washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: March 2013

Russo: Will Obama’s support for advanced manufacturing help Dems win white working class votes?

The following article, which first appeared in the Cleveland plain Dealer, is by John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University and co-author with Sherry lee Linkon of “Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.
People in Youngstown were excited when, in his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama cited the new $70 million National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) hub as central to his emerging economic and manufacturing policy. An investment in new manufacturing in a city still struggling three decades after deindustrialization might seem both economically and politically savvy, but it’s not clear that NAMII will either strengthen the local economy or attract more votes for Democrats in the future.
Over the last decade, research-and-development manufacturing hubs have become a dominant paradigm for rebuilding a competitive manufacturing sector, and Obama plans to create 17 more of them around the United States. They bring together state and local governments, universities and businesses to confront technological challenges through innovative design and manufacturing methods. In Youngstown, the hub is devoted to the development and expansion of “3D printing,” which deposits thin layers of material to design and shape various components. This “3D” process enhances business competitiveness by reducing design, manufacturing and energy costs.
But local workers are rightly cautious about NAMII. They understand that 3D printing technology could cost some of them jobs. Like other technology, it will require more skills from some while rendering others’ skills obsolete. Just as computer-aided manufacturing has reduced many skilled machinists to machine tenders, and information technology has reduced some accountants to data processors, 3D printing will likely displace at least as many machinists and tool-and-die makers as it creates new positions, and it could make small-scale machine shops redundant. Supporters will tout the new jobs and improved business efficiency created by NAMII, but they’re not likely to even acknowledge the associated job losses.
As with previous high-tech efforts in the Mahoning Valley, workers may well be new arrivals who will rent or buy homes in the suburbs or commute from other cities in the region. As one resident told National Public Radio, most locals don’t even recognize Youngstown as the center of an emerging “tech belt,” with NAMII at its core. It is important to remember that high-tech industries aren’t enough to repair the economic dislocations caused by more than 30 years of disinvestment and deindustrialization.
As Richard Florida and Michele Maynard have suggested in The Atlantic’s Cities website, compared with manufacturing in the past, advanced manufacturing no longer generates many good-paying jobs with high wages and benefits. NAMII may well help local businesses to develop, but Youngstown and cities like it would be wrong to pin all of their hopes on investments in advanced manufacturing. High-tech operations may not be sufficient to offset a globalized economy, a disadvantageous trade policy, currency manipulation and tax policies that encourage offshoring, all of which play a critical role.
Nor will Democratic-led investment in advanced manufacturing necessarily attract new voters to the party. Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress has argued that while the Obama coalition has the potential to change future politics, the president’s promise to invest in more high-tech manufacturing jobs may not translate into Democratic votes. To make its new majority sustainable, Teixeira argues, the Democratic Party must expand white working-class support, especially in states where minority growth is slow. Such voters are looking for material improvements for themselves and their families, and without substantive improvements, the working class could swing Ohio’s votes back to Republicans, as happened in 2010.
In 2012, Obama won in Ohio because of a combination of minority turnout and above-average support from the white working class, most likely in response to the stimulus package and the auto bailout. To hold onto those voters, the Democrats will have to show that they have produced strategies that generate faster, stronger economic growth. That’s especially important in states like Ohio, where the minority share of eligible voters is not growing rapidly, so white working-class votes matter more than in many other states.
Youngstown residents appreciated the extra attention their struggling city received and hope that federal investment in high-tech, advanced manufacturing will yield real, good jobs. While local Democrats can take credit for establishing NAMII and the emerging Tech Belt, Ohio Democrats should remember that they could also share the blame if the investment doesn’t pay off and if exaggerated expectations are dashed, especially for the working class.


