It’s frequently said that change comes to California before it comes to the rest of the nation, and if that’s the case America may be in for a rocky ride, according to a new report, published by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, in conjunction with Public Opinion Strategies. The report, based on a survey of 1,500 CA RVs for the L.A. Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, indicates that widespread discontent with state leadership may be creating a political vaccuum. From the exec summary:

Results reveal that voters in California are deeply pessimistic about where things currently stand in their state and are very unhappy with their state leaders. The State Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger both receive very low approval ratings and it seems that these low marks are more driven by voters’ disappointment with their leaders than anger. Despite their unhappiness voters resist all of the changes presented to them that would help shore up the large budget deficit and eliminate some of the gridlock in Sacramento.

An L.A. Times article by Evan Halper based on the study, reports,

More than a third of those polled said they or a family member had lost a job in the last year. Nearly half said they or someone in their family had been hit with a cut in take-home pay, and 57% said their investments or those of family members had dropped by more than a quarter.
The recession’s impact is particularly strong among blacks and Latinos, with 57% of Latinos and 41% of blacks in the survey saying they or someone in their family had lost a job as a result of the recession. Among Latinos, 21% reported a home foreclosure, a number more than twice the overall rate of those surveyed.
Nearly a quarter of those polled said they or someone in their family had lost healthcare coverage as a result of the recession. And 27% said they or someone in their family had put off or canceled a medical appointment or prescription in the last year because of the cost.

Further,

Amid tough times, “voters seem uninterested in budgetary innovation,” said Stan Greenberg, one of the two pollsters who supervised the survey. His Republican counterpart, Neil Newhouse, concurred, saying the poll indicated widespread voter “distrust” of proposed reforms, in favor of a focus on cutting spending and reducing the power of special interests.
…A solid majority, 65%, opposed plans to place sales tax-like levies on services such as legal advice and car repairs. A proposal to flatten the income tax to make the state less dependent on the wealthy was opposed by 48% of voters and supported by just 33%. The nonpartisan panel had endorsed the argument made by many budget experts that income taxes from wealthy residents make state finances too erratic because they rise and fall dramatically as the stock market moves.
Another proposal being pushed by budget reformers, although not the commission, would ease the restrictions on property tax increases put in place three decades ago by Proposition 13. That idea was also unpopular. Just 30% of voters support such changes even if they would affect only commercial property and not residences.

Another L.A. Times report on the survey by Cathleen Decker indicates that there is an emerging opportunity for Democrats:

Read more…

Mike Lux has a HuffPo post on the House health care reform vote which provides some illuminating observations about the struggle to unify Democrats in support of the measure, including this tribute to Speaker Pelosi’s leadership:

Nancy Pelosi deserves enormous credit for finding a way to get this done. Like all progressives, I am deeply unhappy with the abortion language that was allowed to be voted into this bill. That language is unacceptable and has to be changed in conference committee. But I was looking at the vote count on Friday night too, and we really were done unless that vote was allowed. There were literally no good choices at that moment, because to let the bill fail or pull the bill from being voted on would have caused everything to get unraveled. We still have a very good chance at stripping this terribly restrictive anti-abortion language in conference committee, and need to keep fighting to do that.
On the final vote, the whipping process was intense and impressive. Democratic leaders I have known in the past have rarely played this kind of hardball, but some kneecaps were broken Saturday night to get these votes, and the Speaker did a masterful job of doing every little thing that needed to be done. She gave no passes to people, and she was very clear there would have been consequences to all who voted no. She got the job done.

After giving due credit to the leadership, Lux has a scold for both the single-payer and Blue Dog purists:

On the other hand, there are some Democrats I am appalled by. As a 30-year supporter of single-payer, and with full knowledge of the imperfections in this bill, I am angry that single-payer supporters Kucinich and Massa were happy to let any hope of health care reform for a generation die because the bill wasn’t everything we hoped it would be. To let another generation go by where tens of thousands of people die every year from being under-insured, and have the insurance companies continue to be allowed to screw people over preexisting conditions, lifetime caps, and recessions is just wrong.
Then there is the large collection of Blue Dogs who care nothing about the President or the Democratic Party’s top priority, let alone all those people without insurance. After all that Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi did for these reps in the 2006 and 2008 elections, all the money and time and staff and consultant help they gave them, for those Blue Dogs to walk away on the biggest issue, when they were needed the most, is a sign of their selfishness…They are also dumb about their own political fate: if Democrats don’t deliver, Democratic base voters will walk away in massive numbers, and it will be the people in marginal districts that will suffer the most.

