Alan I. Abramowitz and Nate Silver agree that Dems have a good chance to win back a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year, which should be cause for some concern among smarter Republicans. Here’s Abramowitz, from his current column at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Democrats would only need to pick up 25 seats in 2012 to get to the magic number of 218 that would give them control of the House-assuming that all of their members supported the Democratic candidate for Speaker. That’s hardly an insurmountable number. In fact, two of the last three elections, 2006 and 2010, have produced bigger swings, and 2008 came close.
Despite the recent volatility of House elections, some astute political observers are giving the Democrats little or no chance of regaining control of the House in 2012. For example, last December, Republican pollster Glen Bolger went so far as to “guarantee” that the GOP would maintain its House majority even if President Obama were to win a second term. And just last month, respected political handicapper Charlie Cook agreed that a Democratic pickup of 25 or more seats in the House was highly unlikely.
Both Bolger and Cook cited the relatively short coattails that winning presidential incumbents have had in recent years as a major obstacle to big Democratic gains in the 2012 House elections. In the past 40 years, the largest number of House seats gained by the winning incumbent’s party was 16 in 1984, a year in which Ronald Reagan won reelection by a landslide. You have to go all the way back to 1964 to find an election in which the winning incumbent’s party gained at least 25 seats in the House.
Notwithstanding these predictions and the historical record, however, there are three reasons to believe that Democrats have a decent chance of taking back control of the House in 2012. First, as a result of their big gains in 2010, Republicans will be defending a large number of seats in House districts that voted for Barack Obama in 2008; second, many of those districts are likely to vote for Obama again in 2012 because of the difference between the presidential and midterm electorate in the current era; and third, Republican incumbents in these Obama districts will be at high risk of losing their seats if Obama wins because straight-ticket voting is much more prevalent now than it was 30 or 40 years ago.

Further, adds Abramowitz,

…There are 60 Republicans in districts that were carried by Barack Obama in 2008 including 15 in districts that Obama carried by at least 10 points. In contrast, there are only 12 Democrats in districts that were carried by John McCain in 2008 and only six in districts that McCain carried by at least 10 points.

As for the GOP’s supposed edge in redistricting, Abramowitz notes:

Of course before the 2012 congressional elections take place, House districts will be redrawn based on the results of the 2010 Census. In states where Republicans control redistricting-and the number of such states grew considerably as a result of the 2010 midterm elections-GOP legislatures may be able to redraw the lines to protect potentially vulnerable Republican incumbents. However, the ability of Republican legislatures to protect their party’s House incumbents may be limited by the dramatic increase in the past decade in the nonwhite share of the population in many states. For example, while Republicans will control redistricting in Texas, which is gaining four House seats, more than any other state, most of the population growth in Texas has been because of the rapid increase in the Hispanic population. At least one, if not two, of the new Texas House districts are likely to go to Hispanics.

Abramowitz also cites the increased turnout, over the mid terms, of Obama-friendly constituencies in a presidential election, particularly Latino voters, who are growing even faster than expected, according to the latest census data. But he believes the Dems strongest card may be the rising trend toward straight-ticket voting in recent years. Abramowitz stops short of predicting a Dem takeover of the House, but he calls it a “realistic” possibility, especially if Obama wins a “decisive victory” in ’12.
Nate Silver sees the budget fight and the vote on GOP Rep. Ryan’s draconian budget proposals as a potential net plus for Democratic congressional candidates. Silver explains in a recent five thirty eight post,

So far, no polls have been conducted on Mr. Ryan’s budget as a whole. But — although voters will like the deficit reduction it claims to achieve (several outside analysts have questioned the bill’s economic findings) — a couple of its individual elements figure to be quite unpopular. In particular, the bill includes substantial changes to Medicare and Medicaid — changes that many voters tell pollsters are unacceptable. And it would cut the top tax rates, when polls usually find that most Americans want taxes on upper-income Americans to be raised rather than lowered.