Creamer: Pundits Must Learn Seven Lessons About the Sequester

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
A day doesn’t go by that a group of pundits doesn’t gather on a news show to hold forth about the automatic budget cuts contained in the so-called “sequester.” Many spend much of their time obsessing on some morsel of insider minutiae, or unthinkingly restate assumptions that are just plain wrong. Here are seven lessons that are key in thinking out the budget standoff.
Lesson #1: America is not trying figure out how to adjust its budget to a “time of scarcity” as one pundit suggested on one of the weekend’s Sunday shows.
America as a society — and an economy — is not in a “time of scarcity.” Defined in terms of Gross Domestic Product per person, we are still the richest nation in the world. Ask the gang on Wall Street — where stock prices just set a record — if they are living in a time of scarcity.
We are living in a time of enormous inequality. Ordinary people haven’t had a raise in 20 years, while the wealthiest among us have accumulated unthinkable riches. As a percentage of national income, corporate profits have risen to their highest levels since the 1950s — 14.2 percent in the third quarter of last year. At the same time, the percentage of national income going to wages dropped to 61.7 percent — almost to its low point in 1966.
We are also living in a time of scarcity for government budgets because Republicans in Congress slashed taxes on the wealthy, opened up new loopholes for big corporations, and obstruct policies that would put everyone back to work and generate new tax revenue.
Real Gross Domestic Product per capita — the best measure of the sum of the goods and services produced by our economy per person — increased more than eight times between 1900 and 2008. That means the standard of living of the average American today is over eight times higher than it was in 1900. Average Americans today consume eight times more goods and services than they did at the beginning of the last century. We are eight times wealthier today than we were then.
And note that GDP per capita has increased six times since Social Security was passed in 1935 and 2.3 times since Medicare was passed in 1965.
The skills of our people and the natural resources of our country that are the basis for our economic well-being did not magically evaporate after the financial collapse in 2008. The system we use to organize production and distribution did collapse because of the recklessness of the big Wall Street Banks and the Republican policies that allowed the most massive expansion of economic inequality since the Great Depression.
Our problem over the last four years has not been the need to “tighten our belts” in order to accommodate a “time of scarcity.” It has been to restart the system of production and distribution – to put all of our many resources back to work at the same time we assure that the fruits of our economy are more equitably shared among our people.
The problem for the pundits is that if you begin with the assumption we are in a “time a scarcity” you get austerity and stagnation. If you begin with the assumption that our economic system collapsed because of the decisions of living, breathing human beings, you get policies aimed at fixing the problem and putting people and resources back to work.
Lesson #2: $85 billion is not “just 2 percent of federal spending so it won’t really matter.”
First, the $85 billion cut by the sequester must be absorbed over seven months — six for many of the cuts in personnel that require 30 day furlough notices. That means for this fiscal year — right now when the economy is just getting some momentum — the cuts will have double the impact.
But the most important point is that economic growth — and its effect on the job market — occur at the margins. As anyone who has ever run a business can tell you, there is a huge difference between making a little every month and losing a little every month. The same is true for the economy.
There is a massive difference for our long-term economic prospects — and ironically the size of the deficit — if the economy is growing at 2 percent or 3 percent or if it is shrinking by even 1 percent.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the sequester will cost America 750,000 new jobs and about half a percent of annual GDP growth this year. That will in fact make us poorer and reduce the quantity of good and services that would have been otherwise been available for our people — and the loss compounds over the next decade.
In fact, with compounding, if the sequester continues to be a .5 percent drag on economic growth each year, by the tenth year, it will cost the American economy about $750 billion in lost goods and services annually — and our standard of living will be about 5 percent lower than it otherwise would have been.


White House Handled Woodward Follies Well

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on March 1, 2013.
In his post, “Woodward Does Duty With Phony Outrage Machine,” Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America has an interesting take on the alleged complaint by Bob Woodward that he was somehow threatened by the white house:

Woodward’s hard-to-believe tale about being threatened, based on a single innocuous sounding phrase from an email sent by a senior White House aide, was cheered by Obama’s conservative critics who claimed it proved their long-running theory about the administration’s “thug” culture. But the shaky story of a threat quickly collapsed when the full context of Woodward’s email exchange with the White House aide, Gene Sperling, was revealed. Rather than a threat, the two men had simply engaged in a vigorous, respectful debate.
Yesterday, Woodward summoned two reporters from Politico to his home and told them his tale of woe. According to the Politico article, Sperling had pushed back on Woodward’s assertion that President Obama was “moving the goalposts” on the issue, telling Woodward in an email, “I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
From that, Woodward insisted he’d been threatened, even though “I think you will regret staking out that claim” doesn’t sound like very threatening language. Instead, it sounds like someone trying to tell Woodward he would regret publishing facts that are inaccurate. (Kind of the opposite of a threat, no?)
Indeed, when Politico published the email exchange in its entirety, the whole story fell apart. Sperling had actually written, “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” And Woodward’s response certainly did not indicate that he felt threatened; he told Sperling, “I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening.”
Why Woodward decided to stage a media tour based on a false premise of a non-existent threat remains to be seen. But we do know Woodward’s now an honorary practitioner of the far right’s Phony Outrage Machine.
That’s where never-ending allegations of Obama misconduct are churned out on a daily, and even hourly basis. And it’s where there’s always a new claim to replace the last debunked one in an effort to meet readers, listeners and viewers’ insatiable appetite for news about Obama’s supposedly wicked ways…