Lux names and thanks the conservative Dem House Reps who supported the party on this crucial vote and looks to the future with confidence that Dems will soon pass a transformational health care reform bill, “making history when we do.”

Anyone flipping through CSPAN in between football games on Saturday had an opportunity to catch a pretty ugly sight. As Rep. Lois Capps spoke out in defense of women’s rights, Republican Congressman Tom Price repeatedly attempted to shout her down, citing parliamentary procedure. This comes just a week after conservatives forced a moderate woman out of the race for the congressional seat in NY-23.
Now POLITICO has a story on the GOP’s struggles in persuading women to run for office:

House Republican leaders have spent years trying to bolster female recruitment, often with frustrating results. While the number of Democratic women willing to challenge sitting Republicans keeps rising, recruiting GOP women to challenge Democratic incumbents is becoming harder.
From 1994 to 2004, the NRCC recruited an average of 20 women a cycle to challenge incumbents, and even they won only three of those seats during the entire decade.
In 2006 and 2008, the number of female challengers dropped to 13 and 18, respectively, with only one winner, Rep. Lynn Jenkins of Kansas.

But this isn’t a story that’s limited to Congress, which makes things all the more difficult for the GOP.
The trend is even more pronounced in the states, where Democrats control an overwhelming advantage in the legislatures that count women as a significant percentage of their members. There are 11 states where women represent at least 30 percent of the legislative districts, and we control both legislative chambers in 10 of them.
If the GOP really were serious about recruiting more women to office, perhaps that’s the place where they should start. But the example of Dede Scozzafava — who was a member of the New York Assembly before being chosen to run in last week’s special election — should raise a red flag for many.

James Oliphant’s Sunday L.A. Times article, “Healthcare Reform Bill Wouldn’t End Higher Premiums Based on Age” raises a touchy issue, which may entail significant political costs for Dems in the mid-terms and ’12, if some adjustment is not made. Oliphant, discussing current health care reform proposals, explains it thusly:

…The far-reaching clampdown on insurers leaves one highly controversial element untouched: the issue of charging higher premiums to older policyholders than to younger, presumably healthier consumers who are less likely to file costly claims…Under the provisions of the bill passed by the House on Saturday, as well as in the probable Senate version, insurers will be able to charge middle-aged consumers at least twice as much as they do younger customers.
…Experts use the arcane-sounding term “age rating,” and they discuss it in terms of ratios — as in a 2-1 formula or a 4-1 formula. Behind the jargon, the issue has huge financial and other implications for millions of Americans and the insurance industry.
For example, according to a recent Urban Institute study, if the age-rating ratio were set at 2 to 1, a typical 58-year-old policyholder would pay about $5,900 a year for health insurance. If the age rating were 4 to 1, the premium could jump to $8,650…Conversely, a 24-year-old would pay about $2,965 under a 2-1 rating system, but the premium could fall to $1,880 if the 4-1 ratio were used.
Advocates for older Americans argue that age rating amounts to discrimination, gives insurers a back-door way to deny coverage to those who need it most, and imposes serious hardship on many middle-aged people who are years away from being eligible for Medicare.
“Age is an immutable characteristic. I can’t make myself younger,” said Natale Zimmer, policy director for OWL, an advocacy group for middle-aged and older women. “To charge someone more simply based on age really amounts to discrimination.”
…Meanwhile, depending on the ratings, older people could have both higher costs and higher out-of-pocket expenses because they are more in need of services.

It’s a difficult challenge, determining fairness in health care premiums. Today’s older health care consumers were told when they were young that they paid relatively high premiums so their costs would be less when they got older. Now they are being told they have to pay more because they are older. Can’t blame them for feeling a little scammed.
The political implications are no less problematic. The importance of young voters in Obama’s election, underscored by the effect of their absence at the polls last Tuesday complicates the political trade-off between making younger voters happy vs. pleasing the older demographic, which turns out on election day at higher rates.
Add to this the fact that older voters are more likely to suffer the ravages of last year’s economic meltdown, in which approximately one-third of pension assets disappeared for most workers who had significant pension holdings. Younger workers will have more time to re-accumulate the missing third, while older workers are more likely to get stuck with the loss. This will not make for happy campers in the older-aged demographic, and unless something is done, incumbents will likely pay the price.
Thus far, Democrats have not been culpable in the rip-off of older workers. It’s been mostly a Republican thing. But if health ‘reform’ that increases costs to older voters is enacted, all bets are off. Conversely, Democrats need a much higher profile as champions of pension reform and moderating health care out-of-pocket costs and premiums paid by older consumers. Assuming they will not react politically to a triple-screwing is wishful thinking, bordering on political suicide.