Silver also believes that the Republicans’ prospects for a senate takeover next year are overstated. Echoing Abramowitz’s point about the decline in split-ticket voting, he sees the vote on Ryan’s proposals as a potential game-changer for the House:

…One possible consequence of the vote is that it could tie the fate of Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress more closely together. In the past, presidents have rarely had substantial coattails when running for a second term; Bill Clinton’s Democrats won just 9 seats in the House in 1996, for instance, even though he beat Bob Dole overwhelmingly. In 2010, however, the share of the vote received by Democrats running for Congress was very strongly correlated with support for Mr. Obama, and today’s vote could deepen that connection, making it less likely that voters will return a divided government again.

When two of the sharpest political data analysts agree that the House may be up for grabs, the DNC and Dem contributors should take note and invest accordingly. Of course there is a difference between Dems having a decent chance to win back a House majority and the probability of it happening. For the moment, however, The President appears to be moving into solid position to leverage the trend toward straight-ticket voting for the benefit of the Party. With a favorable break or two on the economy, the possibility of a Dem takeover of the House could morph into a good bet.

Just when you thought the 2012 Republican presidential field couldn’t get much zanier, who should appear on the highways and byways of Iowa than Judge Roy Moore!
Yes, we’re talking Roy Moore, Alabama’s famous Ten Commandments Judge, who won brief notoriety by getting himself forcibly ejected from office for insisting on the installation of a large monument to the Decalogue at his courthouse, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Moore was treated as a martyr by theocrats everywhere, but his two subsequent bids for governor of Alabama–most recently last year, when he finished a poor fourth in the GOP primary–didn’t go much of anywhere.
Judge Roy has also been a fixture at Tea Party events, serving as the most visible link between that “movement” and the Christian Right. But resistance to GLBT rights has long been his go-to issue, and that’s what has drawn him to Iowa, where conservative activists are obsessed with an effort to overturn the State Supreme Court’s 2009 decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Indeed, Moore’s appearance at an anti-marriage-equality rally in Des Moines last month seems to have led directly to his decision to launch a presidential exploratory committee and stick around Iowa as a putative candidate. He’s being squired around the state by one of the co-chairs of Mike Huckabee’s 2008 Iowa campaign.
If nothing else, Moore’s move should help make Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain seem more moderate by comparison, though you do have to wonder exactly how much oxygen exists for multiple candidates associated with the harder-core elements of the Christian Right. The more conventional Iowa Republicans have to be getting a bit uncomfortable by now at the realization their state party has become a global wingnut magnet.

So Beltway deficit hawks probably enjoyed the little scare thrown into financial markets today by Standard & Poor’s (yes, the folks who completely missed every sign of the financial crisis), which suggested future action to downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating if nothing is done soon to achieve a bipartisan deficit reduction plan.
But the warning wasn’t really music to the ears of the supposedly-debt-obsessed Tea Party Movement, whose leaders right now seem to treat as Public Enemy Number One the possibility of a bipartisan budget plan, because they know it would have to include increased revenues.
RedState’s Erick Erickson has declared war on his own senator, Saxby Chambliss, for participating in the Gang of Six negotiations aimed at a Bowles-Simpson modeled deficit reduction package. All over the country, Tax Weekend Tea Party gatherings were focused on intimidating Republican pols into opposing any compromise with Democrats on budget issues.
It’s far past time to understand that conservative activists only care about budget deficits and debts when Democrats are in office, and only favor action on deficits and debts if they involve wrecking the New Deal/Great Society programs, and actually cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
No bipartisan deficit reduction package will ever get the support of today’s conservative movement. It has to be their way or the highway, and their way means repeal of progressive taxes and progressive policies generally.
I hope the mainstream media finally gets that rather important detail straight.

