I don’t have a lot to say about the unusual “debate”–via back to back speeches at different locations–between the President of the United States and the former Vice President of the United States in Washington today. You can read them here and here, and judge for yourself, or check out the many assessments on the internet (e.g., this early one from Jacob Heilbrunn calling it a rout for Obama).
More interesting to me is the way Team Obama created this “event” in the first place, showing how smart tactics can promote smart strategy.
Remember where we were just yesterday on the “anti-terrorism” issues that were the centerpiece of the Obama-Cheney “debate.” The President was getting hit from every direction on his handling of detainee polices, investigations of interrogation practices, and increasingly, his Iraq and Afghanistan strategies. It seemed nearly everyone was calling him a wimp, a hypocrite, or both, from their varying perspectives. The U.S. Senate had dealt him an embarrassing bipartisan blow on funding for shutting down Gitmo.
It’s hard to imagine a better “reframer” of these issues than a “debate” with Dick Cheney, a deeply unpopular man who is determined to defend the very worst practices of the Bush administration, in a manner that reminds Americans–progressives and moderate independents alike–exactly why they voted for Barack Obama, even if they are disappointed with him on this or that issue. And aside from the specific issues in discussion, there is simply no downside for the White House or for Democrats in keeping Cheney front-and-center as the snarling voice and brooding face of the GOP.
If, in addition to everything else, the initial perception that Obama cleaned Cheney’s clock is broadly shared, you’d have to consider this a tactical and strategic ten-strike for the White House, at a time, and on a topic, where he needed one. The next “frame” (sorry for the bowling metaphor, but I couldn’t resist!) could produce different results, but it was a good day’s work for the President of the United States.
Month: May 2009
It has unfortunately now become clear that despite certain promising trends in the December elections in Iraq, in general the situation is sharply deteriorating. The Sunni “awakening councils” – whose pacification was a critical part of the reduction in violence — have not been paid since last winter when responsibility for their payments was passed to the Shia army. Instead of the jobs and assimilation into the Shia-dominated army that they were promised, many “awakening council” members have been arrested and others have gone into hiding. Bombings have once again become regular and frequent events. All the major religious and ethnic groups are preparing for a renewal of fighting.
It now appears that even a “best-case” scenario for Iraq is a continuing level of sectarian violence that resembles past eras in Northern Ireland. The “worst-case” scenario is a return to the full scale, grotesquely violent ethnic civil war of 2006-2007.
The Republicans, because they are out of power (and committed to their “take no prisoners” propaganda strategy) are already beginning to prepare utterly opportunistic attacks on Obama and the Democrats regardless of what actually happens in Iraq.
• If Obama decides to slow the withdrawal of troops from Iraq (assuming this can be negotiated with the Iraqi government) Republicans will criticize him for failing to achieve a clear “victory”–i.e. to completely suppress the ethnic violence.
• If Obama sticks to his current plan for withdrawal while conditions worsen, Republicans will attack him for “losing” the war in Iraq that the surge had “won”.
This propaganda strategy requires almost no effort for the GOP. It is, in effect, a perfect “no- lose” situation for them. They just have to avoid inadvertently insulting the work of General Petraeus and the military while they attempt to assign the entire blame for whatever transpires onto Obama and the Democrats.
What should Democrats do in response? The first and most urgent challenge will be to present a unified and coherent response to the Republican attacks and to avoid the appearance of internal disarray. This will not be easy because there are at least three quite distinct strategic views about Iraq within the Democratic Party — and more if one includes the formerly Republican neoconservative military strategists who — in an extraordinary case of instant mass epiphany — all rediscovered the virtues of principled political nonpartisanship around 11:03 P.M. last November 4th (as one observer acutely noted, “they did not flee the sinking Republican ship; they teleported”).