Boehlert concludes, “But again, the story isn’t true. There was no threat issued. The only question that remains is why Woodward felt the need to concoct such a bizarre and public Beltway drama…By signing up for duty with the Phony Outrage Machine and by parading around on Fox News wringing his hands over a fictitious threat, Woodward does serious damage to his reputation.”
Woodward was on ‘Morning Joe’ this morning, walking everything back as gracefully as he could. To be fair, he did not use the word “threat” in his reporting of the incident, but it does appear that he was trying to imply it, when he had to know better, given the full context of the email exchange. David Axelrod confronted him on the program, pointing out that Woodward’s home paper, the Washington Post used the term “was threatened” in the headline. Give Axelrod credit for being fair and temperate in making his points.
In The Nation, Greg Mitchell’s “From Legend to Laughingstock: Bob Woodward Cites Bogus ‘Threat,’ Calls Obama ‘Nixonian’ gooses some chuckles out of the dust-up, beating up on Politico, as much as Woodward, and observing:

Published at the Politico site, this obsequious report (the writers also backed Woodward’s view on Obama as bad guy in the sequester debate) drew wide mockery on the web last night, even from some on the right. The “threat” appeared no different from someone’s simply warning another that they might be embarrassed if they continue with their current line of action or thinking…The White House quickly pointed out what most readers had already concluded: Woodward was completely hyping the alleged threat–sort of like Bush did with Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. He had even said much the same thing in a hasty CNN appearance.
Now the White House has released the full text of the e-mails exchanged by the official, IDed as Gene Sperling, and Woodward–and they should bring (but probably won’t) full shame to Woodward, Vandehei and Allen.
Politico has released the full e-mails and they give lie to Woodward’s claim of feeling “threatened,” as you’ll see in Woodward’s reply and Sperling calling him “a friend.” Now we learn that Vandehei and Allen deliberately left out the key “as a friend” lead-in to the alleged “threat.” Sperling also wrote, “my bad,” and closed with: “My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.” Some threat!
…Dan Froomkin calls the whole affair in a tweet: “Bob Woodward’s Mad Hatter tea party with Allen and Vandehei…. All of them puffed up and delusional.” A writer at The Atlantic Wire observed: “We hope Woodward never gets an e-mail in ALL CAPS.” As Dick Cheney might put it, we are simply hearing the cries of old-line DC journos in the “death throes” of their game…Charles P. Pierce has fun with it all here, but adds, seriously, that Woodward played the pair “like the two-dollar fiddles that they are.” Even The Daily Caller admits they got played by Woodward.

And Ed Kilgore adds that the illustrious Pat Caddell has weighed in on the matter, at the Fox News web page, no less, likening Obama to Nixon and calling out Woodward for not adequately popping off about Benghazi. “C’mon into the fever swamps, Bob! The water’s fine!,” urges Kilgore.
It should be acknowledged that Woodward has given a hard time to Republicans, also, going back to Watergate, though many would agree that he has drifted rightward since then. However, as one of America’s most respected MSM reporters, he shouldn’t be anywhere near the GOP’s phony outrage machine.


