No matter how many times the sharpest political scientists present data proving that the “Independent voter” category is largely a myth, some reporter will come out with an article somewhere larded up with quotes saying this or that candidate is toast because they can’t win ‘Independents.’ They are the myth that will not die, the elusive unicorns of politics, prancing around in sparkly woodlands in the easily-distracted heads of lazy reporters and academics.
So, one more time. There is no Santa Clause, no Easter Bunny, no tooth-fairy and there are no ‘independent voters.’ There are swing voters. There are political moderates. There are Reagan Democrats and other voters who sometimes vote for different parties. But over 90 percent of self-identified ‘independents’ lean Democratic or Republican, according to Alan I. Abramowitz, author of “The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy.” The term has little useful meaning, other than serving as a feel-good, catch-all category for Democratic and Republican voters who can’t bear to identify themselves as such.
Jamelle Bouie sheds light on the phenomenon in his American Prospect post, “New Name, Same Old Thing.”:

Among political scientists, it’s well known that the “independent voter” is a myth. When pressed, the large majority of voters lean Democratic or Republican and tend to vote like partisans, consistently supporting their party of choice. The only difference between a strong partisan and a “weak partisan leaner” is that the latter are reluctant–for whatever reason–to place themselves in one camp or the other…Over the last few years, this myth of the independent voter has taken hold among political journalists and others outside of academia.

Bouie provides a painful example of the delusion, which you can read if you want to at his link above, then has this to say about the so-called “Obama independents”:

“Obama Independents” fit the profile of a Democratic-leaning voter, who might defect from the party in GOP wave years, but for the most part chooses the name with “D” next to it when in the voting booth…There’s no need to hype Obama Independents as some new segment of the electorate, and indeed, the entire exercise is a little banal. Of course the Democratic presidential candidate needs to win a large majority of Democratic voters to win the presidency. That’s just how it goes.

The overwhelming majority of ‘independents’ are Republican and Democratic “leaners,” while swing voters and moderates will remain the more relevant categories for political analysis.

