At The New Republic, Dissent Co-Editor Michael Kazin makes a cogent argument for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and spare America future campaign finance debacles. Of course none of several proposed amendments can pass, as Kazin acknowledges, since that would require a two-thirds majority just to get out of congress and into the state legislatures. In addition, notes Kazin, “as long as Sheldon Adelson, the brothers Koch, and their ilk are eager to finance some politicians and destroy others, no proposed amendment of this kind will get beyond the agitational stage.”
But Kazin, author of “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation,” makes a persuasive case that such an amendment could be very helpful in starting a serious movement for campaign finance reform:

But that drawback can be turned into a virtue. Agitation has, in fact, been the initial purpose of many proposed amendments, including those that keep failing (like that which would require the federal government to balance its budget) to those that are now unassailable (like the 13th, which abolished slavery.) The idea of altering America’s foundational document can give focus and legitimacy to movements which need to show that the people are truly on their side. In 1994, the balanced budget amendment became the centerpiece of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and helped conservative Republicans present themselves as tribunes of common sense. Of course, if enacted, it would have forced the government to slash spending in 2009 instead of increase it, turning the Great Recession into a second Great Depression. An amendment is good to campaign with before it has a chance to become law–and even if it never should.
For prime examples of amendments that helped movements grow, one can look back a century ago, to the aptly named Progressive Era. From 1913 to 1920, four major amendments were quickly passed and ratified–the 16th establishing the income tax; the 17th creating the popular election of senators; the 18th, prohibition of the business in alcoholic beverages, and the 19th women’s suffrage. Each victory capped a grassroots struggle that had lasted for decades and, for much of that time, had seemed rather hopeless. Suffragists and prohibitionists–whose ranks often overlapped–had begun organizing in the 1840s. The groundswell for an income tax, which, at first, only the richest citizens had to pay, and the push to democratize the election of Senators both grew out of the anti-monopoly fervor of the late 19th century….

As for the political psychology behind those amendment campaigns, Kazin adds “Each proposed amendment helped progressive organizers to focus the attention of the press, to galvanize supporters of their cause, and to unify campaigns that otherwise were fragmented by local desires and diverse constituencies.”
Kazin notes a pervasive reluctance to champion constitutional amendments among modern liberals and the failure of alternative approaches to get much traction. Yet, he argues that, “To shake up a system that both parties have long abetted and the High Court has graced will require a massive effort by angry outsiders and those members of the political class who share their disgust. To transform that system will require having a true alternative in mind. Advocating for a constitutional amendment could aid both purposes…”
Where all other reforms have clearly failed to generate much excitement, the very boldness of a constitutional amendment just might be the tonic that revitalizes the progressive base. As Kazin concludes, “the end result might even breathe some new life into that 225-year old promise to “promote the general Welfare.”

At The Washington Monthly Political Animal, TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore illuminates the “hate the whole, love the parts” paradox that pops up in just about every in-depth opinion poll addressing the Affordable Care Act. Commenting on the findings of the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll, Kilgore adds clarity to the discussion throughout his post, especially in this excerpt commenting on surprising Republican support for key ACA provisions:

Greg Sargent called up the pollsters and got more partisan breakdowns, and it’s interesting to see how far the “hate the whole, love the parts” sentiment penetrates into GOP ranks…Greg thinks these numbers simply reflect GOP opposition to the law on grounds that it’s Obama’s. That’s undoubtedly a big part of it, but a complete lack of understanding as to how insurance markets work is a factor as well. You can bet GOP pols will be telling their base and independent voters alike that can get all the rich chocolatey goodness of the above reforms via a somewhat different menu of individual tax credits, high-risk pools, interstate insurance sales, medical savings accounts, association health plans, and maybe tort reform. It would not be true by any stretch of the imagination, but so long as they can keep holding such “ideas” out as an alternative to reenactment of the popular provisions of ObamaCare, they might be able to keep their folks placated for a while, particularly if an eliminated individual mandate leads to higher premiums that can be blamed on the surviving parts of the law. In the end, though, the Republican “agenda” on health care will amount to a big bait-and-switch, even for Republican voters.