But, even as Democrats continue to debate alternative military strategies among themselves, they can, without contradiction, also present a unified response to Republican attacks. The basic theme of this response should be that there is a fundamental difference between responsible and irresponsible criticism. Obama, General Petraeus, and the other military advisors face deeply difficult, “no easy answer” trade-offs regarding how to allocate limited troops and deal with deeply rooted interethnic violence. Republicans who want to criticize Obama’s strategy therefore have an obligation to confront key questions like the following:
• In order to deal with the current shortage of available troops, should the U.S. bring back the draft? Should it hire 50,000 or more additional paid mercenaries to fill the gaps? If a Republican is not in favor of these steps, then he or she must explain where the troops will be found to carry out any broadened U.S. mission before he or she criticizes Obama.
• To deal with rising ethnic violence in Iraq, should the U.S. resume the payments to the “Awakening Councils, even if the Maliki government objects? Should the U.S. redeploy increased numbers of American troops to Iraq’s major cities to maintain peace between Shia and Sunni? If not, then Republican critics must explain exactly what alternative strategy it is that they propose before they criticize Obama. Demanding “victory” is not an alternative military strategy – it is a goal.
When Republicans attack Obama without honestly answering these kinds of questions — as they most surely will — Dems should consistently make three parallel points about the difference between sincere debates over military strategy and the following key phrase — “irresponsible political posturing”:
• Partisan demands for “victory” or “success” which do not include a realistic plan to provide the troops and resources needed to achieve those goals are irresponsible political posturing.
• Partisan accusations that Obama’s strategy “is failing” or has “failed” which do not offer a coherent alternative strategy are irresponsible political posturing.
• Partisan attacks on Obama and the Democrats as showing “weakness” but which offer no alternative strategy are irresponsible political posturing.
In short, Democrats should respond to Republican attacks on Obama by insisting that Republicans have a patriotic obligation to the troops and to the county to offer serious and responsible military alternatives rather than empty partisan rhetoric. The American people understand that there are no easy, magic solutions in Iraq. If the Republican “alternative” is to pretend that magic solutions exist, they will not receive the support of most Americans.
Democrats should as their very first response to Republican attacks consistently and repeatedly assert the basic demand that Republicans avoid “irresponsible political posturing” on this issue. Democrats should insist that if Republicans engage in this kind of shamelessly irresponsible behavior, they do not even deserve to be answered; they deserve to be condemned and ignored.
It didn’t get much more than a day’s attention in the MSM, but the announcement over the weekend that the President was appointing Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as U.S. ambassador to China has created all sorts of insider buzz about the 2012 and 2016 presidential contests and the future of the Republican Party.
Huntsman was by all accounts carefully preparing a 2012 presidential bid, and was rapidly emerging as the one Republican that Democrats feared. Instead, he’s heading to Beijing as an employee of the Obama administration.
Was this, as many commentators asserted, a shrewd maneuver by the White House to “sideline” a potentially dangerous foe? Or, as others suggested, had Huntsman independently decided to cool his presidential ambitions until 2016, when a chastened GOP might turn to him after wearing out its current lurch to the hard right? Or were both strategic considerations in play?
It’s hard to say. With excellent timing, The New Republic has published a long profile of Huntsman by Zvika Krieger that lays out all the relevant facts, including Huntsman’s rivalry with fellow-Mormon Mitt Romney and the unhappy conservative-activist reaction to the governor’s recent endorsement of civil unions for gays and lesbians. You get the impression that perhaps Huntsman seized on the China gig (for which his background strongly prepared him) as an opportunity to sidestep a decision about duking it out with Romney and Palin and Huckabee and Sanford and Lord knows who else in the pursuit of a nomination that turned out to be worthless, much as his friend John McCain did in 2008.
In any event, the payoffs to both sides in the Obama-Huntsman partnership are pretty clear. The President gets a savvy Mandarin-speaking ambassador who can put a bipartisan cast on his efforts to deal with a vast number of U.S.-China issues, from Iran and Darfur to global financial reform to carbon emissions reductions. Huntsman gets a chance to burnish his foreign policy credentials and stay out of the latest struggle for the soul of the GOP. At the moment, it looks like a win-win proposition, particularly for Barack Obama, who will be perfectly happy if there is no “moderate” voice in the 2012 Republican field.
