At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent’s “Business leaders to GOP: No more debt limit hostage taking!” pinpoints what may be the Democrats most powerful leverage in the negotiations ahead.
Class consciousness seems to be rising quickly in Great Britain, where 60 percent now self i.d. themselves as “working class,” compared to 24 percent in 2011, reports Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian.”…it’s the findings on class that should really give Labour heart. For they suggest serious trouble in the middle – a fear that life is going backwards for many natural Conservative voters in flagrant breach of the age-old Tory promise that hard work will be rewarded.”
As Sen. Jay Rockefeller prepares to retire, at NPR.org Greg Henderson notes an interesting fact about West Virginia, which is a red state in presidential elections: “Both senators, the state’s governor and one of its three members of the House are Democrats. And the state that produced legendary Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd (who brought the state “billions of dollars for highways, federal offices, research institutes and dams,” as The New York Times noted in its 2010 obituary) hasn’t elected a Republican senator since the 1950s.”
The “No Labels” crowd is at it again. This time it’s another WV senator, Sen Joe Manchin and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman singing bipartisan kumbaya in the Washington Post opinion section. In the comments section following the article, DWSouthern adds “Democrats have been willing to negotiate all along. Now all you two dreamers need to do is get about 200 more Republicans (you now have 10) in the House to end gridlock and get the government working again. Lots of luck when the goal of Republicans has been to make the government dysfunction and blame it on Obama. The only solution to the problem is to remove about 100 or so Republican from the House in the next election.”
For an authentic bipartisan act of significance by a Republican U.S. Senator, however, read yesterday’s New York Times editorial, “One Republican Steps Forward,” which gives Sen. Lisa Murkowski well-deserved praise on an important issue: “Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, broke through the partisan wall to propose a badly needed mandate for transparency by the growing army of unrestricted, unidentified donors who underwrite attack ads and other stealth tactics that have so disfigured American politics.” The measure would require every organization that gives more than $500 to disclose its donors.
On the weapons-of-domestic-mass-destruction issue, however, there is only one Republican providing gutsy leadership.
Here we go again with the comprehensive, big-package vs. piecemeal reform debate, this time with respect to gun control, well-reported here by WaPo’s Sean Sullivan. I get the political reasons why big-package always seems to win out as a strategic option, regardless of the issue. But just once, I’d like to see a fast-track, piecemeal reform strategy put into play, nailing the low-hanging fruit and pealing away the bogus arguments against needed reforms that usually get watered down in the comprehensive package.
Also at The Post, John Sides considers “How congressional dysfunction could hurt House Republicans.” As Klein explains: “…The particular problem for House Republicans is this: when Congress is unpopular, voters don’t punish all House incumbents. Instead, they direct their dissatisfaction primarily at majority-party House incumbents. So argue political scientists David Jones and Monika McDermott in their book (see also this article). In the article, Jones finds that a 10-point decrease in approval costs majority-party House incumbents 4 points at the poll. This effect is larger in swing districts and has been getting larger over time, as the parties have polarized…”
See also David Lauter’s L.A. Times article, “Washington stalemates hurting Republicans most, polls indicate,” which provides a good round-up of the latest data on the topic.
At The Daily Beast Bob Shrum ably sums up the nitty-gritty of the GOP’s big problem — and the Democrat’s advantage: “And today, the GOP is the party that won’t compromise; the party that threatens economic chaos; the anti-Medicare, anti-Social Security, anti-women, anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-young party. There’s no future in that.”

New poll has 47 percent of Americans self-i.d. as Democrats or leaning Dem, compared to 42 percent for Republicans — “based on an aggregate of all 2012 Gallup and USA Today/Gallup polls, consisting of more than 20,000 interviews.”

Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake spotlight “5 senators to watch in gun control debate” explaining why they could have pivotal influence on prospects for assault weapons control.

Charles M. Blow has some cogent thoughts on “Reframing the Gun Debate” in his NYT column, including: “First, let’s fix some of the terminology: stop calling groups like the National Rifle Association a “gun rights” group. These are anti-regulation, pro-proliferation groups. They prey on public fears — of the “bad guys with guns,” of a Second Amendment rollback, of an ever imminent apocalypse — while helping gun makers line their pockets.”