Kilgore concludes with a note on the importance of Dems protecting Medicaid from GOP attacks after the upcoming Supreme Court ruling, as a critical component of anything that purports to be serious health care reform. Without it, “the whole effort to move towards universal access to affordable health care will fail, regardless of what happens on all the regulatory issues.”

This article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
When the history of the 2012 presidential election campaign is written, last week may or may not rank as the most significant — but it will certainly be viewed as a major inflection point in the race.
Romney’s bad week began on Friday, June 15, when the Administration announced that the Department of Homeland Security would defer action to remove the “Dreamers” — undocumented young people who came to this country before the age of 16 and were less than 30 years of age. This includes the young people who would have been covered by the Dream Act that passed the House and received a majority vote in the Senate in 2010 — back when Democrats still controlled both bodies. Unfortunately, the Dream Act did not receive final passage in the Senate because it was blocked by a Republican filibuster.
First and foremost, the President’s action was enormously significant because it gave formal status — and work permits — to 1.4 million young people who had previously been subject to deportation from the only country many of them had ever known.
But as a political matter, it was also a game changer.
President Obama already led Romney among Hispanic voters by ratios of two or three to one in most polls. But over the last three years, Republicans have successfully blocked all of his attempts to pass comprehensive immigration reform through Congress, and his bold action for the Dreamers sent a bolt of electricity through the Latino electorate. His action will almost certainly turbocharge efforts to boost Hispanic voter turnout that will likely be decisive in key swing states like Colorado, Nevada and Florida — and may still put Arizona in play.
What’s more, it completely undercut Senator Marco Rubio’s attempt to craft a bill that would provide relief to Dreamers without giving them the pathway to citizenship promised in the Dream Act. That bill would have had no chance whatsoever of passing the Republican House this year, but it would have given Romney and the Republicans a fig leaf to hide behind in their attempt to improve their dismal standing in the Hispanic community. In fact, the President’s action turned the Tea Party-backed Rubio into the incredible “shrinking senator” and took Rubio off the Vice Presidential list of most pundits.
For his part, Romney spent the week dodging questions from reporters — and Dream students — about whether he would leave President Obama’s action in place if he were elected.
The political impact of these events was on display at last week’s conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). Romney was given tepid, polite applause. Obama received a thunderous ovation.
In his speech to the group, Romney pledged that he could be trusted to “keep his promises.” The next day, the President pointed out in his remarks that one of those Romney “promises” was a firm pledge to “veto the Dream Act” earlier in the campaign.
The entire episode highlighted the fact that Romney is running as the most anti-immigrant major party candidate for President in modern history. His embrace of the Arizona “papers please law” as a “national model” and his connection with the architects of that law, like rabidly anti-immigrant Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, will be highlighted once again when the Supreme Court rules on the law’s constitutionality early this week. And in an amazing show of ineptitude, Romney’s people have scheduled him to actually be in Phoenix for a fundraiser on Monday when it is expected that the Supreme Court is likely to rule.
But last week’s development on the immigration and the Dream Act did more than damage Romney with Hispanics and help mobilize them to participate in the fall election. It also turned around the political momentum in the race. In politics, like sports, momentum — the bandwagon effect — is a big factor. Last week it returned to the Obama camp after several weeks of bad economic news and Romney’s consolidation of his base as he secured the GOP nomination.
