John Nichols post at The Nation, “The Post-Wisconsin Game Plan” provides a nuanced ‘where-do-we-go-from-here’ consideration of progressive strategy to mobilize middle class voters for the 2012 elections. Nichols sees the still-strong outrage against the effort to eradicate collective bargaining rights for public workers in Wisconsin, Indiana, Maine and Ohio as a powerful force, which can be leveraged to strengthen the Democratic party and its prospects:

Post-Wisconsin, there is a tentative but emerging consensus that mass movements at the state level might matter just as much to the broader goals of labor and the left as traditional election-oriented campaigning. As Steve Cobble, former political director of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition campaigns of the 1980s, argues, “The energy that’s developed in Wisconsin and Ohio, and that could develop in a lot of other states, is what’s needed to renew the coalitions that can re-elect Obama in 2012 and elect a lot of Democrats. But it should go further than that. With the right organizing push, unions can build a base that forces Obama and the Democrats to take more progressive stands and to govern accordingly.”
The size of the demonstrations in the states, and the agility with which protest movements have pivoted to political fights that could shift control of governorships and legislatures, has prompted this reassessment of strategy by labor and its allies. Rather than a single-minded focus on electing Democrats–or the rare friendly Republican–the idea is that more might be accomplished by directing cash and organizing hours to (as one SEIU draft document suggests) “mobilizing underpaid, underemployed, and unemployed workers” and “channeling anger about jobs into action for positive change.”

Nichols acknowledges that some progressives are skeptical about this approach:

…Henry has conceded that the decision to focus more on nonunion workers is risky. The talk is of a major expenditure of resources, with some 1,500 SEIU staffers fanning out in seventeen cities to knock on more than 3 million doors–including those of millions of non-SEIU members. Some worry that this is not the most strategic use of resources. Veteran organizer Jane McAlevey argues that intensive engagement with union members should take precedence over a diffuse attempt to mobilize nonunion workers for mass rallies with an uncertain purpose. “The go-big, go-wide and go-shallow model may generate 2012 voter IDs outside their base, but it’s not going to mobilize a real fight for a fair economy,” says McAlevey. “To do it right requires deep work with their members and their members’ organic connections in their communities.”

There is an emerging consensus, explains Nichols, that “the greatest threats to unions as forces in the workplace and in political life are posed at the state level–where GOP governors and legislators are attacking collective bargaining rights while proposing brutal cuts in spending on education and services…” But he notes the overwhelming complexity of meeting this challenge:

States have unique political cultures, quirky voting patterns, divides between heavily union and nonunion regions that can be finessed only by those who understand the territory. “I’ve heard from people in other states who want to know how they can do what’s been done in Wisconsin, and I tell them it’s not that easy,” says Ben Manski, an organizer of the Wisconsin Wave protest coalition. “They have to focus in on their own strengths, their own history and their own challenges.”

Nichols provides a succinct summation of current initiatives, post-Wisconsin:

Whereas Wisconsin activists are focused on recall elections this summer that could remove Republican state senators who have backed Walker’s antilabor agenda, Mainers are lobbying moderate Republican legislators to break with right-wing Governor Paul LePage. While there is talk in Michigan of trying to recall Governor Rick Snyder, in Ohio there is no recall option. But Ohio has a veto referendum provision that unions are using to try to overturn Governor John Kasich’s attacks on collective bargaining.
Every one of these state battles turns a labor struggle that initially played out in the streets into an edgy political fight. Instead of waiting for the next election, labor and progressive campaigners are forcing votes on their schedules to address unprecedented assaults on union rights and public services.