For political dominance the Obama coalition must win congressional elections and be widened to include more white working class voters. The Obama team knows this but the strategy they have developed isn’t fully adequate to achieve it

This item is an excerpt from an article by TDS Founding Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, cross-posted on February 22 from The New Republic.
There are two keys to achieving real political dominance for the new Obama coalition. First, it must be mobilized beyond presidential elections–in congressional elections, where turnout patterns don’t yet align very closely with presidential elections, and between elections, in the struggle to achieve legislative victories. Second, the Obama coalition must be widened to take in a larger share of the white working class. Otherwise, the hostility of these voters will undercut public support for the president’s agenda, as well as remaining a lurking threat in every election, particularly congressional ones.
The Obama team is not unaware of these necessities. But the strategy they’ve developed to address them isn’t entirely adequate. It seems to consist of emphasizing particular fights like immigration reform, gun control, same sex marriage, and climate change that appeal most strongly to different elements of the Obama coalition. This strategy does have merit. The thought is that even if all these fights don’t yield legislative victories (and they won’t so long as Republicans control part of Congress), they will nevertheless serve to generate more enthusiasm among key parts of the coalition, without imposing much of an electoral cost. Moreover, these fights are all substantively important in policy terms, so any victories attained will be important breakthroughs.
But the strategy has serious limitations. To begin with, even if these issues do little damage to Democrats’ standing among white working class voters, they will also do little to win their support. These voters are primarily looking for material improvements in their lives, improvements that are not possible without strong economic growth and the jobs, tight labor markets, and rising incomes such growth would bring. In a low-growth environment, these voters will remain exceptionally pessimistic and inclined to blame Democrats and government for their lack of upward mobility.
Even more serious, core groups of the Obama coalition will be weakened by continued slow growth. Obama was well-supported by these groups in 2012, but a sluggish economic environment, where unemployment continues pushing 8 percent, will try these voters’ patience. How much enthusiasm will Hispanics, blacks, youth, single women, etc., whose unemployment rates are considerably above the national average, continue to have for a party that cannot do more to improve economic conditions? Attrition in support will be inevitable in such a scenario and the opportunity to consolidate a dominant coalition will be lost.
How likely is it that slow growth will continue? Unfortunately, it appears to be a very serious possibility. The last quarter of 2012 actually saw the economy contract by .1 percent. And CBO’s latest economic projections, just released on February 5, anticipate that the economy will grow by only 1.4 percent this year (halving CBO’s previous projection) with an average unemployment rate of 7.9 percent. They project 2014 to be slightly better–2.6 percent growth and 7.8 percent unemployment–but the economy doesn’t really pick up until 2015. Even then, unemployment remains above 7 percent in 2015, above 6 percent in 2016, and doesn’t approximate full employment until 2017.
The reason for these gloomy projections is fiscal drag–that is, lower spending and higher taxes are subtracting demand from the economy, thereby slowing the still-fragile recovery. The fiscal cliff deal did considerable damage, chiefly due to the expiration of the payroll tax cut, which raised taxes 2 percent for middle and low income earners. The sequester will do more damage if implemented, indiscriminately cutting $85 billion from federal spending this year and every year thereafter for 10 years. And then there is possible further damage from whatever deal might be struck around the next extension of the debt ceiling, due in a few months (damage not included in the CBO projections).
It’s a bleak picture to be sure. What the economy really needs is something like Obama’s initial offer on a fiscal cliff deal. That offer included, besides tax increases on the wealthy and long-term cost reductions for Medicare, extensions of both unemployment insurance and the payroll tax holiday, as well as a roughly $50 billion jobs plan focused on infrastructure spending. The Republicans rejected the offer out of hand, of course, and the administration quickly yielded on the payroll tax cut and the jobs spending, leaving just the unemployment benefits extension. Rescinding the Bush tax cuts for those with $450,000 in income and higher was the laudable centerpiece of the deal, making the tax code fairer and helping to reduce long-term deficits, but that did nothing to alter the contractionary nature of the deal.
Now Obama has to deal with the extremely contractionary sequestered spending cuts. One of his stated operating principles on dealing with the sequester is to “do no harm” to the economy. However, the only way to really do that would be to avoid short-term spending cuts altogether.
Will he try to do that? It’s possible. But it doesn’t help matters that he has consistently evoked the possibility of a Grand Bargain with the Republicans that would, in a “balanced” way, attain $1.5 trillion in debt reduction over ten years. In all likelihood, that would mean agreeing to hundreds of billions in cuts (Obama would be lucky if only half ($700 billion) of the total savings was from spending cuts; Republicans will demand much more), starting this year and continuing until 2023. Leaving aside the content of the cuts, we know this means one thing that is indisputably bad–subtracting demand from the economy while it is still struggling, thereby making CBO’s gloomy economic projections more and more likely.
It therefore seems that another contractionary deal, despite Obama’s stated commitment to “do no harm,” is a distinct possibility. He would be well-advised to forget about such a Grand Bargain-type deal, which is not necessary in the short run (the deficit is already declining, as the CBO report notes, and will continue to do so for several years) and concentrate on what is necessary: growth. This starts with delaying or ending the sequester. As Paul Krugman points out, “kicking the can down the road,” so derided by Washingon commentators and elites, is in reality the responsible thing to do, given the state of today’s economy.
Then Obama should move to actually getting the economy some help. One obvious way to do this is through infrastructure investment. As Neil Irwin recently noted, low interest rates, millions of unemployed construction workers, and high economic development payoffs make such investment amazingly close to a free lunch. Obama did call for more infrastructure investment in his SOTU, including a new proposal for infrastructure repair called “Fix-It-First”, but this was in the wish list portion of his speech and had no clear urgency or timeline attached to it. These investments need to be moved up to short-term priority number one.
Indeed, if any deal is cut with the Republicans, it should be to put such investments immediately in the pipeline. We need a Grand Bargain for growth far more than we need a Grand Bargain for deficit reduction. Besides as many analysts have noted, the best medicine for deficit reduction is a higher growth rate, so the two goals are intimately and virtuously related. Add a half point to the growth rate and you knock $1.5 trillion off the national debt over ten years, thereby achieving Obama’s current debt reduction target.
And then there is the political payoff. The faster we move into a high growth economy, the better the opportunities for consolidating and expanding the Obama coalition. Conversely, if we stagger along for the next several years, the coalition has an excellent chance of falling apart. A very simple equation captures what’s at stake here:
Demographics + Growth = Dominance
Democrats have the demographics part of the formula already. Now what they need is the growth part to achieve electoral and policy dominance. That is the real challenge for Obama and his party if they wish to see the many worthy ideas in his State of the Union become reality.