Looks like the Republicans aren’t totally paranoid about voter fraud, after all. An Indiana jury just convicted Republican Secretary of State Charlie White of three counts of voter fraud, two counts of perjury and one count of theft, according to this Indy Star report.
Ronald Brownstein has a sobering analysis for those who think President Obama will have a cakewalk election in November: “Political strategists used to believe that incumbents were unlikely to win elections (or carry states) where their approval rating lagged below 50 percent; but given the widespread cynicism about politicians many strategists on both sides believe the tipping point is now around 47 percent. Below that number, incumbents are a distinct underdog; above it, they are favored, with the ground tilting much more toward them once they cross 50 percent…the number of states Obama can plausibly contest to reach 270 Electoral College votes is narrowing.” On the upside, Brownstein notes that Obama is “generally polling above his approval ratings in head-to-head match-ups against the leading Republican contenders-who have seen their favorability ratings decline amid their fierce primary struggle.”
Punditty at Allvoices.com has a somewhat sunnier take on Obama’s prospects: “According to poll figures available Feb. 3, 2012, at Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, President Obama leads in 20 states when the three most recent polls for that state are averaged, giving him 259 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win re-election. The unnamed GOP opponent is ahead in 15 states for 106 electoral votes, with 136 electoral votes rated as tossups and 37 electoral votes lack enough data to reach a conclusion.”
AP’s Ken Thomas assesses prospects for a long GOP campaign, and also sees a tough struggle for Dems: “A Gallup survey showed Obama’s approval ratings dropping in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, all critical to his re-election. In New Hampshire, which Obama carried in 2008, he had an approval rating of about 38 percent…Adding to the concerns, the Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the economy would grow only 2 percent this year. It also predicted an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent on Election Day.”
In his post on “The 50 Percent Problem” at The Hill, Democratic consultant Mark Mellman takes an instructive look at the relationship between presidential approval ratings and reelection prospects, and notes “Professor Alan Abramowitz’s statistical model suggests that a 1-point increase in the president’s net approval rating leads to a 0.1 percent increase in vote — meaningful, but hardly the perfect correlation implied by the 50 percent rule…So based on all the data, what can we say about approval ratings and presidential votes? In short, presidents with approval ratings below 43 percent are quite likely to lose, while those over 55 percent are very likely to win. In between, where President Obama now stands, is the zone of uncertainty…
Charlie Cook sees a significant uptick in President Obama’s prospects: “My feeling for much of the past year was that Obama’s reelection chances were distinctly uphill. Today, I am not so sure. I see it as more of an evenly matched fight, something borne out by a USA Today/Gallup survey of the key battleground states showing essentially a tie.”
As if the GOP doesn’t have enough internecine conflict, Karl Rove picks a fight with Clint Eastwood for doing a patriotic “Yea America” ad cheering on Big Auto’s comeback — just because it indirectly calls attention to the fact that President Obama’s initiative — which Romney opposed — saved America’s most pivotal industry. Hard to see any political upside for Rove’s whine, which has undoubtedly increased the ad’s hittage, now at over 2.7 million and counting.
Republicans shot themselves in the other foot with a different Super Bowl ad deploying a demeaning racial stereotype to defeat Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow (MI). The denunciations are rolling in. As Republican consultant Mike Murphy swiftly tweeted his verdict Sunday night: “Pete Hoekstra Superbowl TV ad in MI Senate race really, really dumb. I mean really.” Hoekstra still supports the ad, which was produced by the same wizard who did the ‘Demon Sheep’ ad for Carly Fiorina in her losing Senate campaign in CA. and Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m You” spot in her losing U.S. senate campaign in DE.
The buzz is increasing, even in conservative circles, that Dems may indeed retake the House, mostly because of the growing perception that Republicans are responsible for Washington gridlock, reports WaPo’s Aaron Blake.
Big shift in Obama campaign fund-raising strategy, as Michael O’Brien reports at MSNBC First Read: “Obama campaign manager Jim Messina emailed supporters to formally endorse contributions to Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC founded by Bill Burton, a former White House deputy press secretary. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm,” Messina wrote on the campaign’s blog. “Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PAC.”
Lest you thought that the GOP voter suppression campaign was finally flagging, the Virginia News Leader reports that “there are at least 17 bills flowing through the Virginia General Assembly that make voting more difficult…Those “Voter Integrity” bills are generally the work of Republicans.”
George Wagner’s op-ed in the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel, “Today’s GOP Vacates the Center,” presents some interesting data about the primary source of current political polarization and paralysis: “…Over the last generation, the Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left. Political scientists Howard Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole cite legislative voting records over the past 35 years. By creating a widely used measurement that reveals the ideology of congressional members, U.S. Senate Republicans moved twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left; and House Republicans moved six times farther to the right than their Democratic colleagues move to the left…It’s really been a one-sided shift. The polarization that the electorate decries has been caused mostly by the GOP.

Democrats have reason to be encouraged by this morning’s report that that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January and the overall unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3 percent. Of course the Administration should vigorously exercise its bragging rights concerning the monthly report, and especially the overall favorable employment trend of recent months.
For those who want a more nuanced understanding of what the latest employment numbers may mean for the 2012 elections, however, Nate Silver’s “Obama’s Magic Number? 150,000 Jobs Per Month” at his FiveThirtyEight NYT blog may be the most incisive data-driven analysis yet published on the relationship of employment to presidential politics. Silver takes a sobering look at the connection, and explains:

No economic indicator is the holy grail…And there are a number of non-economic variables pertinent to predicting presidential elections — wars, candidate quality and ideology, turnout, scandals and so forth…But if you want to focus a single economic indicator, job growth during the presidential election year — especially as measured by the series called nonfarm payrolls — has a lot going for it.
…Data related to the change in the level of employment have had among the highest correlations with electoral performance in the past. The correlations aren’t perfect by any means. But if you perform a true apples-to-apples comparison (that is, looking at the economic indicators alone rather than muddying them with other sorts of extraneous variables), they do at least as well as anything else in predicting elections, and slightly better than some other commonly used metrics.
Just as important, there are a lot of qualitative reasons to focus on the jobs numbers. They measure something tangible and important. They receive much attention from economists, investors, political campaigns and the news media, and therefore inform the public discussion. They are released every month after only a minimal lag. They are subject to revision, and the revisions can be significant, but they aren’t quite as bad as those for other economic series like G.D.P. or personal income growth. The jobs numbers are calculated in a comparatively straightforward way, and are usually in pretty good alignment with other economic measures. They don’t need to be adjusted for inflation.

Silver then taps some creative methodology to correlate the nonfarm payroll growth rate with the popular vote margin of defeat or victory for the incumbent party in 16 post WWII presidential elections, and he comes to some interesting conclusions, including:

Overall, the relationship between job growth and electoral performance is good but not great…Roughly speaking, there were 10 election years in which you could make a pretty good prediction about the election outcome from knowing the jobs numbers alone: 1948, 1960, and then the eight elections from 1980 onward…In six other elections, you would have needed to look beyond the jobs numbers to come to a good prediction about the outcome.

Citing some of the complicating factors that can cloud his data-driven analysis, such as Eisenhower’s charisma, the Watergate scandal and foreign policy debacles. Regarding a possible Obama-Romney race, Silver argues,

…If we knew nothing else about the election but how many jobs were created between January and October 2012, we would deem Mr. Obama to be a favorite if the economy created more than 107,000 jobs per month and an underdog otherwise. Basically, this would represent job creation at about the rate of population growth.

That’s good news for Obama. The “what have you done for me lately?” factor may signal even better news:

…The public has tended to give greater weight to recent job growth, discounting earlier performance when the trajectory seems positive…If you break it down in more detail, you’ll find that job growth during the third year of a president’s term has a positive effect on his re-election odds, while the coefficients attached to the first two years are negative.
But none of these results are statistically significant or particularly close to it; only job growth during the fourth year of a president’s term has a clear effect.

Silver then factors in presidential approval ratings into his calculations, which indicate:

Mr. Obama’s approval rating is now 46.5 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average…That isn’t terrible — it’s in the range where Mr. Obama might be able to eke out a victory in the Electoral College — but it’s somewhat below average. From 1948 through 2008, the average president had an approval rating of 52 percent as of Feb. 1 of the election year, according to the Roper Center archives.
If Mr. Obama has an approval rating of 52 percent by November, he will almost certainly win re-election. He’d also be a favorite if he’s at 50 percent. And 48 percent or 49 percent might also do the trick, since at that point Mr. Obama’s approval rating would likely exceed his disapproval rating.
But Mr. Obama is not quite there yet. The surest way for him to improve his approval rating will be to create jobs at a rate that exceeds the rate of population growth.
We can come up with an estimate of just how many jobs this might be if we put a president’s approval rating as of Feb. 1 and the payrolls numbers into a regression equation…I’ll spare you the math (although it is straightforward), but this works out to a break-even number of 166,000 jobs per month — not a huge number, but more than the 107,000 that we had estimated before accounting for Mr. Obama’s middling approval rating.
…If you run another version of the analysis that considers a president’s net approval rating, along with the rate of payroll growth net of population growth, you come up with a break-even number of 151,000 jobs per month.

The Wall St. Journal is predicting an average of 155K jobs being added per month in 2012, notes Silver. But he adds that forecasting track records are “frankly pretty mediocre.” Taking all of the factors into consideration, Silver ventures, ” If payrolls growth averages 175,000 per month, Mr. Obama will probably be a favorite, but not a prohibitive one. If it averages 125,000 per month, he will be a modest underdog.”
Silver’s numbers appear to be sound enough, and 150K jobs per month seems like a good guidepost. Rachel Weiner cautions at WaPo’s The Fix, however, that “No president in recent history has been reelected with unemployment above 8 percent, and analysts suggest it would take growth of between 167,000 and 260,000 jobs a month to get there by November.”
It would be interesting to see what Silver’s analysis could do scaled down to the state level, taking into consideration Geoffrey Skelley’s point at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles (50 states plus Washington, D.C.).” It might be worthwhile to look at needed job growth and margins of victory in the half-dozen most volatile swing states. That could be helpful to Dems in terms of laser-targeting resources.