In a step that will be interpreted as a triumph for what passes as Republican “moderation” these days, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution (at a special session called for this purpose) today that accuses the President and the Democratic Party of “pushing our country towards socialism,” but does not specifically demand that Democrats begin calling themselves the “Democrat Socialist Party,” which was how it was originally worded.
Since all the “whereas” clauses in the resolution seem to have been left intact, it doesn’t appear that Republicans have changed their minds about calling Democrats “socialists.” They’ve just abandoned the sophomoric idea of demanding a party name change, complete with cropping “Democratic” to “Democrat,” an odd if ancient GOP ritual.
But maybe that’s too simplistic. To get a sense of Republican “thinking” on this subject, it’s useful to watch a video put together by the American News Project’s Harry Hanbury after interviewing RNC members at a state chair’s meeting yesterday. Here’s what California National Committeeman Shawn Steel had to say:
One point of view is that calling them a “socialist party” is not quite accurate; they’re more like a “national socialist party” the way the Nazis were. Well, I don’t know if that faction is going to prevail or not.
Another group is thinking that “socialism” kind of obscures the real issue of what Democrats are doing. The chairman of Tennessee said it’s really not a matter of “socialism,” but it’s more like “fascism” where the government controls the corporations but the corporations are still semi-private.
So maybe for some RNC members it was a matter not of avoiding name-calling, but of reacing agreement on exactly the right name to call. “Nazi” and “fascist” do have a bit stronger connotation than mere “socialist.”
And there seems to be some disagreement as well about exactly the right label among the all-powerful conservative activist base, at least according to one of its longtime leaders, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie. He’s been conducting an online survey for the last week via his Conservative HQ site, and here’s how his self-identified-conservative respondents break down in describing “President Obama’s political philosophy”: Socialist: 46%; Marxist 24%; Communist: 11%; Fascist:10%; Liberal: 5%; Progressive: 2%.
No, I think it’s definitely premature to say any kind of “moderates” in the GOP have had any kind of “victory” when it comes to thinking about the party that waxed them in the last two election cycles.
This item from the TDS staff was originally published on May 19, 2009
In his May 18 ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress (CAP) website, Ruy Teixeira expounds on an extremely encouraging development for progressive Democrats, the dawning of the “millennial generation” — those born between 1978 and 2000 — as a political force. As Teixeira explains:
Between now and 2018, the number of Millennials of voting age will be increasing by about 4 and a half million a year and Millennial eligible voters by about 4 million a year. And in 2020, the first presidential election where all Millennials will have reached voting age, this generation will be 103 million strong, of which about 90 million will be eligible voters. Those 90 million Millennial eligible voters will represent just under 40 percent of America’s eligible voters.
Last November’s election was the first in which the 18- to 29-year-old age group was drawn exclusively from the Millennial generation, and they gave Obama a whopping 34-point margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. This compares to only a 9-point margin for Kerry in 2004. Behind this striking result is a deeper story of a generation with progressive views in all areas and big expectations for change that will fundamentally reshape our electorate.
Teixeira references another new CAP study “The Political Ideology of the Millennial Generation,” by John Halpin and Karl Agne, which indicates
Overall, Millennials expressed far more agreement with the progressive than conservative arguments. Indeed, of the 21 values and beliefs garnering majority support in the survey, only four can be classified as conservative. Moreover, six of the top seven statements in terms of level of agreement were progressive statements. These statements included such items as the need for government investment in education, infrastructure, and science; the need for a transition to clean energy; the need for America to play a leading role in addressing climate change; the need to improve America’s image around the world; and the need for universal health coverage..,.When asked in the 2008 National Election Study whether we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems or whether the free market can handle these problems without government being involved, Millennials, by a margin of 78 to 22 percent, demonstrated an overwhelming preference for strong government.
