The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Believe that, as President, Mitt Romney would revert to his days as a “Massachusetts Moderate?” Think again.
Every bit of evidence indicates that if he were President, the Far Right would lead Romney around by a ring in his nose.
Just last week, we saw it clearly on display. It didn’t take but two weeks for the Far Right to force the Romney campaign to sever its ties with openly gay Richard Grinnell, who it had hired as its foreign policy spokesman. The campaign itself argued that it had begged Grinnell to stay. But right wing talk show host Brian Fischer of the American Family Association, who had led the drive to force Grinnell’s resignation, declared it a major victory.
On his radio show, Fischer bragged that Romney had learned his lesson and would never again hire a gay or lesbian in a major campaign role. And you certainly didn’t see Romney contesting that assessment.
Instead we’ve seen Romney lined up shoulder to shoulder on TV with Tea Party icon Michele Bachmann, and Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell — a potential Romney VP pick and a champion of “trans-vaginal ultrasounds.”
The reason why there is not a chance that Romney will ever reinvent himself once again as a “moderate” is that he wasn’t really a “moderate” in the first place. He’s always practiced one version or the other of ultra right wing, “let Wall Street run wild” Romney economics. And he’s never given one thought to firing workers, cutting pensions, loading companies with debt and bleeding them dry of millions of dollars.
But you can’t really say that he is a committed believer in any economic principle or political value. Mitt Romney is committed to one thing and one thing alone — his own success. He has shown he has no core values whatsoever.
That’s why it wasn’t hard at all for Romney to shed his “moderate” past positions on issues like abortion rights, contraception, gay rights and immigration and to become what he himself calls a “severe conservative.”
Why will he remain a “severe conservative” if he is elected President? Because people who have no core values have no backbone. You won’t find Mitt Romney taking a stand against the dyed-in-the-wool ideologues that dominate the Republican caucus in Congress.
Those Republican ideologues may be way out of the mainstream, but they definitely have core values. Some of them were so committed to those values that they were willing to take our country to the brink of bankruptcy last year due to their unwillingness to give an inch of compromise.

Read more…

While many progressives think of evangelical voters as predictably Republican, Stanford professor of anthropology T. M. Luhrmann has an article at The New York Times offering some interesting advice to progressives who want to get a bite of the evangelical vote:

If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on. They should talk about how we can grow in compassion and care. They could talk about the way their policy interventions will allow those who receive them to become better people and how those of us who support them will better ourselves as we reach out in love. They could describe health care reform as a response to suffering, not as a solution to an economic problem.
To be sure, they won’t connect to every evangelical. But the good news for secular liberals is that evangelicals are smarter and more varied than many liberals realize. I met doctors, scientists and professors at the churches where I studied. They cared about social justice. They cared about the poor. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many of them got into their cars and drove to New Orleans. This is a reachable population, and back in 2008, a quarter of white evangelicals voted for Mr. Obama. Democrats could speak to evangelicals more effectively if they talked about how we could develop our moral character together as we work to rebuild our country.

Dems should remember that not all self-described evangelicals are conservative on social issues. Indeed, a significant portion embrace something akin to ‘social gospel’ Christianity, in which compassion for the poor and suffering is an important value. These voters are approachable by progressives who can speak their language.

Michael Tomasky has an appealingly titled post, “The GOP’s Impending Electoral College Meltdown” up at The Daily Beast, and his analysis of the latest snapshot polls should gladden the hearts of Dems:

…When you look at the likely swing states, it is not right now a close race at all. RCP’s Electoral College map gives Obama 227 electoral votes from states that are solidly or pretty clearly leaning in his direction. It gives Romney just 170. It lists 11 toss-up states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia…
…Obama leads in nine of the 11 states. Romney leads only in two, and he leads in the two whose mere presence on a list of swing states suggests trouble for him–Arizona and Missouri. Romney’s lead in those states is small (3.2 percent in the former, 3.0 in the latter). Of the nine states in which Obama leads, he is ahead by outside your typical three- or four-point margin of error in four: Colorado (9.5 percent), Nevada (6.7 percent), Pennsylvania (6 percent), and Ohio (5.3 percent)…There appear to be lots of ways for Obama to get to 270 losing either Ohio or Florida. But there appear to be almost no plausible ways for Romney to get to 270 without winning both of them, and one or two major swing states besides, states where he is behind right now.