Amidst general pleasure over the House´s passage of health reform legislation Saturday night, there´s also progressive angst over two issues: the narrowness of the vote, which leaves little or no margin for error when the conference committee report comes up, and the passage of the Stupak Amendment, which goes much further than previous House or Senate bills in restricting the ability of consumers to purchase abortion coverage in the new exchanges.
The first concern is probably overwrought. Speaker Pelosi clearly whipped her vote, and gave a free pass to vulnerable Democrats to vote “no.” Since the final version is likely to be less subject to conservative attack than the House bill, Pelosi should be able to hold all 219 Democrats and perhaps add a few.
The Stupak Amendment is more problematic, since 64 Democrats voted for it. But given the arcane nature of the differences between Stupak and earlier anti-abortion provisions, it’s unclear that any Democrats who voted for the House bill would vote against the conference report with a slightly less obnixious anti-abortion provision.
In any event, we should take a deep breath right now and appreciate the historic nature of the House vote, which didn’t look that secure until right before it occurred. Aside from its substantive importance, the vote should prove helpful in diverting the news media from ludicrous overinterpretation of the NJ and VA gubernatorial results.

If you suspect that the oft-repeated meme that last week’s elections were about local concerns, rather than national politics is a bit overstated, The New Republic has a couple of posts that add some clarity. First up is
WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr., author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who explains:

Democrats will highlight Obama’s continued strong approval ratings in New Jersey as part of their larger argument that these contests were local in character. But the disaffection in both Virginia and New Jersey–and the unexpected narrowness of New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s re-election margin, despite his record-breaking campaign spending — should worry all incumbents, particularly governors seeking re-election next year. And after their strong showings in the last two national elections, Democrats happen to constitute a large share of the pool of incumbents.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, as he made his way to Corzine’s concession speech at a hotel here, said he sees an electorate in a dark mood. “There are two things happening,” the New Jersey Democrat noted. “One is fear. The other is punishment. Voters fear for themselves and their families, and they want to punish anyone who got them into this condition.”
What Lautenberg underscored is a spirit far different than the buoyant confidence Barack Obama inspired a year ago. And the Obama change-agents, particularly the young, were notably absent from the voting booths this week. In Virginia, a state Obama carried comfortably last year, a majority of those who showed up to vote on Tuesday said they had backed John McCain. This much more Republican electorate produced a GOP landslide all the way down the Virginia ballot.
That is the fact from this week that Democrats would be fools to ignore. It’s not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama’s party…for the moment, the thrill is gone from politics, and that is very dangerous for the mainstream progressive movement that Obama promised to build.

TNR Sr. Editor John B. Judis also cites Democratic base-neglect, and the economy in particular. According to Judis,

There are two reasons, I think, for the lack of enthusiasm. The first is the continuing economic slump (according to some economists, we can no longer say “recession.”) As I have argued before, rising unemployment almost inevitably makes presidents unpopular. And if unemployment rises above ten percent, and stays there for 2010, the Democrats are going to be in trouble in 2010. Their base will not come out, and swing voters will decide to take a chance on the other party.
The economists in the White House may have good grounds for believing that unemployment will begin to fall by next June without the equivalent of a second stimulus. But if they don’t believe this, or are not sure about it, then the Obama administration better find ways to dole out more money. Increases in spending like this will cause howls of disbelief from the far right and from the would-be centrists, but these kind of measures–and not a further urge to compromise–are what will help the party’s prospects in 2010.
The second reason has more to do with the administration’s political style. While making much of his community organizing background, Obama has failed to keep the Democratic–and more broadly, liberal–base enthusiastic and committed. There is simply no feeling of a political movement or a crusade among the Democratic grassroots the way there was, say, among Republicans and conservatives during a comparable time in Ronald Reagan’s first term.

And the best response, according to Judis:

…Obama has cultivated an insider style of politics aimed at Congress rather than the public. This is not to say that Obama should hold out for a single-payer health insurance program or nationalize the banks. Like Reagan, Obama should be ready to compromise–and also, obviously, to propose actions that will actually work. But in putting forward their programs, Obama and the White House have to begin to wage more of a public campaign that touches upon the ideals of social justice that got him into office. He has to make clear to voters and to what remains of a political movement that he is not just on their side, but fighting for them. He hasn’t quite done so, and that is one reason for the difficulties he and the Democrats encountered in this month’s elections.

