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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: August 2013

Dems Counter-Attack to Protect Voting Rights in the States

From Reid Wilson’s WaPo Govbeat post, “Democrats push back on voting rights“:

Last week, operatives tied to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee launched what they call a 50-state initiative to promote voting reforms that would make it easier to cast a ballot. The effort is being run by American Values First, an outside group organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code and run by Michael Sargeant, the DLCC’s executive director. Democrats will push legislation similar to a Colorado measure signed into law earlier this year that requires all elections to be conducted by mail.
Legislators in at least seven other states will propose bills that would tweak election laws in other ways. In some states controlled by Democrats, the measures have a good chance to pass. In other states with divided control or that operate under Republican control, Democrats plan to use the measures as political cudgels, painting the GOP as opposed to basic voting rights.
The new push comes in response to Republican initiatives to rewrite election laws in key states. Republicans in North Carolina and Florida moved to cut the number of days on which a voter can cast a ballot early. Arizona and Florida both imposed new restrictions on groups that sign up voters for absentee ballots. And Republican-led legislatures in states from New Hampshire to Michigan to Florida passed legislation requiring voters to show photo identification before they receive a ballot.

Wilson notes that Colorado Dems passed a bill that will “require residents to vote entirely by mail,” joining Washington and Oregon, where automatic registration linked to drivers licenses failed by a single vote. Democrats are optimistic about passing it, however. Elsewhere Dems are fighting to establish “no fault” absentee voting, which is now in place in 34 states and to lengthen registration periods.
It’s good Dems are showing assertive leadership on restoring and strengthening voting rights in the states. It’s important, however, that their constituents are well-informed about which party is all about making it harder to vote. Some generic ads making that point in the states might be a worthy DNC project.


Kilgore: RNC’s Juvenile Threat May Lead to ‘Closed Loop’ Discourse

The following article by TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore, is cross-posted from The Washington Monthly:
So the RNC has unanimously approved the rather juvenile resolution “punishing” NBC and CNN for planning programming about Hillary Clinton by banning them from hosting Republican presidential candidate debates in 2016. I am sure heads will roll at the two networks.
More seriously, the resolution–and the “ultimatum” from Reince Prieubus that preceded it–has fed a more useful discussion in and beyond the Republican Party about candidate debate formats and who should control them.
Yesterday I wrote about the idea of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity moderating GOP debates and how that reflected the conservative movement’s desire to create a closed loop of discourse in which conservatives would “vet” candidates for their willingness to rule out any compromise or even discussions with non-conservatives. In response, Atrios argued that internal party criteria are what nomination contests are for:

I’m all for Sean and Rush running Republican primary debates, and liberal people running the Dem ones. They’re in tune with what the actual voters of such elections are interested in.

Kevin Drum agreed that Democrats might begin moving in this direction as well:

I’m not sure how this translates on the Democratic side, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of the debates moderated by honest-to-goodness lefties rather than John King and Wolf Blitzer. Why not make the candidates defend themselves against criticism from the left? It’d be good for them to go up against Rick Perlstein and Katha Pollitt once or twice. Why not?

That all makes sense, but there’s something going on in the “let’s control our debates” drive in the GOP which isn’t about accountability to primary voters at all. Note this argument from National Review’s John Fund in his partial endorsement of the exclusivity approach:

None of this is to suggest that Republicans who want to install exclusively conservative commentators as debate moderators and panelists have got it right. Debates will not serve the party well if they become an echo chamber or if the moderators address only hot-button issues that spark the conservative base. But a political party has a right to do its best to project the kind of image it wishes, and if that involves greater “diversity” in debate formats and participants, all the better.

Huh: so parties have a “right” to “project the kind of image” they want! This sounds like less, not more, transparency about the actual views of candidates. I observed yesterday that a lot of conservatives would probably be happy if they could somehow prohibit non-conservatives from watching their nomination-contest debates. It’s one thing to “control” debates so that the interests of primary voters are better reflected in the questions. It’s another thing altogether to try to hide the answers from the general electorate.