Even better, adds Tomasky, the GOP’s anti-Latino policies seem almost custom designed to benefit Obama and the Democrats:

…We know all about the demographic changes of recent years, identified most comprehensively by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis. But there’s more to the story than that. Demography didn’t have to be destiny. If the Republican Party of the last few years hadn’t done everything it could possibly imagine do to alienate Latinos, “new-economy” professionals, and young people, the party would have remained competitive in Colorado (which, by the way, doesn’t really seem like much of a swing state to me) and some Great Lakes-Rust Belt states. That party would have easily maintained its historic advantage in Virginia and North Carolina. But the Republicans chose not to be that party. They decided to be the hate-and-anger party, and they veritably shoved states like those I just mentioned into the Democratic column….

All well and good. But Krissah Thompson notes in the Washington Post that there is a serious problem looming for Dems even in Tomasky’s encouraging scenario:

The number of black and Hispanic registered voters has fallen sharply since 2008, posing a serious challenge to President Barack Obama’s campaign in an election that could hinge on the participation of minority voters…This is the first time in nearly four decades that the number of registered Hispanics has dropped significantly.
That figure fell 5 percent nationwide to about 11 million, according to the Census Bureau. But in some politically important swing states, the decline among Hispanics, who are considered critical in the 2012 presidential contest, is much higher: just over 28 percent in New Mexico, for example, and about 10 percent in Florida.
For both Hispanics and blacks, the large decrease is attributed to the ailing economy, which forced many Americans to move in search of work or because of other financial upheaval…”There is the massive job loss and home mortgage foreclosures which disproportionately affected minorities,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan policy group that focuses on Latinos…”When you move, you lose your registration.”

But Romney has another strategy problem that may override all of the obstacles facing the Obama campaign, as Tomasky explains:

…Barring some huge catastrophe, the only way a not-well-liked candidate like Romney can make up five to seven points in expensive-market states is through massive doses of attack ads, both from his campaign and from the various Super PACs, which may spend a combined $600 million or more–solely on negative ads and chiefly in six or eight states. Hate and anger aren’t going anywhere.

If both Tomasky and Thompson are right, it may come down to big money vs. the ground game. In November, the number that may matter more than all of the polling data put together is the number of well-trained GOTV workers Dems are able to mobilize in the big cities of the swing states.

The Washington Post op-ed “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem” by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein is still generating buzz across the political spectrum, leaving the ‘false equivalency’ apologists groping for a credible response. Ornstein and Mann made a very tight case, but it’s worth revisiting a TDS strategy memo by Ed Kilgore, James Vega and J.P. Green for an important related observation.
As the authors note in “Wake up, commentators. The most dangerous group of “right-wing extremists” today is not the grass-roots tea party. It is the financial and ideological leaders in the Republican coalition who have embraced the extremist philosophy of “politics as warfare“:

….it is necessary to very clearly distinguish between two entirely distinct meanings of the term “extremism.” On the one hand, it is possible for a person or political party to hold a wide variety of very “extreme” opinions on issues. These views may be crackpot (e.g. “abolish paper money) or repugnant (“deny non-insured children medical care”). But as long as the individual or political party that holds these views conducts itself within the norms and rules of a democratic society, this, in itself, does not lead such groups or individuals to be described as “political extremists” by the media or society in general.
Libertarians and the Libertarian Party offer the best illustration. Vast numbers of Americans consider many libertarian views “extreme.” But, because the libertarians conduct themselves within the norms and rules of a democratic society, they are virtually never described by the media as “political extremists.”
The alternative definition of the term “political extremists” refers to political parties or individuals who do not accept the norms, rules and constraints of democratic society. They embrace a view of “politics as warfare” and of political opponents as literal “enemies” who must be crushed. Extremist political parties based on the politics as warfare philosophy emerged on both the political left and right at various times in the 20th century in many different countries and circumstances.

When the extremism of the Republican Party is now discussed, this distinction is often lost, but it is crucial to understanding what is genuinely “extreme” and different about them.

Despite their ideological diversity, extremist political parties share a large number of common characteristics, one critical trait being a radically different conception of the role and purpose of the political party itself in a democratic society.
In the politics as warfare perspective a political party’s objective is defined as the conquest and seizure of power and not sincere collaboration in democratic governance. The party is viewed as a combat organization whose goal is to defeat an enemy, not a governing organization whose job is to faithfully represent the people who voted for it. Political debate and legislative maneuvering are seen not as the means to achieve ultimate compromise, but as forms of combat whose objective is total victory.

It’s a critical distinction. A great democracy is supposed to synthesize diverse points of view through reasoned negotiation and compromise. But ‘Politics as Warfare’ seeks to annihilate political adversaries and allow no flexibility to address their concerns. And there can’t be much doubt that it makes bipartisan compromise for the greater good of our country all but impossible.

