Republican governors are term-limited in both Alabama and Georgia going into 2010. And despite Barack Obama’s poor performance in the former state and the recent Republican dominance in the latter, Democrats are hopeful about regaining the governorship in both states, where GOPers are in some disarray.
But the interesting thing is that the early front-runners for the Democratic gubernatorial nominations in Alabama and Georgia are African-Americans, as noted recently by Tom Baxter of the Southern Political Report.
Anyone who knows Alabama U.S. Rep. Artur Davis is aware that he’s been looking at a gubernatorial race for a good while. He formally entered the 2010 contest a couple of months ago, and with the recent decision of former Gov. Jim Folsom, Jr., against running, Davis is generally considered the primary front-runner, though Agriculture Commissioner Ronnie Sparks has now jumped in and state Sen. Roger Bedford may do so later.
Davis has built a definite reputation in national Democratic circles as a centrist, dating back to his original primary victory over civil rights veteran Earl Hilliard in 2002. But he was also an early supporter and close advisor to Barack Obama, with whom he has often been compared, in part due to their distinguished stints at Harvard Law School. His own early polls show him running even in general election trial heats against three possible Republican nominees, state Treasurer Kay Ivey, Alabama community college chancellor Bradley Byrne, and Troy University chancellor Jack Hawkins (Hawkins has since renounced intentions to run).
The unsettled nature of the Republican field in Alabama is best illustrated by fears that the infamous “Ten Commandments Judge,” Roy Moore, who fared poorly in a primary challenge to Gov. Bob Riley in 2006, could win the nomination this time around as the best known candidate. GOPers could have a messy and divisive primary.
Georgia has two African-American Democratic statewide elected officials, Attorney General Thurbert Baker and Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. Both have won three consecutive statewide elections during a period when Republicans have captured nearly every other statewide office while winning control of the legislature. Baker surprised many observers by announcing for governor last week. Once a floor leader in the legislature for Zell Miller, he’s a relatively quiet politician who has steadily built a reputation as a moderate-to-conservative with a law-and-order pedigree.
Baker’s statewide name ID and the importance of the African-American vote in Democratic primaries makes him the putative front-runner, but he faces a tough race and a probable runoff, even if former Gov. Roy Barnes doesn’t join the field. House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter announced his candidacy yesterday, and former Secretary of State, Labor Commissioner, and Adjutant General David Poythress has been campaigning for months.
Georgia Republicans, meanwhile, are sure to have a competitive and potentially nasty primary involving front-runner Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle (the guy who beat Ralph Reed in 2006), long-time Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, and the relatively moderate Secretary of State, Karen Handel.
Those who think of the Deep South as little more than a bastion of Republicanism these days should keep an eye on these contests. They have the potential to upset not only partisan, but perhaps racial, stereotypes.

The latest “death of newspapers” story is out of Boston, where the New York Times Company, owners of the venerable Boston Globe since 1993, is threatening to close down the paper unless unions make major concessions.
In another newspaper, the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley offers the ultimate ironic big picture comment about this trend, in the course of suggesting that we can do without the print dailies:

As many have pointed out, more people are spending more time reading news and analysis than ever before. They’re just doing it online. For centuries people valued the content of newspapers enough to pay what it cost to produce them (either directly or by patronizing advertisers). We’re in a transition, destination uncertain….But there is no reason to suppose that when the dust has settled, people will have lost their appetite for serious news when the only fundamental change is that producing and delivering that news has become cheaper.

