washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Ed Kilgore

Where’s the Plan on Iraq?

Thomas Friedman’s column on Iraq in today’s New York Times raises a couple of rather pertinent questions: does the Bush administration really have a strategy for a successful end-game? And if not, does anyone else?It’s increasingly obvious that the administration’s happy-talk about Iraq–most notably Dick Cheney’s claim that the latest upsurge in violence is the insurgency’s “last throes”–is mendacious stonewalling of the worst kind. There are a lot of theories kicking around about the administration’s actual thinking. One is the idea that it’s simply waiting for the approval of a fully constitutional Iraqi government this fall before finally announcing an intention to begin withdrawing U.S. troops. Another is the belief, suggested by my colleague The Moose, that the Bushies have entered a full LBJ Vietnam mode, in which they are imprisoned by past decisions and are simply blundering ahead without vision or hope.Either way, what should the rest of us think or propose? To be sure, most Democrats, whether or not they supported the original decision to to invade Iraq, have generally supported the proposition that failure to secure the country and create a decent opportunity for a stable democratic regime would be a terrible setback for America and its interests. And to be sure, Democrats don’t have much responsibility for the horrendous series of misteps by the Bush administration that have led us to this unhappy juncture in Iraq. But simply calling for U.S. withdrawal on a fixed timetable unrelated to the political situation in Iraq, as many Democrats are beginning to do, simply compounds the administration’s irresponsibility and reinforces the Bush/Rove/Rumsfeld argument that theirs in the only alternative to retreat and surrender.Friedman argues that critics of the administration should propose “doubling the boots on the ground” in Iraq to shake up the current drift towards chaos and give the Iraqi government a once-and-for-all chance to force Shia and Sunni leaders to pick sides and commit themselves to a pluralistic democracy. Given the Pentagon’s struggles to support the current level of deployment, I don’t think this is a lively option.But Friedman’s demand that we all stop staring at polling data on Iraq and have a real debate on what we propose to do is salutory. If the administration is unwilling to engage in that debate, then it should be forced upon them by Congress and the country. My own small insight is that perhaps we should begin to make reduction of the American presence a political prize for all the factions in Iraq–an incentive for Sunni support of the government, and a source of credibility for the government itself. Perhaps that’s where the administration is headed, but if so, they need to say so, to Iraqis, and to Americans as well.The time for happy talk is over. Iraqis aren’t buying it, and neither are Americans. It should be easy for Democrats–and increasingly, for many Republicans–to unite in a demand for a real plan.


Senators (Sort Of) Above the Fray

Last month SurveyUSA created a big political buzz by releasing a 50-state batch of polls with the approval/disapproval ratings of America’s Governors. Democrats did better than Republicans, and red-state Democrats did sensationally well. This week SurveyUSA released a similar batch of polls rating U.S. Senators, at a time when Congress as an institution, and Republican Congressmen in particular, are getting pounded in most public opinion surveys. Lo and behold, all 100 Senators have positive approval/disapproval ratings, in sharp contrast to Governors. Now, part of this result reflects the enduring reality that Governors, as chief executives of their states, are held responsible for general public attitudes about state government, while Senators can pretend they are bravely bringing home the bacon for the home folks while evading responsibility for general attitudes towards Congress, or even their party in Congress. Executives feel the heat for public unhappiness, while legislators deflect it elsewhere, anywhere. Still, the SurveyUSA ratings on Senators are interesting. Barack Obama is America’s most popular Senator in his own state, with a 72/21 approval/disapproval ratio. The least popular Senator is John Cornyn from Bush’s home state of Texas, who registers at 40/36. Notable 2006 target Rick Santorum actually has the highest disapproval rate of any Senator, with a 45/44 ratio. Ohio’s Mike DeWine continues to beg for a strong opponent in 2006, coming in at 44/43. Conrad Burns of MT is at a marginal 50/42 ratio. Supposedly vulnerable Democrat Ben Nelson is at a robust 64/26, while the other Nelson, Bill of Florida, is doing relatively well at 47/29. Among the bottom-feeders in the survey are, unfortunately, a bunch of GOPers who aren’t up in ’06, including the aforementioned Cornyn, Richard Burr of NC (42/36), Tom Coburn of OK (43/40), his colleague Jim Inhofe (44/42), and Mel Martinez of FL (43/39). In general, Senate Republicans are suffering somewhat from the plunging approval ratings of their party, but not as much as they should. And that’s something Democrats should accept as a party-wide challenge.


