Note: this item is from regular TDS contributor Matt Compton, who is Communications Director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), and represents one in a series of “partner reports” from major Democratic and progressive organizations.
It’s no secret that state governments have been forced to make some tough choices in the current economic climate. But even as lawmakers grapple with budget shortfalls, Democrats in legislatures across the country are making an effort to pass smart, progressive laws on a number of fronts.
At the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, we are launching an effort to catalog that good work in a series of progress reports highlighting important legislative accomplishments at the state level.
For instance, before this year, many believed that the 2009 legislative session would be an unfavorable environment for pursuing equal rights and the legalization of same-sex marriage, but the opposite has proven to be true. Democrats led the charge in states like New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine to legalize gay marriage, and lawmakers in states stretching from Minnesota to Montana to Hawaii introduced bills that would roll back same-sex marriage bans or expand legal recognition for gay couples.
Read the DLCC Equal Rights Progress Report here.
This legislative session will also be remembered as a year when lawmakers devoted significant focus to energy innovation. Hundreds of state-level energy bills were filed in 2009, and Democrats worked to pass significant legislation boosting wind and solar power production. Lawmakers from Iowa to New Mexico to Washington saw their legislation become laws.
Read the DLCC Renewable Energy Progress Report here.
These accomplishments prove that state legislatures have the capacity to act as laboratories of innovation, even in touch economic times. In places where Democrats hold majorities, that means forging a path toward more progressive public policy.
These kinds of reforms are important to note early because transformational state policy initiatives can become models for national action.
Look no further than Massachusetts.

CNN Political Editor Mark Preston has a report on the new DNC/Organizing for America health care reform television ad that starts running today. The 30-second ad has a simple message, targeting “fellow Democrats and centrist Republicans” in 8 states: AR, IN, FL, LA, ME, ND, NE, and OH for two weeks, urging them to “support health care reform this year.” According to Preston,

The ad running in the eight states does not mention the senators by name, but it does ask viewers to call Capitol Hill, and provides the telephone number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard. Two of the states, Arkansas and North Dakota, are represented by a pair of Democratic senators, while the six remaining states are represented by centrist Democrats and Republicans. The commercial that is running nationally follows the same script, but it does not ask people to call their senators.

The ad features five Americans describing how their health care problems are being neglected by the current system, and Preston provides the ad’s script, as follows:

“It’s Time”
Woman 1: My son has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He’s four.
Man 1: When I lost my job, I lost my health insurance too.
Woman 2: My health insurance wouldn’t fully cover me when I got sick.
Man 2: My father in-law walks with a limp because he didn’t have health care.
Woman 3: My husband’s job covered us, until he was laid off.
Man 1: It’s time.
Woman 2: It’s time.
Man 2: It’s time.
Woman 1: It’s time for health care reform.
VO: The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.
CHYRON: It’s time for health care reform. Join the fight: healthcare.barackobama.com
[State Version]: CHYRON: It’s time for health care reform.

You can watch the ad here. Thus far, most of the hundred or so comments following Preston’s post are less than insightful.

Early in a campaign cycle, fundraising statistics can sometimes speak volumes about how a particular contest is likely to develop, and even which candidates will decide in the end against running. Politico’s Josh Kraushaar has a rundown today on the big fundraising “stories” for 2010.
A few stand out. Senate candidate Charlie Crist of Florida may be profoundly unpopular with conservatives in his party, but he’s crushing primary rival Marco Rubio on the fundraising front. Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning is still turning in some of the most anemic fundraising numbers in the country. Joe Sestak has more than four million dollars in the bank for his yet-to-be-officially-announced primary challenge to party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter. And Republicans who are marking down a Senate seat in Delaware as a likely gain next year might want to notice how little money their supposed candidate, Rep. Mike Castle, is raising, often a sign of an impending retirement rather than a big race.

