The following article by Nancy LeTourneau is cross-posted from The Washington Monthly:
President Obama’s “pen and phone” strategy (which he announced a year ago) has confused a lot of progressives. The title of this article by Markos Moulitsas pretty well sums it up: “Imagine that: Obama decides he’ll fight for people, approvals soar.” He’s right that President Obama’s approval rating has risen over the last couple of months and that the American people seem to like the fact that he is getting things done…despite Congress. Where the confusion shows is in assuming that the President has recently decided to “fight for people.”
Moulitsas includes a list of things Obama has announced recently. But as many of us have been pointing out, a lot of them (normalization with Cuba, executive orders on immigration, etc.) have been in the works for at least 1-2 years. It’s true that free community college is a new proposal. But it was preceded by a proposal for universal pre-K in his 2013 SOTU. The President has consistently said that he would stand by the process of the State Department’s study of the Keystone Pipeline and would veto any effort to preempt it. His working group on police reforms follows a record number of police brutality investigations initiated by the Civil Rights Division of DOJ during his administration.
But Moulitsas isn’t the only one confused by what’s happening. Simon Johnson is one of the people who objected to the nomination of Antonio Weiss as Undersecretary of Domestic Affairs at the Treasury Department. And so its ironic to read him insist that President Obama needs to swiftly nominate someone to that position now that Weiss has removed himself from consideration. But Johnson shows his own confusion with this:

In the continuing absence of an Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, the administration has recently displayed an inconsistent – or perhaps even incoherent – policy stance on financial sector issues. On the one hand, in mid-December, the White House agreed to rollback a significant part of Dodd-Frank – the so-called “swaps push-out,” which was shamefully attached at the behest of Citigroup to a must-pass government spending bill.
On the other hand, the President has recently issued veto threats to protect financial reform.

Read more…

Nate Cohn asks a great question at The Upshot:

How does a Republican Party seemingly dominated by the South, energized by the Tea Party and elected by conservative voters also consistently support relatively moderate presidential nominees?

Well-stated. And his answer is one Democrats must understand before we can formulate a winning strategy:

The answer is the blue-state Republicans…It’s easy to forget about the blue-state Republicans. They’re all but extinct in Washington, since their candidates lose general elections to Democrats, and so officials elected by states and districts that supported Mr. Romney dominate the Republican Congress.
But the blue-state Republicans still possess the delegates, voters and resources to decide the nomination. In 2012, there were more Romney voters in California than in Texas, and in Chicago’s Cook County than in West Virginia. Mr. Romney won three times as many voters in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City than in Republican-leaning Alaska.
Overall, 59 percent of Romney voters in the Republican primaries lived in the states carried by President Obama. Those states hold 50 percent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention, even though they contain just 19 percent of Republican senators. Just 11 percent of House Republicans hail from districts that voted for President Obama.

Kind of paradoxical. We have been repeatedly told that “moderate” Republicans, such as they are, must run to the right to get their party’s nomination. Yet, the GOP has a bias toward the more moderate candidates on nomination day.

For all the legitimate attention that will be given to questions about whether an establishment favorite like Mr. Bush can win over deeply conservative voters, there are just as many questions about which conservative candidate can win over blue-state Republicans. Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney won every blue-state primary in 2008 and 2012, making it all but impossible for their more conservative challengers to win the nomination.

Cohn trots out charts indicating that the 18 “bluest states…have dwindled to 7 percent of the G.O.P.’s Senate delegation…But they still account for 4 in 10 voters in Republican primaries, helping swing results toward establishment candidates.” Cohn adds,

The importance of blue-state Republicans makes it far less likely that the party will nominate a conservative firebrand or a favorite of the religious right, like Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee, than one might guess from the unwavering conservatism of the red-state electorates that hold sway over elected Republicans in Washington…If the Republican presidential nominee were decided by the red states — by the same electorates that send Republican officials to Washington and then dissuade them from even the most incremental compromises — then Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain probably wouldn’t have won the party’s nomination.
Cohn cites a somewhat similar trend with Democrats, noting that a left progressive Democratic presidential candidate “might win San Francisco, Boulder, Colo., or Vermont, but would struggle to win relatively conservative Democrats in Appalachia or the South,” which should give added comfort to Hillary Clinton. Conversely, former FL Gov Jeb Bush and WI Gov. Scott Walker will find Cohn’s analysis heartening (NJ Gov. Christie would also be included here, but for his still-festering scandals. If Scott Walker’s ethical issues explode, the smart money in Cohn’s analysis is on Jeb Bush).

An interesting insight, especially for those of us who find the party conventions more boring than not, with their ritualistic rah rah, ho-hum platform deliberations and predictable displays of unanimity at closing time. The Republican primaries in blue states and Democratic primaries in red states have a lot more to say about the direction of the country than is commonly believed.
As for the money primary, Cohn notes some geographic overlap:

The clout of blue-state Republicans is enhanced by an alliance with the party’s donor class. Republican donors, in general, are likely more concerned by electability and business issues than religiosity and the culture wars. But they also come disproportionately from the blue states, which accounted for 62 percent of all Republican primary fund-raising in 2012. A candidate like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey or the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in 2008 might be too moderate to win the nomination, but would have a far easier time raising money than a highly conservative candidate like Mr. Santorum.

In the GOP, the culture warriors get all the press but the economic conservatives get the dough. No doubt the Koch brothers would likely be happy enough with Jeb Bush, but an unrepentant union-basher like Scott Walker probably gives them a political stiffie.
Cohn notes exceptions, like Bush II mining his evangelical creds to win his party’s nomination. But you can’t so easily factor out his blue state bloodlines. In any event, he’s more the exception that proves the rule. Overall, Cohn’s analysis squares well with recent history.
Bottom line, if Cohn is right, don’t pay too much attention to the clown car culture warriors of the red states. The Republican nomination is more about who is the shrewdest of their blue state slicksters.