Novak’s Latest Stab-in-the-Back Theory

I guess after many, many years of reading Robert Novak’s twisted columns, I shouldn’t be surprised at anything he writes. But in his syndicated column today, the Prince of Darkness reaches a new low in sheer weirdness and mendacity. Its hypothesis is that Tony Blair is stabbing poor, honest George W. Bush in the back by conspiring with U.S. environmentalists and double-dealing politicians to force U.S. compliance with the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change, for the express purpose of destroying U.S. economic growth. Watching Novak construct this argument is stomach-churning. There’s the blind quote from a “White House aide” planting the lurid idea that “Kyoto was never about environmental policy…. It was designed as an elaborate, predatory trade strategy to level the American and European economies.” There’s a wildly out-of-context 2001 quote from a European Commission official suggesting Kyoto is about, well, a lot of things, including economics, which in no way supports the Novak hypothesis. There’s the weird and unsubstantiated assertion that Europe’s industries “have been devastated” by Kyoto. And there’s the total misrepresentation of Blair’s position, which is not to demand U.S. accession to Kyoto, but to create a “parallel track” where the U.S. takes some action to reduce carbon emissions (a position embraced by Bush during his 2000 campaign, and abruptly abandoned once he took office), pending further negotiations on a common strategy to deal with climate change. This whole, ridiculous argument is predicated on the right-wing assumption that action on greenhouse gases is incompatible with economic growth. Tell that to the growing number of U.S. business executives–most recently, those at Duke Power, a major utility–who believe action on this front is not only compatible with economic growth, but is essential to maintaining U.S. competitiveness on the new, clean technologies that are emerging to deal with the greenhouse gas challenge. But of all Novak’s twisted arguments, the worst is this idea of Bush as a victim of some sort of conspiracy. “Bush is surrounded by hostile friends” on climate change, says he. It’s true, of course, that most scientific experts within the administration are convinced climate change is a potentially catastrophic problem, with especially catastrophic implications for the U.S. economy. It’s true that most rank-and-file Republicans think this is a challenge worthy of national action. It’s even true that a growing number of conservative evangelical Christians are identifying this as an important “stewardship” issue. And it’s true some, though not enough, Republicans on the Hill have decisively separated themselves from the right-wing argument that this is all some sort of bogus anti-growth effort to make us all live in grass huts and bicycle to work. But Bush’s genuinely false friends are those, like Novak, who persist in encouraging him to defend a head-in-the-sand position on climate change that’s as deeply irresponsible as the administration’s fiscal policies. Since this is a president who seems to enjoy being told he’s always right, I somehow doubt he’ll figure this out.


Charters, Vouchers, and Accountability

Over at the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal site, Kevin Drum draws attention today to the first in a big series of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports on that city’s notable experiment in school choice. The MJS’s findings suggest that the use of public funds for religious public schools have made a difference for some, but not generally most, students affected. And after citing a particular report on the lack of accountability for results among “choice” schools in Milwaukee, Kevin draws this pointed conclusion:

I can be talked into experimenting with vouchers and charter schools. But if the real goal is just to expand funding for parochial schools and allow them to operate with no oversight, count me out.

As a strong supporter of charter public schools, I agree with Kevin’s statement. But this is precisely what separates, in theory at least, the charter school movement from the conservative demand for publicly financed private-school subsidies, a.k.a. vouchers. By definition, a charter school is an independently operated public school that is issued a charter, i.e., a performance contract, that explicitly identifies the educational outcomes it promises to deliver, on pain of losing public funding. And for all the rhetorical support conservatives sometimes offer for charter public schools, their support for voucher programs shows they don’t understand or truly care about the distinct bargain of flexibility in exchange for results that the charter movement is all about.I will defer to my colleague Andy Rotherham over at Eduwonk for a nuanced analysis of the Milwaukee experiment, which I am sure he will soon supply. But I think it’s important to note that in a “choice” experiment that includes both vouchers and charters, the bad things about the former can obscure or even defeat the good things about the latter.


The Forgotten Armageddon

We all know that elements of the Cultural Right, and their Bush administration allies, are sympathic to scriptural ideas about the hellwards direction of the world towards Armageddon. But on one front where Armageddon most threatens us, the administration and its friends are so indifferent that you have to wonder if they have cut a deal with the forces of Antichrist: global climate change.Today’s Washington Post has an appropriately angry editorial about the Bushies’ serial defiance of all the science, all the policy, and all the truth about climate change. It’s enough to make you feel apocalyptic.