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of the TDS Advisory Board.
Political observers follow presidential approval ratings obsessively and often interpret them in terms of the daily drama of this or that issue or trend. But amidst much speculation about the stability of Barack Obama’s base of support, it’s useful to compare his approval ratings in various demographic groups with their support for him last November.
An examination of recent Gallup Poll data shows that Americans’ opinions about the job Barack Obama is doing as president closely mirror the results of the 2008 election. The President’s 58% approval rating in the July 6-12 Gallup Poll is slightly higher than the 53% share of the vote that he received last November, but his approval rating among various demographic groups correlates almost perfectly with his vote share among the same groups.
The following figure shows the relationship between Obama’s 2008 vote share in 24 demographic groups and his current approval rating in the same groups: the correlation between the two is a near perfect .99.
The implication of these results is that when it comes to opinions about the President, little has changed in the past eight months. Despite the continued weakness of the economy and the steady drumbeat of attacks on the President’s policies from the right, the coalition of groups that put him in office last November remains solidly behind him today.

Yesterday’s staff post on the Sotomayor hearings noted in an update that the apparent Republican decision to focus on the Ricci case and affirmative action was a rather edgy strategy given the risk of alienating proud Latino supporters of the woman conservatives are mocking as the “wise Latina.”
The hazard of this strategy was emphasized today in a quote from NDN’s Simon Rosenberg that appeared in a long Dan Balz WaPo article about the Sotomayor hearings:

If during the next few weeks the Republicans appear to be playing politics with race rather than raising legitimate issues about Sotomayor’s judicial approach, it could reinforce the deep impression that the Republican Party’s anachronistic and intolerant approach to race and diversity is making them less capable of leading a very different and more racially diverse America of the early 21st century.

Simon’s an astute observer of Latino political opinion, and he’s right: if Republicans really are wary of the impression of appearing to be some sort of white identity politics party, they sure are playing with fire if they make the Sotomayor hearings about affirmative action. It would be smarter for them to stay in the dog-whistle territory of abstractions about “judicial activism,” which the unhappy Cultural Right will understand as a reference to Roe v. Wade, instead of blundering into a debate over race and diversity that will raise temperatures in a way that is almost guaranteed to increase the already formidable Latino solidarity with Sotomayor, and hostility to the GOP.

In his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ on the web pages of the Center for American Progress, TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira reports that public support of the Global Warming Bill is on track as the legislation makes its way to the desk of President Obama. According to Teixeira, a consensus has emerged in support of the “broad goal and approach” of the legislation, otherwise known as “The American Clean Energy and Security Act:”

…75 percent of respondents in a mid-June ABC News/Washington Post poll said the federal government should “regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars, and factories in an effort to reduce global warming.” Just 21 percent disagreed. Moreover, when those who agreed that the federal government should regulate greenhouse gases were asked if they would still support this if it raised the price of the things they buy, 80 percent of that group still said yes.

Teixeira noted “majority support (52-42)” for a “cap-and-trade approach” to limiting greenhouse gas in the poll, while acknowledging that the complexity of the proposal may confuse some of the poll respondents. Nonetheless, Teixeira explains that there is a strong consensus for pro-active legislation, with the U.S. in the lead:

…The public believes it is necessary to move ahead on the climate change bill, even if the rest of the world is not moving at the same time. Almost three-fifths (59 percent) said the United States should take action on global warming even if other countries such as China and India are doing less to address the issue, compared to 38 percent who thought either we should take action only if these countries take equally aggressive action (20 percent) or we should do nothing (18 percent).

The legislation will face some challenges ahead as it moves through the congressional process. But President Obama can rest assured that he will have plenty of support when he signs the Global Warming Bill.

Oh, so now we understand why Sarah Palin needed to quit her job as governor of Alaska: she had a higher calling to educate those of us in the Lower 48 about energy policy, beginning with her op-ed in the Washington Post today.
Jon Chait of The New Republic offers the most succinct analysis of Palin’s effort:

Her subject matter is the House bill to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Palin argues against it by ignoring the entire question of carbon dioxide emissions and instead arguing that expensive energy is bad and cheap energy is good.

That’s pretty much it. You’d never know from Palin’s piece that there’s any controversy about carbon or climate change; it’s all about domestic energy supplies, and hey, we’ve got plenty if the “bureaucrats” and “liberals” would just get out of the way! Westerners “literally sit on mountains of oil and gas.” There’s also lots of coal, which is getting mighty clean these days, and you can build a nuclear power plant most anywhere! Experts–meaning the people of Alaska–get it even if “liberals” don’t:

Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

The op-ed is a pretty good example of what Peggy Noonan was talking about the other day in her extraordinary Wall Street Journal jeremiad aimed at Palin:

She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

And that’s what is annoying about Palin today. On one of the premier soap-boxes in the world, on a subject she supposedly knows well, and at a time when she could really use some evidence of thoughtfulness, she pens this silly cardboard attack on people and positions that don’t actually exist, while ignoring the actual case for cap-and-trade, other than the juvenile jibe of calling it “cap-and-tax.”
I sure hope that this isn’t what Palin has in store for us in the months ahead.

