely noticed…In this absurd campaign season, when media outlets devote hours of time to arguments about which Republican candidate insulted which wife, about violent and irresponsible campaign aides, about whatever soap-opera scenario comes to mind, thoughtful discussions of issues get little attention. And deep and detailed discussions of issues get even less coverage.
Clinton’s speech on the importance of filling Supreme Court vacancies, and on the values and ideals that should guide judicial nominations, was a deep and detailed discussion of a fundamental responsibility of presidents. What she said impressed not just her own supporters, who gathered Monday to hear her speak on the University of Wisconsin campus, but also Wisconsinites who are undecided or inclined to vote for someone else in the state’s April 5 primary.

Nichols credits Sen. Sanders with taking the issue seriously, and expresses confidence that he would also nominate an “outstanding” justice to the high court. Sanders, notes Nichols, “has spoken well and wisely about the standards he would apply in doing so.”
As for Clinton, “a Yale Law School graduate, the author of scholarly articles on children and the law, a former law-school instructor and a former board chair of the Legal Services Corporation…When she speaks about the Supreme Court, she does so with insight and passion.” Nichols continues,

What was powerful was not just the Democratic contender’s recognition that “the Court shapes virtually every aspect of life in the United States–from whether you can marry the person you love, to whether you can get healthcare, to whether your classmates can carry guns around this campus.”
It was not even her appropriate observation that, “If we’re serious about fighting for progressive causes, we need to focus on the Court: who sits on it, how we choose them, and how much we let politics–partisan politics–dominate that process.”
What stood out was the way in which Clinton put the current debate over judicial nominations into historical, political and legal context.

In the speech, Clinton blistered Republicans for obstructing a vote and even hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. She explained that “this battle is bigger than just one empty seat on the Court….By Election Day, two justices will be more than 80 years old–past the Court’s average retirement age. The next president could end up nominating multiple justices,” she explained. “That means whoever America elects this fall will help determine the future of the Court for decades to come.”
Clinton then got down to specific cases before the court, including, but not limited to:

“The Court is reviewing how public-sector unions collect the fees they use to do their work. The economic security of millions of teachers, social workers and first responders is at stake. This is something the people of Wisconsin know all too well, because your governor has repeatedly attacked and bullied public sector unions, and working families have paid the price. I think that’s wrong, and it should stop.”
“The Court is reviewing a Texas law imposing unnecessary, expensive requirements on doctors who perform abortions. If that law is allowed to stand, there will only be 10 or so health centers left where women can get safe, legal abortions in the whole state of Texas, a state with about 5.4 million women of reproductive age. So it will effectively end the legal right to choose for millions of women.”
…It’s also put a hold on the president’s clean-power plan. Either America can limit how much carbon pollution we produce, or we can’t. And if we can’t, then our ability to work with other nations to meet the threat of climate change under the Paris agreement is greatly diminished.”

“In a single term,” said Clinton, “the Supreme Court could demolish pillars of the progressive movement.” Echoing the cause first championed by her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen Sanders, Clinton added, “If the Court doesn’t overturn Citizens United, I will fight for a constitutional amendment to limit the influence of money in elections,” she said. “It is dangerous to our country and poisonous to our politics.”
Clinton reiterated her determination to “appoint justices who will make sure the scales of justice are not tipped away from individuals toward corporations and special interests; who will protect the constitutional principles of liberty and equality for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or political viewpoint; who will protect a woman’s right to choose, rather than billionaires’ right to buy elections; and who will see the Constitution as a blueprint for progress, not a barrier to it.”
Like Clinton, Sen. Sanders has affirmed the same priorities in selecting future Supreme Court justices. Voters in Wisconsin who value sober and serious appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court will find themselves on solid ground in casting their ballots for either Democrat.