A Cultural Conversation on the Left

Something very interesting has been happening this week on several progressive blog sites: a genuine and heated discussion about the legitimacy of Democratic expressions of solidarity with parents worried about the impact of popular culture on their kids.This is a subject I’ve written about a lot, but let me tell you, it’s been pretty lonely work. A lot of Democrats just become unhinged at the suggestion that our habitual concern for corporate responsibility towards working families might extend into the entertainment and advertising industries. My friend Amy Sullivan did a post on the Political Animal site back in April that in passing endorsed the idea of a “consistent responsibility message” for Democrats, and practically got cyber-lynched in the comments thread.So I was surprised and delighted when The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta (who, unlike myself and Amy, does not have a background that arouses suspicions of latent Bible-thumper sympathies) did a long post commenting on Barbara Whitehead’s new Blueprint article on parents, culture and Democrats, and made the most compelling case I have yet seen for Democratic solidarity with culturally-stressed parents. Indeed, she even offered a clear reason for the antipathy of so many bloggers and political operatives on the Left to this subject. Citing Whitehead’s argument that marrieds with young children experience a “life-stage conservatism” based on their responsibility to teach kids right from wrong, Franke-Ruta suggested there’s a sort of “life-stage liberalism” on cultural issues among the young single people who dominate the Left blogosphere and Capitol Hill staffs. Actually, she rather more pointedly called it “adolescent libertarianism,” but sarcasm aside, she rightly understood that 23-year-olds are more likely to identify with trash-culture-consuming kids than with their anxious parents.Franke-Ruta’s piece touched off a vigorous debate with her colleague Matt Yglesias, that ultimately drew in Kevin Drum and Kenny Baer, and ended amicably and constructively. Indeed, Matt closed the loop by penning a draft speech on culture and parenting that showed there’s a lot of potential common ground available on this subject.So I’m feeling a lot less lonely.


Eating Their Young

It’s generally accepted that conservative activists were a lot more upset about the judicial nomination “compromise” in the Senate than were their Democratic counterparts. But if current developments in Ohio are any indication, the Right isn’t going to get over it without extracting some revenge. According to a (subscription only) article by Lauren Whittington in today’s Roll Call, conservative fury about Sen. Mike DeWine’s involvement in the compromise is endangering the campaign of his son, Pat DeWine, in a special election to fill the seat of new U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman. Until the Senate went non-nuclear, the younger DeWine had been the front-runner for the GOP nomination in this heavily Republican district, mainly thanks to a big fundraising edge. But now, according to a poll conducted for his leading rival, former Rep. Bob McEwen, the two are neck and neck, with DeWine’s favorable/unfavorable ratio at a queasy 40/36 as opposed to McEwen’s 51/5. According to Whittington, the most important reason for DeWine’s high negatives is his father’s role in the Senate compromise. Indeed, he’s even suffering from conservative anger at his father’s Ohio colleague, George Voinovich, for his opposition to the Bolton nomination. “The actions of the two Ohio Senators,” reports Whittington, “considered blasphemous by much of the GOP base, have dominated conservative radio outlets in recent weeks.” What’s most interesting about this story is that anger over the judicial compromise and the Bolton “betrayal” is apparently not limited to full-time activists; it’s extending deep into the conservative rank-and-file. And that shows the Right-Wing Noise Machine, so effective as an instrument on behalf of the GOP, can turn lethally self-destructive if the Republican coalition begins to fall apart.


Is Polarization Failing?

It’s no big secret that the Bush/Rove polarization approach to politics and policy is predicated on the belief that since self-identified conservatives handily outnumber liberals, destroying any middle ground will force moderates to choose sides in a competition where Democrats have to win a huge, disproportionate number of them to stay even. But as a new Washington Post survey shows, Democrats may soon be well-positioned to do just that. According to the survey, while four of five Democrats think Bush is focusing on the wrong priorities, and nearly as many Republicans disagree, an astonishing 68 percent of self-identified political independents agree with Democrats on this question. And let’s be clear: it’s not that they worry about Bush’s particular approach to this or that issue, or don’t know enough about it–they think he’s focusing on the wrong issues entirely. Since the dominant conservative wing of the GOP is now deeply, and probably irreversibly, invested in Bush’s current agenda, it will be very difficult for him to change gears dramatically, even if he did have something relevant to offer on the economy, health care, or Iraq, which he doesn’t. Thus, it may well be that the powerful logic of polarization–a strategy that simultaneously allows you to rev up your base, reward constituencies, and force the opposition to counter-polarize–is turning perverse, as Bush struggles with a restive base, clamoring constituencies, alienated swing voters, and a united Democratic opposition that, for all its problems, seems more in touch with what Americans care about.