At The New Republic today, Jonathan Chait looks at the imperiled state of health care and climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate, and raises a perennial question: should wavering or wayward “centrist” Democrats be disciplined through the threat or reality of primary challenges?
Chait goes through the pros and cons of Democratic primary threats–and the less-than-effective disciplinary alternatives–at some length, and concludes that with proper (if difficult) calibration, such threats might be a good idea, particularly since they seem to work for conservatives. He’s very persuasive when it comes to blanket condemnations of such tactics, which are common among those tactical folk whose mission is simply to maximize the D-to-R ratio:

The conventional view deems primary challenges counterproductive. When senators or members of Congress depart from the party’s agenda, the thinking goes, they’re maintaining an independent profile necessary to win reelection. If you drag them too far to the left, you’ll just lose the seat to a right-wing Republican. Better to safeguard Democrats who will support their party most of the time rather than risk electing a Republican who won’t do it ever.
The logic breaks down in two ways. First, some members move to the right for reasons that have nothing to do with self-protection. Maybe they’re catering to special interests rather than home-state public opinion. (Take the squeamishness of many Democrats over a public health care plan, which commands over 70 percent public approval but virulent opposition from the health care industry.) Or maybe they’re just more conservative than their constituents. (Take Feinstein, or Joe Lieberman.)
Second, while the party has an interest in protecting the popularity of its elected officials, it doesn’t have an unlimited interest. Suppose, for example, that the Democrats had a chance to pass historic health care and climate change legislation, but that doing so would make Evan Bayh 20 percent more likely to lose his reelection bid. I’d take that deal. Obama would take that deal. But I’m pretty sure Evan Bayh wouldn’t.

This all makes good sense, but I’d take his analysis of why Democrats (particularly in the Senate) sometimes stray a bit further. Sometimes “public opinion” as measured by national polls, or “interest-group pressure” as embodied by generalizations like “the health care industry” don’t really capture what worries an individual senator–not just as a cowardly pol, but as a representative of a particular place. In-state or regional factors can enormously affect which “public opinion” and which “interest groups” matter, viz, the perennial Heartland resistance to reforms of agricultural subsidies, and the perennial energy-producing-state hostility to climate change legislation. The United States Senate is by design an unrepresentative institution. Citing national polls on, say, the “public option,” isn’t likely to sway a small-state, red-state Democratic senator.
Another factor that may be more vulnerable to a primary threat is something Chait alludes to indirectly in his discussion of Chuck Grassley’s wavering position on health care reform: institutional prerogatives. For reasons of personal ego, committee jurisdiction, and perceived influence, senators often position themselves either as independent Sun Kings who must be placated, or as Swinging Players whose vote must be bought with concessions. Some progressives really don’t get this, and assume that Democratic indiscipline is all about corrupt corporate money, when it’s often just about self-promotion.
Reminding Democratic senators via primary challenge threats that they may not have the luxury of playing Washington games can be helpful, but so, too would be a stronger effort by Democratic congressional leaders to link the ascension to Sun King status to party discipline on key votes–and in the Senate, particularly the cloture votes necessary to enable a majority of senators to enact legislation.
Chait does suggest that “calibrating” primary threats is very difficult. I’d emphasize that. No senator welcomes a primary challenge, but at least in conservative territory, some Democratic incumbents might welcome a poorly funded left-bent challenge that enables them to show off their independence. A credible primary threat that doesn’t completely divide the Democratic Party is what might work as a disciplinary device, and might even succeed, to the instruction of others. But every case is specific: The most famous recent primary challenge, Ned Lamont’s to Joe Lieberman, made sense because Lieberman represented a party and general electorate to his “left.” But it ultimately failed because the GOP took a dive to help Lieberman win as an Independent.
Without question, Democrats shouldn’t categorically rule out primary challenges, or the threat thereof, to party heretics. But they shouldn’t rule them in as a matter of course, either, and should continue to examine whether a Democratic congressional caucus is institutionally or ideologically incapable to deliver on the president’s legislative promises.