Why Obama Shouldn’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Jonathan Bernstein has a good post up at Salon.com, “GOP antics will not damage Obama one bit,” urging President Obama to take a step back and shrug off the never-ending teapot tempests that come his way, secure in the knowledge that the sane majority is mostly with him on the important issues — that’s why he got re-elected. It’s sound advice. No chief executive should get bogged down in every controversy that clamors for attention.
McCain, Graham and other yammering Liliputians are always going to be there, griping about every little thing that comes up in hopes of damaging the president’s leverage. They really can’t do much, so why engage with them? As Bernstein puts it:

There’s plenty of things that capture the attention of people who are intensely interested in politics, which everyone else ignores unless they have a particular interest in it. Personnel flaps similar to the Hagel nomination are likely suspects. Think, if you remember them, of similar controversies around Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod or Peter Diamond. Each of these was all the talk of Washington for a while, and then it wasn’t. Most people, however, hardly noticed any of them.
Moreover, we know that the more people pay attention to politics, the more partisan they are likely to be. That’s important, because it means that those people who did pay attention to the Chuck Hagel nomination fight are the most likely to interpret it through their strongly held partisan biases: Democrats will support the president, Republicans will oppose him.
What all that means is that these kinds of controversies, even fairly large ones, are very unlikely to matter at all. Most people ignore them; everyone else merely sticks to their previous opinions.

As a result, Bernstein opines in his key insight, “presidents are a lot more free to take risks than they realize…Barack Obama should realize, then, that he has quite a bit of latitude to make “mistakes” that cause media flaps as long as they don’t produce serious policy disasters.” it’s a liberating insight if it empowers the president to focus more effectively on a grand strategy for securing reforms that matter most. This is more true for presidents in their second term for obvious reasons.
Let the minions respond to the small stuff. Obama was elected to fix the economy and move America forward toward greater shared prosperity. All else is unworthy of too much presidential attention. As Bernstein concludes, “What really does matter is getting the policy right; do that, and the politics will usually follow.”
Obama is a president who seems temperamentally suited for such a Taoist perspective. He picks his fights carefully, and lets congress do most of the rat-a-tat-tat and then acts. Several writers have noted the “Tao of Obama.” As the Tao puts it, “It is because he does not contend that no one in the empire is in a position to contend with him.” Perhaps it’s not a bad strategy, especially for the president tasked with dealing with the most wholly obstructionist opposition in U.S. history. To paraphrase another Taoist saying, the water that goes around the rock reaches its destination before that which fights the rock.