Every now and then a pundit puts her or his finger on an important phenomenon that’s been hiding in plain site. That’s true of E.J. Dionne’s remarkable Washington Post column over the weekend on the “American Ruling Class” and its unprecedented indifference to the fate of the country:

An enlightened ruling class understands that it can get richer and its riches will be more secure if prosperity is broadly shared, if government is investing in productive projects that lift the whole society and if social mobility allows some circulation of the elites. A ruling class closed to new talent doesn’t remain a ruling class for long.
But a funny thing happened to the American ruling class: It stopped being concerned with the health of society as a whole and became almost entirely obsessed with money.

Dionne goes on to chronicle the declining effective tax rates of the very wealthy, and its connection to one of the most intensive lobbying campaigns in U.S. history, particularly aimed at lowering or eliminating taxation of capital gains and dividends, which is of greatest important to the financial sector:

Listen to David Cay Johnston, the author of “Free Lunch” and a columnist for Tax Notes. “The effective rate for the top 400 taxpayers has gone from 30 cents on the dollar in 1993 to 22 cents at the end of the Clinton years to 16.6 cents under Bush,” he said in a telephone interview. “So their effective rate has gone down more than 40 percent.”
He added: “The overarching drive right now is to push the burden of government, of taxes, down the income ladder.”
And you wonder where the deficit came from.

It’s unlikely that the “ruling class” notices this sort of admonition or cares about it. But it does provide a nice break in the monotonous pandering of conservatives to the very rich as oppressed “job creators” who need to be liberated from taxes and regulations in order to work their magic on behalf of the useless drones who make up the bulk of the U.S. population, who are longing for salvation from John Galt.

In this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress website, TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira shows how congressional conservatives are “doubling down on their extreme policies” with radical budget proposals concerning taxes and Medicare that have little prospect of winning anything resembling majority support. On taxes, Teixeira explains:

President Barack Obama has severely criticized this budget plan, saying it is completely out of step with the country’s needs and values. Polling data suggest the public is having the same reaction to the conservatives’ budget. In a just-released Gallup poll, a strong 59-37 majority say next year’s budget should include an increase, not a cut, in taxes for those making more than $250,000.

Regarding Medicare:

The public is also far from wanting to end Medicare as we know it. Sixty-one percent in the Gallup poll favor only minor changes (34 percent) or none at all (27 percent) in the program. Another 18 percent support major changes and only a miniscule 13 percent say they are in favor of completely overhauling Medicare. The latter figure is significant since a “complete overhaul” is exactly what conservatives are proposing to do.

It appears that the prudent conservatives of yesteryear have all been replaced by ideologues in blinders, who may now be courting political disaster, as Teixeira suggests. “With this budget…they may finally have gone so far that they will be unable to ignore the negative reaction to their proposals.”

Political organizer and Democratic strategist Robert Creamer argues in his latest HuffPo post that President Obama has outmaneuvered his Republican adversaries with his speech on the budget. Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” now sees four factors recasting “the political equation” to favor Democrats. First:

…Obama changed the frame of debate from the realm of policies, programs and green eye-shades into a contest between the progressive values that have always defined what is best in America and the radical conservative values of the Gilded Age.
The right always goes to political war armed with a full complement of value-based arguments and symbols. They are very good at clothing the self-interest of Wall Street/CEO class in talk about freedom and individualism and self-reliance.
We lose when we talk about policies and programs and they talk about right and wrong.
But the moment we transform the debate into a contest between progressive and radical conservative values — between the progressive and conservative visions of the future — we completely change the political equation.

Creamer credits Obama’s speech with delineating — and illuminating — a critical demarcation regarding “two very different visions of American society”:

* Are we all in this together — or do we believe in a society where everyone is out for himself and himself alone?
* Should we simultaneously take responsibility for ourselves and look out for each other — or should the strongest and most clever among us simply be allowed to dominate and exploit the rest?
* Do we aspire to hope and possibility — to the belief that we can shape a better future for our kids? Or are we ready to concede that we can no longer afford to assure that every child has the education she needs to fulfill her potential =- or that seniors should be denied a dignified life in their retirement — or that if you’re sick and poor, you’re just out of luck?
…When we proudly assert our progressive values, we win.