Romney had sought to continue his previous momentum through a bus tour that carried his economic message to New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan — all states the President had won in 2008 — all critical to the outcome in 2012. The first day of his bus tour was eclipsed by the President’s action on immigration. Day two, the big news was the campaign’s decision to wave off a planned stop at a Wawa store in Quakerstown, Pa., when 150 Democrats and former Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania gathered there to greet Romney’s bus.
Matters were made worse when, after diverting to a more friendly Wawa, Romney marveled at the “touch screen” sandwich machine that local Wawa customers had used for a decade — recreating the out of touch moment first experienced by the first President Bush when he was awestruck by supermarket bar code scanners in the early 1990’s. Of course, Romney had already shown his contempt for convenience stores early in the campaign when he complained that what turned out to be cookies made by a favorite Pennsylvania bakery looked like they came from a 7-11 store.
His tour continued to be dogged by a counter-tour organized by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that preceded Romney’s own. The DNC’s “Romney Economics: Middle Class Under the Bus” tour drew competing press throughout the Romney route.
And things just kept getting worse for the GOP. On Monday of last week, a group of nuns launched their own press tour: “Nuns on the Bus — the Nuns Drive for Family, Faith and Fairness.” This two-week press tour — complete with a bus wrapped with their slogan and powerful testimony from Catholic Women Religious — focused on the fact that the Ryan-Romney-Republican budget does not square with Catholic values. The “Nuns on the Bus” tour generated press coverage of Biblical proportions everywhere it went — including key swing states in the presidential and congressional races. It continues until July 3.
Finally, at the end of the week, the Washington Post published a major story exploring how — when he was head of Bain Capital — Romney was a “pioneer” outsourcing American jobs abroad. All the Romney campaign could do to respond was quibble over the term “outsourcing” and “offshoring.”
In a campaign stop in Florida on Friday, President Obama argued that we don’t need a “pioneer in outsourcing” in the Oval Office. Instead we need someone who will work every waking moment to create American jobs. Obama campaign senior adviser, David Axelrod, tweeted that Romney is running to be “Outsourcerer-in-chief.”
There’s no other way to put it. This issue is devastating for the Romney candidacy. That’s because it simultaneously moves the two groups of voters that affect the outcome of any election: persuadables and mobilizables.
It is particularly important to white working class swing voters that are President Obama’s weakest swing demographic. At the same time it energizes his base — especially organized labor and progressives.
Americans understand that the outsourcing of American jobs — especially manufacturing jobs — is one of the key factors that has devastated the middle class. And Republican strategist Frank Luntz was right when he said, “If next year’s campaign is couched as a battle over the middle class, Democrats will win.”
The “pioneer of outsourcing” story will become one of the iconic symbols in the 2012 campaign. It clearly and simply summarizes the growing concerns among swing voters that Romney Economics — and Romney’s history at Bain — are both about making millions for himself and other millionaires and throwing the middle class “under the bus.”
As if that wasn’t enough, the week ended with an extravagant Romney Retreat for his the biggest fundraisers and bundlers for the Romney campaign and its super PAC at a posh resort town in Utah. Trackers captured dozens of corporate jets landing at local airports ferrying the members of Romney’s true base — the CEO/millionaire set — to the Romney soiree. The retreat brazenly featured meetings of “industry groups” like bankers, who strategized about their political aims with Romney and other Republicans leaders like Senate Banking Committee ranking Republican Spencer Bachus. It also provided attendees with a weekend of unfettered access to top Republican political strategists like former Bush adviser Karl Rove, who might once again return to government if Romney wins.
Americans United for Change Communications Director Jeremy Funk blogged:

With doubt about Mitt Romney’s ability to create jobs reaching new heights this week following the revelation that companies he oversaw as CEO of Bain Capital were “pioneers” of the cold, greedy practice of shipping U.S. jobs overseas to bottom-wage countries, you might think he would think twice about rubbing elbows and clinking glasses with his former outsourcing specialist colleagues at Bain anytime soon. Yet, not 48 hours later, Bain Capital’s private jet was spotted today near Romney’s exclusive retreat in Utah for mega campaign donors, undoubtedly including a who’s who list of outsourcing corporate interests — a retreat unofficially billed as “Outsourcers of the World Reunite.”

Romney’s bad week was punctuated by a Bloomberg poll that showed Obama had lept to a double digit lead in the race. While some pundits dismissed the poll as an outlier, few could argue that Romney was making ground in his uphill battle to the White House. And most handicappers agree that, though the election will almost certainly be close, right now they’d rather be Barack Obama than Mitt Romney.
Lots can happen in the four and a half months that remain until November 6 — and all those Romney donors will flood the airwaves with attacks ads in the weeks leading to the election. But if the Obama campaign can string together more weeks like the one that just passed, it will be Barack Obama, not Mitt Romney, that will be standing on the Capitol steps taking the oath of office next January.

President Obama has clearly played a very good hand, considering public attitudes toward his recent announcement regarding the deportation of young illegal immigrants, reports TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot.’:

President Barack Obama recently announced that his administration would stop deporting illegal immigrants who came here before age 16, have been in the country for five years, have no criminal record, are in school or have a high school diploma, or were honorably discharged from the military. This change is similar to some of the provisions of the DREAM Act, which has stalled in Congress, thanks to conservative opposition. The DREAM Act also includes a path to citizenship.
President Obama’s move generated a positive response–not just among Latinos, who, of course, are wildly enthusiastic. In a Bloomberg poll of all voters, Obama’s announcement received support by an overwhelming 64 percent to 30 percent.

Teixeira adds that “the public is quite supportive of the DREAM Act. In a recent Latino Decisions poll, the DREAM Act was backed by a decisive 62 percent to 33 percent margin.”
“Conservatives may weep and wail about Obama’s announcement,” concludes Teixeira. “But it appears that the public agrees with the president: It’s the right thing to do.”

As the nation braces for one of the most important Supreme Court decisions ever, E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains how the public debate was framed: “The ACA is the victim of a vicious cycle: Obamacare polls badly. Therefore, Democrats avoid Obamacare, preferring to talk about almost anything else, while Republicans and conservatives attack it regularly. This makes Obamacare’s poll ratings even worse, which only reinforces the avoidance on the liberal side…The media have abetted the problem, but this is partly a response to the impact of the vicious cycle on how the issue has been framed. As a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has shown, terms used by opponents of the law, such as “government-run,” were much more common in the coverage than terms such as “pre-existing conditions.”
At CNN Politics, Gregory Wallace explores the ramifications of the term “Obamacare.”
Everyone will undoubtedly be playing Monday Morning quarterback when the decision is released. As for Democratic strategy, at WaPo Peter Wallsten cites “the ‘musket defense’ supported by Harvard Law proff Lawrence Tribe and others: “To defend the health-care mandate, for instance, the government could have cited past measures such as a 1792 law signed by President George Washington requiring able-bodied men 18 or older to purchase a musket and ammunition. Several scholars, even former president Bill Clinton, have cited the 18th-century law as an example of an individual mandate that happened to be imposed by a president with impeccable originalist bona fides.”
Regarding the ACA mandate, at Talking Points Memo Brian Beutler notes the ‘adverse selection’ problem: “The prevailing view among policy experts and industry insiders is that if the mandate falls, the rest of the health care law becomes unsustainable. A phenomenon known as adverse selection will dominate the insurance market when younger, healthier people opt not to purchase insurance, premiums will spike, and the market will enter a death spiral…” If that happens, why not amend the act with an irresistible tax incentive for younger workers to “buy in”?
MSM bias in reporting on appeals courts ruling on the constitutionality vs. unconstitutionality of the ACA has been even worse than you think, according to this well-documented report from Media Matters: “A majority of federal rulings on the substance of President Obama’s health care reform law have found it to be constitutional, including the law’s mandate that individuals purchase health insurance. But a Media Matters review of the five largest newspapers and the flagship CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs finds that the media overwhelmingly focused on rulings that struck down the law in whole or in part — 84 percent of segments on the broadcast and cable programs reviewed and 59 percent of newspaper articles that reported on such rulings — while largely ignoring rulings that found it constitutional or dismissed the case.”
OK, here’s the headline for an Associated Press story by Jennifer Agiesta: “Poll: 1-in-4 uncommitted now in White House race.” Here’s a sentence that appears about 2/3 into the story “Overall, the poll found that among registered voters, 47 percent say they will vote for the president and 44 percent for Romney, a difference that is not statistically significant.” (toplines here) If you suspect that the headline will become the poll meme, and far fewer will read the article, you are not alone.
For an informative case study of how Republican Governors suppress voting rights by executive order, read AP’s “Iowa governor strips voting rights from thousands of felons, restores few.”Gov. Branstadt requires felons who have served their time to submit a credit report with the application to restore their voting rights. As a result, “…8,000 felons in Iowa have finished their prison sentences or been released from community supervision, but less than a dozen have successfully navigated the process of applying to get their citizenship rights back, according to public records obtained by the AP. Branstad’s office has denied a handful of others because of incomplete paperwork or unpaid court costs.”
Could this headline and the poll behind it be an indication that voters may indeed be ready to penalize congressional Republicans for ‘gridlock, obstruction and paralysis’?
Susan Page’s report on “Latinos Strongly backing Obama” quotes an ad strategy tip from Sylvia Manzano, a political scientist at Texas A&M University: “Running an ad that says, ‘I would never vote for Sonia Sotomayor,’ ‘I would veto the DREAM Act’ — those are really easy things to crystallize and repeat…”
For a disturbing look at how out-of-state, right-wing money is being marshalled to defeat one of the best progressive U.S. Senators, see David Callhan’s “Private Wealth and the Public Interest: Sherrod Brown Under Attack.” This could be the marquee state-wide race for ‘people power’ vs. big money. Dems in states where their Senate race is pretty much decided may want to help out Sherrod Brown at this ActBlue page.

