Count me among those who think Mike Huckabee’s “Merry Christmas” ad, which is running in Iowa and two other states, is very clever. It identifies him with the undoubtedly growing ranks of voters who are getting weary of political ads, while allowing him to get across a forthrightly (if understated) Christian holiday message. It won’t offend anyone who would consider voting for him in the first place, and it represents a nice dog-whistle appeal to those conservative evangelicals who think anodyne holiday greetings represent a “war on Christmas.”
It’s weird to watch conservatives–even religious conservatives–try to get indigmant about this ad. Like Bill Donahue, the heavily hackish chief of the heavily politicized Catholic League, some of them are claiming the ad features a subliminal religious message in the form of a bookshelf in the background that forms a cross-like image. Huckabee’s reaction to that theory was truly priceless:

Huckabee said the bookshelf is just a bookshelf and shrugged off the controversy: “I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, ‘Paul is dead. Paul is dead.'”

The odd thing is that there are plenty of things Huckabee has said and done over the years that are ripe targets for legitimate criticism from both the left and right, including his gubernatorial record and his nutty tax proposal. Sarah Posner offers a rich menu of such Huckabisms in today’s FundamentaList at The American Prospect. But accusing him of being too Christian ain’t going to cut it among the kind of people he’s appealing to in the early Caucus and primary states. Indeed, such attacks let him indulge in the kind of bogus martyrdom that conservative evangelicals are all to prone to embrace these days.

One new poll of Iowa Democrats, by InsiderAdvantage, came out yesterday, and another, by Washington Post/ABC, came out late last night. The former created a big buzz among Edwards supporters, because it showed him up 4 over Clinton and up 6 over Obama among likely Caucus-goers. The latter had Obama up 4 over Clinton, and 13 over Edwards. InsiderAdvantage hasn’t done a previous Iowa poll, so there are no trend-lines to look at; the WaPo/ABC poll shows small trends towards Obama and Clinton and a small drop for Edwards since last month.
The top line aside, the two polls agree on some things, most notably John Edwards’ increasingly strong performance in second-choice preferences, and the now-familiar Obama dominance among younger and highly-educated voters. As Chris Bowers at OpenLeft points out in an excellent analysis, the InsiderAdvantage poll stipulates an extremely low turnout among voters under 45, even by Iowa standards, making its numbers for Obama especially suspect (the WaPo/ABC poll isn’t accompanied by age breakouts).
So: while campaigns can be expected to spin any given favorable poll as indicating a “surge” or a “comeback” or whatnot, the real deal remains very hard to measure. Typically, “likely voter” screens become more accurate as the actual event approaches, but the legendary difficulty of determining likely participation in the Iowa Caucuses makes even that prediction perilous. About the only statements that can be made with any degree of confidence based on a variety of recent polling are that John Edwards will probably do better than his first-preference polling suggests, and that young voter turnout will probably be decisive, one way or another, for Obama.