Some stats from Michael Medved’s Daily Beast article on women in the new congress: “In 2012 married women gave a comfortable 7 percent edge to Mitt Romney, and in 2008 they chose John McCain 53-47 percent. In 2004 married females went even more decisively (55-44) for George W. Bush.” But single women, “only 23 percent of the overall electorate …chose Barack Obama in 2012 by a ratio of better than 2 to 1, and assured him the presidency.” In addition, Medved reports that two thirds of women in the House are Democrats, as are three quarters of the women in the U.S. Senate.

Democratic party leaders should read Thomas F. Schaller’s post, “Democrats Dread 2014 Drop-Off” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Schaller quotes experts who say that recruiting quality candidates and mobilizing African American and Latino volunteers offer the best hope for improving turnout in non-presidential elections.

I sometimes worry that a moderate, charismatic Republican presidential candidate might somehow rise from the ashes of the GOP’s current festival of self-immolation (not Christie — his bluster will eventually wear thin and he’s peaking too soon). At The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky explores prospects for rebuilding a healthy moderate caucus in the GOP. As for moderate Republican voters, Tomaskys says “I have to believe that there are millions of such people out there. They just have no one to report to, no place to go. If someone builds this, they will come.”

Speaking of Republican moderates, The Monitor’s Liz Marlantes explains why once moderate Lindsay Graham has morphed into the GOP’s lead attack dog.

At AFL-CIO Now Mike Hall’s “10 Reasons All Workers Benefit from Fixing the Immigration System” provides some excellent talking points which could help persuade moderates to support the Democratic plan.

For those who were wondering if FL Gov. Rick Scott could get any sleazier, Sahil Kapur’s “Rick Scott Under Fire For Inflating Cost Of Health Law’s Medicaid Expansion” at Talking Points Memo provides the answer.