Naturally some Democrats are very concerned about the deflection of needed labor resources from the Presidential contest next year. And there is concern, reports Nichols that the White House should be doing more to support unions, although the President’s approval ratings are still high in Wisconsin.
Nichols spotlights Sen Sherrod Brown (D-OH) for taking a gutsy, pro-union stance other Democratic politicians have avoided — a gamble that appears to have paid off in the latest opinion polls. He quotes Publi Policy President Dean Debham, “Sherrod Brown appears to be in a much stronger position now than he was just three months ago…There’s been a very significant shift in the Ohio political landscape toward the Democrats.”
As Nichols says “…the challenge is to build state-based movements that are muscular enough to win immediate fights (blocking bad legislation, preventing cuts, preserving embattled unions, organizing new workers) while pulling Democrats–including the president–away from the politics of caution and compromise.” He credits SEIU, CWA and National Nurses United, MoveOn and other progressive groups for innovative “neighborhood organizing, coalition building and demonstrations” against tax give-aways to the wealthy, home foreclosures and assaults on Medicare and Medicaid.
President Obama would do well, says Nichols, to heed the example of FDR in 1936, “after a wave of militant labor organizing and localized general strikes had swept cities across the country,” when he crafted “a populist appeal for unity…to battle the economic royalists who would turn the country back toward ‘the old law of the tooth and the claw.'”
Sad that 75 years later the “economic royalists” description still fits the modern Republican party so well. Hopefully, FDR’s example will not go unnoticed by President Obama, who has recently had his own lesson in how bold leadership can win public support.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Mike Huckabee pulled off quite a Sweeps Week carny act Saturday night, pulling in what must have been a record audience for his Fox show by sending all sorts of mixed signals about his presidential intentions. Prior to his announcement, he presided over a spirited trashing of Mitt Romney’s health care speech and listened good-naturedly to guest Ted Nugent call for Navy SEAL teams to “secure” the borders by giving transgressors the ol’ bin Laden treatment. He then sat in on bass guitar with the bow-hunting rocker on “Cat Scratch Fever,” and, finally, he faced the cameras, bobbing and weaving for a good five minutes before informing viewers that God had vetoed what could have been a successful 2012 presidential run for His Faithful Servant.
Production values aside, Huckabee’s announcement might not affect the presidential race as much as a divinely sanctioned green light would have: Until recently, after all, most handicappers had assumed he’d give 2012 a pass. But the certainty of a Huck-less field is a big deal all the same–and not without its winners and losers.
The loudest huzzahs for Huckabee’s announcement undoubtedly occurred in the Greater Minneapolis Area. With Huck out, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann now has a clean shot at the conservative evangelical activists who backed him in 2008. Indeed, many of them today might even prefer Bachmann’s Old Testament thunder to the New Testament cheeriness that Huckabee so reliably exudes. Bachmann, therefore, can’t be counted out in Iowa, since the biggest threat to her among serious social conservative zealots is no longer the 2008 Caucus winner, but probably talk-show host Herman Cain, the champion crowd-pleaser whose prospects for actual victory remain miniscule.
The ultimate beneficiary of Huck’s demurral, however, is likely to be Tim Pawlenty. His all-in-for-Iowa strategy now looks considerably more promising, and he is appealing to many pragmatic social conservatives as an electable alternative to the unpalatable Mitt Romney and (if he runs) Mitch Daniels. A field without Huckabee, moreover, is a field without a viable deep-fried southern option, which could be great news for a guy like T-Paw in South Carolina and other southern states. Pawlenty is already ahead of the game in Palmetto State pandering: He has long championed the balanced budget constitutional amendment that is Senator Jim DeMint’s litmus-test for 2012 candidates, and he’s outdoing his rivals in championing Governor Nikki Haley’s demand that they all join her crusade against the National Labor Relations Board’s intervention in a dispute between Boeing and the machinists’ union over the relocation of an airplane production plant to South Carolina.
The candidate who would appear to suffer most from this decision, on the other hand, might well be Huck’s old nemesis, Mitt Romney. After all, a Huckless field not only bolsters the chances of Pawlenty; it also increases the temptation to run for other candidates with the potential to steal support away from Romney, most obviously Mitch Daniels. And ironically, Huck’s absence from Iowa could mess up Romney’s efforts to stay out of the state entirely or at least keep expectations there very low. Polling in Iowa that does not include Huck invariably shows Mitt running first–an assessment of strength that few analysts consider real, given the heavy campaigning of other, lesser-known candidates in the state, and the cap on Romney’s support that attacks on his health care record will likely impose. Still, his illusory poll position could lure him into re-entering the state that tripped him up so badly in 2008. And if, instead, he rebukes the state decisively, ever-sensitive Iowans could deny him even a respectable finish going into the more Romney-favorable contests in Nevada and New Hampshire.
Of course, some of Huckabee’s key assets–his backers and former political operatives–have yet to declare their new allegiances, meaning that at least some of the benefits from Huck’s announcement have yet to be allocated. For instance, one of Huckabee’s key South Carolina backers, former Governor David Beasley, has started making unlikely positive noises about Jon Huntsman. But at least two important pols close to Huckabee are now truly up for grabs: Iowa’s Bob Vander Plaats, who is heading up a social conservative group that may make a big endorsement in the fall, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Whatever direction in which these folks ultimately lean could have a decisive effect on Iowa and the subsequent contests. For the time being, however, look for Pawlenty, everybody’s favorite second choice, to acquire some more believers.