The fine folks at DemocracyCorps devoted all of their latest batch of polling and strategic analysis to the single issue of immigration. And they are once again sounding an alarm that this could be a dangerous wedge issue for Democrats in 2008 if they mishandle it.
The tone of urgency in the DCorps report is probably a reaction to a subtle but very real sense of relief among many Democrats that immigration hasn’t, so far, been an election-decider much of anywhere in 2006 or in 2007 special elections. Indeed, there’s even been something of a backlash against the idea that Democrats should change their rhetoric on the subject at all (viz. this recent Markos Moulitsas post that treats Democratic fears about immigration as part of a general pattern of timidity and unprincipled weakness). Another factor feeding this backlash is the belief that harsh Republican rhetoric on illegal immigration is creating a pro-Democratic trend among Latino voters that will offset or even dwarf any benefit the GOP gets from emphasizing the issue, though presumably polls like those done by DCorps take that into account in measuring net effects.
Confusing the matter even more, of course, is the fact that the political fallout over the immigration issue varies tremendously from place to place; DCorps emhasizes that its impact may be greatest in hotly contested Congressional elections (typically in states and districts where immigrants are numerous enough to represent a perceived cultural threat, but not numerous enough to constitute an important voting bloc–e.g., much of the Midwest and South).
In any event, the latest DCorps research suggests that anti-immigration sentiment is getting more, not less, pervasive and intense; that big majorities of Americans are rejecting anything other than an enforcement-first message, while equivocating a bit on the choice between enforcement-only and “comprehensive” approaches; and, most importantly, that immigration messages could for better or worse turn a significant number of votes, especially among less-educated Democrats and all sorts of independents.
Like many previous polls, the DCorps survey shows about two-thirds of respondents favoring a very stringent-sounding version of a “path to citizenship” proposal, including fines and English proficiency requirements before allowing applications for citizenship. But since an actual majority of respondents (52%) support “deporting all illegal immigrants”–and 35% support that “idea” strongly–it’s natural to infer that support for a citizenship path would be contingent on “touch back” provisions that require undocumented people to leave the country first. Moreover, DCorps suggests that the public has simply and perhaps irreversibly made up its mind to oppose non-essential benefits for illegal immigrants and their children; anyone supporting drivers’ rights or taxpayer-subsidized college aid is barking up a very tall tree.
After arguing that Democrats should make enforcement a strong and threshold issue in addressing the issue, DCorps also explores distinctive Democratic talking points, and suggests that support for tough employer sanctions is a very good idea.
In many respects, the DCorps analysis parallels that of TDS contributor Andew Levison, whose strategy memo on immigration suggests a message that combines support for serious enforcement measures with a distinctive Democratic counterattack on the Republican position. DCorps does not test the specific sub-messages Levison recommends, such as drawing attention to Republican economic policies that have exacerbated the immigration problem, or denouncing enforcement-only approaches for dividing families. But DCorps’ polling does suggest that moral arguments on immigration are more powerful than economic arguments, which again indicates that the power of any Democratic argument depends on first addressing the “rewarding lawbreakers” issue.
It’s all pretty complicated, and I’m sympathetic to those who say Democrats should just go with their pro-immigrant heritage and let the chips fall where they may. But to the extent that both sides of the intra-Democratic immigration debate appeal to political considerations, DCorps’ data and analysis, and Levison’s own strategic take, should be read carefully.

One of those habits in political journalism that makes me absolutely crazy is the tendency to engage in competing exaggerations every time the subject of “swing voters” comes up. There’s a good example in today’s Washington Post, where Alec MacGillis has a piece entitled: “In N.H., the Swing Vote Is Vanishing.”
A big chunk of the the article is devoted to the argument that while the percentage of voters registering as “undeclared” (i.e., independent) in NH has ballooned to 44 percent, a lot of those folks actually vote for one party or the other. This is hardly a novel observation, for NH or anywhere else. And it is useful to correct the impression that the number of swing voters is rapidly increasing, which some journalists erroneously fall for by conflating self-identified independents with swing voters.
But are swing voters really “vanishing?” To make his point, MacGillis cites estimates that “at most a third of those voters are seen as true independents.” If that’s so, then maybe 14 percent of the NH electorate is composed of true, unattached, swing voters. That’s a lot of folks, and hardly a “vanishing” category.
The real point of MacGillis’ piece is that the differences between Democratic and Republican candidates are a lot sharper than in 2000, meaning that John McCain and Barack Obama aren’t in direct competition for undeclared voters, as McCain and Bill Bradley appeared to be in 2000. Moreover, the Democratic contest is the real indie-magnet this year. For that very reason, McCain’s own staffers admit that the universe of undeclared voters they are trying to attract is smaller than in 2000.
But they are still there, and still matter, for candidates in both parties. And down the road, their numbers and nature might change in a competitive general election, when candidate rhetoric is less controlled by the need to compete for highly partisan “base” voters.
In other words, the topic of swing voters, and the closely related topic of base voters, require a lot more nuanced analysis than that afforded by ax-grinding “they are everything” and “they are nothing” exaggerations. And that’s why The Democratic Strategist is planning a special roundtable discussion of the subject for the beginning of the New Year. Stay tuned.