Kinsley, of course, is rebutting an explanation for the newspaper crisis that’s a bit passe: that people aren’t interested in real news anymore. That was something you heard a lot back in the pre-internet days of the 1970s and 1980s, when it appeared that television was destroying the papers. Today the argument is mainly about news infrastructure and “freeriding”: that online news and commentary sources, and especially news aggregators, can’t and won’t make the investments necessary to replace the news organizations that they are “ripping off” and killing off.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject, but it’s worth noting that the traditional print news organizations have created many of their own problems, from bad business decisions that have nothing to do with journalism, to professional inbreeding and elitism, to very slow adjustments to technological changes and the quickening of news cycles. I’m old enough to remember when I got nearly all of my information from print newspapers and magazines (and from the library rather than Google!), but also old enough to witness the long steady decline of most regional newspapers into five-minute reads of yesterday’s stories, and old enough to resent the stranglehold on political interpretation once maintained by a small handful of Bigfoot Journalists. The Washington Post used to get a lot of us folks out in the boondocks to pay a hefty fee to receive a “national weekly edition” in themail. It still exists, though I don’t know how many people still fish in for a subscription. Even if I thought it were possible, I wouldn’t want to go back to the days when well-produced “news” was old, slow and expensive.
You’d have to assume that before long online advertising will evolve in a way that will enable it to pay most of the freight for online journalism, accompanied by new forms of cooperative newsgathering that will enable the coverage of international and specialty subjects. It’s less clear what will happen to the journalistic guild, with competition from non-guild-members now so prevalent. I once tried to make a lateral career transfer from government service to editorial writing for a small daily paper which was advertising for some help, and was quickly informed that such positions were the rabbits that kept underpaid reporters running around the track for so many years, so nobody without a journalism degree and experience as an ink-stained wretch, regardless of writing skill or substantive expertise, need apply. So the oft-cited grand traditions of the Fourth Estate aren’t always about excellence or ethics.
Before too long, we may look back at today’s MSM as anomalous and wonder why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to set up news monopolies run by corporate oligarchs and staffed by trained and accredited serfs. But the transition to the shape of things to come is going to be painful and messy.

One of the most imteresting aspects of last week’s Iowa Supreme Court decision striking down a statutory ban on same-sex marriage in that state was what didn’t happen: a big backlash that sent Democratic politicians running for the hills.
That would have likely happened just a few years ago, at the time when even quite progressive Democrats from “blue states” generally followed the “yes to civil unions, no to marriage” approach, while many Democrats in politically competitive states took an even harder anti-gay-marriage posture.
Contrast that to the joint statement put on Friday by Iowa’s Democratic state legislative leaders, Sen. Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and House Speaker Pat Murphy:

Thanks to today’s decision, Iowa continues to be a leader in guaranteeing all of our citizens’ equal rights.
The court has ruled today that when two Iowans promise to share their lives together, state law will respect that commitment, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.
When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today’s events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.
Today, the Iowa Supreme Court has reaffirmed those Iowa values by ruling that gay and lesbian Iowans have all the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as any other Iowan.

Desmoinesdem at Bleeding Heartland has a roundup of other immediate Iowa Democratic reactions to the decision, and they are generally very positive.
And even Iowa Republicans had to rouse themselves to get upset. Just prior to the decision, when asked how the legislature might respond if the marriage ban were struck down, House GOP leader Kraig Paulson basically said they had better things to spend their time on, like the budget and the economy, referring to same-sex marriage as a “side issue.” Conservative activists weren’t real happy with that, so now GOP leaders are dutifully putting out statements of outrage and resolve.
The most notable reaction in the Des Moines Register, the state’s dominant media presence, was a Sunday article entitled: “Marriage Ruling May Boost Iowa Economy,” featuring more quotes from wedding plannings and tourism experts than from angry evangelical ministers.
What seems to have happened in the last few years, in Iowa as elsewhere, is that the question for politically and ideologically moderate voters on same-sex marriage has changed from “Why?” to “Why Not?” And that change in turn almost certainly reflects the lack of impact–other than images of smiling, happy couples–in states that have already legalized gay and lesbian marriages.
The trend in public opinion in favor of same-sex marriage availability is so strong that Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com has done a regression analysis that predicts when majority opinion in each state will reach that position in the future. He lists ten states as already in that category, with 13 more joining it by 2012, and even Mississippi coming along, as the last holdout, by 2024.
Cultural conservatives may continue to scream about “judicial activism” and usurpation of popular rights on this issue, but the ground is moving beneath their feet. And we’ve already reached the point where in large swaths of the country, opposition to same-sex marriage as a powerful conservative “wedge issue” is dead, thank God.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