Somebody at the white house is doing some good thinking, selecting the bibles of both Lincoln and MLK for swearing in President Obama for his second term, as Michelle Boorstein reports at the Washington Post. You couldn’t ask for better symbols for “binding up the nations wounds” and transforming “the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful sympathy of brotherhood” — especially because 2013 should be a big year for anniversaries recalling the legacies of both King and Lincoln.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
There is a great deal of angst and worry among progressives about what is going to happen in two months when the Republicans once again will be trying to hostage the entire economy so that they can cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education and everything else in the federal budget that helps low and middle income folks. It is of course a bad situation when you have one branch of the government eager to blow up the economy to get bad things that more than 80 percent of Americans oppose, but I believe we need to spend a lot less time worrying and a lot more time organizing. We can beat these guys, and beat them badly, if we have a focused and aggressive strategy.
There are four things progressives need to be doing right now. The first relates to the president. I understand the disappointment about kicking the can down the road another two months, and the fact that we lost some leverage on the revenue side. And I was very critical of the president’s willingness to swap cuts in Social Security benefits for a deal in this last go-around, and will fight him with every ounce of energy if he proposes any such thing again. But right now is the worst possible time to be raising doubts about this president’s willingness to hang tough in a negotiation as some of my friends on the progressive movement are doing.
The Republicans need to know that the president is deadly serious when he says he won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling, and that the entire progressive movement and Democratic party have his back on this. No negotiation, whatsoever. Period and end of sentence. In the 2011 situation and in the fiscal cliff drama, the president made clear from the first that he was ready, willing and eager to negotiate, and negotiate he did. But Obama knows that we can’t keep running government from one ridiculous self-made crisis to the next, so he has drawn a line in the sand, and progressives need to back him to the hilt. Let’s take him at his word, and expect that he will deliver: no negotiation over whether government will pay the bills it has already incurred. To send the economy into a massive panic, to put the good faith and credit of our country at risk, so that Republicans can cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and education is not acceptable to the American people, and the Republicans will quickly figure that out.
I have been very tough on the president at times over the last four years and I’m sure I will have some choice words for him at some point soon down the line, but I admire the fact that he has essentially put his manhood on the line on this issue. If he backs down and starts negotiating, he will look terrible, be seen as very weak, and he knows it. He knows he can’t afford to blink, and progressives should back him 100 percent: no negotiation whatsoever on the debt ceiling.
Speaking of lines in the sand, the second thing progressives need to be doing is to mount an all-out, serious, no-holds-barred campaign around no more cuts to those things in the budget that help the bottom 98 percent. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits should all be off the table. Education, student loans, Head Start, health care, the SNAP and WIC programs have to be, as well. Low and middle income Americans have lost jobs; had their wages frozen or decline; have had the cost of basic necessities like groceries and health care and gas prices skyrocket; have had their homes drop badly in value; and have taken round after round of devastating cuts in government programs that directly help them. It is neither morally nor economically right that they would be the ones who get hurt by budget cuts. And cuts to these programs are generally quite unpopular, in some cases by percentages of more than 80 percent against. If politicians feel like they need to cut government spending, there are plenty of bloated military contracts and subsidies to agribusiness and oil companies you can cut, but don’t you dare touch the things that help middle and low income folks.
This needs to be a serious campaign, like the campaign against Social Security privatization in 2005, or the campaign HCAN organized on health care reform. We need to build a firestorm that walls off these programs from more cuts, that makes that idea fundamentally unacceptable and politically explosive. And we need to tell the leaders of both parties: we will fight you with everything we’ve got if you don’t keep your hands off the things that matter the most to us.
Third, we need to keep resolutely, in every forum we have, bringing this back to jobs. We should keep asking the questions: how exactly does threatening to stop paying our bills create jobs? How does cutting Social Security create jobs? Why are politicians obsessed with cuts for middle class programs instead of creating new jobs? What we need, as many of my friends in the blogosphere keep saying, are jobs not cuts. In fact, as Bill Clinton proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best way to cut the deficit and create a surplus is to create lots of decent paying jobs. So every single time some right wing blowhard is talking about cuts, we should ask them how exactly that cut creates a job, and remind people that 60 percent of the deficit right now is due to the lack of jobs in the economy.
Finally, we need to be very clear: we are not done with needing more tax revenue from big corporations and the top 2 percent. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in big corporate loopholes we need to close; we should have a financial transactions tax on speculative Wall Street trading; we should have a carbon tax to help do something about global warming; and yes, we can still raise more from individual rates and the inheritance tax — after all, the Republicans keep going back and raising the same old bad ideas over and over again, we can certainly revisit the good ideas.
Progressives need to stop worrying about what deals might be cut, and start organizing to make it impossible to cut the bad deals we are afraid of. The president has laid out in the clearest possible way that he won’t negotiate with these economic hostage takers, and we should make clear we have his back. We have to make clear to every politician and every pundit: we need jobs, not cuts to the things the bottom 98 percent most rely on, and we need more tax revenue from big business and the top 2 percent.

Jonathan Bernstein has a post up at The American Prospect warning of the dangers of the latest Republican ploy to undermine the electoral college by eliminating “winner-take-all” election rules. Bernstein explains how it would work:

The GOP may attempt to rig the Electoral College by changing the electoral vote allocation in GOP-controlled states which voted for Barack Obama. The idea would be to shift from the normal winner-take-all plan to something that would split the votes in those states. Ideally, from the Republican point of view, every Republican state would be winner-take-all while all Democratic states would be split more or less evenly, making it almost impossible for a Democrat to win the White House. All of that, as obviously undemocratic as it is, would be perfectly Constitutional; the Constitution leaves every state in charge of how to choose its electors.

It’s a pretty transparent effort to politicize the rules in favor of Republicans. Instead of supporting direct popular election for all states, a genuinely populist reform, it’s a sleazy effort to leverage proportional allocation of electoral votes, but only in states where the GOP sees an advantage.
Bernstein cites a litany of GOP schemes to toy with rules, just inside the parameters of the law, including abuse of the filibuster, mid-decade redistricting, the Clinton impeachment, all of which were legal, but violated established “norms” that have helped government function in a bipartisan way for decades. Bernstein continues:

Much of the American political system actually runs on norms, not rules. It may seem strange to people–especially after 20 years of Republican-led Constitutional hardball–but that arrangement actually can work very nicely. Both parties, and beyond them most other politically active citizens, simply work within the de facto rules of the game and work for the best results under those rules.
The problem is that once a party in such a system starts looking for areas to exploit in the gap between written law and the way the law is practiced, they may find all sorts of small, temporary edges. And there’s really no particular reason for them to stop once it starts. In each case, the case for moving ahead is the same: why not use the rules to your advantage? For the other party, the incentive to fight fire with fire is overwhelming. Not only is sticking to outdated norms while your opponents don’t a sure recipe for losing, but in fact the very norm of following norms rapidly disappears and should be replaced by loophole-exploiting by everyone.
There’s a classic collective action problem here: everyone is far better off under a system in which the basic rules of the game are agreed to and respected than under a system in which the rules are constantly altered, but at any particular point in time anyone who figures out a gap to take advantage of can be better off.

Bernstein adds, “…Coalition building and complex bargaining–both of which are absolutely essential for large-policy democracy–only do that work when they are necessary. When the rules are up for grabs, those processes can become unnecessary.” He acknowledges that some rules changes are a good idea, when they are measured and fair to both parties. But the latest trend of all-out warfare by finagling the rules is a dangerous way to go.
Bernstein believes that such ‘constitutional hardball’ invites a new kind of trench warfare, which is counter-productive in terms of serving democracy. Republicans will undoubtedly argue that using the ‘nuclear option’ to implement the “talking filibuster” is an example of Democratic party abuse of the ‘rules,’ of course neglecting to mention that their unprecedented abuse of the filibuster makes it one of the few options available to restore balance to the system, given GOP intransigence.
Bernstein concludes that “the best hope is that the present generation of Republicans will maybe be replaced by a group who have a bit more restraint; after all, they do call themselves conservatives. But that’s probably just wishful thinking.” Bernstein doesn’t get into it, but the underlying danger to Democrats is that ‘constitutional hardball’ will likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now dominated by Republican appointees, most of whom have demonstrated their willingness to make highly politicized rulings.

From Peter Beinart’s “Why Hagel Matters” at The Daily Beast: “At the heart of the opposition to Hagel is the fear that he will do what Republicans have thus far largely prevented: bring America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan into the Iran debate…And Hagel was changed, in large measure, because he bore within him intellectual (and physical) scar tissue from Vietnam.”
Is filibuster reform toast? Maybe not, explains Dave Weigel at Slate.com. Seven of nine new Democratic Senators support the ‘talking filibuster’ reform, reports Alexander Bolton at The Hill.
At The Nation Herman Schwartz faults President Obama with a limp response to GOP stonewalling of his judicial appointments — and the President’s non-appointments, explaining “As a result of the White House’s laggardness, right-wing justices continue to dominate the federal courts–meaning that many of Obama’s most important legislative achievements could be eviscerated and his legacy dissipated, because most of the circuit courts of appeal are controlled by Republican appointees…Obama’s response to these GOP tactics has been weak and ineffectual. First, he has failed to send up enough nominees. Second, he has neglected to think and act strategically with respect to those he has nominated.”
At The Campaign for America’s Future Terrance Heath puts “The House GOP’s Disaster Relief Disaster” in perspective. John Avlon’s “Callous Conservatives: Gulf State Republicans’ Sandy Shame” piles on at The Daily Beast.
Good video and content for Democratic attack ads against Republicans’ failure to respond to Hurricane disaster right here.
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry hosted an informative forum on “Long-term party Building for Democrats,” featuring Governor Howard Dean, and Democratic strategists Karen Finney and John Rowley.
At The Daily Beast Will Marshall opines about The Deal that “the result was a one-sided victory for Obama, who got $620 billion in revenue from raising rates on very wealthy households, plus an extension of the stimulus tax breaks for low-income families and $30 billion in new spending on unemployment, without having to convince Democrats to swallow cuts in entitlements…without significantly more tax revenue, lawmakers would have to make truly draconian cuts in entitlements to fix the debt. They shouldn’t and they won’t.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. agrees, explains why and lights the way forward for President Obama: “if Obama hangs as tough as he now says he will; if he insists on more revenue in the next round of discussions; and if he immediately begins mobilizing business leaders to force Republicans off a strategy that would use threats to block a debt-ceiling increase to extract spending cuts. Real patriots do not risk wrecking the economy to win a political fight…He needs to move the discussion away from a green-eyeshade debate over budgets and foster a larger conversation over what it will take to restore broadly shared economic growth. His presidency really does depend on how he handles the next two months.”
At TNR Alec MacGillis has an informative tribute to the late Jerry Tucker a union reformer who advocated broader worker education, corporate campaigns and pioneered the “work to rule” strategy, “in which workers frustrate employers by slowing down operations all the while technically hewing to the letter of their contract. Work-to-rule appealed to Tucker because its success depended on the full understanding and empowerment of the entire workforce.”
John Rodgers and David Friedman, both officials of the Union of Concerned Scientists, urge “Don’t listen to the Chicken Littles: Obama made smart investments in green tech” at The Monitor: “Despite the critics’ naysaying prophecies, clean tech is on the rise nationwide in large part due to federal investment….Of course there are risks when government and industry invest boldly in new technology. But if they don’t, America will cede its leadership on clean transportation and energy technology to other nations like China that already have thriving green industries that also benefited from government assistance.”