Alert readers don’t need me to tell them that Mitt Romney’s Great Big Speech on health care at the University of Michigan yesterday was in political terms an epic disaster. By adamantly defending the Massachusetts health plan that has become his personal albatross; reasserting distinctions between “RomneyCare” and “ObamaCare” that conservatives just don’t buy; and then laying out a “plan” for what he would propose as president that is no more than a compilation of every tired conservative health policy pet rock of recent years; Romney did himself no tangible good and simply provided an opportunity for a united, high-profile chorus of denunciation and mockery from the growing ranks of his detractors, right, center and left.
Yes, he gets the occasional grudging prop for refusing to “flip-flop” on health care as he famously did on abortion and same-sex relationships, but a small “authenticity” credential is no substitute for being in synch with the conservative zeitgeist on perhaps the central policy issue going into 2012.
But what I find most interesting about the reaction to Romney’s speech is that this supposed favorite of Republican “elites” seems to have become unacceptable in some pretty elite precincts. The Wall Street Journal editorial board is about as “elite” as you can get, and it fired off an op-ed on the eve of Romney’s speech that essentially told him not to even bother running for president. National Review magazine is an elite conservative opinion-leader and one which, moreover, endorsed Romney’s 2008 candidacy. NR’s editors today published an institutional take on Mitt’s speech that used “failure” in the title and scathingly criticized nearly every word Romney said, concluding with this condemnation:

We understand that Romney does not feel that he can flip-flop on what he had touted as his signature accomplishment in office. But if there is one thing we would expect a successful businessman to know, it is when to walk away from a failed investment.

Jennifer Rubin, the designated conservative blogger for the Washington Post, occupies an unusually visible spot in the GOP chattering classes. Here’s her reaction to the politics of Romney’s gambit:

Romney is entirely lacking in self-awareness and understanding of the current Republican primary electorate if he thinks this speech is going to help. I’m sure his primary opponents, like many pundits, are dumbstruck that such a capable man could be so dense when it comes to his chosen profession.

