This Salon.com headline says it well: “The GOP’s media warfare goes nuclear: How the RNC is trying to hold journalism hostage.”
“How the Right Trounced Liberals in the States: Conservatives have mastered the art of cross-state policy advocacy, while liberal efforts have fizzled. Here’s what has to change” by Alexander Hertel-Fernandez & Theda Skocpol should be required reading for Democrats concerned with political strategy. The authors argue that “Network builders have to get out of their comfort zones in the worlds of liberal advocacy groups mostly headquartered in New York, Washington, California, and a few other blue enclaves to find and activate network connections across the vast heartland. And if progressives want to gain credibility and clout in the states, they will need to become far more strategic about engaging in widespread policy fights with the greatest potential to reshape the political landscape in conservative as well as liberal states across America.”
George Stephanopoulos interviews Stanley Greenberg and Republican pollster Kristin Soltis Anderson on “The 2016 Election Through the Eyes of the Polling Pros.”
NYT columnist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate Paul Krugman weighs in on the differences between GOP and Democratic presidents’ management of the economy: …”Historically, the economy has indeed done better under Democrats….The arithmetic on partisan differences is actually stunning. Last year the economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson circulated a paper comparing economic performance under Democratic and Republican presidents since 1947. Under Democrats, the economy grew, on average, 4.35 percent per year; under Republicans, only 2.54 percent. Over the whole period, the economy was in recession for 49 quarters; Democrats held the White House during only eight of those quarters…The Obama record compares favorably on a number of indicators with that of George W. Bush. In particular, despite all the talk about job-killing policies, private-sector employment is eight million higher than it was when Barack Obama took office, twice the job gains achieved under his predecessor before the recession struck…Democrats can afford to be cautious in their economic promises precisely because their policies can be sold on their merits. Republicans must sell an essentially unpopular agenda by confidently declaring that they have the ultimate recipe for prosperity — and hope that nobody points out their historically poor track record. And if someone does point to that record, you know what they’ll do: Start yelling about media bias.”
For Republican elected officials who are thinking that it’s time to bail, here’s a good template:

Jessica Taylor’s post, “Can Democrats Find Their Southern Charm?” explores the Dems’ improving prospects for taking the governorships of Kentucky and Louisiana.
In his AlJezeera post, “GOP and Democrats slow to woo booming Asian American electorate,” Bobby Calvan writes: “In the 2014 midterm elections, some exit polls suggested that Asian Americans were about evenly split between Democratic and Republican candidates — a dramatic turn from the 2012 presidential election, when 73 percent of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) aligned with the Democrats…Far from monolithic, Asian Americans hail from dozens of countries — three-quarters of Asian Americans are foreign born — and arrived in the United States from a multitude of cultures, religions and political histories. They have different worldviews…Democrats and Republicans are more invested in chasing after the 25.2 million eligible Latino voters — a much bigger prize than the 9 million eligible voters of Asian descent.”
WaPo syndicated columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes about the downer tone that pervades the GOP and it’s supporters in their view of the future. “The pessimism within significant sectors of the GOP is more than the unhappiness partisans typically feel when the other side is in power. It’s rooted in a belief that things have fundamentally changed in America, and there is an ominous possibility they just can’t be put right again…Democrats are more bullish on the future.”
Cartoonist Mike Luckovitch shares his vision of the coming GOP presidential debates.

There’s a general assumption in the air in Washington that the two-year budget deal and the advent of Paul Ryan as Speaker means we can all stop worrying about conservative-generated chaos in Congress until after next year’s elections. That could be premature, as I discussed today at Washington Monthly:

For all the “cleaning the barn” talk about the two-year “budget deal” that cleared the Senate in the wee hours this morning, it does not actually resolve all the troublesome spending issues or eliminate the possibility of conservative mischief. As David Dayen notes at the Prospect, while the deal set overall spending levels, is does not obviate the need for actual appropriations bills.