With respect to next year’s mid-terms, the challenge to re-ignite the base is clear for Obama, the Democratic Party — and progressive activists alike.

Now that the results from NJ and VA have been masticated for a few days, it´s pretty obvious that the most ominous–but potentially reversible–factor in the dual Democratic defeats was a massive change in the composition of the electorate. According to exit polls, under-30 voters represented 21 percent of the Virginia electorate in 2008, and only 10 percent last Tuesday. And in NJ, the under-30 share of the vote dropped from 17 percent in 2008 to 8 percent in 2009.
African-American turnout didn´t drop so much; in VA, it declined from 20% of the electorate in 2009 to 16 percent this year, and in NJ, it actually went up marginally as a share of the electorate. But since turnout generally dropped, it´s clear that 2008´s massive African-American turnout for the Democratic ticket was not replicated.
With Democratic fears about 2010 already heavily focused on the typically older and whiter composition of midterm electorates, the NJ-VA results simply confirm what we already knew, but at a level of intensity that is surprisiing (though Corzine´s general unpopularity and Deeds´ questionable campaign tactics are responsible for some of the problem).
The question going forward, of course, is why the Obama Coalition turnout was so weak, and what, if anything, Demcrats can do to reverse this trend during the next year.
And that´s where the relative clarity over the numbers breaks down into varying interpretations over the implications.
Unsurprisingly, many self-conscious Democratic progressives think that Obama´s “centrism” has “discouraged the Democratic base,” much as, they believe, Bill Clinton did so in his first two years, leading to the Republican landslide of 1994. In this view, the administration and congressional Democrats need to forget once and for all about “bipartisanship,” congressional compromises, Blue-Dog-coddling, or deficit worries, and plunge ahead with a boldly progressive agenda that revitalizes the 2008 coalition. This interpretation, of course, collides with the counsel of those focused on the disastrous performance of 2009 Democratic gubernatorial candidates among independents, who are (often falsely) assumed to be “centrist” in orientation.
Others focus on the mechanics of voter mobilization, and suggest that what most needs to happen in the next year is a rebuilding of the Obama ¨”machine” that helped boost minority and youth turnout to historic levels in 2008.
And a third theory is simply that conditions in the country, and the enduring unpopularity of both political parties, has eroded the Democratic vote in those segments of the electorate least likely to vote (young voters being most conspicious in that category). According to this theory, a record of forward momentum in Congress (on health care and climate change) and on the economy is most crucial in reducing the fallloff in pro-Obama turnout and the carnage among independents.
The first and third theories point in different directions, since a ¨”bold progressive¨ direction may not be consistent with congressional accomplishments (aiming instead at a Trumanesque placement of blame on Republican obstruction and extremism). And both theories may not sufficiently account for the difficulty in transferring Obama´s relatively strong approval ratings in the potential electorate as a whole to actual voters deciding between actual Democratic and Republican candidates competing across the country in individual races. As Jonathan Singer pointed out this week at MyDD, one scenario going forward is that Barack Obama could become a latter-day Ike, incapable of transferring personal popularity to his party (though split-ticket voting has vastly declined since the 1950s).
Democrats need to debate and sort out these theories of last week´s turnout calamity. But one this is clear: a continuing focus on the dangerous extremism of the GOP is consistent with every theory, particularly if, as is likely, Republicans go into 2010 hoping to reclaim control of the House, and head towards 2012 with a presidential field tilting to the crazy Right. You can argue all day about whether Obama or congressional Democrats have dashed the hopes of many 2008 voters for dramatic change in Washington. But 2008 Obama voters who are made abundantly aware that today´s Republicans want to govern from a position well to the Right of that of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay are a lot more likely to go to the polls next November no matter how sanguine they are about the administration´s record.

If you like a blog that both skewers low-watt political commentary and provides an important reality check about a much misunderstood political category, read Nate Silver’s post “Independent Voters and Empty Explanations” at FiveThirtyEight.com.
Silver begins by quoting from articles by writers who should know better, including Karl Rove, all in agreement that ‘Independent voters’ hurt the Dems in Tuesday’s elections — to which Silver responds:

This is what passes for analysis nowadays.
Why did Democrats lose in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday? Because independent voters moved against them, say the pundits…This is true, insofar as it goes; Democrats lost independents nearly 2:1 in the gubernatorial race in Virginia, and by a 25-point margin in New Jersey.
But it doesn’t really tell us very much. It’s a lot like saying: the Yankees won the Game 6 last night because they scored more runs than the Phillies. Or: the unemployment rate went up because there were fewer jobs.