These condemnations are pretty categorical, to put it mildly. And it shows the importance of a little nuance in talking about Republican “elites.” Some elements of the “elite,” mainly political professionals and corporate lobbyists, care more about “electability” and demonstrated “competence” than any particular item of ideology. These are the folk who are made uncomfortable by cultural issues, have patronizing attitudes towards the Tea Party movement, and think debt-limit brinkmanship and absolute ideological litmus-tests generally are irresponsible. This is what’s left of Mitt Romney’s “base,” aside from regular voters who are (a) members of the LDS faith, (b) older Michiganders who fondly remember his father and mother, (c) New Englanders who have an understanding attitude about what it took for Romney to win office in a state like Massachusetts, and (d) people not paying much attention yet to the issues that divide potential Republican candidates.
Indeed, Romney’s main hope at this point seems to be based on the fact that these voters are disproportionately represented in such early-caucus-and-primary states as Nevada, New Hampshire, and Michigan.
The more ideologically committed elements of the Republican “elite,” though, seem to have already given up on Romney, and even the “practical-minded” elites on his donor lists and organizational charts could easily defect if Mitch Daniels decides to run or Tim Pawlenty begins to gain some real popularity. Mitt’s own wealth and name-identification numbers will keep his candidacy alive for the immediate future. But it’s more and more likely that he’ll need an absolute demolition derby among his opponents to get to the point John McCain improbably achieved in 2008, when hostile ideological elites sucked it up and ate their words about him in an act of partisan solidarity.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Because so much of what passes for political debate in this country takes place in a faux-fact zone, it is a welcome change to read Reihan Salam’s latest essay in the National Review. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama famously promised that taxes would either stay the same or go down for households making less than $250,000 a year. But Salam points out that there’s no way of reducing the budget deficit to acceptable levels, let alone financing the kind of federal government Obama favors, while relying solely on income and payroll tax increases for households making more than that figure. Of course, there’s not much that can be squeezed out of the bottom four income quintiles (households making less than $100,000 per year). On the other hand, relying solely on the rich for added revenues would imply tax rates in excess of 75 percent. But what about the well-off but not rich–those in the fifth quintile who earn between $100,000 and $250,000 a year? Can they really be held harmless?
To dramatize the problem we’re facing, let’s consider the analysis the Urban Institute’s Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane published in January, which looked at taxes and benefits for households in different income brackets. The average couple earning $112,000 and retiring in 2010 will have paid $140,000 in lifetime Medicare taxes, but is expected to receive lifetime Medicare benefits totaling $343,000. Twenty years from now, the same couple would have paid $171,000 in lifetime Medicare taxes and would receive $530,000 in benefits. (Technical note: These amounts are in constant 2010 dollars, adjusted to present value using a 2 percent real interest rate. In calculating net benefits, the authors have taken into account premiums as well as payroll taxes.)
Or consider the analysis USA Today published last week, which found that Americans are paying the smallest share of their income for taxes since 1958–23.6 percent, versus about 27 percent in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. On average, a person making $100,000 this year will pay $23,600 in combined taxes–federal, state, and local, income, payroll, and sales–versus $28,700 in 2000 and $27,300 in 1990. Even when the one-year Social Security tax cut ends, the tax gap between now and a decade ago for individuals making $100,000 will still be more than $3,000.
Of course, you might argue we’re short on revenues because the tax code has let the very wealthy off the hook in recent decades. Maybe so, but it’s hard to see that in the data. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the effective tax rate for all federal taxes in 2009 was 18.2 percent. The effective rates by quintile were:
Lowest -0.9
Second 6.6
Third 13.4
Fourth 17.2
Top 22.9
But maybe the real action is within the top quintile of income-earners, with the super-rich making out like bandits. Again, the Urban-Brookings numbers don’t support that story:
80-90 19.4
90-95 22.0
95-99 23.5
Top 1 percent 26.1
Top 0.1 percent 27.9
This is just a one-year snapshot, of course. What about trends over time? We know that the distribution of income has become less equal in recent decades, with those at the top commanding a larger share. You might think that the share of taxes paid by high earners has declined during this period, shifting the burden to those below. But according to the CBO, that hasn’t happened either. While the share of national income for the top quintile and the top 1 percent has risen considerably since the mid-1980s, their share of total federal taxes has risen even more.
You might still argue, however, that the right comparison is not across time but across national boundaries. Surely the rich pay more of the total tax burden in other advanced democracies, and we need to become more like them. Wrong again. Using 2005 OECD data, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the share of taxes paid by the top 10 percent in the United States is 1.35 times larger than their share of income. The comparable number for France was 1.10 times; for Germany, 1.07 times; for the OECD as a whole, 1.11. And this is what we should expect, given that most other democracies rely less on income taxes and more on alternatives such as the VAT, which is less progressive.
Finally, you might be curious about the numbers lurking behind the abstractions of quintiles. I was too, so I checked. According to the Census Bureau, the top 5 percent of household incomes began at $180,001. The Obama campaign pledge has the effect of exempting all but the top 2 percent of households from even the possibility of higher taxes.
How realistic is this? It’s widely agreed (even across party lines) that if increased tax revenues are to be part of a long-term fiscal stabilization plan, they should come via a version of the 1986 reform, which broadened the tax base by reducing tax expenditures–i.e. special tax credits, deductions, exemptions, deferrals, and preferential rates. But as a recent note from Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center makes clear, it’s the well-off but not rich (i.e. the top quintile excluding the very rich) that benefits massively and disproportionately from itemized deductions and exclusions from taxable income. In other words, while it may make political sense to shield households that fall between the 80th and the 98th income percentiles (i.e. those making between $100,000 and $250,000 per year) from tax increases, we won’t raise much revenue if we do.
This prospect won’t trouble the conservatives, who don’t want to raise taxes on anyone and are prepared to gut the federal government in the process. But it should alarm moderates and liberals who believe in public investments and the social safety net. Unless Obama is prepared to tolerate huge deficits indefinitely, or to emulate arch-conservatives and curb the budget deficit with spending cuts only, he will have to break his unsustainable tax pledge at some point. The only question is when.