That means we’re not finished with opportunities for hostage-taking, as conservatives can still hijack the budget process to earn long-sought victories. Attached to all of the existing appropriations bills are riders unrelated to the budget, affecting everything from social to environmental to financial regulatory policy.
In September, Public Citizen and hundreds of other organizations outlined just a sample of those riders. For example, the appropriations bills on offer would cancel all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. They would prevent enforcement of a proposed Labor Department regulation to mandate investment advisers to operate in their clients’ best interest. They would cancel the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules. They would stop environmental regulations on clean water, endangered species, and air-quality standards for ozone, and block an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule on toxic silica dust in the workplace. They would exempt flavored cigarettes currently on the market from regulation. They would halt the Securities and Exchange Commission from completing rules requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending. They would block rules limiting the hours long-haul truckers can spend on the road without rest. And they would change hundreds of other rules, regulations, and funding priorities….
The White House, in its statement on the budget deal, said that it would work with Congress “to enact responsible, full-year FY 2016 appropriations–without ideological riders–based on this agreement.” But there is nothing in the deal that prevents Congress from sending appropriations with these riders and daring the president to veto them. Everybody, therefore, has the same choices in front of them that existed before John Boehner announced his resignation.

Well, not all the same choices are available, since the use of the debt limit to extort policy changes is indeed off the table. But David’s right: the specter of a government shutdown over conservative demands to “defund” Planned Parenthood hasn’t been defused, and if as expected there’s another omnibus appropriations bill covering multiple federal agencies it will represent quite the hostage for such demands.
You can make the argument that the dynamics which made the budget deal possible–you know, the bipartisan desire to get to the elections without fresh crises in Congress–will inevitably prevent a big collision over appropriations, much less a shutdown. But keep in mind the only way out of an impasse will be the same Hastert-Rule-violating coalition of House Democrats and a minority of Republicans, and one of the prices Paul Ryan paid for that spanking new gavel he wields was a pledge to take the Hastert Rule more seriously.

Anyone assuming the furies lashing conservatives towards a strategy of maximum confrontation have been quelled may be mistaking a tactical quiet-before-the-storm for genuinely good weather.

At HuffPo, senior polling editor Mark Blumenthal has a review article discussing Stanley Greenberg’s new book, “America Ascendant,” which calls for a new progressive era to address “revolutions that are changing America, changing politics, changing culture, changing economics.” Blumenthal interviews Greenberg (audio of full interview here), and shares some of his observations, including:

Greenberg argues in the book that these revolutionary changes, including a population that is growing younger and more racially and culturally diverse, will lead to a period in which America will be “exceptional again.” But he believes that renewal will require a period of sustained political reform, comparable to the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, and the defeat of the “counter-revolution” being waged by the modern Republican Party.
The book, based in part on years of Greenberg’s polling and focus groups, also looks at the profound “downside” to this time of change: stagnating wages, an endemic cost-of-living crisis, a perceived end to “middle class dreams.” These “deep contradictions,” as Greenberg describes them, have produced pessimism about the future and great skepticism about leaders in Washington, including President Barack Obama.

As for the Republican party and its future, Blumenthal notes:

While Greenberg counsels Democrats to advocate “very bold policy changes,” he also believes that a Republican “implosion” is now underway in the GOP presidential primary.
The Republican Party, as Greenberg describes it, is “a rural, white, married, evangelical, religious party in a country that’s becoming less married, more secular, more urban.” The “furious counter-revolution” the party has waged for a decade to keep the “new American majority” from governing, he said, has “alienated the Republican Party from the country.”
He sees the evangelical and tea party blocs as “driving the base of support” for presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and believes they could ultimately boost support for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Greenberg is also ready to declare former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “gone” as a presidential aspirant. “There’s no place for Bush in the Republican Party,” he said. Bush has positioned himself as a “more electable” candidate. But Greenberg pointed out that he “presents himself as the most conservative on choice issues, which makes him unacceptable to [GOP moderates], the one group of voters that might have voted for a moderate establishment candidate.”