Jim Messina, Who Just Took a Job Advising Britain’s Conservative Party, Should Immediately Resign as Head of OFA – Or Be Unceremoniously Fired. Here’s Why:

Harold Meyerson in The Washington Post:

Messina isn’t just a consultant; he is also the chairman of Organizing for Action, which describes itself on its Web site as an “organization established to support President Obama in achieving enactment of the national agenda Americans voted for on Election Day 2012.” The site touts the necessity of investing public dollars in infrastructure and highlights the efforts of volunteers across the country to win passage of immigration reform. If Organizing for Action’s members had any say in the matter, they almost surely wouldn’t approve of the group’s chairman going to work for Britain’s anti-immigrant, anti-public investment prime minister. Indeed, if they had any say in the matter, they might ask Messina to choose between Obama’s agenda and Cameron’s. If he opted to keep working for Cameron, they might just opt for a less-conflicted leader.

Mike Tomasky in the Daily Beast:

How could you flip from Barack Obama to David Cameron?
On immigration, domestic spending cuts, and Big Tobacco, Messina is signing on to and in the first two cases will be defending positions that are perfectly in line with America’s Republican Party. What’s he doing?
Political consulting isn’t a profession known for its demanding ethical standards. But no matter how flexible your relationship to the truth or how sleazy your ads, there is one line you aren’t supposed to cross–going to work for the other side. The Tories aren’t the Texas Republican Party. But they are the other side.

Andrew Sabl in The Reality Based Community:

It’s fine, in fact laudable, for a policy expert in government to be nonpartisan–meaning not free of ideology, which nobody is, but determined to work for the public interest rather than the narrow interest of one party vis-à-vis another. It’s fine, though rarer and not mandatory, for a policy expert outside of government to be the same way. It’s thirdly fine for a political commentator or blogger who never claimed to be easily classified in Left-Right terms– Andrew Sullivan, for example –to support Obama in the U.S. but Cameron in Britain…
…But someone who purports to be the leader of a party’s grassroots had better understand, and be prepared to practice, the thing that Max Weber said the leaders and followers of mass political parties “always and necessarily” must do: fight. And the mass membership of a modern party will never fight for the sake of a specified level of public debt, but only for the less compromising reasons–loyalty to a side, and/or devotion to a larger and longer cause–whose importance Messina demonstrably does not begin to grasp.
Messina can, barely, remain a political consultant to both our Democrats and Britain’s Conservatives. But grassroots Democrats will not, and should not, follow a supporter of the Tories into political battle. If Messina thinks we should, that’s all the more evidence that he’s unfit for his current job.
To campaign is to choose. Having taken the Tories’ shilling, Messina should resign from OFA. He will not lack for other work.


GOP’s Eve of Destruction

Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei have a Politico post up that is so discouraging for the GOP that it has been titled ‘Eve of Destruction.” The entire post is a pretty devastating read for Republican office holders. But we’ll just share a enough to whet the Democratic appetite here:

It is almost impossible to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be. Most dance around it in public, but they see this year as a disaster in the making, even if most elected Republicans don’t know it or admit it.
Several influential Republicans told us the party is actually in a worse place than it was Nov. 7, the day after the disastrous election.
• The party is hurting itself even more with the very voters they need to start winning back: Hispanics, blacks, gays, women and swing voters of all stripes.
• The few Republicans who stood up and tried to move the party ahead were swatted into submission: Speaker John Boehner on fiscal matters and Sen. Marco Rubio on immigration are the poster boys for this.
• Republicans are all flirting with a fall that could see influential party voices threatening to default on the debt or shut down the government — and therefore ending all hopes of proving they are not insane when it comes to governance..
The blown opportunities and self-inflicted wounds are adding up:
• Hispanics. Nearly every Republican who stumbled away from 2012 promised to quit alienating the fastest-growing demographic in American politics. So what have they done since? Alienated Hispanic voters — again.
It is easy to dismiss as anomaly some of the nasty rhetoric — such as Rep. Don Young calling immigrants “wetbacks” or Rep. Steve King suggesting the children of illegal immigrants are being used as drug mules. But it’s impossible for most Hispanics not to walk away from the immigration debate believing the vast majority of elected Republicans are against a pathway to citizenship.
…• Swing voters. Republicans are in jeopardy of convincing voters they simply cannot govern. Their favorable ratings are terrible and getting worse. But there is broad concern it could go from worse to an unmitigated disaster this fall. Most urgently, according to a slew of key Republicans we interviewed, conservative GOP senators have got to give up their insistence that the party allow the government to shut down after Sept. 30 if they don’t get their way on defunding Obamacare.
The quixotic drive — led by Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — is part of Rubio’s effort to make up with the conservative base after he was stunned by the backlash over his deal-making on immigration. Pollsters say the funding fight makes Republicans look even more obstructionist, and causes voters to worry about the effect a shutdown would have on their own finances.