Democrats will be arguing about President Obama’s strategy in negotiating the fiscal cliff deal for months, and there is a lot to criticize from all points on the Democratic spectrum. Senate passage of the compromise was predictable enough. But one day out, it’s worth looking at the breakdown of the votes in the House of Representatives to fairly evaluate the white house and Democratic strategy.
The New York Times has the complete House roll call, along with a good roll-over map. The final House vote was 257-167. In all, 172 Democrats and 85 Republicans voted for the bill. In opposition were 16 Democrats and 151 Republicans.
Among Republicans Speaker Boehner and Rep. Ryan supported the compromise, with Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other GOP “leaders” opposing it.
The 16 Dems who opposed the compromise included a few strong progressives, who objected on principle to elements of the compromise and a small group of remaining Blue Dogs who couldn’t accept any tax hikes. Eight members did not vote, for varying reasons, some personal. (e.g. Liberal stalwart Rep. John Lewis’s wife, Lilian just died). Of course, most of the ‘Yes’ votes included strong progressives, who disliked elements of the deal, but held their noses and took one for the team. Here’s the Democratic breakdown of the “no” votes, according to the Washington Post:

The 16 Democrats voting no split between the liberal and the moderate. More liberal Reps. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Peter DeFazio (Ore.), Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Jim McDermott (Wash.), Brad Miller (N.C.), Jim Moran (Va.), Bobby Scott (Va.), Pete Visclosky (Ind.) voted no. But they were joined by moderate-to-conservative Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.) and Adam Smith (Wash.).

Without getting into the elements of the deal and the specific concerns of the members who voted, the tally reflects a fairly comfy pillow of 39 more votes than were needed for passage, since 218 votes were needed to pass the compromise. From a purely bipartisan standpoint, the bigger the ‘pillow,’ the better the compromise. From a progressive perspective, the smaller the margin, the better the indication that “the best possible deal” has been negotiated.
Of course it can be argued, as many do, that the negotiating strategy was flawed from the get-go, so the tally on this vote means little with respect to all of the more optimistic ‘might-have-been’ scenarios. Not surprisingly, much of the progressive critique falls into the ‘Obama-gave-away-the-store-too-early’ category. See here, here, here and here, for example.
The vote tally reflects a pretty good measure of tea party strength in the House. It appears that there are 151 unrepentant tea party votes in the House. These Republicans are unfazed by national economic concerns and narrowly focused on what right-wing activists in their district want. Most of them are well-protected by gerrymandered districts. These are the obstructionists Dems have to work around to get any legislation passed until the new congress is seated in January, 2015.
From my perch, maybe the President could have hung a little tougher. But it was a tough call with all of the bluffing and bluster going on to determine how many Republicans were running scared enough to be persuadable.
We Dems must have our hour of self-flagellation before we can move on to the next struggle. But it would be folly to overlook our party’s failure to mobilize a good voter turnout in 2010 as a root cause of the fix we’re in now. Instead of hand-wringing about the deal we are going to have to live with, let’s apply what we have learned in this vote and in our successful 2012 voter mobilization — to win back control of the House in 2014.