Creamer’s second point, that the major provisions of Obama’s budget are “immensely popular.”:

…The beltway pundits would have you believe that to have a “serious” budget plan you have to do things that are “painful” and “unpopular.” The only reason that would be true is that they often advocate taking actions that are beneficial only to the top two percent of the population at the expense of everyone else.
They say that to be “serious” we have to cut Social Security for seniors who make an average of $19,000 a year and give tax breaks to people who make tens of millions — sometimes billions a year.
It’s easy to see why that would be pretty unpopular with most people. To make it palatable to ordinary people you have to convince them that they need to take the “bitter medicine now” so they can have a better life — or avoid an even more dire fate — in the future. This, of course, is self-serving hogwash…Of course we need to do what is necessary to pay for what government does. But the choice we face is not between short-term pain and long-term prosperity. It is between a better life for most people and the greed of a few people.
President Obama’s proposals are very popular because if we clearly lay out the true choices, normal people are smart enough to understand their own interests. Eighty-one percent of the population favors increasing taxes on millionaires. Huge percentages oppose cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. They oppose eliminating Medicare and replacing it with vouchers that steer you to buy private insurance. They certainly oppose increasing out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicare by $6,400 — which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says is the direct consequence of the Republican budget. They support making smart, appropriate cuts in defense spending. They support investing more, not less, in education and scientific research. They support more money — not less — for Head Start, nutrition programs, to pay for police and fire protection, to build schools and bridges and high-speed rail. They support investing more money in clean energy…

Third, Creamer cites two key “framing points”:

* Eliminating the budget deficit is not inconsistent with progressive priorities. This should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of memory, since the last time the budget was balanced was just ten years ago and that was done under Democrat Bill Clinton. However, it was necessary to make this point clear by presenting a plan to achieve fiscal balance that also embodies progressive values.
* Controlling health care costs — which is a major driver of increased spending — is not the same as simply shifting these costs to seniors and the disabled. Controlling costs is about actually controlling increases in the costs of delivering health care — chief among which are the outrageous costs of prescription drugs. Obama reintroduced a major way to cut health care costs into the debate: Allow Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate lower drug prices. But that of course would lower the profits of the drug companies.

Lastly, Creamer credits the President with playing a shrewd endgame in the budget deal:

Obama’s strategy was to settle the short-term 2011 budget battle in order to eliminate the Republican weapon of the short-term government shutdown. That was a key leverage point because it was very much in Obama’s interest to avoid the economic damage that a shutdown would cause to the fragile recovery. He wanted to get the best deal he could in terms of pure dollars and cents. But his main goal was to come to an agreement that avoided a shutdown, but did not compromise structural or policy issues that would reshape the political and economic landscape far beyond the September end of the fiscal year. In that, he was largely successful.
By coming to an agreement before he launched the broader policy debate he also had the opportunity to see exactly how far the Wall Street/CEO faction of Republican Party and the party’s political elite would allow the Tea Party faction to go in pursuit of its program. Turned out that they were unwilling to shut down the government over the Tea Party social agenda.
Obama also wanted to wait to seriously join the debate until after the Republican budget chair, Paul Ryan, had unveiled the details of their budget plan that lays bare the real contours of the right-wing vision for everyone to see. That allowed him to clearly contrast a progressive vision with a fully articulated Republican blueprint.
Obama has changed the terms of negotiation — the benchmarks — from pure dollars cut, to questions involving the purpose of government and our vision of society. That makes it much easier for him to draw clear lines in the sand -= as he did yesterday. He pledged unequivocally not to privatize Medicare, not to block grant Medicaid, and not to sign another extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
At the same time, his proposals allow him to take off the table the issue of how much Democrats want to reduce the deficit. He presented a plan that matches — and actually exceeds — the Republican deficit reduction goals. That leaves the only question for debate the issue of how that goal is achieved, which is the strongest Democratic political ground.
What about Republican claims that they will hold an increase in the debt ceiling hostage to their budget demands? They are nothing but bluster. If the Wall Street/CEO faction were unwilling to allow the Tea Party to shut down the government, they certainly are not going to allow them to explode the economy and financial markets with government default.
…The Congress does not need a “budget” for fiscal 2012 and beyond. To continue operating, the government does need new appropriation bills for 2012. Those will become the focal point of the next “shutdown” drama, but that will once again likely involve numbers and spending levels — not the long-term structural questions posed by the Republicans and Obama budget plans.

