TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, and Hart Research analysts Guy Molyneux and John Whaley have a new 100-page report, “Better, Not Smaller,” (PDF here) that shatters one of the most treasured conservative myths — that shrinking the size of government is what most voters want. The report, based on a survey completed in May by Hart Research Associates for the Center for American Progress and its Doing What Works project, is one of the most thorough investigations of public attitudes and perceptions about the size and quality of government yet conducted.
The report is being released in conjunction with the ‘Doing What Works Conference’ now being streamed, live via webcast as we go to press, on the Center for American Progress Web pages. From the authors’ introduction to the report:

Public confidence in government is at an all-time low, according to a major new survey commissioned by the Center for American Progress. And yet clear majorities of Americans of all ages want and expect more federal involvement in priority areas such as energy, poverty, and education, the poll found.
The key lesson embedded in these seemingly paradoxical results: Americans want a federal government that is better, not smaller. CAP’s new research shows people would rather improve government performance than reduce its size. And they are extremely receptive to reform efforts that would eliminate inefficient government programs, implement performance-based policy decisions, and adopt modern management methods and information technologies.
The May survey of 2,523 adults conducted by Hart Research Associates found that public lack of confidence in government’s ability to solve problems is more closely related to perceptions of government performance than it is a function of partisan affiliation or political ideology. A majority of respondents indicated they would be more likely to support political candidates who embrace a reform agenda of improving government performance, effectiveness, and efficiency.

The survey noted “substantial support” among the younger respondents, as well as people of color, self-identified independents, political moderates and even some Republicans and Tea Party supporters, for reforms keyed to cutting inefficient programs, while redirecting support to cost-efficient programs, publishing evaluations of individual programs/agencies and modernizing management methods and information technologies. Further,

Americans have not significantly changed their opinion of government’s role. Indeed, clear majorities want more federal government involvement in priority areas, and they expect government’s role in improving people’s lives to grow rather than shrink in importance in the years ahead.
Rather than a rejection of big government, the survey reveals a rejection of incompetent government….

The authors caution, however:

The government receives mediocre to poor performance ratings from the public both in terms of how effective it is and how well it is managed. There is a widespread belief that government spends their tax dollars inefficiently, and the survey explores these perceptions of “wasteful spending” in significant depth. Improving these perceptions, we find, is a central challenge for reform efforts.
The message to politicians and policymakers is clear. Government will not regain the public trust unless it earns it. And earning it means spending taxpayer money more carefully–and doing what works.

Yet, overall, the study found “a surprisingly high level of confidence that government effectiveness can be improved” and “poor performance in the public sector is not inevitable.” The authors cite “a powerful commitment to realizing that potential for better government.” It appears that conservatives parroting the ‘big government’ as demon meme may be preaching to the choir. Democrats, on the other hand, just may be able to reach a more thoughtful constituency by talking about what it takes to create smart government.

In terms of historical trends, there is not much of an upside for Dems, who currently control 27 state legislatures, compared to the GOP’s control of 14 (8 split), in Tim Storey’s “Legislature Lowdown” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

…Since 1900, there have been 27 elections held in the presidential mid-term year. In all but two of those mid-term elections, the party in the White House lost seats in state legislatures. The only exceptions were in 1934 and 2002. In 1934 during one of the lowest points of the great depression, Democrats campaigned on Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and gained over 1100 legislative seats nationwide in FDR’s first mid-term election. In 2002, Republicans rode a groundswell of support for President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11th attacks to pick up 177 seats. However, in the other 25 mid-term elections, the party of the president lost an average 495 legislative seats. Mid-term losses have been mitigated in recent decades since modern redistricting took hold, but the trend is still very consistent. This trend is not good news for Democratic legislative candidates running for the first time since 2000 with a Democrat in the White House.

Storey identifies 27 “battleground” legislative chambers, where a pick-up of just 3 seats would lead to a switch of party in the majority. Dems have 14 to defend, compared to 11 for the GOP, with AK Senate and MT House tied. The big prizes, in terms of the more populous states, are the NY Senate (32 D – 29 R – 1 vacant), the OH House (53 D – 46 R), and the PA House (104 D – 98 R – 1 vacant). Close behind would be the TX House (73D – 77 R),
As Storey points out, in 44 states redistricting by state legislatures is a critical issue of concern with respect to national politics (6 states that have special commission-like structures for that purpose). Further,

The 2011 redistricting could be the first time since the era of modern redistricting began in the 1980s, following the 1960s landmark Supreme Court decisions on redistricting and the evolution of the process in the 1970s, that Republicans have the redistricting edge in the states, and it could be substantial. If November 2nd is a big Republican wave election, it could give the GOP sole redistricting authority in the drawing of more than 160 U.S. House districts–nearly six times more than their Democratic counterparts. Under this scenario, the bulk of the seats redrawn in the 2011 redistricting, about 200, will be in states with divided partisan control. The stakes for this November’s legislative elections could not be higher. It’s shaping up to be a year of historic volatility in state legislative elections.