The following post by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
This news about Bain Capital being a pioneer in outsourcing, investing in some of the leading early companies that advised American companies in how to most effectively do it, is a pretty big deal on the face of it, but it has even deeper implications than many people realize. Being in this kind of business when the vast majority of Americans are so upset by out-sourcing is just one of Mitt Romney’s deep dark secrets that he has been trying to hide, and helps to powerfully make the case that Romney’s entire business career has been fundamentally at odds with the interests of the American middle class.
The other thing this news does is that it very likely ends the debate within the Democratic party as to whether it is okay to talk about Bain Capital’s business practices. There are still going to be Wall Street Democrats squeamish about beating up on this kind of wealthy financial company, but to defend a company that was literally a pioneer in helping American companies out-source jobs would be incredibly unpopular. Given how deeply unhappy voters are about out-sourcing, given how it generally is one of the top issues mentioned by voters in any poll I have seen over the last decade, it would be political malpractice not to attack Bain and Romney over this news, and any honest Democrat will have to understand and acknowledge that fact.
The reason this story goes so deep is that Romney’s entire political strategy is based on carrying blue collar white voters very heavily. Obama won 53 percent of the vote in 2008 while losing white working class voters by 18 percent. Even if you assume Obama doesn’t do quite as well turning out his base voters, to win this election Romney will have win that white working class demographic by at least 62-38 percent. Given how big a deal out-sourcing is to blue-collar workers, this story becomes close to a deal-breaker for Romney.
The Romney campaign’s reaction to the story is hilarious:
“This is a fundamentally flawed story that does not differentiate between domestic outsourcing versus offshoring nor versus work done overseas to support U.S. exports.” The very incoherence of the quote speaks to their strategy: try to confuse the issue, try to make it sound complicated. The problem for Romney is that this is a remarkably simple story: whether you call it out-sourcing or off-shoring (and I don’t see how the new word helps him), Romney was caring only about his company’s profits and not at all about creating jobs here in the U.S., and he saw out-sourcing jobs as a great new way to make money.
Perhaps as interesting as the story itself is the fact that after four years as governor of Massachusetts, and more than six years of his running for the presidency non-stop, even with all his talk about his business career helping him understand job creation, this is the first time we have heard about these investments. Mitt Romney is big into secrets, and is very good at keeping them. He has Swiss bank accounts, and Cayman Island accounts as well. His financial disclosure for years past has been unusually secretive in nature. He won’t say what his positions are on a whole range of critically important issues. I think we can guess why Romney tried to hide the news about his being a pioneer in out-sourcing, but why does he have secret off-shore bank accounts and so little information in his financial disclosure reports? What has he invested money in all those years that requires such skullduggery? This is as secretive a man as has run for president at least since Dick Nixon with all his dirty little secrets.
This is the candidate who said that we must only speak of issues about the concentration of wealth “in quiet rooms”. He prefers speaking about these kinds of things in quiet rooms, because to be open about how he made his money would be such an insult to the exact voters he most needs to win this election. But Romney made his incredible fortune by doing insider deals in those quiet rooms, by quietly helping companies turn a profit by out-sourcing their workers. After he made his money off these kinds of deals, he hid a great deal of it in secret Swiss and Caymans bank accounts. Is a man with these kinds of values — and these kinds of secrets — the kind of man we want to be president?

