washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: June 2013

Gov. Scott’s 180 on Early Voting Suggests Public Fed Up With Suppression in Bellwether FL

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on May 22, 2013.
As one of the most important swing states, Florida’s election law reforms are of more than local interest. So, when Florida’s right-wing governor Rick Scott reverses his earlier opposition to early voting and suddenly signs into law reforms that actually improve voting rights, it may indicate that growing public discontent about voter suppression is making swing voters tilt Democratic. As Aaron Deslatte Tallahassee Bureau Chief of the SunSentinel, explains:

Gov. Rick Scott has signed an elections bill that allows more early voting, in an attempt to reverse some of the restrictions the Republican-controlled Legislature put in place in 2011…is a response to the ridicule Florida received in the days after President Barack Obama’s re-election, when votes were still being counted in a few counties…some urban counties like Miami-Dade, Broward and Orange saw lines that stretched for hours.
Miami-Dade, in particular, has been blasted for not re-aligning its voting precincts with updated population data, resulting in some polling sites that were slammed and others largely empty. Other counties like Palm Beach complained that vendors botched up ballots and software…The bill, HB 7013, lets the State Department fine vendors $25,000 for voting-machine problems that don’t get fixed.
…It also increases the allowable early voting hours, and goes from eight days to 14 days. The Legislature had reduced that early-voting window to one week in 2011, which some evidence has found decreased early-voting turnout last year — particularly among minorities.
And it expands the locations for early voting from just election offices and city halls to include courthouses, civic centers, stadiums, convention centers, fairgrounds and government-owned senior and community centers.
“…With this election reform package, Florida has achieved what many of us thought at one time might be impossible: a huge improvement to our democratic process and a giant step forward for Florida voters,” said Deirdre Macnab, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.
…But Democrats and some voting-rights groups have been less-than-thrilled with the bill because it gives county election supervisors discretion in the number of hours of early voting they offer — as much as 168 hours — and whether or not to hold early voting on the Sunday before a general election. Some rural counties have said that Sunday is rarely used by voters, while it’s a main get-out-the-vote day among minorities in more urban counties…

The Republicans’ heavy-handed voter suppression may be backfiring with swing voters. Certainly the outrage about FL’s long lines at the polls in 2012 — 8 plus hours in some Miami precincts — aren’t helping the state GOP. Gov. Rick Scott seemed to be campaigning for poster boy for voter suppression before the election. Now he is all about expanding voter access, no doubt to save his political skin. He is running scared.
Looking toward 2014, polls taken in March by Public Policy Polling and Quinnipiac University showing Gov. Scott running 8 and 6 points, respectively, behind likely Democratic candidate for FL Gov. Charlie Crist.
Whether Dems can beat Gov. Scott or not in 2014, leveraging voting reforms in key states is a critical concern for Democratic GOTV. Florida is not only a key swing state with the 3rd largest electoral vote bloc (29 e.v.’s, tied w/ NY) ; it’s also a bellwether, having picked the winner in 12 out of the last 13 presidential elections (12 of the last 14, for those who believe the 2000 election was stolen). The DNC, major party contributors and progressives in general should gladly provide whatever help the Florida Democratic Party needs to take full advantage of the reforms.


Boy, I’m glad Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan weren’t writing in the early 60’s. I tremble to think how they would have covered Martin Luther King.

This item by James Vega was originally published on May 21, 2013.
In a new piece titled provocatively titled, “Obama the Uniter? Not Really”, the Washington Post’s resident dispensers of inside the beltway common wisdom have once again managed to concede the reality of Republican extremism as the source of political polarization in one sentence and then turn around and lay the responsibility for it on Obama in another.
Just watch how this world Olympic-class “it’s not really his fault except it really is” gymnastic logical summersault is performed:

“Obama the Uniter? Not Really”,
…there’s little question that Republicans in Congress have been driven to the ideological right over the past few years due in large part to a series of primary victories by conservative insurgents over incumbents viewed as insufficiently loyal to party principles.
But, Obama is still the president who pledged — loudly and repeatedly — to change how Washington works. That has not happened. The economic stimulus bill and the healthcare law passed on party line votes in his first term. The gun bill failed on party lines in his second term. And, with a series of scandals and investigations now mounting, it seems more likely that partisanship will grow rather than shrink in the coming months…
None of that is Obama’s fault and there is nothing — or virtually nothing — he can do to change it. But, add it all up and you are left with one inescapable conclusion: The president who pledged to change Washington is almost certain to come up short on that promise.

Wow. I sure am glad Cillizza and Sullivan weren’t writing in the early 60’s. They probably would have evaluated Martin Luther King something like this:

Martin Luther King, Man of Peace? Not Really
…there’s little question that segregationists have been driven even further to the ideological right over the past few years due in large part to the growing demands for equality …But Martin Luther King is still the leader who pledged — loudly and repeatedly — to seek civil rights without violence.
That has not happened….A church in Birmingham has been bombed, civil rights workers have been murdered and John Kennedy has been assassinated.
None of that is King’s fault and there is nothing — or virtually nothing — he can do to change it. But, add it all up and you are left with one inescapable conclusion: The leader who pledged to seek civil rights without violence is almost certain to come up short on that promise.