In addition to redistricting concerns, adds Storey, “Legislatures enact over 20,000 new laws every year” and spend “about $1.5 trillion” in taxpayer money annually.”
Looking at the big picture, it’s possible Dems could lose some state legislatures, but still have control in a plurality of states. What may be more important in terms of congressional seats and the electoral college is what happens in the aforementioned larger states, especially TX, which is expected to gain as many as 3 or 4 U.S. House of Reps. seats. Perhaps Democratic contributors would do well to send a little love to the state Democratic Party organizations in NY, PA, OH and TX.

As with any election, the 2010 mid terms require that Democrats not only define their beliefs, but also make a credible case why their adversaries should be defeated. Writing at HuffPo, Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, has a handy summary of reasons why the Republicans must not be allowed to win control of congress. Here’s some excerpts:

…Over the course of eight short years — between 2000 and 2008 — the Republicans methodically executed their plan to transform American society. They systematically transferred wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest two percent of Americans — slashing taxes for the wealthy. They eviscerated the rules that held Wall Street, Big Oil and private insurance companies accountable to the public. They allowed and encouraged the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks that ultimately collapsed the economy and cost eight million Americans their jobs. They ignored exploding health care costs, tried to privatize Social Security, gave the drug companies open season to gouge American consumers and presided over a decline in real incomes averaging $2,000 per family. They entangled America in an enormously costly, unnecessary war in Iraq, pursued a directionless policy that left Afghanistan to fester, and sullied America’s good name throughout the world.
Their economic policy of cutting taxes for the wealthy and deregulating big Corporations failed to create jobs. In fact, over his eight year term, George Bush’s administration created exactly zero net private sector jobs. They inherited a Federal budget with surpluses as far as the eye could see and rolled up more debt than all of the previous Presidents in the over 200 years of American history. And in the end they left the economy in collapse.
This was not a disaster that could be remedied overnight. By taking bold action at the beginning of his administration, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress prevented the financial crisis from morphing into a Great Depression…Obama, the Democrats and their progressive allies have — after a century of trying — finally passed health care reform allowing America to end its status as the only industrialized nation that did not provide health care as a right. They are on the brink of reining in the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks. And they have set the stage for massive long-term investments in economic growth and clean energy.

Creamer acknowledges the impatience of Americans about “the slow pace of economic recovery” and the “special interests that profited from their economic pain,” and he cites the Republicans’ “audacity” in arguing that Dems are to blame: “In effect they want the election to be a referendum on whether the Democrats have mopped and swept fast enough cleaning up the mess that they created.” Further, says Creamer,

Read more…

Conservatives are pulling out all stops in trying to implant the meme that the public wants an all-out war on the federal deficit, including spending cuts of the sort Republicans favor. In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, however, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains:

…The grain of truth here is that the public is in fact concerned about the size of the deficit. But everything else is wrong. There are many more important things to the public than cutting the deficit.
Take jobs, for example. The public declared by 60-38 in a mid-June Gallup/USA Today poll that they favored Congress passing new legislation this year that would provide “additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy.” Of course, this is exactly the kind of legislation conservatives are now strenuously opposing on the grounds the public is sick and tired of spending to create jobs.

As for other cuts in social spending,

…A late June Pew poll asked the public if they’d approve of various spending cuts to balance their state’s budget this year. The public opposed all of them. This included 73-21 opposition to cutting funding for K-12 public schools; 71-25 opposition to cutting funding for police, fire, and other public safety departments; 65-27 opposition to cutting health care services provided by state or local government; and 50-43 opposition to cutting funding for maintaining roads and public transportation systems.