On May 13th, David Madland and Teixeira had a more in-depth post, “New Progressive America: The Millennial Generation,” on the political attitudes of this important demographic group. First, the demographic explosion:
We can start with the sheer size of this generation. Between now and 2018, the number of Millennials of voting age will increase by about four and a half million a year, and Millennial eligible voters will increase by about 4 million a year. In 2020—the first presidential election where all Millennials will have reached voting age—this generation will be 103 million strong, of which about 90 million will be eligible voters. Those 90 million Millennial eligible voters will represent just under 40 percent of America’s eligible voters.
The diversity of this generation is as impressive as its size. Right now, Millennial adults are 60 percent white and 40 percent minority (18 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 5 percent Asian, and 3 percent other). And the proportion of minority Millennial adults will rise to 41 percent in 2012, 43 percent in 2016, and 44 percent in 2020 (21 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 6 percent Asian, and 3 percent other). This shift should make the Millennial generation even more firmly progressive as it fully enters the electorate, since minorities are the most strongly progressive segment among Millennials.
This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 14, 2009
We’ve all been interested in the relatively high approval ratings President Obama has maintained during his first few months in office, which seem to have resulted from a combination of actual approval of his policies, appreciation of his leadership style, and the mistrust earned by Republican critics, this last factor deepened by Republican extremism. Another measurement of public sentiment, a rising “right track” number, is a bit harder to analyze, since it probably reflects optimism about the future more than approbation of current conditions.
The big question, of course, is whether that optimism is based on expectations of immediate improvements in the economic situation, and if so, how much progress the Obama administration needs to show, and how quickly.
John Judis of TNR has an interesting analysis of these dynamics out today, leading to a prediction that the President’s approval ratings are likely to drop significantly in the autumn unless the “green shoots” of economic revival grow faster than appears probable at present.
I personally think his prediction is debatable, precisely because it’s unclear how much patience with Obama’s agenda is harbored by those independents (and even a significant minority of Republicans) in the population who spell the difference between high and middling approval ratings. It’s also unclear how much fresh controversy will be generated by the budget fight, and particularly the health care and climate change debates, where Obama’s opponents don’t seem to have obtained much political traction so far.
Having said that, the point made by Judis that should cause the most concern to Democrats involves Congress more than the public at large:
Obama’s real test of leadership may not turn out to have been his first 100 days, but those 100 or 200 days that begin sometime late next fall. If unemployment is still rising, will he still be able to convince Congress, which will have become grey-haired over growing deficits, to pass another equally large stimulus program? If the bank bailout doesn’t merely get a “C,” but fails, will he be able to resist pressure from the American Bankers Association and take the next step of nationalizing failing banks?
The general consensus of economists that a second stimulus bill may prove necessary, and the certainty that some action other than additional subsidies would be the next step to deal with the financial crisis, both create large dilemmas for the administration if economic conditions don’t begin to improve. As Judis concludes: “One can only wait and hope.”
Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Alan Abramowitz, who is Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of the TDS Advisory Board.
Is support for abortion rights hurting Democratic candidates at the polls and, if so, would abandoning the Party’s traditional pro-choice position help Democrats win over pro-life voters? These questions are being raised with increasing urgency following the release of new Gallup and Pew polls that supposedly show a substantial decrease in support for the pro-choice position among the American public.
The findings of the Gallup and Pew polls are rather surprising given the stability of public attitudes on the abortion issue over several decades. Moreover, a number of other polls conducted before and after the 2008 election found no dramatic change in public opinion on this issue. For example, the two most respected academic surveys of the American public, the General Social Survey and the National Election Study, found no decline in support for abortion rights between 2004 and 2008. More importantly, the evidence from the 2008 National Election Study indicates that Barack Obama’s support for abortion rights was a net plus for his candidacy and that attempts by Democrats to win over pro-life voters by abandoning the Party’s support for abortion rights would probably do more harm than good.