Worse, the very few remaining Republican leaders who can accurately be described as open to a modicum of bipartisanship have grim prospects for getting any traction in their party. Indeed, some of them must be wondering if becoming a conservative Democrat might be a good move for their political survival.


Edsall: How Immigration Division in GOP Helps Dems

From Thomas B. Edsall’s NYT Opinionator post, “Marco Rubio’s Un-American Dream“:

The dilemma of the Republican Party as it struggles to pick its way through the immigration minefield and build Hispanic support is further complicated by the fact that polling data suggests that the most fruitful source of new voters for the party’s candidates is not Hispanics, but the white working class. It is already a Republican constituency, but the discontent of these voters with the Obama administration has been growing sharply.
…Ruy Teixeira, who specializes in analyzing political-demographic trends, has written perhaps the best description of the weaknesses of the white Republican strategy: the core target, the white working class, is “declining precipitously as a share of voters, down from 54 to 36 percent between 1988 and 2012.” At the same time, young white voters make up “the most liberal generation in the overall electorate by a considerable margin.”

Edsall adds that “For many Republican politicians, shifts in Hispanic voting have little relevance to their individual re-election prospects, and the importance of Latinos in presidential contests is a secondary concern.” Further,

The real issue facing the Republican Party in presidential elections is that it needs new blood. Mitt Romney lost to Obama by a 3.85 percentage point margin, 51.06 to 47.21 — that’s 5 million votes. The party can try to boost its backing among whites, a steadily declining share of the electorate, or it can try to boost margins among Hispanics. The truth is that a winning Republican candidate will probably have to do both.
Projections of the impact of immigration reform range from Jeb Bush — “immigrants are particularly important to help create more taxpayers to fund the safety net for the large, retiring baby boomer generation” — to the Heritage Foundation’s argument that immigration reform “would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion in new spending on entitlements and social programs.”
…A pro-immigration-reform candidate along the lines of Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio will have to figure out how to balance the conflicting interests and values of a white and Hispanic coalition, just as the Democrats from 1968 onward have struggled to maintain — and win with — a biracial coalition, white and black….

All of which underscores the importance of Democrats reiterating their identity, loudly and clearly, as the party of both fair immigration reform and economic justice and opportunity for all working families. In doing so they will continue to make inroads with younger white working-class voters, solidify support among Latinos and highlight the Republicans’ inability to build consensus, even in their own party.


Teixeira: Why GOP Pitch to ‘Missing’ White Voters Will Likely Fail

The following article by TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira, is cross-posted from Think Progress:
There is a vogue in Republican party circles these days for enhancing the party’s de facto commitment to white voters. One approach is to rely on turning out the “missing” white voters from the 2012 election. Alan Abramowitz and I have critiqued this approach in a series of TP Ideas posts (see here and here).
Another approach is to assume that the GOP can garner an ever higher share of the white vote, thereby counteracting the pro-Democratic effect from the continuing rise of the minority population. In a strict mathematical sense, proponents of this view are correct that if the GOP can get a high enough share of the white vote and then increase that share every election, they can be electorally successful even if they do not increase their share of the burgeoning minority vote. But how plausible is this approach? Can Republicans reasonably expect to continue increasing their share of the white vote every election, surpassing their (unusually high) 59 percent share in 2012 — which was not enough to win that year -by ever-wider margins?
I don’t think so. White voters are likely to become less, not more, conservative over time, presenting a huge obstacle to this ever-increasing white Republican vote strategy.
Start with the white working class. These are the most conservative white voters, regularly giving Republicans a 12-14 point larger margin than they receive among white college graduates. But white working class voters are declining precipitously as a share of voters (down from 54 to 36 percent between 1988 and 2012) while white college graduates are increasing their share (from 31 to 36 percent over the same time period). That means that the white working class is also declining as a share of white voters. Back in 1988, 64 percent of white voters were white working class; by 2012, that figure had dropped to just half of white voters. This trend is likely to continue for many years, making the white vote a harder not easier target for conservative appeals.
Another daunting obstacle to the GOP dream of an ever larger share of the white vote is the growing Millenial segment of the white electorate. The Millennial generation, as has been widely documented, is the most liberal generation in the overall electorate by a considerable margin. This is also true of white Millennials, who are considerably more progressive than their older counterparts. In the last two elections, the Republic margin among white Millennials has averaged 20 points below that among white voters as a whole. And Millennials are becoming a larger and larger proportion of the white electorate with every passing year. By the time the 2020 election is held, they will be around 37 percent of eligible white voters -close to 2 in 5 white voters.
Republicans in the future will thus be attempting to squeeze ever more white votes out of a white electorate which is being steadily liberalized both by educational attainment and generational replacement. This is not an impossible task, but it is surely very, very difficult. Perhaps it’s time for a re-think in Republican circles: the future of white people appears less promising for the GOP than they had supposed.