Michael Tomasky makes the case at The Daily Beast that the Republican Party has morphed into something fairly new in American politics — a political party wholly dedicated to sabotaging legislation. “They didn’t come to Washington to govern. They came to sabotage. So our working assumption must be whatever the issue, sabotage is what they’re going to do.” (See also this TDS post on the topic by Vega, Kilgore and me) Further, adds Tomasky, the only forces that can stop them now are “the high-profile figures of Wall Street and the corporate world,” since they are already among the big losers of the current fiscal crisis and have more to worry about in a few months.
Jared Bernstein believes going over the cliff is better than cutting a bad deal. As Bernstein explains, “it would be better to go over and quickly repair the damage on the other side. How do I know we’d get a better deal there? I don’t, but at that point, I suspect Congress would quickly implement the president’s back-up, bare minimum plan: cut the now-higher taxes on households below $250,000 (which after Dec. 31 scores as a big tax cut, so Rs can enthusiastically get behind it), extend UI, patch the AMT and doc fix, and maybe suspend the sequester. The estate tax will have reset to a much worse deal for those Rs and Ds who want to protect the top few tenths of a percent of wealthy estates ($1 million exemption, 55 percent rate), so they too would be motivated to accept the WH’s deal ($3.5 million exemption, 45 percent top rate, as opposed to what we might get from the Senate deal: $5 million, 35 percent).
HuffPo’s Ryan Grim adds clarity to the coverage of filibuster reform prospects, Grim reports that “Merkley’s “talking filibuster” proposal is wildly popular with the public. A HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in late November found that 65 percent of Americans believe senators should have to participate in debate for the duration of a filibuster, while only 9 percent said that senators should be able to filibuster without being physically present.” He adds, “The Constitution allows the Senate to write its own rules, which is why Democrats say that only a majority is needed at the beginning of the term to write new rules. Opponents point to Senate Rule V, which states that the rules can only be changed with a two-thirds vote. Democrats point out that Senate Rule V is not part of the Constitution and argue that no previous Senate can tie the hands of a current one.”
Ezra Klein observes that the McCain-Levin proposal “…is filibuster reform for people who don’t want to reform the filibuster.”
About 49K Floridians were discouraged from voting by long lines — and about 30K of them would have voted for President Obama, according to this report.
At FiveThirtyEight, Jon Sides argues that evidence is scant that front-loading attack ads against Romney helped President Obama much.
Mother Jones’ staff has put together “151 Victims of Mass Shootings in 2012: Here Are Their Stories.” Share it far and wide until we get a worthy gun control bill enacted.
David Brooks dissed President Obama on MTP because “sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization,” which recalls Frank Rich likening Mitt Romney to “an otherworldly visitor from an Aqua Velva commercial circa 1985.” Not hard to pick which ‘visitor’ is better for America.
At Daily Kos, John Perr provides the numbers that show quite conclusively “The national debt? Republicans built that.”
Krugman explains why Starbucks should just make the overpriced coffee and leave the muddle-headed national debt palaver to the MSM.