by Drew Lieberman and Andrew Baumann, Senior Associates Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research
With gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon, the big oil companies and their Republican defenders in Congress have reason to be nervous. As big oil fights to cling to the nearly $5 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies they receive each year, the American electorate has had enough. Our recent survey (see note 1) shows that American voters:
Lay the blame for high gas prices squarely at the feet of Big Oil. A 52 percent outright majority say the oil companies are most to blame for the recent increase in gas prices, a finding confirmed by a recent CNN/Opinion Research survey (see note 2) that shows 61 percent of American adults say the oil companies deserve a great deal of blame for the recent increase in gas prices, the highest percentage of any entity tested.
Strongly support ending oil company subsidies. The CNN/Opinion Research poll shows 77 percent believe the oil companies as a whole are making too much profit, three and half times the 22 percent who say they are making a reasonable profit. By a 73 to 20 percent margin in our survey, voters favor eliminating the $5 billion in subsidies and tax loopholes for oil companies each year, with 57 percent strongly favoring this proposal, the highest level of strong support among any proposal to lower gas prices.
Do not buy the oil companies’ defensive claims that ending their tax breaks will cause more hardship at the pump. While Congressional Republicans continue to defend Big Oil, voters reject the premise that ending the subsidies will cause gas prices to go up. Sixty-nine percent believe “we should end the billions in government subsidies for oil companies because we shouldn’t use taxpayer money to give handouts to oil companies already making huge profits,” while just 22 percent agree with the statement “we should keep tax breaks for oil companies because if we raise taxes on American energy producers that would just cause gas prices to increase further, hurting regular Americans.”
Note 1. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a national survey of 1,000 likely 2012 voters (833 landline, 167 cell) between March 16 and 20, 2011. The margin of error for the survey (overall) at the 95 percent confidence interval is approximately ± 3.1 percentage points.
Note 2. Interviews with 1,034 adult Americans conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on April 29-May 1, 2011. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Think there will eventually be a bipartisan deal to increase the public debt limit after an extended period of Kabuki Theater posturing? Maybe it’s time to think again.
Ezra Klein really hits the nail on the head in describing the “negotiations” as they stand today:

The negotiation that we’re having, in theory, is how to cut the deficit in order to give politicians in both parties space to increase the debt limit. But if you look closely at the positions, that’s not really the negotiation we’re having. Republicans are negotiating not over the deficit, but over tax rates and the size of government. That’s why they’ve ruled revenue “off the table” as a way to reduce the deficit, and why they are calling for laws and even constitutional amendments that cap federal spending rather than attack deficits. Democrats, meanwhile, lack a similarly clear posture: most of them are negotiating to raise the debt ceiling, but a few are trying to survive in 2012, and a few more are actually trying to reduce the deficit, and meanwhile, the Obama administration just met with the Senate Democrats to ask them to please, please, stop laying down new negotiating markers every day.
If we were really just negotiating over the deficit, this would be easy. The White House, the House Republicans, the House Progressives, the House Democrats and the Senate Republicans have all released deficit-reduction plans. There’s not only apparent unanimity on the goal, but a broad menu of approaches. We’d just take elements from each and call it a day. But if the Republicans are negotiating over their antipathy to taxes and their belief that government should be much smaller, that’s a much more ideological, and much tougher to resolve, dispute. The two parties don’t agree on that goal. And if the Democrats haven’t quite decided what their negotiating position is, save to survive this fight both economically and politically, that’s not necessarily going to make things easier, either. Negotiations are hard enough when both sides agree about the basic issue under contention. They’re almost impossible when they don’t.