Every four years since 1980, the American National Election Study has asked a sample of eligible voters to choose one of four positions on the issue of abortion: abortion should “never be permitted,” abortion should be permitted “only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger,” abortion should be permitted “for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established,” or “a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of choice.”
The results in 2008 were very similar to those in other recent election years: 13 percent of voters supported a total ban on abortion, 26 percent supported allowing abortion only under highly restrictive conditions (rape, incest or danger to the woman’s life), 19 percent supported allowing abortion under less restrictive conditions but only if a there was a clearly established need, and 42 percent supported allowing abortion as a matter of choice. For analytical purposes, I combined the first two options, banning abortion completely and allowing it only under highly restrictive conditions, into a single pro-life category. I left the rather vague third option, allowing abortion only if a need had been clearly established, as a middle category, and I used the fourth option, allowing abortion as a matter of choice, as the pro-choice category. This resulted in 39 percent of voters being classified as pro-life, 19 percent being classified in the middle position, and 42 percent being classified as pro-choice.
There was a strong relationship between abortion position and presidential vote in 2008. Pro-life voters supported John McCain over Barack Obama by decisive 62 percent to 38 percent margin. But pro-choice voters supported Obama over McCain by an even more decisive margin of 73 percent to 27 percent. Those in the relatively small moderate group favored McCain over Obama by a fairly narrow 55 percent to 45 percent margin.
According to the NES data, pro-choice voters supporting Obama made up 30 percent of the electorate while pro-life voters supporting McCain made up only 24 percent of the electorate. These results suggest that Barack Obama’s support for abortion rights helped him more than it hurt him in 2008. Before accepting this conclusion, however, we need to control for the influence of partisanship because opinions on abortion are strongly correlated with party identification and 90 percent of Democratic and Republican identifiers voted for their own party’s presidential candidate in 2008.
In order to evaluate the impact of the abortion issue on the performance of the presidential candidates, we need to know whether partisan defection rates were affected by opinions on abortion. Table 1 displays the relationship between abortion opinion and partisan defection among Democratic and Republican identifiers (including leaning independents) who had a clear abortion position. About one-fourth of each party’s voters were cross-pressured on the issue of abortion: 27 percent of Democratic voters took the pro-life position and 25 percent of Republican voters took the pro-choice position. However, the results in Table 1 show that pro-choice Republicans were more than twice as likely to defect as pro-life Democrats. Pro-life Democrats were only slightly more likely to defect than pro-choice Democrats but pro-choice Republicans were much more likely to defect than pro-life Republicans. In fact, the relationship between abortion opinion and defection was statistically significant only for Republicans.
Based on these results, the abortion issue appears to have produced a small net gain in support for Obama in 2008. Pro-choice Republicans who voted for Obama made up 2.6 percent of the electorate while pro-life Democrats who voted for McCain made up 1.4 percent of the electorate, resulting in a net gain of 1.2 percent of the vote for Obama.
Some critics of the Democratic Party’s current position on abortion have suggested that the Party could make substantial inroads among pro-life voters who now support the GOP by abandoning its support for abortion rights. The evidence from the 2008 NES displayed in Table 2 raises serious doubts about the viability of such a strategy, however. Republican voters who were pro-life on abortion tended to take conservative positions on many other issues: the overwhelming majority described themselves as conservative, opposed marriage or civil unions for same sex couples, opposed a larger government role in providing health insurance, supported the war in Iraq and approved of President Bush’s job performance.
Based on their ideological identification and other issue positions, there appears to be little likelihood that pro-life Republicans would respond positively to appeals from Democratic candidates on the issue of abortion. Moreover, in addition to alienating the pro-choice majority of Democrats, such a shift would also alienate the pro-choice minority of Republicans who appear to be much more open to appeals from Democratic candidates on a wide range of issues. These findings suggest that rather than abandoning the Democratic Party’s traditional support for abortion rights in a futile pursuit of pro-life Republican voters, Democratic candidates would be better off focusing their efforts on appealing to Republicans who support the Democratic Party’s traditional position on abortion.