In the interview Greenberg acknowledges that a “shattering loss” for the GOP in 2016 could strengthen Republican moderates and make their party more competitive later on. “For now, however,” concludes Blumenthal, “Greenberg sees the GOP’s counter-revolution on a collision course with the demographic trends reshaping the American electorate.”

For all the talk of “winners” and “losers” in the CNBC Republican presidential candidates’ debate last night, there was one near no-show: the big two-year bipartisan budget deal that passed the House a few hours before the debate began. I discussed this anomaly at TPMCafe:

Wednesday the most important economic/fiscal policy development of the entire presidential cycle occurred in Washington: The GOP-controlled House approved a two-year budget deal that takes away every conservative point of leverage until after the elections. It confirmed for the rank-and-file conservative “base” every suspicion about the gutless and treacherous Republican Establishment.
Yet in a GOP presidential debate Wednesday evening, the budget deal barely came up. Instead, for a variety of reasons, the candidates mostly took turns attacking the big dumb abstraction of Big Government as the cause of every conceivable problem, with Hillary Clinton and the feckless CNBC debate moderators getting beaten up nearly as much as Washington.
Perhaps it is telling that the budget deal was only emphasized by Rand Paul, a desperate candidate who had already announced he was going to filibuster the deal in the Senate when it comes up for a vote Thursday. Ted Cruz mentioned it, too, but only because it fits seamlessly into his usual rap. And John Kasich denounced it in passing but only to contrast it with his own alleged fiscal accomplishments way, way back in the day. Presumably the issue didn’t “work” for anyone else, and perhaps they were relieved to retreat to the minutiae of their tax plans and the vaguest and broadest suggestions that any federal involvement in any area of domestic government is to be opposed.

Maybe the candidates were just too deep into debate prep this week to notice the ground had shifted in Washington. I just don’t know.

Suffice it to say that the biggest winner of the entire day and night was Paul Ryan, whose two-faced response to a budget deal designed to make life easy for him received a tepid rebuke from Paul but nothing more. Unless there’s a real surprise in the Senate, it appears the GOP, including its presidential candidates, is ready to find some alternative to debt limit defaults and government shutdowns in order to smite its foes. Hearing them all sound like they want to go back to the governing philosophy of the Coolidge administration made me wonder if the biggest threat of all is that they might win next November.

Re last night’s GOP debate, the pundit and prediction markets consensus seems to be that Rubio amped up his game with punchy rebuttals and hogging more time than previously. Carson won the new twitter followers and Facebook ‘likes’ derbies, while Bush scored the bold-type quote of the evening at Rubio’s expense with his carefully-crafted zinger referencing the “French work-week.” But Trump edged out Rubio and smoked all of the other candidates (Bush dead last) on stage on the applause-o-meter, reports Andre Tartar in his Bloomberg by-the-numbers post.
At FiveThirtyEight.com Nate Silver mulls over the debate and some recent numbers and concludes “Yeah, Jeb Bush is Probably Toast.”
The concerted GOP whine of the evening was that the media has failed to give their presidential candidate field enough softballs. NBC’s Chuck Todd called it a “premeditated attack” on the media. All of which smells like the GOP field hopes to intimidate the MSM from asking tough questions.
Speaking of softballs, the hapless “undercard” candidates were actually asked if they thought the day after the superbowl should be a national holiday.
A new Gallup poll indicates that “Americans’ support for the Tea Party has dropped to its lowest level since the movement emerged on the national political scene prior to the 2010 midterm elections. Seventeen percent of Americans now consider themselves Tea Party supporters.”
Back in the real world, a just-released Associated Press-GfK poll shows strong support for tighter gun laws: “Eight in 10 Democrats favor stricter gun laws, while 6 in 10 Republicans want them left as they are or loosened…Still, the results show the calls for tighter laws have some bipartisan appeal, with 37 percent of Republicans, including 31 percent of conservative Republicans, favoring stricter gun laws,” reports AP’s Emily Swanson.
A newly-published ‘Third Way’ report makes the case that “The Democratic economic agenda should be organized around one over-arching goal: sustained private sector economic growth that expands and greatly benefits the middle class.”
Could it be that the continuing litany of scandals involving former GOP House speakers and Boehner’s failed legacy sets an irresistibly low bar for Paul Ryan, as he preps for the speakership?
‘Partner” would be a contortionist’s stretch.