Political Strategy Notes

Demos has a good update on the benefits of same day voter registration, which includes: “States that allow Same Day Registration consistently lead the nation in voter participation. Four of the top five states for voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election all offered Same Day Registration. Average voter turnout was over 10 percentage points higher in SDR states than in other states…Research indicates that allowing young people to register to vote on Election Day as much as 14 percentage points…African Americans comprised 36 percent of those who used SDR to vote in the 2008 presidential election in North Carolina, the first such election when SDR was available there…eleven states (California, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) and the District of Columbia have now enacted the reform.”
Maria Liasson’s “One Strategy For A GOP Overhaul? Follow The Democrats’ Example” at NPR’s ‘It’s All Politics’ blog distill’s some of the thinking going on inside the GOP makeover discussion, including this weird nugget from LA Gov. Bobby Jindal: “We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping. This is a rigged game, and it is the wrong game for us to play,” he said. “Today it’s the fiscal cliff; tomorrow it’ll be the fiscal apocalypse; then it’ll be the fiscal Armageddon.” But we encourage Republicans to ignore Michael Gerson’s call for Republicans to change, “not just in tone, but actually in substance.”
And, until adults regain control of the GOP, this is the right fight for the president and Dems.
At The Kansas City Star Jordan Shapiro’s “Missouri Democrats stall bill on union dues” reports on the latest GOP union-bashing scam in the state legislature, a “paycheck protection” bill, which is a Frank Luntz-like euphemism for preventing public unions from automatically deducting dues from their members’ paychecks. Similar measures, sort of ‘right-to-work lite,’ have passed in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan and Washington state. Missouri Democrats have blocked the bill on the state senate floor…for now.
The Hill’s Brendan Sasso notes an interesting angle on political donor disclosure in his ‘Hillicon Valley’ blog. The FCC, if not the FEC, “already has the power to require outside groups, like super-PACs, to reveal who is paying for the pricey, often negative ad campaigns that blanket the airwaves ahead of elections…FCC regulations currently require TV broadcasters and cable providers to identify the “true sponsor” of all ads, whether they are commercial or political. The FCC rarely investigates or penalizes violations of the rule, however.”
In her post, “In Voting Rights Arguments, Chief Justice Misconstrued Census Data,” NPR’s Nina Totenberg calls out the Chief Justice for his statistical shenanigans (large m.o.e.’s) in arguing that Massachusetts has a worse record than Mississippi in African American voter turnout. Roberts, like his predecessor Rehnquist, has a long history of involvement in voter suppression, ably reported by Adam Serwer at MoJo.
The partisan stink behind the effort to overturn the Voting Rights Act is growing stronger. Zachary Roth fleshes out the connections at at MSNBC.com.
At FiveThirtyEight.com Micah Cohen provides some encouraging stats as part of an answer to his question “Can Democrats Turn Texas and Arizona Blue by 2016?“: According to demographic projections by the Center for American Progress for 2016, “In Arizona, more than 175,000 Hispanics will enter the voter pool as roughly 10,000 white voters leave it. In Texas, 185,000 new white eligible voters will be overwhelmed by the roughly 900,000 Hispanics expected to enter the electorate.” Florida will gain 600,000 eligible Latinos and 125,000 eligible whites. African American eligible voters will also increase in these states.
Here’s the false equivalency headline of the week, selected for promoting the delusion that Democrats have not offered any reasonable compromises and the GOP’s rigid obstructionism is not unprecedented. The article is similarly myopic.
The nit-pickers are abuzz with accusing the President of conflating sci-fi films (Star Wars vs. Star Trek) as a result of his recent statement “I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.” But Chris Peterson, an M.I.T. research assistant, has a different take: “…There is a Jedi Meld well established within the admittedly capacious but nonetheless official contours of the Star Wars: ‘Expanded Universe. In Outbound Flight,’ a novel written by the prolific Timothy Zahn, the Jedi Master Jorus C’baoth instructs a young Anakin Skywalker that the Jedi Meld “permits a group of Jedi to connect their minds so closely as to act as a single person…According to Wookieepedia, the Jedi Meld was deployed by dozens of Jedi, including (but not limited to) Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Anakin, Jacen, and Jaina Solo, across dozens officially-licensed books. Indeed, its recovery and redevelopment, principally by the Solo children, was an important turning point in the Yuuzhan Vong War as chronicled exhaustively in the New Jedi Order series….not only is the Jedi Meld, through general acceptance and uncontroversial use, authoritatively established within the official Star Wars universe: it was the right reference for Obama to make.” So there.