This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 13, 2009
Like a lot of non-Rush-Limbaugh listeners, when I first heard that a large faction of Republican National Committee members was pushing for a formal resolution calling on GOPers to start referring to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party,” I thought it was a puerile joke that the adults in the Republican Party would quash.
Apparently not. According to sources speaking to Politico‘s Roger Simon, the Republican National Committee will approve the resolution at a special meeting of the RNC called for that very purpose.
Here’s how the sponsor of the resolution, Jeff Kent from Washington State, explained its rationale a few weeks ago:
There is nothing more important for our party than bringing the truth to bear on the Democrats’ march to socialism. Just like Ronald Reagan identifying the U.S.S.R. as the evil empire was the beginning of the end to Soviet domination, we believe the American people will reject socialism when they hear the truth about how the Democrats are bankrupting our country and destroying our freedom and liberties.
I don’t know what’s more offensive: the idea of identifying the Democratic Party, which the American people elected to run Congress and the executive branch just six months ago, with the Soviet Union, or the idea that Ronald Reagan brought about the collapse of the Soviet bloc through a magic spell. All in all, the highly adolescent nature of Kent’s thinking is illustrated not only by this comic-book historical revisionism, but by his insistence on retaining in his version of the “Evil Empire” the little-boy-taunt of dropping the last syllable from the adjective “Democratic.”
The St. Paul of the “Democrat Socialist” rebranding, Indiana RNC member James Bopp, Jr., sent an encyclical around further explaining its purpose. Here’s a pertinent passage:
The threat to our country from the Obama administration cannot be underestimated. They are proceeding pell mell to nationalize major industries, to exponentially increase the size, power and intrusiveness of the federal government, to undermine free enterprise and free markets, to raise taxes to a confiscatory level, to strap future generations with enormous unsustainable debt, to debase our currency, to destroy traditional values and embrace a culture of death, and to weaken our national defense and retreat from the war on terror. Unless stopped, we will not recognize our country in a few short years.
Yeah, I think the 60-plus-percent of Americans who approve of the job President Obama is doing are pretty happy with the plan to “destroy traditional values and embrace a culture of death.” Or perhaps they don’t understand that returning the top marginal tax rate to where it was ten years ago, and at a far lower level than in those fine days when Ronald Reagan abolished the Soviet Union, represents “confiscatory” taxes. Who knows, maybe they even think that we don’t need to deploy barbaric torture methods to fight terrorists.
It’s easy to mock this stuff, but it’s actually pretty significant: we are not talking about some radio blowhard or self-promoting Fox “personality” in this case, but the Republican National Committee. If, as Simon predicts, it approves this resolution, Republicans who like to think of themselves as serious people need to feel some real shame. Comparing the Democratic Party to the leadership of a totalitarian society, and treating it as an enemy of the country, isn’t just ridiculous: it’s an incitement to crazy people to act crazy or worse.
In an important new survey, Democracy Corps shows that the Republican advantage on trust in handling national security issues, which has been a staple of American politics since the Vietnam War era, has vanished, at least for the moment, in no small part due to strong approval of President Obama’s policies.
The shift has been dramatic, particularly in certain key demographic groups:
Less than six years ago, in August 2003, Democrats lagged by 29 points on this key metric, effectively ruling them out as a credible alternative on national security for many voters. The shift has been especially dramatic for key likely voter segments:
* Moderates. Self-described moderates favored the GOP on national security by 25 points in 2003, but now favor Democrats by a decisive 23 points, 54 to 31 percent.
* Women, especially unmarried women. Women trusted the GOP more on national security by 20 points in 2003; now they trust the Democrats more by 17 points. The shift is the strongest among unmarried women.