While the budget deal falls far short in terms of meeting progressive priorities, Creamer argues that President Obama’s speech has helped to put Dems in solid position for 2012. Creamer predicts a Democratic trifecta next year — holding the white house and senate, and winning back the House majority. He adds “The president’s speech yesterday made that kind of electoral outcome much more likely.”

I know, I know, early presidential nominating polls are not very meaningful, and usually reflect name ID as much as anything else, and yes, I know, “national” polls of this nature are especially insignificant, because a handful of early states are likely to determine the nomination. But still, PPP’s new poll showing Donald Trump pulling out to a big lead (at 26%, he has higher numbers than anyone has shown in any national poll that I’ve seen) over the entire GOP presidential field is pretty shocking.
Equally shocking is PPP’s finding that 23% of self-identified Republicans say they won’t vote for any candidate “who firmly stated they believed Barack Obama was born in the United States,” with another 39% being unsure if they could stomach such a radical proposition. Trump pulls 37% among the self-proclaimed birthers, and 28% among the maybe-birthers, so it’s reasonably clear his overall standing isn’t just the product of being a television celebrity.
Now maybe he won’t run, or he’ll run as an indie, or he won’t run seriously (there seems to be a lot of doubt about whether he’s remotely as rich as he claims to be), or those voters expressing support for him will reject him when they know more about his background and views. I certainly don’t think he’s in any danger of winning the nomination. But the real issue is that if he maintains or increases these levels of popularity among rank-and-file Republicans, the tolerance of GOP insiders for lower levels of craziness is bound to increase, giving them exactly what they do not need right now: another big push to the right.
Already, “mainstream” candidates are making some pretty crazy sounds. Newt Gingrich is addicted to Muslim-baiting. The quintessentially unthreatening Tim Pawlenty has recently been flirting with gold standard advocacy, while opposing the last appropriations deal and saying extremely irresponsible things about the upcoming debt limit vote. They’ve all adopted the habit of calling the current administration “socialist” and referring to rich people exclusively as “job-producers.” What’s next? Mitt Romney buying ads to endorse the Atlas Shrugged movie? Haley Barbour coming out for repeal of the 14th amendment? Who knows.
Perhaps some candidate will successfully play the Trump Card by convincing the powers that be in the GOP to quietly designate him or her as the one who can save the party from The Donald’s level of kookiness, and get a blank check to compete with him for the crazy-person vote. If so, things could get very weird on the campaign trail.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has crafted ‘The People’s Budget,’ and it is nicely put in perspective by TDS Advisory Board member Chris Bowers at Daily Kos, and cross-posted from Kos below:
One of the complaints the progressive blogosphere commonly levels against the Democratic leadership in DC is about negotiating strategy. Generally, the complaint is that the Democratic leadership in Congress and in the White House make opening bids that are already compromises, which results in final legislative deals skewing further to the right than necessary. Perhaps the most frequent specific example of this complaint is that Democrats in Congress should have started the health care debate by proposing a single-payer plan, and might have ended up with a public option in the final bill as a result.
Whether or not you agree with that complaint in either the general or the specific, if it is applied to the budget fight the Democratic leadership in DC should have started with The People’s Budget (PDF), which the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced today. It’s a budget that produces a surplus by 2021 without cutting services for the poor and middle-class. It thus provides a stark contrast with the recent proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan, and a left-flank to the principles outlined by President Obama.
Here’s a general overview of the People’s Budget:
* Reduces unemployment–and thus the deficit–through extensive investment in infrastructure, clean energy, transportation and education;
* Ends almost all the Bush tax cuts, creates new tax brackets for millionaires and new fees on Wall Street;
* Full American military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other reductions in military spending;
* Ends subsidies for non-renewable energy;
* Lowers health care costs through a public option and negotiating Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies;
* Raises the taxable maximum on Social Security.