Paul Krugman of The New York Times has struck a big chord in the blogosphere with a new column that basically makes the case for John Edwards (as opposed to Barack Obama) more effectively than Edwards himself has been able to do so far.
Krugman begins by stipulating there’s not much difference between the two candidates on substance. He then makes two distinct arguments. The first is that by talking about bipartisanship and an inclusive approach to lawmaking, Obama is giving up leverage against corporate opposition to big domestic policy changes in advance, while Edwards is more realistically aiming at mobilizing anti-corporate public sentiment in a no-holds-barred, winner-take-all fight. The second is that Edwards as the Democratic nominee would ride a populist tide to a big victory, while Obama would probably win, but by a narrower margin that would limit his presidential power as much as his conciliatory rhetoric.
The first argument, which is also often made against Hillary Clinton, has always struck me as one that inflates tactical into strategic differences. Let’s say Obama’s elected president, and begins with an inclusive approach on health care. Let’s say further that Krugman’s right, and that corporate interests and/or conservatives prove to be obdurate in their opposition to any significant change. Has Obama lost or gained political capital with an initially conciliatory approach? Hard to say, as an abstract matter. If, on the other hand, John Edwards is elected president, and promotes a health care plan by way of an uncompromising assault on corporate interests, what will he do if he fails? Keep at it eternally until he wins, or compromise? That’s hard to say as well, and it’s even harder to say whether the Obama or Edwards approach would get the best and/or fastest results from a progressive point of view.
So in the end, the first argument for the Edwards approach depends pretty heavily on the second: the idea that Americans are begging for an anti-corporate, highly confrontational populism, and will reward its most forceful advocate with a big majority in 2008 and beyond.
There’s not much question that anti-corporate populism is a sentiment that’s on the rise, for the very obvious reason that the current administration and its GOP allies have engaged in a long pattern of mutually corrupting acts with corporate and other wealthy interests. But the idea that big majorities of Americans strongly support the idee fixee interpretation of corporate power–that it’s the single explanation for everything wrong with the country and the world–is just not supported by much evidence. Krugman offers a single data point: “A recent Democracy Corps survey of voter discontent found that the most commonly chosen phrase explaining what’s wrong with the country was ‘Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington.'”
That’s true, but in that survey, even though respondents had the chance to pick two explanations for America’s “wrong track,” something less than an overwhelming majority–40% to be exact–chose the anti-corporate narrative, seven percentage points ahead of the ancient conservative meme, “Moral and family values are being eroded.” The same survey also raised alarms about the preoccupation of independent voters with “uncontrolled borders.”
So while this is definitely a good year for populist rhetoric–and every single Democratic candidate is using it pretty heavily– the idea that it’s some sort of silver bullet that will produce the kind of majorities that will enable the next president to reject any sort of compromise and FDR his or her way to instant progressive victories is, well, a bit under-supported by the evidence. So, too, is the assertion that efforts to reach out beyond the Democratic base for support of progressive policies is (to use Krugman’s phrase about Obama) “naive,” as compared to the rival approach of seeking legislative majorities after labelling not only Republicans but half of Democrats in Washington as incorrigibly corrupt.
The ability to achieve “change” in the current political environment–and given our constitutional system, in almost any political environment–is hard to measure in advance. Obama’s inclusiveness wouldn’t suddenly change everything, but nor would Edwards’ willingness to “fight.” Democrats would be better advised to pick a candidate based on policies and on character than on the belief that any candidate can build a progressive record on nothing more than a different attitude.

We’ve reached the final stage of the pre-voting segment of the 2008 presidential campaign, and the ancient rituals of late candidate endorsements are playing out.
The big news yesterday was that the Des Moines Register, the rare newspaper that can actually affect votes, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, giving her campaign a much-needed psychological boost going into the home stretch in Iowa (The Register‘s endorsement of John McCain on the other side is less influential, but could help him create some buzz towards a possible third- or fourth-place finish in Iowa).
Though the Register summarily dismissed John Edwards (who received their endorsement four years ago) as the purveyor of “harsh anti-corporate rhetoric,” he received the endorsement of Mari Culver, Iowa’s First Lady. This was hardly a surprise. Culver, a trial lawyer, caucused for Edwards four years ago, and while her husband, Governor Chet Culver, is officially neutral, his own political operation is full of Edwards supporters. The move will remind a lot of Iowans of the influential endorsement of John Kerry in 2004 by then-First Lady Christie Vilsack.
Meanwhile, back on the Republican side, McCain got another endorsement from a source who will raise a lot more eyebrows than the Des Moines Register: Joe Lieberman. Given their longstanding alliance on issues ranging from Iraq to cap-and-trade, and Lieberman’s near-total estrangement from the Democratic Party, the endorsement is hardly a surprise (I’m sure the happiest man in politics today is my former colleague Marshall Wittmann, the McCainiac who is now Lieberman’s communications director). But it does illustrate how rapidly some elements of what used to be thought of as the “center” have moved hard right in the crucible of contemporary poltics. Lest we forget, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened eight years ago, it’s likely that Joe Lieberman would be wrapping up his second term as Al Gore’s Vice President (and perhaps as his designated successor), and under another near-miss scenario, John McCain could be stumping the nation right now for a second term for John Kerry, as his Vice President. Instead, McCain is desperately struggling to become the conservative movement’s savior amidst the wreakage of a weak presidential field, and now Lieberman’s joined him. You have to figure that the odds of Lieberman again voting for Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader in 2009 have gone down to zero, which will be fine with Democrats assuming they pick up the additional seat necessary to finally bid Lieberman adieu.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