President Obama picks up 29 electoral votes in a new electoral map projection based on a round-up of recent state polls, for a total of 314. As Ryan Witt adds at Political Buzz Examiner: “It is also worth noting that many of the most recent polls come from Rasmussen Reports, an organization that has given Republican candidates a misleading three-to-five point edge in their polls as recently as 2010.”
The electoral college may be the Democrats’ friend this time around, but it could well be toast by 2016, according to this analysis by Albert B. Southwick at the Worcester Telegram.
Far be it from moi to demonize adversaries, but could this confab be the most unholy admixture of evil, money and secrecy in history?
Today it’s all about Florida, as President Obama takes his turn at the NALEO Annual Meeting in Orlando and then Hillsborough Community College in Tampa. Meanwhile the Justice Department is arguing before a federal district court with ample evidence that FL’s new restrictions on early voting discriminate against people of color, as this Reuters report by Drew Singer explains.
A wave election? It just ain’t happening, says Charlie Cook.
Dem ad-makers alert: About 1:53 into this video clip, watch Romney’s new gaffe/slip, arguing that the President is “out of touch” because he doesn’t know “when to send jobs overseas.”
Dana Milbank skewers House Republicans for their shameless attacks against Attorney General Holder: “They did what sensible people usually do when they have an honest disagreement: They accused the attorney general of being an accessory to murder.”
Yeah, right. Is that why we’re seeing passage of an unprecedented number of voter suppression laws by Republican-controlled legislatures across the U.S.?
Hmmm. Jeb Bush does seem to be more engaged in nibbling at the fringes of presidential politics all of a sudden, as this report also suggests. Please, Romney, please don’t let the talk about another Bush on the ticket amount to idle jabber.
I think Carlo Rotella may be on to something in his Boston Globe post “Vampires and zombies help us think about elites and masses.” Hey, how about “Barack Obama: Vampire Capitalist Hunter”

On the day of Romney’s big speech at the NALEO (National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials) Annual Conference, the media is abuzz with speculation about what, if anything, the Republican nominee-in-waiting can do to get at least a bite of this pivotal demographic. Much of the speculation center’s on the possibility of Romney picking Sen. Rubio as his running mate, since there isn’t much he can do in terms of policy, having hitched his star to GOP immigrant-bashing.
At WaPo Felicia Sonmez rolls out “Five Things to Watch for” in Romney’s remarks, including President Obama’s halt of deportations, personal attacks against Obama, a “broader agenda” for immigration reform, how congressional Republicans respond to his remarks and whether or not Romney will take questions from the press.
Short of announcing Rubio or NM Governor Susana Martinez as his running mate, Sonmez’s point about the response of congressional Republicans is of interest, more for the down-ballot implications, since Romney’s hopes for a significant positive bounce with Latinos are slim and none. As Sonmez puts it,

…Watch to see what Republicans on Capitol Hill do. They’re the ones whose support Romney needs most if the GOP is planning a counter-offensive against Obama on immigration reform. Members such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are key when it comes to reaching across the aisle, but House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are the ones faced with rallying the troops.