Romney’s gloatfest about his big Florida win has been gished by his latest gaffe. But the most interesting statistic of the election — the 14 percent decline in GOP primary turnout from ’08 — does not bode well for Republicans in the general election. Granted, there was a big property tax initiative on the ballot in ’08. But Janet Hook’s Wall St. Journal report, “Florida Turnout Falls Short of Hopes” notes that leading voter turnout experts believed it to be lower than expected nonetheless, all the more disappointing to the GOP because Florida is hosting the Republican national convention this summer.
Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s shameless corporate toady, signs the ‘right-to-work’ bill into law — the first rust belt state to do so. The great Hoosier, Eugene V. Debs, turns in his grave as workers begin protests.
But it looks like a ‘Stop the Insanity’ movement may be afoot among some other GOP governors, according to Michael Cooper’s New York Times article “Second Year In, Republican Governors Moderate Tone.” Well, maybe just a ‘Reduce the Cluelessness’ trend.
Jamie Stiehm’s “What’s a Republican Feminist To Do?” at the NYT ‘Campaign Stops’ blog explains the dilemma facing Republican women who don’t think women who have abortions should be criminalized. Stiehm doesn’t directly address whether some pro-choice Republican women will vote Democratic, but it’s clearly a possibility for those who strongly believe that women ought to have dominion over their own bodies. Her post also illuminates Romney’s flip-flops on the issue, in stark contrast to both of his parents. Stiehm’s best quote comes from Ted Kennedy in his victory over Romney in the ’94 Senate race: “I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice.”
Richard Cohen’s WaPo column “Republicans Have Only Themselves to Blame” provides a condensed catalog of GOP folly from the primary trail, along with some sharp zingers, among them “Yahoos stride the stage” and “The GOP is brain-dead.” As for the cause, Cohen explains: “The Republican establishment acts as if this season’s goon squad of presidential candidates has come out of nowhere, an act of God — a tsunami that hit the party and receded, leaving nothing but nitwits standing…For too long it has been mute in the face of a belligerent anti-intellectualism, pretending that knowledge and experience do not matter and that Washington is a condition and not a mere city.”
This should be Thursdays’ most unappealing event.
TDS’s James Vega did a worthy takedown of the recent WaPo article in the Fix, “Obama: The most polarizing president. Ever.” Now Jim Manley, a longtime aide to Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid has a rebuttal, also in the Fix, featuring quotes placing the blame for polarization where it more plausibly belongs, including this gem by Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute: “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier–ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Josh Dzieza has a rogues’ gallery, “Who Gave $1 Million or More to Super PACs? A Daily Beast Roundup“.
Mindful that “after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles,” Geoffrey Skelley reviews the latest unemployment rates of the 50 states at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and discusses the possible implications. For example, “Nevada is a toss up state that…However, the terrible state of the Silver State’s economy — it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 12.6% — might be a drag on Obama…Then there are toss ups such as Virginia (6.2%) and Iowa (5.6%), which have jobless rates considerably lower than the national average. That could make these states more likely to support the status quo and vote for the incumbent. For the same reason, recent good news regarding the economies of many Rust Belt states could improve Obama’s reelection chances…Obama barely won North Carolina in 2008, and the state’s 9.9% unemployment rate helps explain why we believe, at the moment, the Republicans are slightly favored to take back the Tar Heel State in November. Conversely, New Mexico, a state with a large Hispanic population that has been trending more Democratic, has a fairly low unemployment rate, making it more likely to remain in the president’s column.”
At FiveThirtyEight.com John Sides sorts out the available data to address the question, “Did Romney’s Ad Advantage Help in Florida?” Lots of significant caveats here, but Sides concludes that “I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial.”
Nate Berg reports at the Atlantic that “Increasing Density and Diversity Likely to Make Western States More Blue.” Berg notes that “much of this shift to the blue side of the spectrum is due to the heavy concentration of new growth in the urban areas of these six states and, not unrelated, their increasing minority populations…The Las Vegas metro area, for example, is now home to three out of four Nevadans. The state’s minority population also increased by about 11 percent between censuses, bringing the non-white population to nearly 45 percent. Two-thirds of Arizonans live in the Phoenix metro area. Arizona’s minority population also increased from 36.2 percent in 2000 to 42.2 percent in 2010. The Albuquerque metro area now houses about 44 percent of New Mexicans. Nearly 40 percent of all Idahoans live in the Boise metro area.”
Don’t miss this moving photo tribute to Obama’s leadership