In looking for something else this morning, I ran across a couple of conservative blog posts that almost perfectly illustrated how rapidly routine information can be distorted into talking points used in attacks on the Obama administration, the Democratic Congress, and in this case, state and local governments.
The original source of those talking points was a General Accounting Office report on how state and local governments were (so far) using money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. the economic stimulus package. According to the report:

Across the United States, as of June 19, 2009, Treasury had outlayed about $29 billion of the estimated $49 billion in Recovery Act funds projected for use in states and localities in fiscal year 2009. More than 90 percent of the $29 billion in federal outlays has been provided through the increased Medicaid Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) and the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) administered by the Department of Education.

A Reuters blogger named James Pethokoukis linked to the report under the headline, “Maybe this is why the stimulus isn’t creating tons of jobs yet,” implying that the amounts were small and the spending wasn’t going into “infrastructure” projects.
Now keep in mind that of the estimated $787 billion in stimulus funds, only $185 billion was slated to occur in Fiscal Year 2009, mainly because FY 2009 began last October 1. I do wonder if Mr. Pethokoukis might have been confusing fiscal years with calendar years.
His apparent surprise that 90 percent of the state-local funds spent so far for FY 2009 are going to something other than “infrastructure” indicates (1) he wasn’t paying much attention when ARRA was enacted and (2) he doesn’t seem to understand that it’s inherently a bit speedier to adjust a Medicaid match rate or disburse a block grant than it is to fund specific highway projects. The GAO report indicates that $9.2 billion in highway funds for have already been obligated but not spent, which is about a third of the total highway money in the stimulus package (about what you’d expect given the time frames). Moreover, a significant portion of the roughly $111 billion in “science and infrastructure” money in ARRA will not flow through states and localities (e.g., most of the scientific research money).
But whatever you think of Mr. Pethokoukis’ brief and sardonic take on the GAO report, here’s how it devolved at the hands of Stephen Spruiell at National Review’s The Corner, under the headline, “Ninety Percent of Stimulus Funds Spent on Bailouts for State Government:”

The [GAO] study found that 90 percent of the stimulus funds spent so far have gone toward bailouts for fiscally irresponsible state governments. These states made commitments on health care and education spending commensurate to what they could afford during the boom years. When the economy crashed and tax revenues dried up, they had no way to pay for these commitments short of raising taxes, which none of them wanted to do. (Most states’ constitutions restrict their ability to run deficits.)
This is what the stimulus was really all about — not creating or “saving” jobs, but preventing states from suffering the consequences of their profligacy.

Note that the relatively small portion of stimulus money GAO was analyzing, which excluded direct federal expenditures and tax provisions, has now become “the stimulus funds spent so far.” And the temporary Medicaid match rate increase, along with funds to prevent education cuts and a very small provision for flexible state funds, has become “preventing states from suffering the consequences of their profligacy.”
Aside from the fact that the Medicaid, education and flexible money Mr. Spruiell is saying “aha” about was in the original legislation, and was fully debated and (in the case of the education and flexible funds) reduced before ARRA was enacted, he does not seem to understand that (1) it’s hardly “profligate” to fail to immediately slash Medicaid rolls or dump school costs on local property taxpayers when state revenues drop massively in a major recession, and (2) if states and localities weren’t “profligate” and made these cuts, they would contribute to the recession and heavily offset the impact of federal stimulus funds, through both reduced consumer spending and personnel layoffs (which were happening all across the country before ARRA was enacted, and which are still happening to some extent because what Spruiell calls “bailouts” weren’t sufficient).
Maybe that’s why not a single one of the 22 Republican governors–including the up-until-recently fiscal conservative hero Mark Sanford of SC–objected to the Medicaid money that always represented over half of the federal-state assistance in ARRA, and why only two–Sanford and Sarah Palin–tried to reject anything other than a very specific set of funds aimed at expanding unemployment insurance coverage.
But loose talk about “bailouts” from people who haven’t followed the debate and don’t know the numbers or the issues can go viral pretty fast, so don’t be surprised if you or your conservative friends soon get emails claiming that 90% of all the stimulus funds are being spent on profligate state social programs.