Asian-Americans Strongly Favor Dems

Gallup Politics’ Andrew Dugan reports that “Asian-Americans Solidly Prefer Democrats: Sixty-one percent of young adult Asian-Americans identify as/lean Democratic.” The polling numbers are “based on aggregated data from Gallup Daily tracking surveys conducted throughout 2012, including interviews with 6,465 Asian-Americans.”
Dugan’s report includes the usual breakdown, which shows 36 percent of Asian Americans self-i.d. as Democratic, 17 percent Republican and 46 percent Independent. But, “after probing independents for party leaning,” the numbers get even more favorable, with Dems at 57 percent, 28 percent for Republicans and 13 percent Independents. Adult Americans of all races were 45 percent Dems, 41 percent Republicans and 12 percent Independents, after factoring in “leaners.” Dugan adds:

Republicans did not perform well among Asian-Americans in the 2012 election, losing this group by an estimated 72% to 26% margin. Asian-Americans make up a small but growing portion of the total electorate, probably 3% in 2012. While both parties and the media have focused highly after the election on the similarly Democratically skewed Hispanic vote, these data are a reminder that the Republican Party suffers from a competitive problem with this minority bloc as well.
…Young Asians break more strongly Democratic, giving President Obama’s party a 61% to 24% advantage over the GOP…This advantage is not to be understated: a commanding 56% of adult Asian-Americans are between the ages of 18 and 34, making Asian-Americans as a whole the youngest of any U.S. racial or ethnic group Gallup analyzes. By comparison, 23% of adult non-Hispanic whites — the racial category most receptive to the Republican Party — are between those ages, versus 37% of non-Hispanic blacks and 47% of Hispanics.

The poll also has some intriguing numbers showing some strong support for Dems among the high-turnout seniors cohort, when leaners are factored in: Dems get 55 percent of Asian Americans over age 55, 40 percent of non-Hispanic white seniors, 84 percent of non-Hispanic Blacks over 55 and 59 percent of Latino seniors. The poll indicates that the age 35-54 cohort is the bigger problem for Dems.


White House Handled Woodward Follies Well

In his post, “Woodward Does Duty With Phony Outrage Machine,” Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America has an interesting take on the alleged complaint by Bob Woodward that he was somehow threatened by the white house:

Woodward’s hard-to-believe tale about being threatened, based on a single innocuous sounding phrase from an email sent by a senior White House aide, was cheered by Obama’s conservative critics who claimed it proved their long-running theory about the administration’s “thug” culture. But the shaky story of a threat quickly collapsed when the full context of Woodward’s email exchange with the White House aide, Gene Sperling, was revealed. Rather than a threat, the two men had simply engaged in a vigorous, respectful debate.
Yesterday, Woodward summoned two reporters from Politico to his home and told them his tale of woe. According to the Politico article, Sperling had pushed back on Woodward’s assertion that President Obama was “moving the goalposts” on the issue, telling Woodward in an email, “I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
From that, Woodward insisted he’d been threatened, even though “I think you will regret staking out that claim” doesn’t sound like very threatening language. Instead, it sounds like someone trying to tell Woodward he would regret publishing facts that are inaccurate. (Kind of the opposite of a threat, no?)
Indeed, when Politico published the email exchange in its entirety, the whole story fell apart. Sperling had actually written, “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” And Woodward’s response certainly did not indicate that he felt threatened; he told Sperling, “I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening.”
Why Woodward decided to stage a media tour based on a false premise of a non-existent threat remains to be seen. But we do know Woodward’s now an honorary practitioner of the far right’s Phony Outrage Machine.
That’s where never-ending allegations of Obama misconduct are churned out on a daily, and even hourly basis. And it’s where there’s always a new claim to replace the last debunked one in an effort to meet readers, listeners and viewers’ insatiable appetite for news about Obama’s supposedly wicked ways…