The GOP presidential primary season’s surprises notwithstanding, Romney’s Florida win makes a compelling case that Newt is basically done. Ed Kilgore’s persuasive analysis below leaves little room for Gingrich’s resurgence and makes it clear that he has two shots, long and none.
It would take a spectacular Romney gaffe to put Gingrich back in serious play, and yes, he’s had a couple of dillies. Romney is a twitchy candidate, prone to excessive jabber. No doubt his smarter handlers will cut back on live interviews as much as possible going forward. But for gaffe potential, he will never match Gingrich. Santorum has to be thinking they could both tank in a mutual gaffe frenzy.
In addition to Kilgore’s points, I would add that Newt’s gender gap vs. Romney — 24 points in the largest of swing states, ices Romney’s cake. Has there ever been a larger gender gap in a mega-state presidential primary? And it’s not like Romney has anything to offer women in terms of policy. It’s about how many women perceive Newt’s character, or rather lack of it.
Under normal circumstances, a candidate with Gingrich’s vote totals in SC and FL would be considered a leading contender in the veepstakes, at least. But team Romney could not be blamed for thinking that would be a little like putting Caligula on the ticket, or a very loose canon on deck. Certainly it would be doubling down on gaffe potential. File that one under ‘not gonna happen.’
Democrats can’t be blamed for cherishing the lurid fantasy of a Gingrich nomination, with it’s potential for lengthening Obama’s coattails far beyond what Romney’s nomination could do. In terms of planning the Obama campaign ahead, however, it looks like time to bet all resources on a contest with Romney, who will be hard enough to beat without distractions, as William Galston has argued.
Yes, Dems should keep rooting for Newt’s success in the primaries and caucuses ahead on grounds that he will further divide the GOP and taint the entire party with escalating nastiness. But Democratic time, energy and money should now be invested in preparing to beat Romney, Dems’ central challenge for 2012.