Former political editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Tom Baxter catches Mitt Romney in a classic Republican screw-up/walkback and puts it in context of the GOP’s increasingly schitzy framing of Obamacare and Medicare expansion:

Paying tribute to a departed friend last week, Mitt Romney stumbled into the sort of gotcha moment that causes former supporters of the 2012 Republican standard-bearer to flinch.
“Without Tom pushing it,” Romney said of businessman Tom Stemberg, “I don’t think we would have had Romneycare. Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”
Realizing he had trampled into a sacred cow, Romney quick backtracked and issued a standardized denunciation of Obamacare. But Romney is not alone in his gotcha.
“I was personally against the Affordable Care Act… But we lost, folks,” Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said recently in a speech to a group of seniors. “We lost. And we lost in court. So what we have to do now is move past that, take the resources we have available and try to improve the quality of life for the people of Alabama and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Pressed later to say whether he was moving toward accepting the Medicaid expansion at the heart of the Affordable Care Act, Bentley gave a response that is the perfect reflection of Republican ambivalence on this subject:
“You know I wouldn’t say nudging toward it,” said Bentley. “But we are certainly looking at that; not right now. We are not at that stage right now.”
That’s the picture from the hinterlands, where a collapsing rural healthcare system and a disproportionate share of the uninsured are making it progressively harder to hold the line on the Medicaid expansion. Mitt Romney said no more than the truth: without a movement toward something like the Affordable Care Act, a lot more people today would be without health insurance. Those who still aren’t tend to be in states which have held the line against this movement, riddled with problems though it may be.

Democratic candidates should make more of all this GOP talking tough about Obamacare coupled with caving on Medicaid expansion — yet another gift from the bottomless well of Republican double-talk.

In his Wall St. Journal column, “The New Democratic Coalition: The party has moved to 41% liberal from 21% since 2000, but seeks a unifying candidate,” William A. Galston writes:

The Democratic contenders for 2016 are dealing with a party that has shifted left in the 14 years since the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency. In 2000, according to an October report from the Pew Research Center, 43% of Democrats identified themselves as moderate, 27% as liberal and 24% as conservative. In 2015, 41% of Democrats think of themselves as liberal–a 14-point jump. The moderates’ share of the party dropped to 35%, the conservatives’ to 21%. Half of the Democrats who participate in the 2016 nominating process are likely to be liberal.
The candidates will be vying to lead Barack Obama’s Democratic Party. Pew researchers find that 61% of Democrats who say they may vote in the primaries and caucuses will be more likely to support candidates who offer plans similar to those of the Obama administration. Only 12% would be less likely to do so. By 45% to 19%, these Democrats say that they will be more, rather than less, likely to support a candidate who wants to expand trade agreements. On this issue, surprisingly, there is no disagreement between liberal and moderate/conservative Democrats.

Galston also notes that the Pew survey shows significant, but unsurprising differences between “liberal,” “moderate” and “conservative” Democrats in their attitudes toward breaking up the big banks and the Iran deal. With respect to the poll’s findings on attitudes toward bipartisan compromise, Galston explains:

The second large contrast between the parties is especially telling. Among possible Democratic primary participants, 60% say they are more likely to favor a candidate who wants to compromise with Republicans. Only 41% of possible Republican participants would be more likely to favor a candidate who wants to compromise with Democrats. Democrats are weary of unending partisan strife; Republicans are gearing up to intensify the battle…Among these Democratic respondents, candidates who espouse a more unifying approach to the presidency are likely to hold the advantage over partisan warriors.

In addition, Galston says, “According to a Pew Research Center study published in June 2014, 56% of voters overall preferred candidates who are willing to compromise; only 39% wanted leaders to stick to their positions, come what may.” But he cites public skepticism about the prospects for political leadership actually pursuing greater bipartisan unity, and concludes, “In these polarized times, the candidate with the most credible response to this challenge is likely to be the next president of the United States.”