It’s worth underlining that “deficits” and “debt” don’t in themselves mean any more to conservatives than they did when then-Vice President Dick Cheney said “deficits don’t matter” in 2002. Every Republican “deficit reduction” proposal is keyed to specific spending cuts–without new revenues–and increasingly, to an arbitrary limit on spending as a percentage of GDP. Even the version of a constitutional balanced budget amendment that Sen. Jim DeMint is insisting on as part of any debt limit deal would have a spending-as-percentage-of-GDP “cap” (at 18%, as compared to about 24% currently) that would force huge spending reductions (you can guess from where since GOPers typically consider defense spending as off-limits as taxes).
Today’s Republicans are simply using deficits as an excuse to revoke as much of the New Deal/Great Society tepid-welfare-state system as they can get away with. And it’s really just a latter stage of the old conservative Starve-the-Beast strategy for deliberately manufacturing deficits in order to cut spending. Democrats should point this out constantly, and not let Republicans get away with claiming they are only worried about debt and fiscal responsibility.

Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg have an interesting post up at MSNBC’s First Read. They report on a new survey pollster Peter Hart calls “fortifying and frightening” for President Obama’s reelection prospects, which should help illuminate his reelection strategy.
The good news for the president and for Dems hoping to ride his coattails:

NBC co-pollster Peter Hart (D) perhaps best sums up our latest NBC survey after bin Laden’s death…The president’s foreign-policy and Afghanistan handlings have hit all-time highs, while his leadership, decision-making, and commander-in-chief ratings have all increased.
…The NBC poll’s table of presidential attributes gives us a good idea on what has changed for Obama since bin Laden’s death and what hasn’t. The biggest increases: being firm and decisive (an 11-point jump from last December), having the ability to handle a crisis (11 points), being a good commander-in-chief (10 points), and uniting the country (10 points).
…Among suburban women — always a key demographic group — 55% now approve of the president’s job, and 50% say they will probably vote for him in 2012.

The not so good numbers address, as the authors note “His economic handling — attributed largely to the high gas prices — has reached an all-time low….a reminder of just how potent the issue of gas prices are right now.”
Overall, however, President Obama’s prospects are modestly encouraging, according to the poll.

…Obama’s job approval stands at 52% (a three-point increase from April) and his generic re-elect stands at 45% (up two points from last month; more interestingly, though, the “definite” vote for the Republican went DOWN eight points). As co-pollster Bill McInturff adds, these numbers underscore the “tremendous anchor the economy is to the president’s job standing.” Bottom line: The president acquired SOME political capital, but not as much as history suggests…

The post notes that Obama has 43 percent approval with ‘Independents,’ and the authors cite Hart’s belief that weak support among Indies is a serious problem for Obama. But nowadays it’s more of a catch-all category composed of disparate voters across the political spectrum. It’s all but impossible to formulate a unified strategy targeting ‘Independent’ voters. Still, it’s a number Obama wants to see increase between now and November 2012, perhaps by targeting segments of the category (e.g. youth, environmentalists, self-employed).
Of course the hope is that Obama’s high marks for strong leadership in the wake of the bin Laden raid will become generalized and supported by improving economic statistics. Polls can be helpful in formulating strategy at particular political junctures, but the numbers the President — and Dems — most want to see as 2012 approaches are declining gas prices and a lower unemployment rate.