The GOP’s Social Security and Medicare privatization policies are not the only thing Florida seniors are angry about. Writing in the AFL-CIO Now Blog, Laura Markwardt, senior communications associate at the Alliance for Retired Americans notes that “Hundreds of Florida seniors and others turned out for a rally in Tampa Friday against voter suppression….Recent changes in Florida’s election rules will have a dramatic impact on Florida’s seniors and other voters. The new law passed in the Florida legislature cuts early voting from 14 days to seven days before the election, which hurts many seniors who vote early because they are physically unable to stand in a long line or make it to the polls on Election Day.”
Nate Silver’s “Polls Diverge, but All Point to a Romney Win” crunches the polling numbers and estimates that “Odds are, instead, that Mr. Romney will win by somewhere in the range of 10 points to 20 points, meaning that many networks are likely to declare him the winner shortly after polls close.”
Milking the ‘liberal media’ meme for the very little that it’s worth outside of his right flank, The petulant bomb-thrower chucks a heat-seeking grenade into the discussion about debate formats in the fall campaign: “As your nominee, I will not accept debates in the fall in which the reporters are the moderators,” Gingrich bellowed at a Pensacola rally. “We don’t need to have a second Obama person at the debate.” Millions yawn.
Most pundits are skeptical about Democrats’ chances of re-taking the House. But a couple of opinion polls suggest otherwise, reports Deirdre Walsh at cnn.com’s Election Center. “Two polls released last week bear that out: An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 47% of voters preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared to 41% who supported a Republican-controlled one; and a National Journal poll indicated a wider margin — 48% said they supported a Democratic Congress and 37% said they wanted Republicans to keep control.”
Steve Roth’s “Social Security: The Elevator Pitch” at Angry Bear spotlights a few stats Dems should master for shredding GOP arguments, among them: “The extra revenue needed to make SS solid far beyond the foreseeable future (75 years) is tiny: 0.6% of GDP…Coincidentally, Scrapping the Cap on SS contributions — so high earners paid payroll tax above $110K — would deliver … 0.6% of GDP.” Roth adds, “Worried about our fiscal future? It’s the health care costs, stupid…U.S. providers charge two to five times what they charge in other countries, and it’s rising faster — and faster than wages, GDP, inflation…If you’re not talking about that, you have nothing useful to say about our fiscal future.”
Eric Boehlert has an interesting take at Alternet , “How Fox News Is Destroying The Republican Party.” Says Boehlert: “For Ailes and company, that slash-and-burn formula works wonders in terms of super-serving its hardcore, hard-right audience of three million viewers. But in terms of supporting a serious, national campaign and a serious, national conversation? It’s not working. At all.”
It’s all caucuses and no primaries for the GOP field during the the next month, according to “What’s Next After Florida: Entering the Dead Zone” by Chris Good of ABC’s the Note. Then the primary action picks back up on Feb 28 in Arizona and Michigan, with ‘Super Tuesday’ a week later (March 6), when 35+ percent of the GOP delegates will be selected in ten states in one day. Good believes “…it’s unlikely any candidate will be able to win the delegate race before May” and California’s 169 delegates (June 5) should clinch the Republican nomination if it isn’t a done deal by then.
February could be Ron Paul’s big month, with all the caucuses slated. But recent revelations about Paul’s hands-on involvement in producing his racist newsletters could be damaging. As WaPo’s Jerry Markon and Alice Crite point out “…People close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day….”It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product…He would proof it,” said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.”
Meredith Shiner and Steven T. Dennis have a Roll Call report on “Rust Belt Democrats Trying to Manufacture a Win,” explaining that “Democrats believe manufacturing job growth, especially in the auto industry, has been one of the bright spots of their résumé and that it’s about time the administration touts that success…Senate Democrats, in particular, have the opportunity to make the manufacturing message their own, or at least use it on the floor with symbolic votes designed to put Republicans in a tough spot.”
Expect an uptick in howls of ‘Class Warfare’ from the GOP as Dems increasingly hitch their 2012 campaign to the growing popular demand for fair taxes. Senate Majrity Leader Harry Reid is planning votes on tax reform throughout spring and summer, according to Lisa Mascaro of the L. A. Times D.C. Bureau’s “Democrats in Congress step up tax-the-rich efforts: They see it not only as a way to reduce the deficit, but also to lay down a populist line in the election battle for Congress and the White House.”

Turns out two major issues in the Florida GOP presidential primary, Social Security and Medicare, are getting scant coverage by both candidates and the media. As Tracy Jan observes in her Boston Globe article “Fla. seniors hear little from candidates on entitlements“:

When talk turned to Medicare and Social Security in the days leading up to tomorrow’s Florida Republican primary, this critical voting bloc voiced disappointment that the issues disproportionately affecting seniors have been notably absent from debates and candidates’ stump speeches here. Most older voters say they don’t know what distinguishes the GOP contenders from each other when it comes to the future of the two programs.
“I think the candidates want to stay away from it, keep it quiet until after the primaries,” said Ralph Lawson, a 71-year-old retired financial planner from Dracut, Mass., in between dancing to live jazz. “They don’t want to upset seniors, the majority of the voters here.”