Jim Hightower’s “Ballot-Measure Democracy a Notable Success in 2012” at Nation of Change, notes overwhelming majorities favoring a repeal or reversal of the Citizens United decision in CO (72 %), MT (76%) and Chicago (73%).
At The Atlantic Anne-Marie Slaughter reports on “The Gender Divide on Gun Control,” explaining, “According to an ABC/Washington Post poll released on December 17th, 59 percent of women but only 47 percent of men support more gun control. Thus when we read that 54 percent of all Americans support greater gun control, that majority is actually a significant majority of 59 percent American women who support it overriding the 50 percent of American men who oppose it.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich makes his case for ‘going over the cliff.’
Regarding “Democratic leaders’ handling of negotiations,” a new Gallup poll finds that “Fifty-four percent approve of Obama’s efforts in talks, up from 48 percent last week,” according to Meghashyam Mali at The Hill.
From CNN’s Political Ticker: “A CNN/ORC International poll released Thursday morning indicates that 46% say they expect Obama will do a better job as president over the next four years than he did the past four years, with 22% saying he’ll do a worse job, and just over three in ten saying he’ll perform about the same as he did in his first term.”
File this one by Jamie Henn of Ecowatch News Report under “cool stuff Mayors can do.”
At The Center for American Progress, Scott Keyes’s “Strengthening Our Democracy by Expanding Voting Rights” reports on “11 pieces of legislation that lawmakers can enact to strengthen voting rights in their state. A number of these policies would make registering to vote more accessible, including online voter registration, Election Day registration, and requiring public schools to help register voters. Others would make it simpler for citizens to cast a ballot, such as expanding early voting, permitting citizens to vote at any polling location, and allowing no-excuse absentee voting. States can also discourage those trying to suppress the vote by outlawing voter caging, strengthening penalties for knowingly deceiving voters, and reforming the voter-challenge process. Finally, legislators can pass other pro-voting policies, such as restoring voting rights to ex-felons and enacting constitutional language affirming an equal right to vote.”
“The Growing Electoral Clout of Blacks Is Driven by Turnout, Not Demographics,”
says Paul Taylor at the Pew Research Center.”Blacks voted at a higher rate this year than other minority groups and for the first time in history may also have voted at a higher rate than whites, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data, election day exit poll data and vote totals from selected cities and counties…Unlike other minority groups whose increasing electoral muscle has been driven mainly by population growth, blacks’ rising share of the vote in the past four presidential elections has been the result of rising turnout rates…These participation milestones are notable not just in light of the long history of black disenfranchisement, but also in light of recently-enacted state voter identification laws that some critics contended would suppress turnout disproportionately among blacks and other minority groups.”
Alternet’s Adam Lee reports on “There Are Now As Many Nonreligious Americans As Evangelicals — 6 Ways Politicians Can Court Their Vote.”
At The New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker’s “How he Got It Right” explores Nate Silver’s impressive powers — and methods — of prognostication.

It seems like just a few months ago a lot of pundits marveled at congressional Republicans’ lockstep unity and discipline in obstructing almost every legislative proposal introduced by Democrats, in stark contrast to earlier eras when Republicans would usually compromise for the good of the country. Republican still have the power to obstruct progressive legislation. But there are signs that GOP unity is beginning to unravel.
As Ronald Brownstein puts it in his National Journal post, “A Role Reversal: Dems Grow More Unified While Cracks Form in the GOP“:

The endgame over the fiscal cliff, like the first stirrings of debate about gun control and immigration, all capture a subtle but potentially consequential shift in the Washington dynamic.
On each front, Democrats are growing more unified while Republicans and conservatives are displaying increasing cracks. That inverts the alignment through most of President Obama’s first term–and indeed most of the past quarter-century.
In the decades immediately before and after World War II, both parties were divided in Congress between the moderate and the more ideological wings. But since the 1980s, the two sides have diverged. Conservatives have established unquestioned dominance in the GOP. Meanwhile, Democrats, though moving to the left overall, have maintained much greater divisions.
The debates over taxes, guns and immigration all reflect this evolution. Not long ago, each issue divided both parties.

Brownstein provides several instructive examples of political divisions within the two parties and temporary bipartisan agreements that emerged in congress during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. Brownstein then describes the beginnings of the transformation:

But while Democrats have remained divided on all three issues, Republicans more recently have moved right almost monolithically. On taxes, every congressional Republican voted against the Clinton 1993 budget plan and Obama’s health reform proposal that raised taxes, and virtually all Republicans backed the younger Bush’s tax cuts. Almost every House Republican from even the leafiest suburban districts voted with the National Rifle Association in 2011 to override state concealed-carry laws. And support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants grew so toxic inside the GOP that John McCain, during his 2008 presidential campaign, felt compelled to renounce his own 2006 legislation providing one. On all of these issues, Democrats remained split through the Bush years and Obama’s first term.
Now this unity gap is narrowing. On taxes, Republicans and conservatives are agonizing over whether to accept an increase not only in tax revenue but also in marginal tax rates–a party anathema since the 1990 deal. By contrast, Democrats are adamantly behind raising rates on the top earners. (If anything, Obama is courting resistance by setting the bar too high with this week’s offer to preserve current rates for those earning less than $400,000.) On immigration, Obama and congressional Democrats have signaled that they intend to move forward aggressively; the same trajectory seems to be developing, in a more qualified way, on guns. On both issues, most Republicans will still oppose the Democratic initiatives. But unaccustomed cracks have emerged in that wall of opposition.
Shifting electoral incentives on each side are driving this role reversal. Overall, Democrats still operate as more of a coalition party, harboring a broader range of views, than Republicans. That’s largely because self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals in the electorate, which means that Democrats in most races (including the presidency) need to attract more votes from moderates to win than Republicans do.