One aspect of yesterday’s budget votes that’s drawing a lot of attention is the fact that Evan Bayh joined Ben Nelson as one of the only two Senate Democrats to vote against the leadership-sponsored resolutions (and for, BTW, an alternative offered by Republican Sen. Mike Johanns).
Nelson’s vote was no surprise; he’s always voted this way, and he’s from Nebraska. But Bayh’s another matter–a fairly senior senator with a safe seat, in a state carried by Obama, and a Democrat who was apparently on the short list to become Obama’s running-mate last year. Because of his still-relatively-young age and his vote-gathering prowess, Bayh’s also been mentioned now and then as a future presidential candidate, and tested the waters pretty thoroughly going into 2008. Ezra Klein dug around in Bayh’s voting record today, and concluded that he’s simply erratic, unlike Ben Nelson.
Bayh’s statement explaining his vote is an expression of straight-forward deficit hawkery. But plenty of other Democratic deficit hawks had no trouble voting for the Democratic budget resolution, most notably the Cassandra of Democratic deficit hawks, Blue Dog Congressman Jim Cooper of TN.
The general feeling in the progressive blogosphere is probably best summed up by Steve Benen at Political Animal: “Yes, Bayh is the new Lieberman.” This epithet is made even more piercing by the fact that the actual Joe Lieberman found a way to vote for the Democratic budget resolution.
The more immediate issue for Democrats is that Bayh was the convener of a group of 16 “centrist” Senate Democrats poised to play a key role in the shaping of budget and other legislation for the remainder of this year. The “Bayh group” was already under fierce attack for an alleged willingness to position itself between the two parties and thwart Obama’s policy agenda. Some of us have suggested that these attacks were unfair or at least premature, and have tried to distinguish between “centrists” who do want to stand aside from the Democratic Party and cut deals, and those who don’t.
Bayh’s vote on the budget will provide abundant ammunition to those who want to lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-“traitor” camp, even though 14 members of the “Bayh group” voted with the rest of the Democratic Caucus.
Best as I can tell, Bayh’s vote was motivated by a sincere horror of deficits and debt, which is so strong that he doesn’t mind abandoning his party and indeed, his fellow “centrists” on what was, after all, the most epochal budget vote since at least 1993 and probably since 1981. For that very reason, he ought to step back from his leadership role in the Senate “centrist” group, in favor of senators whose agreement with and loyalty to the Obama agenda is much less in question. If this group remains the “Bayh group,” it will struggle to achieve the credibility it needs to become anything other than a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors.

Given the political and policy magnitude of the budget resolutions that cleared the House and Senate yesterday, it’s not surprising that the spin is full on to interpret it. But we’re already seeing some interpretations that appear to be at war with themselves.
Today’s article on the vote in Politico (by David Rogers) carries the somber title: “Budgets Fall Short of Obama Mandates.” But by the second graph, Rogers (who, of course, didn’t write the headline) was saying this:

No Republican in either chamber backed the president, but the 233-196 House vote surpassed the size of budget victories for either party over the last decade. And Democrats lost only two of their members on the 55-43 vote in the Senate.

So: what was it? A historic triumph or a horrible setback?
Dig down into the story, and you’re informed that one problem for Obama is that the Senate did not issue reconciliation instructions, which means the key climate change and health care components of the budget blueprint will be vulnerable to Senate filibusters. But that’s not news. It’s been obvious that Obama’s carbon cap-and-trade initiative wouldn’t benefit from reconciliation treatment ever since eight Senate Democrats signed a letter opposing such a step. Meanwhile, the general expectation is that the House approach of tentatively including health care reform in a reconciliation package (if only as a lever to force Republicans to the table) will be accepted by the Senate in the conference committee negotiations just ahead.
The one real surprise in the Senate deliberations was an amendment increasing the exclusion from the federal estate tax, and lowering the top rate on estates from 45% to 35%. But Obama was already proposing a more modest increase in the exclusion, and the close (51-48) vote itself was only symbolic; the tax-writing committees in both Houses would have to act on it separately. In any event, those with good medium-range memory will recall how recently Congress enacted a complete repeal of what Republicans call “the death tax;” as part of the GOP’s budget gimmickry, however, the repeal was set to sunset on the theory that Congress would not dare reinstate it. So we’ve actually made quite a bit of progress on the estate tax since 2001, even in the unlikely event that the Senate amendment is fully implemented.
All in all, yesterday’s votes were about the best the administration could expect. The “party of No” held its ranks; Democratic defections were low; and Democrats have some momentum going forward–no matter how the headlines read.