* Younger voters. Voters under age 30 trusted Republicans more on national security by a 27 point margin in 2003; now they trust Democrats more by 18 points, 50 to 32 percent. This strong margin of trust among younger voters could signal the start of a lasting generational shift on this set of issues.
Barack Obama’s role in eliminating the “national security gap” is pretty clear. As the DCorps analysis shows, the President’ job approval rating on national security (64% favorable) is actually higher than his overall job approval rating (58%). And given efforts by Republicans led by Dick Cheney to claim that the new administration has already made Americans less safe, it’s striking that “by a strong 48 to 26 percent margin, likely voters believe that President Obama is doing better, rather than worse, than President George W. Bush when it comes to national security policy.”
Obama is earning high approval marks on an array of specific policies as well, including his handling of Afghanistan (68%), Iraq (67%), “leading America’s military” (65%) and “fighting terrorism” (61%).
There are some significant areas where public skepticism of the administration holds, most notably towards his stated goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. As is well known from other survey, a slight majority of Americans are also unsure about categorically ruling out torture of terrorism suspects in certain circumstances.
All in all, the survey is very good news for Democrats, and also provides yet another chunk of evidence undermining Republican claims that George W. Bush’s spending policies are the only source of their current political problems. Bush and company managed to turn national security from an enormous source of strength to a handicap in a few short years. President Obama and Democrats generally are taking advantage of that opportunity.
You may not have heard about it, but they’re having an election in California today, with some local contests, but also with a statewide batch of ballot propositions designed to implement the budget agreement reached in February, after much yelling and screaming, between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators (with a few key votes from Republicans).
Pretty much everybody concedes that all but one of the propositions–one that freezes legislators’ salaries when the state budget is out of balance–are very likely to go down when the ballots are counted (and given the very low turnout, that won’t take long).
The central proposition–titled 1A–sought to solidify the budget deal by extending a tax increase for two years while imposing a limit on state spending and strengthening the state’s “rainy’day” fund. It was advertised, in reasonably heavy TV ads financed mainly by the two major teachers unions, as representing an end to California’s perpetual budget crisis. Instead, it’s being perceived as a symbol of the budget crisis, as most Republicans, some Democrats, and notably two public employee unions (SEIU and AFSCME) are opposing it.
For all the talk about 1A and the closely related proposition 1B (which deals specifically with ensuring future education spending), the biggest immediate budget impact would come from proposition 1C, which authorizes an immediate $5 billion loan to the state from future lottery earnings. But 1C is faring even worse in the polls than its better-known companion measures.
Meanwhile, state revenue collections are going even more poorly than was expected when the budget deal “fixed” the budget shortfall, so when all’s said and done, tomorrow California will likely face a cumulative budget shortfall of $21 billion, according to Schwarzenegger’s estimates. While the Governator has spent the last week issuing dire predictions of massive layoffs and untended fires, he’s actually in Washington today to join President Obama for the announcement of new federal tailpipe emissions standards similar to California’s.
Ah-nold’s trip out of town is being greeted with horselaughs from across the political spectrum (his own approval ratings are down to 33%), but especially from Republicans.
You get the feeling listening to California conservatives right now that they think of the budget revolt as an extension of “tea party” sentiment, and that after they get rid of their (term-limited) RINO governor they will reclaim power in Sacramento on a hard-core platform of massive reductions in state spending and employment. This is already playing out in the runup to the 2010 governor’s race: just last week, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, considered something of a “moderate” in GOP circles, promised to lay off 30,000 to 40,000 state employees. And that was before the much darker fiscal picture that will emerge if the budget propositions go down.
I suspect Republicans tend to underestimate the extent to which unhappiness with the status quo in California is a matter of poor services and not just high taxes; cutbacks and tuition increases in the higher education system have been particularly unpopular. But anytime GOPers these days think they have an opportunity to win elections while making cooing noises at their “base,” they’ll go for it every time.