Yesterday I did a post questioning the value of the “Iowa ground game” stories in the MSM. So where does one turn for the real beef? The best thing I’ve read is a long round of diaries at MyDD by someone with the handle of desmoinesdem, an Edwards precinct captain who served Kerry in the same capacity in 2004. The latest (which usefully includes links to six earlier diaries which explain the mechanics of the Caucuses in great detail) addresses the question of the moment: who’s winning in Iowa? And after patiently explaining why staring at polls is probably misleading, demoinesdem goes through the much more subjective measurements that a precinct-level operative utilizes to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing.
You should read the whole thing, but a few nuggets stand out. One is that campaigns tend to overlook potential caucus-goers who appear divided between other candidates; they’re not on the campaign’s radar screen, but could be very important to the actual outcome. Another is the often-forgotten fact that second-place preferences are not just an issue with lower-tier candidates, given the very high “viability” thresholds in smaller precincts. The 2004 winner, John Kerry, was “non-viable” in 222 Iowa precincts. And a third is that late momentum can be crucial, with factors like newspaper and elected official endorsements mattering a lot more in Iowa than in most places.
Speaking of endorsesments, in the comment thread to desmoinesdem’s latest post, there’s a discussion of the Des Moines Register endorsement, which is coming out this Sunday (much earlier than usual). The Register endorsement is universally thought to have helped John Edwards mount a last-minute surge in Iowa in 2004. But this time, the buzz seems to be that either Clinton or Biden will get the nod. And Biden, as desmoinesdem also notes, is the one low-tier candidate who seems to have some momentum at present–not enough to break into the Big Three, but enough potentially to change the dynamics.

There’s already been some derisive commentary (viz., from TAPPED’s Kate Sheppard) about the final question in today’s Des Moines Register Democratic debate, asking candidates to reflect on the joys of campaigning in Iowa.
When moderator Carolyn Washburn started into this question, I thought for a horrified moment she was going to pledge each and every one of the candidates to protect Iowa’s primacy in the nominating process now and forever, world without end, particularly as president. It would have been a difficult pledge to avoid at this point, with all of them lusting after every single Caucus vote. But instead, she only asked for a generic pander to Iowans, and only Joe Biden went over the brink and said “Iowa deserves to be first.”
Listening to the paens to Iowans’ sturdy civic virtues and the glories of food-on-a-stick, I’m probably not the only one to wonder what would have happened if the candidates had been attached to lie detectors. And I actually like Iowa.

I watched the Des Moines Register Democratic candidate debate partly out of sheer curiosity–to see if the Register or its editor and moderator, Carolyn Washburn, adjusted to the savage criticism they received after yesterday’s GOP debate.
They did, to some extent; there was no prohibition on discussion of key issues, and relatively little “Nurse Ratched” scolding of candidates for violating petty debate rules. But the format remained one that provided few opportunities for candidate interplay, pretty much letting them broadcast their messages to audiences in Iowa and elsewhere. There was also, as occurred yesterday, a heavy focus on the Register‘s peculiar obsession with fiscal policy.
Given that basic framework, the debate enabled the Big Three to sharpen their central pitches. HRC got in one very good defining line, though it may have been too subtle for many viewers: Some demand change (Edwards), some hope for it (Obama), but I know you have to work for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her develop that line in the next three weeks.
But Edwards and Obama got to strut their stuff more often and more effectively. If it’s possible to hone a message into a blunt instrument, Edwards has done so with his anti-corporate theme, which he reinforced with almost every breath. And Obama achieved a nice balance between his wonkiness and rhetorical uplift. In the Frank Luntz focus-group reaction to the debate on Fox, Edwards and Obama scored very well. Indeed, it was a good reminder of how little attention regular folks pay attention to campaigns that several focus group members seemed happily surprised by Edwards’ I’ve-fought-corporations-my-whole-life routine, which us political junkies have heard him do about 5,000 times.
The other candidates, denied any chance to spark a fight, did the best they could, with Dodd touting his experience, Biden his expertise, and Richardson his folksiness and resume (though he seemed to have been surprised by the Wen Ho Lee question). The only candidate who had a really bad day was Dennis Kucinich, who was excluded.
The only other points worth making were again by Luntz, who noted (a) that his Dem focus group participants were vastly more positive about all the candidates than the GOP focus group he convened yesterday, and (b) that all his research in Iowa convinces him that the Democratic turnout on Caucus Night is going to be very, very heavy. Regardless of how that affects the outcome on January 3, that’s a good omen for Democrats next November.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