Political Strategy Notes

A good statement from Secretary of State Kerry about the horrific violence in Egypt. But shouldn’t Democratic leaders stand firm for respecting the results of free elections, even when we oppose elected officials’ theocratic policies? Otherwise, how can we be credible advocates for democracy?
There goes Gallup again with the “blame congress” meme, and the MSM gobbles up the bait. Not a peep here about which party voters blame more. Would it be so hard to ask the same respondents, “which party do you believe is more responsible for congressional gridlock?”
In his latest tweet, Rand Paul seems determined to set a new standard for denial regarding racial discrimination and voter suppression.
At Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Geoffrey Skelley writes that “… There is little question that the upcoming fights over the future of Obamacare, the budget, the debt ceiling and immigration will sorely test Obama. The lack of meaningful action in Washington and the ugly clashes that are on the way may drag Obama down the same road as Truman, Johnson, Nixon and the younger Bush. On the other hand, the absence of a stalemated war and the possibility of continued (if slow) economic improvement may allow Obama to escape their path and tread one more similar to Ronald Reagan. In this polarized, partisan era, Obama will benefit from continued intense backing by Democrats and minority voters; his ceiling isn’t fixed, but Obama’s floor is relatively high.”
At The Daily Beast Jamelle Bouie has a good update on North Carolina Republicans’ all-out war to suppress African American and other pro-Democratic voters.
And at the Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik reports on “Democrats catching breaks in North Carolina.” Says Kondik: “Democrats need a rallying cry for this race, and the Republican legislature has provided them with one; whether the Republican Senate primary voters do as well is an open question….The unsettled Republican field means, to us, that of the four incumbent Democratic senators running for reelection in states that Mitt Romney won in 2014 — Mark Begich (AK), Mark Pryor (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Kay Hagan (NC) — Hagan is probably in the best shape at the moment.”
In Thomas Perez, it looks like Dems — and American workers — will have one of the strongest Secretaries of Labor ever, as AP’s Sam Hananel reports.
Here’s a good Kos cause. Help worst ever Speaker Johnny B. get back to work. As the Kos petition puts it, “To Speaker John Boehner: Dude, seriously, you’ve worked for just 87 days this year and you’re taking a five-week vacation? You’re golfing with Donald Trump while the House hasn’t voted on immigration reform or a jobs bill so far this year? Get off the golf course and back to work.”
Even the Wall St. Journal thinks Priebus is out of line.
Looking ahead to the 50th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28th, Mijin Cha explains at Demos Policy Shop why “The March on Washington is as Relevant as Ever.” See also Gary Younge’s excellent Guardian post, “Martin Luther King: the story behind his ‘I have a dream’ speech.”


Meyerson: Messina Mocks OFA’s Beliefs

Harold Meyerson’s Washington Post column, “Messina’s misguided embrace of Cameron raises questions” makes important points about the Obama’s campaign manager and current chairman of organizing for America helping out Britain’s Tory Prime Minister’s reelection campaign.
“Messina works for pro-immigrant and anti-austerity causes on this side of the Atlantic and for anti-immigrant and pro-austerity causes on the other,” explains Meyerson. He acknowledges that other political consultants have done election work abroad.

Some consultants maintain a level of ideological consistency in their globe-trotting: Pollster Stan Greenberg, for instance, has worked for Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, the Labor Party’s Tony Blair and the German Social Democrats’ Gerhard Schroeder. Others consultants are less picky. Douglas Schoen polled for both Clinton and Silvio Berlusconi. (Whatever consistency that may reveal isn’t ideological.)