That is a very quick summary, and full details can be read here. The Economic Policy Institute has a full analysis here. Today at the press conference introducing the budget, economist Jeffrey Sachs praised it as the “only budget that makes sense” and “a lot more serious than everything else on the table.” He’s also previously written about The People’s Budget on the Huffington Post.
Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva said the People’s Budget–which is an actual piece of legislation, not simply an outline–was filed with the Rules committee this morning. His fellow co-chair, Representative Keith Ellison, told me he thinks it will get more than 100 votes, which would be a majority of House Democrats. Even though that is still not enough to pass the chamber, Ellison said “we have to tell people what we would do if we had the numbers.”
Getting those numbers will of course be very difficult. However, under no circumstances should we consider it impossible. One of my favorite stories in political history is the passage of the Reform Act of 1867 by the British Parliament. This was a bill expanding the franchise that was passed by a Conservative government, even though the Conservatives had gotten into power largely by defeating a weaker form of the same bill. However, the Conservatives ended up passing the bill largely because of overwhelming public pressure in the spring of 1867.
To me, the moral of that story has always been that the location political center can, and often does, change very quickly. The first step in making change happen is by talking about new possibilities. Today, with their introduction of the People’s Budget, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has taken that first step.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
By now, it should be obvious that anyone hoping party insiders will draft a Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Rick Perry to rescue the lackluster Republican 2012 field from itself is living in a hopeless fantasyland. But in case you need even more evidence, consider this: Dark-horse candidates who aren’t fully committed to running for president, deep within their bones, have a terrible track record of misfires and flameouts.
We need look no further back than 2008 for a vivid historical example. That year, Republicans were in a similar mood, disenchanted for one reason or another with Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and the whole crew. At that point, the GOP’s brilliant backup plan was Draft Fred Thompson. His positive qualities were obvious enough: The former senator and longtime actor had a conservative enough record to be acceptable to activists without being threatening to swing voters; he seemed articulate and reasonably smart; and he was, of course, a celebrity who got to play a gruff, tough, avuncular prosecutor. He was sort of Tim Pawlenty with a growl and gravitas.
Thompson’s perceived electability was such that his putative candidacy was a much-awaited event, expected to change the dynamics of the race overnight. And once he finally announced in September of 2007–on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” no less–he won a slew of early endorsements, including the coveted nods from the National Right to Life Committee and Iowa’s conservative potentate Steve King.
But it was already becoming clear that he lacked commitment. Even before his appearance on “Leno,” there were abundant signs that he wasn’t running for president so much as walking–or even riding a golf cart–with abundant stops for rest and ice cream. His first Iowa appearance, in August, was at the Iowa State Fair, a must-do for any candidate and particularly one like Thompson, who had already skipped the official Straw Poll that serves as the major fundraiser for the state GOP. With the eyes of the first-in-the-nation-caucus state on him, Big Fred showed up at the sweaty, extremely informal event sporting Gucci loafers and proceeded to spend the day tooling around the fairgrounds in the aforementioned cart–a very big no-no for anyone who wasn’t either disabled or a major Fair donor.
This turned out to be an apt harbinger of Thompson’s campaign style. In their account of the 2008 campaign, Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson summed up the problem:

His campaign went through three phases: anticipation, hype, and disappointment. He initially surrounded himself with a team that had little experience in modern presidential campaigns. They convinced him new media offered a way around the rigors of the campaign trail, which appealed to a man with a reputation in Republican circles as a not particularly hard worker. …
“Fred was sold a bill of goods about what it took to run for president,” communications director Todd Harris later told us. “He was given the distinct impression … that in 2008 all you needed to do was have a heavy blog presence, appear regularly on Fox News and specifically on Hannity & Colmes, and from time to time go out and have an event.”