The following article by political consultant Peter D. Rosenstein, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
It’s always interesting when people find it hard to say “thank you” and then ask for more at the same time. Politicians don’t have that problem. How many times do you get a request for more money either with the thank-you for your last donation or even before you got thanked? It may be a little annoying, but that is the way the game is played.
Advocates need to remember that we have to play the game the same way. We can thank someone for all they have done for us, make a contribution, and give support, while at the same time demanding that they do the things they promised but haven’t yet done. It is kind of like walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Read more…

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic, where it is part of a symposium on “Obama and Populism.” Note also the additional contributions to the symposium from TDS Co-Editors Ruy Teixeira and William Galston.
The cool, professorial Barack Obama may not be the most natural politician to espouse a populist message. And being the incumbent doesn’t help: Rhetoric that makes voters feel more aggrieved about their current condition isn’t likely to win him any votes. But Obama can still run on a populist platform. In fact, he has to. Not because it’s the best way to argue for his agenda–because it’s the best way to bash his opponent, Mitt Romney.
It’s fitting that most of the discussions of the advantages and pitfalls of populism for Obama are focused on rhetoric. On a policy level, a sitting president has a relatively limited window for populist agenda items. Obama has supported a tax surcharge on the very wealthy, tax penalties on companies outsourcing jobs, greater regulation of banks and insurance companies–these all command strong popular support in the general electorate. But there are some populist positions that Obama simply can’t assume without the kind of reversal of positions that a vulnerable incumbent is not about to undertake. Obama is not going to say TARP (or his implementation of it) was a mistake; that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is a corporate stooge; that economic globalization needs to be resisted by every possible means; or that private health insurance ought to be abolished.
But if by “going populist” one means criticizing the excessive power of wealthy private interests in the economy, society, and politics–and the Republican policies designed to defend or increase it–then the President has significantly more latitude, which he clearly has signaled his willingness to use. How far can he credibly go in the direction of unrestrained rhetorical populism? In his TNR essay on this subject yesterday, Geoffrey Kabaservice argued that Obama would be constrained by his personality: a populist tone, he suggested, is alien to the persona of a President who is “nobody’s idea of ‘just folks.'” But American history has shown that populist rhetoric doesn’t have to come from the heartland. Franklin Roosevelt was nobody’s idea of “just folks” either; that didn’t keep him from inveighing against economic royalists, or from quoting his equally patrician relative Theodore Roosevelt in denouncing “malefactors of great wealth.”
Kabaservice associates Obama with John F. Kennedy’s “cool,” but an identically privileged background did not prevent JFK’s two brothers from striking populist notes. On one occasion in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was speaking to a medical school audience about the need for better health care for the poor, and one of the future physicians asked him sarcastically where he expected to get the money for such social luxuries; without hesitation Kennedy responded, “From you.” As RFK showed, it’s possible to combine populist heat with the progressive light of a “common national purpose” message.
In fact, a more populist tone is not only possible for Obama, it’s essential. While voters may hold him primarily responsible for the economy, they will judge his performance based on their sense of the trouble he inherited from Bush and the resistance he’s facing from Bush’s party. That means, to use the all-purpose terms devised by Democratic wordsmith Bob Shrum, Obama has to convince the electorate that he’s been “fighting for you” and is “on your side” against the policies of a party beholden to sinister rent-seeking corporate actors.
Most importantly, Obama badly needs to make sure this is a “choice election,” and not a referendum on Obama’s first term. That means he needs to run on Mitt Romney’s flaws, and not only on his own accomplishments. And because of Romney’s own background and economic agenda, a populist message is the best way to do that. Romney is running almost entirely on his reputation as a corporate wizard; his economic policy platform is about liberating “job creators” from taxes and oversight; and he has embraced the Ryan Budget, a domestic policy blueprint that aims at a government-engineered redistribution of resources from the bottom to the top of the income ladder. If Obama does not draw attention to the obvious class nature of Romney’s background, agenda, allies, and beneficiaries, then he is in danger of letting Romney get away with the suggestion that he’s simply offering an alternative path to full economic recovery–not a path for the wealthy to acquire more wealth.
For Obama to represent the national interest and the welfare of the broad middle-class, as those fearing a populist approach so often suggest, he’s going to have to establish that Mitt Romney is a creature of moneyed special interests. And like it or not, that means Obama must wage rhetorical battle against America’s elite. That’s not to say that the President will have to model himself on William Jennings Bryan; for the purposes of this election, RFK would suffice.