The problem here for the GOP is that, what’s good for Romney — in this case more goodwill with Hispanic voters, may not be perceived as a priority by Republican House members who don’t see Latino voters as an influential demographic in their districts. In addition, way too many GOP House members have at least flirted with repressive immigration proposals opposed by Hispanic leaders and voters, and not all will give Romney a pass if they think he overrreaches.
It’s likely that just showing up gives Romney what cred he is going to get with Latino voters, and, with all that is going on, that won’t be much.

It’s a safe bet that many American progressives are swooning with envy at the French left, which just secured a no-nonsense parliamentary majority in Sunday’s elections, giving President Francois Hollande the leverage he needs (314 of 577 seats, +27 votes from smaller parties he can count on much of the time) to enact sweeping economic reforms. Time Magazine’s Paris Bureau Chief Bruce Crumley does a good job of putting the election in perspective:

The leftist romp in France’s June 17 legislative elections gave the Socialist Party of French President François Hollande a commanding parliamentary majority — and with it a free hand with which to usher in policy reversal. The Élysée now can push for more domestic spending to stimulate a sluggish French economy that, Hollande says, has been hurt by the austerity measures of France’s previous conservative leaders. It also provides Hollande a sturdy French base from which he’ll rally like-minded European partners to adopt similar Keynesian policies across the recessionary euro zone. That’s an ambitious — and risky — program that can now begin in earnest.
Compare that with France’s new conservative minority, which suddenly finds itself in a drastically altered and emphatically defensive posture. Not only are the allies of former President Nicolas Sarkozy powerless to block leftist spending plans — they now also have to reckon with their loss of influence on pan-European policy and the end of an active partnership with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in defending austerity measures. Instead, Sarkozy’s camp turn inward to deal with the deep existential questions confronting the French right.

Crumley calls Hollande’s program “risky.” But austerity has flunked all over Europe. What else is a progressive party supposed to do, emulate their failed opposition? The U.S.experience with Keynesian policies light has produced limited success. Yet, the only thing that hasn’t been tried by a major industrial nation to recover from the Bush meltdown is robust Keynesian reforms. France will likely provide the object lesson.
No doubt American conservatives who follow European politics are as dismayed as American progressives are encouraged by Hollande’s working majority. Republicans will snarl at the mention of Hollande’s Socialist Party, which is now running the show. But ‘Socialist Party’ is a bit of a misnomer in that the party’s leaders have historically nurtured a vigorous private sector, which may end up even stronger when Hollande’s program kicks in and strengthens demand. France ranks 4th among Fortune Global 500 nations, ahead of Germany and the UK. Don’t bet that will change much as a result of France’s new parliamentary majority.
At the heart of France’s social contract is a health care system that is ranked #1 of 191 nations by the World Health Organization (and is nicely spotlighted in this clip from Michael Moore’s “Sicko”). French health care has been weakened from time to time with modest out-of-pocket hikes, but will likely be restored to full strength under Hollande.
In France, unlike the U.S., all citizens know that they will not lose their home or retirement nest egg because of medical expenses. They know also that this security was achieved as a direct result of their support of leadership provided by the Socialist party and many years of campaigning and protest. It’s a foundational principle of the solidarity of the French left.
No matter what the U.S. Supreme Court does regarding the Affordable Care Act in the days ahead, American progressives should affirm their resolve that health care reform with universal coverage is a must-do. It’s not only a central element of a decent society, but must also be a core principle to promote long-haul solidarity among all Democrats.