Despite tons of national press, and the support of King and the NRLC, Thompson limped home with a poor third-place finish in Iowa. He then staked everything on a final effort in South Carolina, and again finished third, managing in the end simply to take votes from Huckabee and guarantee McCain a win that got him to the brink of the nomination. The whole exercise was a pointless disaster that raised the GOP’s hopes and ultimately saddled the party with a weak nominee–so weak, in fact, that McCain had to choose Sarah Palin as his running-mate in order to preserve a semblance of unity.
The truth is that Republicans ought to take a good honest look back at the Thompson campaign and ask themselves if they really want a candidate who has to be talked into running. Indeed, Fred is by no means the first to be coaxed into a race by insiders who made it sound easy to convert the acclaim of elites into caucus or primary wins. Political history is littered with Big Dogs who quickly got into trouble in the tall grass of actual nomination contests: Wilbur Mills in 1972, who won a booming 4 percent in New Hampshire; Birch Bayh in 1976, who lost with a seventh-place finish in Massachusetts; Lloyd Bentsen, who was destroyed by Jimmy Carter despite raising tons of money; John Connally, another big fundraiser who couldn’t win actual votes; Howard Baker, who dropped out after New Hampshire in 1980; and Phil Gramm, who burned out in 1996. Fred Thompson was also not the first candidate of “half a mind” to run for president whose diffidence ultimately repelled voters. Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and Bill Bradley in 2000 both famously had trouble taking their own campaigns seriously; and Nelson Rockefeller in 1968 and Ross Perot in 1992 stumbled painfully because of their indecision about whether to run at all.
The moral of the story for 2012 is that the presidential campaign trail is brutal and unforgiving–particularly right now, and particularly for Republicans. The early Republican caucuses and primaries will be dominated by conservative activists who want a crusade, not a mere political campaign, and will almost certainly punish candidates who don’t give the impression that they will fight for every vote. This is a very poor environment for a “draft,” or for a politician pretending to run, reluctantly, out of a sense of civic obligation. Even Ronald Reagan got himself into early trouble in 1980 by campaigning as though voters owed him the nomination, with bands playing “Hail to the Chief” before every speech. He lost Iowa that year, and had to run a savagely ideological campaign in New Hampshire in order to recover.
So as the days rush by and this already slow-to-develop Republican nomination contest begins in earnest, insiders hoping for dark horse salvation need to get a grip and realize that it’s very unlikely they’ll be saved from this field by Christie or Jebbie or Petraeus or Rubio or Perry. All the hype in the world can’t replace commitment and extra time spent in church basements or living rooms in Pella and Nashua and Spartanburg. Just ask Fred Thompson.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
From time to time until November 2012, I’ll be offering a snapshot of the emerging presidential race. This is the first. Here’s the headline: Given current national trends and a credible Republican nominee, the presidential election would be very, very close, and President Obama might even lose. The economic situation looks like it will not be good enough for the president to cruise to victory, yet it will not so bad that voters are in the mood to repudiate him. In such a situation, campaign tactics, branding, and the identity of the Republican nominee would likely determine the outcome of the election–and in that context, Obama’s aggressive pivot to the center, including his forthcoming speech on deficit reduction, could have a decisive effect on whether or not he wins a second term.
Of course, as the issues director of Walter F. Mondale’s presidential campaign from 1982 until the end, I’m better positioned than most to understand the limitations of such snapshots. At this point in 1983, President Reagan’s approval ratings were in the low forties, and several polls showed him and Mondale in a statistical dead heat. Eighteen months later, his ratings were in the high fifties, and he ended up with 59 percent of the vote. In the interim, of course, economic growth had surged, and the unemployment rate had fallen by 3 percentage points.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme. If economic growth averages 4 percent between now and November 2012, unemployment falls to 7.3 percent, and the real per capita income of average families grows by 3 percent, Obama will be the odds-on favorite for reelection against any Republican. Conversely, if growth languishes, unemployment remains close to its current level, and per capita income doesn’t improve perceptibly, Obama will probably lose to a credible Republican–especially if he also faces stubbornly high gas prices. But if the overall economic picture is between the best and worst case, which is what the consensus of economic forecasters now predicts, the election will be close, campaign themes and tactics will influence the outcome, and the identity of the Republican nominee will matter hugely.