Bad Seed On Rove’s Stomping Grounds

Ah yes, I’ve been waiting for this all year. Finally, as the Abramoff-Scanlon-Norquist-Reed Casino Shakedown Scandal gains momentum, some are beginning to wonder if a close acquaintence of all these gents named Karl Rove might have had some idea what was going on. Last week my colleague The Moose cited a Texas Observer article by Rove-watcher Lou Dubose reminding readers of lots of little favors the Bush White House performed for Abramoff and Norquist and their clients (both men, of course, especially Norquist, were early and avid backers of W. for president in 2000). And everybody knows Ralph Reed has been a big-time Bush-Rove favorite who helped create the Christian-K Street coalition which saved W.’s bacon against John McCain in 2000, and who was allowed to test-drive the GOP’s state-of-the-art Get Out the Vote strategy as Republican Party chairman in Georgia in 2002.But I come at this issue from a slightly different perspective. When it first became apparent that the Texas scam of Reed taking Abramoff-generated Indian Casino money to run anti-gambling initiatives had been replicated in Alabama, I thought: Hmmmm. Texas and Alabama. Alabama and Texas. Don’t we know somebody famous who made these two states his personal political stomping grounds in the 1990s? Some guy named Rove?Rove’s dominance of Texas politics in the 1990s is a well-known story. But as Josh Green explained in his Atlantic profile of Rove last year, Alabama was nearly as large a preoccupation for the Boy Genius. As part of his patented effort to bond the business community and cultural conservatives (and their money) to the GOP through abrasive judicial campaigns, Rove was deeply involved in an effort to take over the Alabama Supreme Court from 1994 to 1998 (indeed, his one loss was to a judicial candidate named Roy Moore, a defeat which, according to Green, deepened Rove’s respect for the political power of the Christian Right).Now, none of this proves in the least that Rove had any involvement in the Casino Shakedown, even though it sure seems Rovian in its three-cushion-shot dynamics of raising special-interest money to succor conservative constituency groups and damage Democrats. But the idea that anything as big as this scam, involving several Rove/Bush intimates and three very visible statewide public campaigns, went down in those two particular states without ol’ Karl having a clue about it is as incredible as the idea that Ralph Reed got millions of casino dollars without suspecting the source of the money. Somewhere, the bloodhounds are gathering and getting the scent of dirty dollars. It will be interesting to follow their trail.


New Details in Reed Gambling Scandal

In today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jim Galloway gives us a much clearer picture of the 1999-2000 Alabama gambling/anti-gambling scandal in which Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, played a central role.Turns out the 1.1 million that flowed from the Choctaws of Mississippi to Grover Norquist to anti-gambling forces in Alabama to Reed’s consulting firm occurred during two different campaigns. The first, involving a $300,000 payment, went to the successful effort to defeat a state lottery initiative backed by then-Gov. Don Siegelman. The rest of the money, $800,000, passed through the Alabama Christian Coalition the following year, and was aimed (successfully) at stirring up public opposition to a bill that would have authorized video poker at four ailing dog racing tracks.More importantly, Galloway clearly explains the motives of the Choctaws in shelling out this much dough to influence gaming laws in Alabama. They weren’t so much worried about a lottery or video poker in Alabama. Their real concern is that legalized public gaming in Alabama would open the way for a ‘Bama tribe, the Creeks, to upgrade an existing facility with bingo-based games into a full-scale casino, in direct competition with the Choctaws across the border.Today’s piece also reveals that Reed has a new story about the source of the money: it came from a special account set up by the Choctaws from their non-gambling revenues. This will apparently become his fallback defense if nobody believes his highly dubious argument that he had no idea his ol’ buddy Jack Abramoff was involving with Indian gaming.I doubt this defense will cut much more ice than the original Reed profession of innocence. The issue is not exactly which Choctaw bank account financed the anti-gambling effort in Alabama; it’s the motive that matters. And there’s not much doubt one tribe, on the advice of Abramoff and utlilizing his close friends Norquist and Reed, was spending freely to avoid competition from another.So far Reed seems to have controlled the immediate political damage to his campaign of his ever-more-intimate implication in the Abramoff scandal. But within the next week or two, the Alabama Christian Coalition is expected to release the results of an internal investigation of the mess. And at a time when Alabama Democrats are pushing a proposal to demand that groups like the Christian Coalition who are involved directly in campaigns disclose their funding sources, the organization might just decide to drop a heavy dime on Reed. Stay tuned.