Boehlert concludes, “But again, the story isn’t true. There was no threat issued. The only question that remains is why Woodward felt the need to concoct such a bizarre and public Beltway drama…By signing up for duty with the Phony Outrage Machine and by parading around on Fox News wringing his hands over a fictitious threat, Woodward does serious damage to his reputation.”
Woodward was on ‘Morning Joe’ this morning, walking everything back as gracefully as he could. To be fair, he did not use the word “threat” in his reporting of the incident, but it does appear that he was trying to imply it, when he had to know better, given the full context of the email exchange. David Axelrod confronted him on the program, pointing out that Woodward’s home paper, the Washington Post used the term “was threatened” in the headline. Give Axelrod credit for being fair and temperate in making his points.
In The Nation, Greg Mitchell’s “From Legend to Laughingstock: Bob Woodward Cites Bogus ‘Threat,’ Calls Obama ‘Nixonian’ gooses some chuckles out of the dust-up, beating up on Politico, as much as Woodward, and observing:

Published at the Politico site, this obsequious report (the writers also backed Woodward’s view on Obama as bad guy in the sequester debate) drew wide mockery on the web last night, even from some on the right. The “threat” appeared no different from someone’s simply warning another that they might be embarrassed if they continue with their current line of action or thinking…The White House quickly pointed out what most readers had already concluded: Woodward was completely hyping the alleged threat–sort of like Bush did with Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. He had even said much the same thing in a hasty CNN appearance.
Now the White House has released the full text of the e-mails exchanged by the official, IDed as Gene Sperling, and Woodward–and they should bring (but probably won’t) full shame to Woodward, Vandehei and Allen.
Politico has released the full e-mails and they give lie to Woodward’s claim of feeling “threatened,” as you’ll see in Woodward’s reply and Sperling calling him “a friend.” Now we learn that Vandehei and Allen deliberately left out the key “as a friend” lead-in to the alleged “threat.” Sperling also wrote, “my bad,” and closed with: “My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.” Some threat!
…Dan Froomkin calls the whole affair in a tweet: “Bob Woodward’s Mad Hatter tea party with Allen and Vandehei…. All of them puffed up and delusional.” A writer at The Atlantic Wire observed: “We hope Woodward never gets an e-mail in ALL CAPS.” As Dick Cheney might put it, we are simply hearing the cries of old-line DC journos in the “death throes” of their game…Charles P. Pierce has fun with it all here, but adds, seriously, that Woodward played the pair “like the two-dollar fiddles that they are.” Even The Daily Caller admits they got played by Woodward.

And Ed Kilgore adds that the illustrious Pat Caddell has weighed in on the matter, at the Fox News web page, no less, likening Obama to Nixon and calling out Woodward for not adequately popping off about Benghazi. “C’mon into the fever swamps, Bob! The water’s fine!,” urges Kilgore.
It should be acknowledged that Woodward has given a hard time to Republicans, also, going back to Watergate, though many would agree that he has drifted rightward since then. However, as one of America’s most respected MSM reporters, he shouldn’t be anywhere near the GOP’s phony outrage machine.


Lux: OFA Fund-Raising Needed to Help Level GOP Advantage

The following article, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
For the three decades plus that I have been in politics, I have been a passionate advocate of the clean money agenda, especially public financing of campaigns and the overturning of one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history, Citizens United. Multiple times over the years I have been a consultant on money in politics campaigns, and have always considered it a very high priority. As someone who has done high-level fundraising for many different presidential, Senate, and House campaigns, and has been involved in a great many policy battles where I was fighting the power of big money special interests, I know well the large and pernicious power of big money in politics. No cause should do more to unite the progressive movement than doing something serious about money in politics. There’s a new money in politics issue, though, that is splitting progressives right down the middle.
The new organization that people close to President Obama set up — OFA, Organizing for Action — is causing some consternation among some people in the movement to reform money in politics. My old friend and comrade in arms on the money in politics issue, Bob Edgar, President of Common Cause, said:
If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors. With its reported promise of quarterly presidential meetings for donors and ‘bundlers’ who raise $500,000, Organizing For Action apparently intends to extend and deepen the pay-to-play Washington culture that Barack Obama came to prominence pledging to end.
As much as I agree with Bob on his ideals and long-term goals, I think he is profoundly wrong this time around.