Greg Sargent has a post, “Millions in TV ads, but no poll movement for Scott Walker” up at WaPo’s ‘The Plumline’ noting an interesting phenomenon.
Citing a new Marquette Law School poll indicating that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is locked in a dead heat with Democratic challenger Tom Barrett among WI RV’s, Sargent explains:

…Walker’s approval rating, and his head to head numbers with Barrett, have not changed in months — if anything, they’re going down. And this is in spite of the fact that Walker and his allies have vastly outspent rivals in TV ads.
Charles Franklin, a political scientist and expert in Wisconsin politics who directs the Marquette poll, sends over some numbers…In January, Walker’s job approval was 51 percent; in March, it was 50 percent; and this month, it’s 47 percent…In January, Walker was leading Barrett 50-44; in March, 47-45; and this month, he trails 46-47. (Among likely voters, Walker leads by a point; all of these findings suggest a mostly unchanging dead heat.)
“There’s been a great deal of advertising in the state, especially from the Walker campaign and Republican supporters, and we’ve seen virtually no movement in the Walker numbers,” Franklin tells me.

Sargent adds that Walker has just announced that “he’d raised a staggering $13 million in three months for the recall fight,” but still no improvement in the polls for Walker. Sargent quotes Franklin again: “This means the race is all going to come down to turnout — the one area where Dems and unions can match Walker in resources and organization, perhaps neutralizing Walker’s ad spending advantage…The advantages that Democrats and unions have traditionally had in the ground game is certainly an area where they can match Walker’s organization at the very least.”
It may be that the same dynamic is at work in the presidential campaign — that there comes a point at which each additional dollar spent on campaign ads brings diminishing returns. In the home stretch, however, it’s all about the turnout ground game — and that bodes well for Democrats.

A.P.’s Thomas Beaumont reports on a ‘reverse coattails’ phenomenon shaping up, in which President Obama is likely to benefit from key House of Reps races with strong Democratic candidates, like Christie Vilsack in IA-4, Orlando Police Chief Val Demings in FL-8 and several others.
Jonathan Bernstein makes the case at WaPo’s ‘PostPartisan’ blog that “Yes, the Democrats have become more liberal,” while Kevin Drum argues that “Democrats Have Moved to the Right, Not the Left” at Mother Jones.
At the Washington Monthly ‘Ten Miles Square’ blog, Bernstein makes an interesting observation about the core dysfunctional weakness of today’s GOP, which sounds a lot like the monomaniacal egotism of its leaders: “…When your leadership is so radical, and radically dishonest as well (consider, just as one example, the “fight” against the UN swooping in and taking away everyone’s guns, or the claim that Democrats are trying to do that), it’s very difficult for a party to really develop either viable policy or principled policy.”
At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver explains why some Dems are rooting for the defeat of once-moderate Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s GOP primary: “If Mr. Lugar loses, it should increase Democrats’ odds of picking up the Senate seat in November. Democrats have a fairly good candidate in Indiana in the form of United States Representative Joe Donnelly, who represents the Second Congressional District and who narrowly retained his seat in a very tough environment for Democrats nationally in 2010.”
Chris Van Hollen outlines the Democrats’ path to regaining a majority of the House at MSNBC.com. “The momentum is with us…”
At Salon.com, Steve Kornacki writes that “The Democratic Senate might just survive,” noting that “A Senate map that looked bleak a year ago is now littered with surprise pick-up opportunities.”
According to Betsy Towner’s article the May Bulletin of the AARP (hard copy only), a Pew Research Center poll for the AARP sketches a snapshot ideological profile of senior voters, who have the highest turnout rates. In terms of political leanings, respondents over age 65 (includes the ‘Woodstock Generation’ and their older sibs) fell into these categories: “staunch conservatives” (15%); “Main Street Republicans” (14%); Libertarians (9%); “Disaffecteds (11%); “Postmoderns (moderates, liberal on social issues) (8%); “New Coaltion Democrats” (11%); “Hard-Pressed Democrats (15%); “Solid Liberals” (13%) and; “Bystanders” (3%). The study also has figures for the 50-64 demographic. The AARP has good infographics on seniors right here.
At WaPo’s ‘The Fix,” Chis Cillizza discusses whether “The Catholic vote is the 2012 bellwether.” Cillizza points out that “in the last two presidential contests the Catholic vote has tracked almost exactly with the popular vote.” and “It’s not just presidential elections where Catholics have been a key swing bloc. In the 2006 midterms when Democrats made huge congressional gains, the party won Catholics by 11 points. In 2010, when Republicans re-took the House, Catholics voted for GOP candidates by 10 points…In each of the past five presidential elections, Catholics have comprised somewhere between 26 percent and 29 percent of the overall electorate. (Catholics were 27 percent of the electorate in both 2004 and 2008.).”
Sen. Rob Portman, frequently-cited to be atop the GOP veepstakes short list, may have just uttered the political understatement of the year: “It’s not about sizzle for me.”