The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, relying on the equal protection and due process clauses of the Iowa Constitution. This makes the midwestern state the fourth state where gay marriage has become legal, though one, of course, California, later reversed the step by a ballot initiative. Vermont could soon become the fifth state, depending on whether the legislature overrides an expected veto by Republican Gov. Jim Douglas of same-sex marriage legislation cleared just yesterday.
In Iowa, conservatives are already demanding a state constitutional amendment to overturn the court ruling. But Iowa’s unusual system requires that constitutional amendments have to be approved by two different legislatures (which meet for two years) before going to voters for approval. The 2009 session is nearly over, and no one believes a constitutional gay marriage ban can be acted upon until 2010. So that means 2012 is the earliest point at which Iowa voters could be considering a ban. And if nothing happens in next year’s state legislative session, a vote to overturn today’s decision couldn’t happen until 2014.
Given the pace of change of public opinion in favor of same-sex marriage, I’d say couples wanting to tie the knot in Iowa don’t have to rush to the altar.

It’s been pretty quiet on the same-sex marriage front since California voters approved Proposition 8 last November. But that could all change tomorrow, when the Iowa Supreme Court is expected to rule on a constitutional challenge to the state’s statutory same-sex marriage ban.
As explained by Jason Hancock at the Washington Independent’s blog, this is a straightforward equal protection/due process challenge based on the state constitution. It’s not that different from the challenge that temporarily succeeded in Massachussets a while back.
What makes the Iowa situation significant is that it’s in, well, Iowa, far from the coastal areas where same-sex marriage disputes have most often raged. If the plaintiffs win in Iowa, you can expect conservatives to mount a constitutional amendment effort, but that’s failed repeatedly in the state.
Expect tomorrow’s ruling, whichever way it goes, to reverberate for quite some time.

The black-and-white details are available just yet, but if the outline provided in today’s Wall Street Journal by House Budget Committee ranking Republican Paul Ryan is accurate, the much ballyhooed GOP alternative budget resolution will be a compilation of very tired and very bad ideas.
On the tired side, you have the brilliant breakthrough concept of a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending (exempting veterans affairs). This is, of course, the oldest of budget gimmicks, central to the fiscal strategy of the first President Bush. It treats all federal programs as of identical worth, and achieves savings by counting on inflation to bleed the actual value of federal expenditures.
Equally tired, if not quite as old, is the concept of reducing taxes on corporations and high earners, which the Ryan budget would achieve at an estimated five-year cost of $4 trillion. The gimmickry here is the creation of a two-track income tax system that would allow taxpayers to choose current rates and deductions, or instead, a flat schedule that would have a top marginal rate of 25%. Corporate tax rates would simply be reduced.
Slightly more novel are the “entitlement reform” features of the House GOP budget. Best I can tell from Ryan’s vague description, Medicare would be voucherized for future beneficiaries (those not currently over 55 years of age), which is to say, it would be eliminated as a defined set of benefits and instead turned into cash for the purchase of private insurance, presumably at a fixes rate that would erode purchasing power over time. The federal share of Medicaid would be capped, which simply means that states would be put in the position of either picking up a larger share of the total costs or cutting services or eligibility. Guess which way they will go.
Best of all, the climate change crisis would be address by expanded oil and gas exploration, with a nod to alternative energies through a commitment to deposit lease or sales revenues into a “clean energy” fund.
It’s a pretty amazing package, reflecting the worst ideas from two decades of bad ideas for evading national challenges and shifting resources to the already privileged. And when we have the details, it could get worse.