But Messina’s work for Cameron takes political fickleness to another level, argues Meyerson:

So why make an issue of Messina’s meandering? Isn’t it just illustrative of the proclivity of some consultants for high-dollar candidates?
There are two reasons why it’s more disquieting than the normal scramble for more clients. First, Messina isn’t just a consultant; he is also the chairman of Organizing for Action, which describes itself on its Web site as an “organization established to support President Obama in achieving enactment of the national agenda Americans voted for on Election Day 2012.” The site touts the necessity of investing public dollars in infrastructure and highlights the efforts of volunteers across the country to win passage of immigration reform. If Organizing for Action’s members had any say in the matter, they almost surely wouldn’t approve of the group’s chairman going to work for Britain’s anti-immigrant, anti-public investment prime minister. Indeed, if they had any say in the matter, they might ask Messina to choose between Obama’s agenda and Cameron’s. If he opted to keep working for Cameron, they might just opt for a less-conflicted leader. But as the structural continuation of Obama for America, the president’s official reelection campaign, Organizing for Action is no more controlled by its members than any other electoral campaign organization is controlled by its volunteers. If the organization’s leader spends part of his time opposing the president’s agenda in a land much like our own, there’s nothing the members can do about it.
The other disquieting aspect of Messina’s misalliance is that it reflects an emerging set of political beliefs among some younger Democratic Party leaders who have grown close to Wall Street, Silicon Valley or both — as Messina did while bringing both big money and technological wizardry to Obama’s reelection campaign. This umpteenth iteration of the New Democrats believes in such socially liberal causes as gay marriage but is skeptical of unions and appalled at economic populism. At times, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel exemplifies this breed of Democrat, but the group’s true poster child is Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who defended Wall Street during the 2012 controversy over Bain Capital’s plant closings (“stop attacking private equity,” he said on “Meet The Press”) and who has actually had a high-tech start-up personally bestowed on him by his Silicon Valley fans.
For Democrats such as these, Cameron’s Tories, in their support for gay marriage, their opposition to labor (and Labor) and their defense of big banks against the European Union’s efforts to regulate them, may look surprisingly simpatico. These synergies probably seem less apparent to the many thousands of Obama volunteers still active in Organizing for Action, but what do they matter? They can’t even keep their chairman from crossing the Atlantic to mock their beliefs.

You couldn’t blame OFA’s members for thinking that Jim Messina really, really needs to resign – or be fired — as head of OFA and let someone run it who actually believes in the organization’s goals and mission.


Cohn: Obamacare Critics Dodge Act’s Key Benefit

From Jonathan Cohn’s post “The Big Savings Obamacare Critics Miss” at The New Republic about a new study for the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted by by Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton and Anthony Damico.:

The authors start by figuring out what the initial, upfront cost of insurance will be for people buying coverage on the exchanges. Based on Congressional Budget Office projections, the average across all households–that is, indivdiuals and families, of all ages–works out to $8,250 a year. That’s not a bad price for comprehensive coverage: It’s in the same ballpark as policies that employers provide employees. Still, it’s more than some families buying coverage on their own might pay today, because they have skimpy policies or benefit from preferential pricing for the healthy. thatObamacare prohibits. That’s why conservatives insist people won’t want to sign up for Obamacare’s insurance options.
…According to the Kaiser study, the subsidies on average will reduce premiums by $2,672, or about a third of the price. The averages mask a lot of variation, with more affluent people getting less assistance and less affluent people getting more assistance. People with incomes of more than four times the poverty line, or about $94,000 for a family of four, get no discount at all. That’s one reason why some people really will pay more for their insurance next year.
Still, the number of people receiving discounts is a lot larger than even many analysts seem to realize. It turns out that about half the people who buy their own insurance today will be eligible for subsidies. For them, the subsidies will be worth an average of $5,548 per household, effectively discounting the price by two-thirds…Keep in mind that people who choose less expensive options, like those that cover fewer expenses, will pay even less for their coverage.
“It makes sense to look at what people will pay for health insurance after taking tax credits into account, just like we do for things like 401(k) plans, child care, or educational expenses,” Levitt [one of the study’s authors] told me. “The law provides a surprising amount of financial relief for people who are buying their own insurance today, not to mention the uninsured, who tend to have lower incomes.” Len Nichols, a health economist at George Mason University, agrees. “In many ways, what the ACA is about is extending premium tax breaks to those without good employer offers today, and doing so through a sliding scale that provides the most help to those who need it most.”

No surprise that this all-important benefit is not addressed by GOP repeal advocates. Dems would be wise to not let them get away with this ‘oversight’ so easilly.