A constant feature of dialogue among left-progressives is whether it is time to launch a serious national third party campaign. In his article, “Why Leftists Should Also Be Democrats,” Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent addresses the question in the context of today’s politics.
Kazin decries the ‘self-defeating” denial of many leftists that the Democratic party has on numerous occasions proven to be an effective advocate for progressive change benefitting millions of working people. Indeed, has any major social or economic reform of the last century in the U.S. been accomplished without the benefit of Democratic Party leadership?
Dismissing the Democratic Party and its rank and file as hopelessly irrelevant to the quest for a more just society as do some leftists is making the good the enemy of the perfect. As Kazin says, “If you neglect the Dems–or simply denounce them–you are saying, in effect, that the carefully considered strategies of all these people who are trying to transform the nation for the better are simply mistaken.”
Kazin also emphasizes the increasing extremism of the modern GOP as a compelling reason for a unified opposition, and the only real-world alternative at present is the Democratic party. Thus, “any leftist who discourages people from engaging in electoral politics or wastes her vote on a third party is doing her bit, however small, to help Republicans win.” And it’s not all that much of a stretch to add that any eligible voter who chooses to stay home on election day is, in effect, voting Republican.
Taking it a step further, before 2000 you could make a case that a third party vote for purely ideological reasons in certain “safe” blue or lost red states in presidential elections need not do any damage to prospects for progressive change. But the nightmare in Florida in 2000, with its horrific and still-reverberating human and economic consequences, continues to wreak destruction in the U.S. and world-wide. The stakes of ill-considered third party dalliances are now too high to seriously consider.
The Democratic party is not the rigidly-corrupt institution of purist left fantasy. The successful campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, for example, indicates that there is a prominent place of influence in the Party for advocates of Democratic socialism. Win or lose, Sanders has already pushed his Democratic opposition substantially to the left, and he has been a hell of a lot more effective in doing so than any third party effort since the Progressive party lead by Henry Wallace in 1948.
As Kazin notes, “the Democrats are also an institution that’s quite open to participation by individuals and groups at nearly every level–from county committees to campaign staffs to elections of delegates to the quadrennial nominating convention. That means there are plenty of opportunities to nudge, or push, the party to the left…Bernie Sanders knows all this–which is why he decided to run for president as a Democrat.”
None of this is to argue that third parties are always counter-productive as advocates for progressive change. They are essential components of progressive coalitions in parliamentary systems and the day may come when they are equally important in the U.S. At present, however, that is not the case. As Kazin writes,

It would be wonderful to belong to and vote for a party that stood unambiguously for democratic socialist principles, articulated them to diverse constituencies in fresh and thrilling ways, and had the ability to compete for every office from mayor to legislator to governor to senator to president. But not many Americans speak Norwegian.
In the United States, there are innumerable obstacles to starting and sustaining a serious new party on the left: the electoral laws work against it, most of the media would ignore it, the expenses of building the infrastructure are prohibitive, and the constituency for such a party doesn’t currently exist. A majority of Americans do say they would like to have a third party to vote for. But at least as many of those people stand on the right as on the left, and many others just despise “politics as usual” and seldom, if ever, vote.

Kazin boils down the choice facing progressives considering involvement in third party activism:

It’s a pragmatic question: can one do more to make the United States a more just and humane society and help people in other societies by working inside, as well as outside, the party, or by ignoring or denouncing it? Of course, leftists in the United States should continue to do what they have always done: stage protests, build movements, educate people, lobby politicians, and create institutions that try to improve the lives of the people whom they serve. But political parties are essential to a healthy democracy. And right now, the Democrats are the only party we have.

Part of meeting this challenge is for Democrats to encourage stronger caucuses in party structure, so different factions will feel they have a real voice — and a stake — in the Democratic Party and its victories. In this way, the divisions Democrats are struggling with now can become their electoral edge in the future.