At a time when congress is considering a range of new initiatives to stimulate the economy and hiring, Teixeira says it’s important to remember that the public wants to keep essential social programs: “Policymakers would do well to remember this as they consider bills that would pump additional money into the economy by extending unemployment benefits, preventing teacher layoffs, and the like. Killing these bills in the name of deficit reduction is not doing the public’s bidding–it’s exactly the reverse.”

Joshua Green, senior editor of The Atlantic has an interesting post, “Do Marijuana Ballot Initiatives Help Democrats Win?” Green cites the piggy-back strategy used by Karl Rove as a possible template for Dems:

Not long ago, Karl Rove was considered a political genius. His mastery of the small, clever maneuver–typically unappreciated until it swung an election–was a big reason why. To his enemies, nothing exemplified Rovean perfidy like the state ballot initiatives he encouraged banning gay marriage that appeared across the country in 2004. Rove’s idea was that conservatives lukewarm on President Bush could be persuaded to support the ban–and, once they’d shown up to do that, would probably vote for Bush, too. On Election Day, the ballot initiatives passed easily and Bush narrowly won a second term.
…Acting on a tip from an Obama official, I found a few Democratic consultants who have become convinced that ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana, like the one Californians will vote on in November, actually help Democrats in the same way that gay marriage bans were supposed to have helped Republicans. They are similarly popular, with medical marijuana having passed in 14 states (and the District of Columbia) where it has appeared on the ballot. In a recent poll, 56 percent of Californians said they favor the upcoming initiative to legalize and tax pot.

The idea is to re-enthuse the youth base which was so helpful in Obama’s victory. Green quotes Jim Merlino, a Colorado political consultant, who helped pass marijuana initiatives in 2000 and 2006: “If you look at who turns out to vote for marijuana, they’re generally under 35. And young people tend to vote Democratic.”
The pro-legalization constituency undoubtedly can be found to some extent among all age groups, especially the greying generation of the 1960’s. The assumption would be that it might also increase mid term turnout of liberals, who favor legalization, but also libertarians, some of whom vote Republican and perhaps even some conservatives, who realize that minor marijuana offenses account for a substantial percentage of incarcerated individuals and associated expenditures.
Green acknowledges that there is no hard data indicating a clear link between marijuana ballot initiatives and increased Democratic turnout, nor even between same sex marriage ballot initiatives and Republican turnout. But he does cite a study indicating that in the 1982 midterms nuclear freeze initiatives in ten states had “a significant positive effect on Democratic candidates.”
In November up to a half-dozen states may hold ballot initiatives to permit medical patients, and others, to smoke marijuana. In California, which has already legalized marijuana use for medical purposes, voters will decide on legalizing it for adults. The state NAACP has endorsed Proposition 19, arguing that selective enforcement of current marijuana laws disproportionately penalizes people of color.

The latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘ by TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira flags a new poll indicating that the health care reform law passed by Democrats is winning new friends. Writing in the Center for American Progress web pages, Teixeira explains:

The June Kaiser Health Care Tracking poll found that public favorability toward the bill has risen over the last month to 48 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable, which is up from 41 percent favorable and 44 percent unfavorable in May. This result is consistent with trends found in a number of other public polls.

And it’s not just the law as a whole; it’s most of the specific provisions that are overwhelmingly popular with respondents:

…The poll tests 17 different provisions in the new law, and 16 of 17 received majority support. In fact, 12 of the 17 provisions were supported above the 60 percent level, with particularly high favorability ratings for health insurance exchanges (87 percent), tax credits to small businesses (82 percent), and gradually closing the Medicare “doughnut hole” (81 percent).

Teixeira concludes that “unrealistic conservatives’ fantasies of a populist uprising to repeal the law” are looking far “off the mark,” if not delusional. Americans like the reform law and its measures as an important step towards health security for all.

Michael Tomasky reiterates a painful, but necessary point in his blog at guardian.co.uk. Tomasky quotes from and references tough statements by Theda Skocpol and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, vigorously blasting the Republicans for obstructing economic reforms, in stark contrast to what Tomasky sees as wimpier Democratic statements concerning the need for economic reforms. Then this:

…Democrats in general still tend to think that you win political fights by having superior arguments. This of course is manifestly not true. You win political arguments by framing the question the media decide to take up. That means being aggressive in your framing, creating conflict (which the media love), and making sure that reporters will go to the other side and ask them well, how do you respond to this?
Some significant number of Americans who don’t hate Barack Obama nevertheless think he wants socialism simply because conservatives have spent 18 months saying that Obama (and the Democrats generally) want socialism. They do that, and quite naturally the media write a bunch of stories in which Republicans allege that Democrats want socialism and Democrats say no we don’t. It doesn’t matter how the article reads. The Republicans have already won in the framing.
And this is the particular political skill the Democrats lack completely. By merely saying the Republicans want to wreck the economy so they can benefit at the polls, if they said it enough, would show them winning in the framing. And as I’ve written a couple of times now, the basic question of this election, still not established, is going to be framed in July and August. Time’s a wastin’.