We’ve arrived at an interesting stage in the Democratic presidential contest. The chattering classes have all pretty much come to agreement that (1) it’s All About Iowa, (2) Iowa’s too close to call, and (3) in a close race, field organization totally rules. So naturally, there’s a huge appetite for insight into the Real Story, i.e., Iowa field operations, or “the ground game.”
Efforts to feed this beast are popping up all over the MSM, with mixed results.
The most overt “peek inside” piece is by Jay Newton-Small for Time, entitled “Inside Obama’s Iowa Ground Game.”
Newton-Small focuses on anecdotal information from mid-level Obama staffers and volunteers, not the high command, and his basic question is whether Obama is another Jimmy Carter or Howard Dean in terms of mobilizing new Caucus-goers. Carter basically put the Iowa Caucuses on the national political map with a big 1976 showing. Dean proved you could finish third with a head start in the polls, all the money and endorsements imaginable, and hordes of hyper-energized volunteers.
The reporter doesn’t really answer his own question, but instead lets Obama’s folk make the case that he’s doing outreach right, with particular emphasis not only on college students, but on indies and Republicans, and on supporters of lower-tier candidates whose second-round support on Caucus Night could be crucial. Without third-party verification, who knows how intensive or effective Obama’s field organization really is?
If Newton-Small’s piece illustrates the shortcomings of microanalysis of the Iowa “ground game,” the perils of macroanalysis are on display in a big Washington Post article on Clinton’s Iowa campaign by Anne Kornblut. A quick read of the piece conveys the impression that Clinton’s campaign is in panic mode, and is just now coming to grips with the harsh realities of Caucus politics. But in her effort to provide a big-picture look at the challenges facing HRC’s campaign, Kornblut telescopes many months of developments.
The Clinton campaign’s “crisis summit” over Iowa that leads the piece occurred back in October, light years ago in campaign terms. Moreover, the employment of battle-tested Iowa pros by HRC began last spring, when she picked up Tom Vilsack’s endorsement and placed her Iowa organization under the consummate field pro, Teresa Vilmain. And the internal struggle over Iowa that’s the subtext of the entire piece was about candidate time in Iowa and the need for additional field personnel, not the Iowa organization’s Caucus savvy. By all accounts, these internal issues have been resolved, so it’s not clear how germane they are to the current environment, unless you think Clinton could have crushed all opposition with an earlier start (hard to believe, since no one could beat John Edwards’ head start in Iowa).
I don’t mean to sound too critical here; there are real insights to be gleaned from both Newton-Small’s and Kornblut’s essays. And we’d all like to get a glimpse behind the veil of the Iowa campaigns.
But here’s the real problem: all of the Big Three have highly competent Iowa managers, excellent field operations, and all the money they need for the home stretch. One may prove to be better than others, but it’s a probably a matter of degree, and if one campaign is doing something really revolutionary, they’re probably not going to tell us about it. Perhaps in the end, Obama’s outreach and microtargeting program; the HRC/Emily’s List effort to radically boost turnout by women; or Edwards’ focus on rural precincts, will make a crucial difference. Maybe there will be a last-minute tactical agreement between candidates for second-choice support. And yes, the weather could matter a lot. But nobody knows right now, best I can tell from a sounding of my own contacts among political reporters and Iowa veterans.
We may just have to wait until Caucus Night to discover the real Ground Game story in Iowa.