Silver then provides a reminder course in J-101:

But in politics, it’s not the proximate cause we’re interested in but the ultimate one. Yes: independents went mostly for Republicans in New Jersey and Virginia (we could have inferred this without having to look at the exit poll). Yes, this “caused” the Democratic defeats. But what caused the independents to move against the Democrats? That’s what we’re really interested in, since that’s what will have implications for future elections.
Too often in “mainstream” political analysis, once it is pointed out that independents have swung in one or another direction, the analysis stops. The pundit inserts his own opinion about what caused the independent vote to shift (“Obama’s far-reaching proposals and mounting spending”, says the Washington Post), without citing any evidence. It’s a neat trick, and someone who isn’t paying attention is liable to conclude that the pundit has actually said something interesting.

Ouch, sayeth the punditry. Now, some poly sci for grown-ups from Silver’s post:

Part of the problem is that ‘independents’ are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:
1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.
These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as ‘independents’. But that’s getting away from the point. Independent voters are treated as a cause, when all that they really are is a symptom. The key is in figuring out what ails the patient.

If anything more pertinent has ever been said about “independent voters,” do share.

Others may dither, but Thomas Schaller cuts to the chase today over at FiveThirtyEight.com with his post “The Big 2010 Question“:

…The big question for both parties–and particularly the Democrats–is one I raised this morning on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show: How replicable is Barack Obama’s precedent-setting presidential coalition in an off-year election?
It’s easy to just say, well, it’s not replicable. Of course it isn’t exactly replicable. The so-called “Obama surge” voters clearly will not turn out at the same rates, and thus not constitute the same proportion of the electorate a year from now that they did a year ago. So the question really is, To what degree, along some continuum between the 2008 presidential electorate and the ones from the 2009 elections this week, will 2010 look like one or other other? And looking backward may provide poor guidance: Because there’s never been an electorate assembled like the one Obama did in 2008, we’ve also never had a post-Obama midterm cycle.

Schaller then asks what may be an even bigger question, this one directed at Team Obama:

…I want to start this series of posts with a very simple question that is, more or less, directed at the Obama White House political operation, and can be rather simply stated: One year out, what are you planning to do in order to safeguard your newly-acquired congressional, gubernatorial and even state legislative majorities?

Schaller continues with a series of thought-provoking ‘sub-questions’ regarding: agenda-setting; candidates; contacting and turnout; and messaging, followed by a lengthening list of reader comments, some of which are equally perceptive. This one’s a must-read.

The announcement of double-digit unemployment is usually an automatic meme-generator for the out-of-office party, so we can expect a lot of Fox News and wingnut jabber about how it’s all President Obama’s fault. It probably won’t matter much to them that most thoughtful voters will connect it to the Bush meltdown.
Alert Dems will respond that this is the 22nd consecutive month of job loss in America, so the trend started at the end of ’07, when the ‘mission accomplished’-‘heckuva job Brownie’ guy was running things. Dems will also remind the commentators that it’s amazing the rate isn’t worse considering we are only a year from the worst economic meltdown since the crash of ’29. More to the point, it would be worse, if not for the Obama/Democratic stimulus, and it would be a lot better, if not for the GOP-led opposition to the stronger stimulus most dems wanted.
As Paul Krugman argues in his New York Times column:

…early this year, President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down.
Thus the stimulus bill fell far short of what many economists — including some in the administration itself — considered appropriate. According to The New Yorker, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimated that a package of more than $1.2 trillion was justified.

Krugman is pessimistic about the president’s prospects for securing a significant cut in unemployment before the mid-terms, a point of view shared by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in his Salon.com post earlier this week:

If Obama and the Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress in the midterms, it will be because the president learned only the most superficial lesson of the Clinton years. Healthcare reform is critically important. But when one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, getting the nation back to work is more so.

In today’s L.A. Times, Reich is quoted saying of the jobless rate announcement,

It’s an important political threshold…the 10% is going to give Republicans more ammunition to criticize the [Obama] administration and force the hand of the administration to at least appear to be taking additional steps to remedy the situation.

The one encouraging sign in the unemployment report is that hires of temp workers are up, usuallly a harbinger of hiring for more stable jobs.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, declared the “recession is very likely over” in September. If he’s got any leverage left to help make good on his pronouncement, now would be a good time to deploy it.