Framing wizards George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling, authors of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, have some instructive messaging pointers for the Obama campaign from their book up at HuffPo. Some excerpts:

Obama’s strategy is to pin the Bush economic disaster on Romney, with good reason, since Romney has essentially the same policies as Bush. Since Obama has not consistently pinned the blame on Bush over the past four years, he comes off as defensive.
…Pinning the disaster on Bush is possible, but it will take a lot of repetition, not just by the president, but by Democrats in general. Not just a repetition of economic facts, but of the moral differences that led to both the Bush disaster and the Obama attempt to recoup.
Perhaps the most important omission from the Obama speech was any overt mention of The Public — everything that our citizenry as a whole provides to all, e.g., roads, bridges, infrastructure, education, protection, a health system, and systems for communication, energy development and supply, and so on. The Private — private life and private enterprise — depends on The Public. There is no economic freedom without all of this. So-called “free enterprise” is not free. A free market economy depends on a strong Public. This is a deep truth, easy to recognize. It undercuts Romney’s central pitch, that is it private enterprise alone that has made our country great, and that as much as possible of The Public should be eliminated.

Noting Romney’s near-demonization of government, the authors explain:

Although Obama intends to argue against this understanding, he unintentionally feeds it. He does so in three ways: First, by accepting and reinforcing many of Romney’s central frames (often by negating them); second, by moving to the right in his own argumentation; and third, by not spelling out his own moral principles explicitly right from the start.
First, here are three examples of Obama repeating Romney’s frames (in bold):
“Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down.”
“They maintain that if we eliminate most regulations, if we cut taxes by trillions of dollars, if we strip down government to national security and a few other basic functions, the power of businesses to create jobs and prosperity will be unleashed and that will automatically benefit us all.”
Republicans “believe that if you simply take away regulations and cut taxes by trillions of dollars, the market will solve all of our problems on its own.”
Though Obama’s statements are supposed to be taken sarcastically, they actually are positive, straightforward, easy to understand versions of Romney’s positions and beliefs.

The authors fault Obama for using conservative-favoring terms like “spending” and “cutting taxes” in defending his positions, noting:

Language is important here, as well as policy. “Spending” is a conservative term; it suggests a needless draining of financial resources, a waste of money. But most of that money was “invested” in our people or used to maintain our infrastructure — not just “spent”. Though a tax reduction for working families may very well have been a good idea, the term “cutting taxes” is a conservative term, suggesting that taxes in general are bad and should be “cut.”

Ditto for the President’s listing his reforms:

…The president gives a long list of perfectly reasonable policies: ending oil subsidies, investing in education, hiring more teachers and pay them better, not deporting young immigrants, investing in clean energy, encouraging energy innovation, supporting R&D tax credits, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, reforming the tax code, eliminating tax breaks for businesses that ship jobs overseas, strengthening Medicare and Medicaid, and so on.
No such list is going to be remembered by most of those who heard it. Moreover, what is said first matters; it sets the moral frame. In his speech, Obama first repeats the Romney frames, opposes them to numbers and policy lists, and only at the end talks about his own moral vision.

There is an alternative, say the authors:

Frame everything from his own moral perspective, including Romney’s positions and assumptions. Avoid the Romney language. Start with his own moral position, which he stated beautifully in his 2008 campaign but has since dropped: That democracy is based on empathy (citizens caring about fellow citizens), responsibility both for oneself and others, and an ethic of excellence (doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for one’s family, community, and country).
…Repeat the truth that The Private depends on The Public. It is The Public that provides economic freedom. Give a vision of responsible, progressive business. Talk freedom — as well as fairness. Point out that the hoarding of wealth by the 1 percent kills opportunity, as Joseph Stieglitz has discussed at length. Speak of an “Economy for All — not just rich bankers, managers, and job killers like private equity firms.” Yes, Romney and those like him are job killers. Say it. Point out that during the economic recovery of 2010, 93 percent of the additional income went to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. Stop using “top” to mean rich. “Top” suggests high morality, merit, and ability. “Bottom” signifies the opposite.

As Lakoff and Wehling conclude, “We are now in a situation where conservatives have framed almost every issue. The least Democrats can do is to refuse to repeat their language and so help them.”