Here’s what the numbers show right now, leading into Obama’s speech on long-term fiscal policy. His approval rating averages about 47 percent–not bad, but not good enough to prevail in the general election. A number of surveys indicate that more people like the president personally than like his policies. In the most recent Pew survey, for example, while 47 percent approved of his overall performance as president, his favorable rating on handling the economy was 39 percent; energy policy 40 percent; the budget deficit a woeful 33 percent. And remarkably, when it comes to the deficit, young voters aged 18 to 29–the cohort most favorably disposed to Obama–are even more critical, with only 29 percent approving.
When people are asked to think about Obama’s reelection in broad terms, additional evidence of potential vulnerability emerges. In recent months, a number of national surveys have posed similar versions of the question: Do you think Barack Obama has done well enough to deserve reelection, or would the country be better off with someone else? The “well enoughs” average about 43 percent; the “someone elses” 49 percent.
When framed in terms of head-to-head competition between the president and a generic Republican, Obama also appears vulnerable. In the 14 national surveys conducted over the past two months, Obama averages about 44 percent, the unnamed Republican about 41 percent. Seven of these surveys show the president in the lead, four give the challenger an edge, and three are tied.
Of all these surveys, the only one that gives Obama a significant advantage–47 percent to 37 percent–is Pew’s March 23 offering. This anomaly intrigued me, so I asked Pew to provide me some internal breakdowns: On ideology, their sample broke down 41 percent conservative, 35 percent moderate, 20 percent liberal–right in line with the national averages. Not surprisingly, the president enjoyed better than 80 percent support among liberals. But he was also favored in the Pew survey by 66 percent of the moderates who chose between Obama and a generic Republican, and by 33 percent of the conservatives. To put it mildly, these last two numbers are implausible leading indicators. Since 1976, no Democrat has received more than 62 percent of the two-party moderate vote, and only Jimmy Carter has gotten anywhere near 30 percent of conservatives. Bill Clinton received 22 percent of the two-party conservative vote in 1996; Obama got 20 percent in 2008. And given what has transpired since, he’d do well to equal that figure next time. Thirty-three percent? No way.
And what about head-to-head competition with specific Republicans? Four of them enjoy high enough name recognition to make comparisons meaningful, and they divide neatly into two groups. All the surveys show essentially the same thing: While Obama would beat Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich by double-digit margins, he’s in a statistical dead heat with both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
Additionally, this must all be thought of in the context of the electoral college. For the reasons discussed in previous columns, I persist in my belief that traditionally pivotal swing states such as Florida and Ohio will continue to be decisive in 2012. During the past month, I’m aware of two credible surveys–by Quinnipiac and Public Policy Polling (PPP)–done in each of these states. Let’s take them in turn:
For Florida, Quinnipiac found Obama’s job approval at 47 percent (49 percent disapproval).When asked about Obama’s reelection, 45 percent said he deserved a second term versus 48 percent saying no; and 40 percent said they would vote for Obama compared to 42 percent for an unnamed challenger. While 70 percent of respondents said they like the president, only 41 percent like his policies. PPP showed Obama’s Florida approval rating at 48/47, Romney’s at 39/39, and Huckabee’s at 40/39. In head-to-head contests, he leads Romney 46 percent to 44 percent (well within the margin of error) and Huckabee by 50/43.

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