Does anybody except me think that this is just world class crazy? I sure do hope so.


Political Strategy Notes

From John Zogby at Forbes: “A new poll by Zogby Analytics shows President Barack Obama actually regaining lost ground in his job approval. His approval rating now stands at 53% — the exact percentage he had when he won re-election last November and up 2 points over his rating in early May. His disapproval rating remained at 46%. The poll of 887 likely voters was taken online May 29 and 30.”
At NYT’s The Caucus, Katherine Q. Seelye explains why women are likely a pivotal constituency in Edward Markey’s bid for the U.S. Senate.
And The Fix’s Chris Cillizza has an informative profile of a constituency that is growing in size and influence — single mothers, including this nugget: “…Obama lost to Romney among white voters, 59 percent to 39 percent. But among white single mothers, Obama bested Romney 56 percent to 43 percent. Lower-income voters are another good example. Obama took 60 percent to Romney’s 38 percent in all households making $50,000 or less a year. Among under-$50,000 households that also included a single mother, Obama took a whopping 79 percent to Romney’s 20 percent.”
TNR’s Nate Cohn probes the politics behind R.I. Governor Lincoln Chafee’s party switch.
At Campaigns & Elections, Erik Nilsson has a sobering take on the power of social media in electioneering in his post, “Can Twitter help you raise money? “According to a new study published in Ecommerce Quarterly, social commerce is almost non-existent. Social media generated only 1.55 percent of traffic to e-commerce sites. To make matters worse, only 0.71 percent of that traffic resulted in any kind of financial transaction.”
For some non-electoral visioneering, try Lyle Jeremy Rubin’s review article “A Realistic Radicalism” in Dissent. Rubin culls insights from three books, “America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy” and “What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution” by Gar Alperovitz and “After Capitalism” by David Schweickart. Some provocative insights here, among them: “Alperovitz is most compelling on Employee Stock Ownership Programs (ESOPs) and worker-owned firms. He brandishes a number of studies that have repeatedly confirmed that both ESOP companies and more ambitious worker-owned firms are often “more profitable, more competitive, and more efficient” than their traditional counterparts…Though there are significant differences in levels of employee participation and democratic decision-making in each setting, the standard is more democratic than its alternative, the trend-line leans in the direction of more democracy, a growing number of unions are coming on board, and proposed bipartisan legislation continues to push for federal tax benefits to ESOP companies operating under a one-person, one-vote system.”
And as long as you’re thinking in terms of transformative societal change, check out Derek Thompson’s data-rich post “How Did Work-Life Balance in the U.S. Get So Awful?” at The Atlantic — which also hints at why working single mothers are a potent demographic asset for Democrats.
If you haven’t been there yet, peruse Progressive Majority’s ‘Message Guide,’ which has useful tips for choosing the best words and phrases for advocating a broad range of progressive reforms.
Oliver Willis takes a perceptive look at conservative websites and observes: “The new generation of conservative media could be the best thing to happen to the left. They make the attacks of Limbaugh, Fox, and company look coherent and solid by comparison…As a liberal who wants conservatism to fail, I thank God for sites like Breitbart.com and Twitchy. They are frustrated conservative rage hubs with little to no application in practical politics or movement advancement.”
Just for fun, read “The 11 Biggest Conservative Scandal Flops” by Ryan Cooper at The Washington Monthly.


So, How Good Was Obama’s 2012 Polling Crew?

David Nir of Daily Kos flags Joshua Green’s Bloomberg Businessweek post, “Obama’s Data team Totally Schooled Gallup,” which observes:

As David Plouffe, then a senior White House adviser, explained in my story, the data team’s models proved to be much steadier and more accurate than even the traditional tracking polls the campaign was also conducting. A number of Obama vets repeated this claim to me, so I asked them to provide some evidence to back it up, and they did. Here, for the first time, is a chart based on internal data that shows how the Obama campaign’s swing state model performed against the much maligned Gallup poll over the last several months of the race. This was the campaign’s daily “horserace” projection of the outcome, based on a nightly survey of 10,000 people.
To me, a few thing jump out: Gallup indicates that the selection of Paul Ryan as running mate hurt Mitt Romney, but Obama’s model really doesn’t; Gallup suggests, incredibly, that the “47 Percent” flap hurt Obama and moved the race back in Romney’s direction; and, biggest of all, Gallup shows a huge drop for Obama–really, an outright collapse–after the debacle of the first debate. At the time, Obama’s staffers were claiming to the press that, yes, their internal numbers showed the president’s weak showing had hurt his support, but that the fall was brief and quickly stabilized right about where his level of support had been all along. As a reporter, you never know if you’re just being spun when campaigns tell you this, because even if they really were collapsing the way Gallup suggests, they’d probably lie about it and say everything was fine, so as not to feed the panic. Based on this data, though, the Obama campaign looks to have been telling the truth.

Green goes on to tell how David Axelrod was so confident of three key states (MI, MN and PA) going Obama’s way as a result of their internal polling and analysis, that he bet his mustache –and won.