The publicity surrounding the Koch Brothers’ payments to Florida State University for the hiring of economic department faculty who will have to answer to the Kochs casts an interesting light on a growing phenomenon. The Kochs have already poured a ton of money into George Mason University in Virginia, and the similarly minded BB&T Foundation has endowed “free market” faculty at the University of Texas, West Virginia University, Western Carolina University, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
What makes this interesting is that this new breed of right-wing donor is subsidizing the Capitalist Gospel not just at private institutions, but at money-hungry state schools. And ironically, they are propagating a particular point-of-view, namely Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, that is aggressively hostile to the Christian beliefs of the bulk of the populations of Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Texas.
You have to wonder if the vigilant Christian Right organizations in these states will wake up and protest these capitalist subsidies for secular humanist teaching.

Katrina vanden Heuval asks a hell of a good question in her Washington Post op-ed “Why aren’t the powers that be tackling the jobs crisis?” vanden Heuval gives the Republicans a sound and richly-deserved thrashing for their monumental hypocrisy on the subject, spotlighting GOP Sen. Rob Portman’s “Senate Republican Jobs Plan,” which hinges on “more top-end and corporate tax cuts, more deregulation, more corporate trade accords” and a catch-all Republican wish-list which has zero chance of being enacted.
The Dems also have a new jobs plan, which has some good features, though you can’t be blamed if you haven’t heard about it, so limp has been the leadership and media coverage behind it. Here’s vanden Heuval’s description of the package:

The next day, House Democrats unveiled their more ambitious “Make It in America” plan. This recognizes that the country can’t keep shipping jobs abroad while borrowing $2 billion a day from abroad to pay for what we import. The package contains its share of political malarkey — the Braley bill to ensure that all American flags are made in America, for example — but at its center is a serious strategy for revitalizing the country, one that deserves far more attention and debate than it’s getting. It tasks the president with creating a manufacturing strategy for the country. It would establish an infrastructure bank and invest in rebuilding America’s decrepit roads and bridges. A range of incentives are proposed for capturing a lead in the green industrial revolution that will sweep the world. The plan also would legislate buy-America procurement policies to help create markets at home while setting up a mechanism to challenge Chinese currency manipulation.

Not a bad start. I hope it doesn’t get too complicated as it develops. The legal challenges to the health care reform act indicate the trouble “big package” reforms risk in today’s polarized political climate– even after they are enacted. I’d rather see a series of separate jobs bills get floor votes in rapid succession than have congress vote on one big package proposal, which may have a dicey provision or two that give its opponents cover. Better to fault one’s electoral opponent for voting against a dozen different jobs bills, than one big one he/she can nitpick.
Poll after poll shows that jobs have been the central concern of the middle class for a couple of years now. It would be good to see any Democratic jobs bill get some media traction, even if it is late in the game. Let the House Republicans vote jobs bills down, and then make them defend their votes next year, as we remind them again and again of Boehner’s 2010 campaign slogan “Where are the jobs?”

So instead of just plowing ahead and hoping his money, his name recognition, and the weakness of the field delivers the 2012 presidential nomination, Mitt Romney’s going to his native state of Michigan to do a Great Big Speech on health care. The presumed goal is to shake off the terrible weight of his own Massachusetts health reform plan, which at present looks likely to doom his presidential campaign.
From advance reports, however, it appears Mitt is basically just trying out some refined talking points, but no new position:

A Romney adviser tells ABC News that he will address his own record on health care reform but that it won’t be a major focus of his speech. While Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has apologized for his past support for legislation to enact a “Cap and Trade” system to cut down on carbon emissions, calling it a “clunker”, don’t expect Romney to do the same on health care reform. Look for Romney to continue his federalism defense: the plan he enacted was right for Massachusetts, but not for the entire country.

Gee, b’lieve we’ve already heard that defense.
Romney will also talk about what he would propose to replace ObamaCare, and looks like he’ll tout the usual Republican “ideas” of giving individuals tax credits to buy private policies and going after medical malpractice suits.
I guess he knows what he’s doing, but if indeed he says nothing new, you have to wonder why he’s going to the trouble and expense of just drawing more attention to his greatest handicap.
As Dave Weigel points out, Romney’s Great Big Speech during the 2008 cycle, dealing with religion, wasn’t terribly effective in reducing voter concerns about his Mormonism. But it did give him an excuse to stop answering questions about it, so maybe that’s his tack here: “I already addressed that issue in Michigan in May.”