There’s no denying that, with a few exceptions, the Republicans have generally played the MSM more effectively with well-rooted frames. They don’t do it with magic, smoke & mirrors. They do it with message discipline and repetition, techniques available to Democrats who like the taste of victory.

The news for Dems is very good in Robert Creamer’s HuffPo post “Evidence Arizona Immigration Law May Be Fatal Mistake for GOP.” Creamer, one of the Democratic Party’s more astute strategists, reviews some recent polling data and finds Democratic candidates now even in the Texas gubernatorial race, pulling ahead in the Colorado Senate race and gaining in the contest for the California governorship — all because Republican immigrant-bashing is backfiring in a huge way. Creamer explains:

The passage of the Arizona “papers, please” anti-immigration law has forced Republican politicians around the country into a political box canyon that does not offer an easy escape. For fear of offending the emergent Tea Party – and other anti-immigrant zealots in their own base — they are precipitating a massive realignment of Latino voters nationwide.

Down in red-state Texas:

According to data released by Public Policy Polling (PPP), Texas Governor Rick Perry has lost his early lead over Democratic challenger Bill White and the race is now tied. The movement from a previous PPP poll in February comes entirely from Hispanic voters. PPP reports that:
“With white voters Perry led 54-36 then and leads 55-35 now. With black voters White led 81-12 then and 70 -7 now. But with Hispanics Perry has gone from leading 53-41 to trailing 55-21….there is no doubt the (Arizona) immigration bill is popular nationally. But if it causes Hispanics to change their voting behavior without a parallel shift among whites then it’s going to end up playing to Democratic advantage this fall.”
…As if to sharpen their anti-immigrant brand, last week the Texas Republican State Convention voted for a platform that included a plank calling on the state government to adopt a state law like the one in Arizona.

Up in Colorado:

PPP reports that its latest polls in Colorado show that incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennett has gone from tying his opponent Republican Jane Norton to a three-point lead largely because his lead among Hispanic voters has soared from 12 to 21 points.

And out in the Golden State:

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman felt compelled to back tough anti-immigrant measures to get the Republican nomination. Now her support among Latinos is hemorrhaging, dropping from 35 to 26 points from March to May. Since the primary, Whitman has begun to waffle on her tough anti-immigrant stand but the damage has been done – what’s more, it’s memorialized in videos that Democrat Jerry Brown is sure to loop over and over on Spanish language TV.

Creamer notes that the AZ “Papers, please” law is viewed by millions of Latinos as a direct insult to their personal dignity and “a litmus test that tells a Hispanic voter whether or not a political candidate is on their side – the critical threshold test of voter decision making.” He describes the GOP as playing with “political fire” and “permanent marginality.” Even more ominously for the Republicans, Creamer adds,

A few months ago, no one would have predicted a massive turnout in November among Hispanic voters. That appears to have changed…If a surge of anti-Republican Hispanic voters destroys the careers of enough politicians who thought that pandering to anti-immigrant fear was good politics, the whole political narrative about immigration reform will change.

Creamer predicts that Republicans will try to repair the damage after the elections, to no avail. “…In all likelihood it will be very difficult to get the anti-immigrant toothpaste back into the tube.”

Brooklynbadboy at Daily Kos flags a new DNC video clip and does a particularly nice job of framing it:

This is the second ad and it is much tougher than the first. The way to capitalize on Barton is not to ask him to step down, it is to make sure everyone knows Barton is what you’re going to get if Republicans win the election.
People talk about how they want to get away from negative ads, but I’m not buying it. The choice is binary. People appreciate knowing who stands for what. This fall, what they need to know is that the Republican Party is nothing more than an extremist group of nutcase fringe. If they get power, they will get back to destroying America just like they did under George W. Bush.
My hat is off, finally, to the administration for getting in gear. Keep it up. Attack Republicans. Every. Single. Day.

Here’s the ad:

That’s the spirit.