Brownstein adds that “Democrats are now operating with a far more ideologically cohesive coalition that overwhelmingly supports action on issues that previously paralyzed the party.” He predicts “more polarization” in the short run, but sees Democrats as gaining more leverage to force reasonable compromises.
If Brownstein is right, then President Obama’s negotiation strategy makes sense. Offering concessions that many of his supporters oppose shows that he is at least negotiating in good faith, while Boehner is stuck with an increasingly unreasonable party that shows no interest in anything resembling a fair compromise.Whatever Obama gives up in the short run can be restored later, since demographics and souring public attitudes towards Republican obstructionism should help Democrats regain control of the House over the next two elections.

Whatever else can be said about Speaker John Boehner, he appears to be a man who loves his country. Indeed it’s hard to think of a politician who gets more emotional about the topic, as a Youtube scan will quickly verify.
Yet, now that the Speaker’s ‘Plan B’ has been nuked by his fellow Republicans, Boehner stands at a crossroads of decision: love of country vs. love of power. The choice he makes will likely define his character in public memory. If he makes the wrong choice, and chooses career over country, he could damage America’s economy dramatically. If he makes the right choice, country before career, he will provide another ‘profile in courage’ for future generations of elected officials.
Noam Scheiber outlines Boehner’s dilemma in his New Republic post “Plan B Dies, Prepare to Go Over the Cliff“:

…Once the House GOP deserted John Boehner last night, there were basically two options for striking a deal before January 1. Either Boehner passes a cliff-averting deal with a majority of House Republicans, or he passes one with a few dozen Republicans and a majority of House Democrats. Alas, I see neither of these things happening this year.

I’m going to hold on to the admittedly long-shot hope that Boehner will consider going with Scheiber’s second option. There is nothing in Boehner’s history that provides reason for this hope — you don’t get to be Speaker without a ruthless careerist mentality. He will almost certainly lose the speakership if he makes the courageous choice. But he might lose it even if he doesn’t, so unhinged are many of his Republican House colleagues, who are demanding an even more obstructionist position in the fiscal cliff negotiations.
Here’s how Scheiber explains the political implications of Boehner making the courageous choice:

That leaves option two: Boehner passes a bill with a rump group of Republicans and a majority of House Democrats. There are actually two ways this could happen. First, Boehner could essentially accept the offer on the table from Obama, perhaps with a tiny symbolic concession that lets him claim he squeezed more out of the president. Or Boehner could take up the bill the Senate has already passed, which extends the Bush tax cuts for families making under $250,000 per year and lets them expire above that.
Unfortunately, it’s extremely hard to imagine Boehner embracing either of these measures and putting them to a vote, for the simple reason that passing either one over the opposition of his caucus would leave him incredibly vulnerable only days before he stands for re-election as Speaker. (That happens on January 3.) If Boehner wants to keep his job, this just isn’t something he’ll screw with. And for whatever reason–certainly not the quality of life it affords him–Boehner comes across as a man who wants to keep his job.

It’s also questionable that Boehner could get the needed “few dozen Republicans” Scheiber noted above. I won’t be surprised if Scheiber’s conclusion that Boehner will opt for the ‘Thelma and Louise’ pans out.
Yet, when all the strategic choices are a pretty big gamble, there is something to be said for going with the one that challenges with a bit of courage, vision and bipartisan spirit. Sure, it’s a tall order for a guy who hasn’t shown much of it thus far. But Boehner may realize that, on another level, his choice is between taking a chance on a genuinely bipartisan resolution of the crisis or continuing to be a herder of rigid ideologues who will never enact any legislation that benefits the American people.
I won’t be surprised if this possibility is dashed before the sun sets. But America is in urgent need of hope and healing. President Obama has done as much as he can. Now somebody else has to accept the challenge.