The issue is a political minefield, with disagreements even among the more conservative seniors. As Jan notes:

Elders who are supporters of the Tea Party divide sharply on proposals for reducing Medicare and Social Security, said Theda Skocpol, a Harvard government professor who coauthored a book about the movement…The well-funded national Tea Party organizations pushing for lower taxes strongly support Medicare privatization, yet grass-roots supporters worry about losing benefits they feel they have earned by working hard their entire lives, said Skocpol.

While Romney has supported raising the eligibility age for Medicare qualification and favors a privatization option for the program. Gingrich, who has blasted Rep. Paul Ryan’s privatization plans as “right-wing social engineering,” has tread a little more carefully:

While Gingrich was lambasted by some in the Tea Party movement for his critique of the original Ryan plan, Skocpol said, the former House speaker’s sentiments did not hurt him with the grass-roots movement. And his move during last Monday’s debate in Tampa to show his support for the Medicare prescription drug benefit – despite its expense and amid Romney’s accusations he was guilty of influence peddling in promoting the proposal in 2003 – may have won him even more favor with Florida seniors, she said.

While Jan notes the lack of substantive discussion about Medicare and Social Security in the Florida GOP primary, Richard Eskow, a senior fellow at The Campaign for America’s Future, doesn’t shy from assigning blame. As Eskow notes in his HuffPo post, “Do GOP Candidates and the Press Have a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” Not to Discuss Social Security in Florida? “:

You’d think Social Security would top the list of subjects for a Presidential debate in Florida. How many questions did Wolf Blitzer ask about it during Thursday night’s Republican debate in Jacksonville?
Answer: None. The words “Social Security” never passed his lips.
It was almost as if there were a “gentlemen’s agreement” among the five people on the stage. And we use that phrase advisedly, since Blitzer sealed the boy’s club atmosphere by asking each of the candidates why his wife would make the best First Lady.
The candidates did mention Social Security a couple of times, but only in passing and only in the most misleading ways possible. It’s too bad there wasn’t, oh, a journalist nearby – one who was inclined to ask follow-up questions.

Ouch. Harsh, but not undeserved.
Eskow explains that Santorum and Paul “attacked Newt Gingrich from the right on Social Security” in the last debate, and then “Gingrich attacked Obama from the left…” However, notes Eskow:

What Gingrich doesn’t say is that he wants to privatize Social Security with a plan that would ultimately cut benefits and put what’s left at risk for the next financial crisis, while making trillions of dollars for Wall Street. He also keeps pushing the widely disproved notions that it’s a “Ponzi scheme” and “a fraud.” (The best takedown of those ideas was done in 1958 by a bipartisan panel convened by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.)

As for the media blackout of the issue:

So why wasn’t it a topic that Blitzer and CNN considered important enough to discuss? When Santorum first mentioned Social Security, Blitzer said “We’re going to get to that in a moment.” Iit sounded like the “it” in question was Social Security, but Blitzer never mentioned it again.

Eskow has a plausible explanation why the candidates dodge the issue:

I can certainly understand why the candidates didn’t want the subject raised. More than three and a half million Republican voters rely on Social Security, including seniors, disabled people, and surviving spouses. In fact, the candidates in Tuesday’s primary would be crazy not to hide their opinions on the topic:
Mitt Romney’s been pushing to privatize Social Security for years. After the financial crisis of 2008, Americans understand how risky it would be to place their financial security in the hands of greedy, reckless, and irresponsible financiers – or as Mitt probably thinks of them, “the fellas.”…Ron Paul says Social Security is “unconstitutional.”
With proposals like these, who wouldn’t want to keep the Sunshine State in the dark? An AARP survey showed that likely Republican voters in Florida oppose Social Security cuts by more than two to one. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, a slight majority would favor raising the retirement age, but more Republicans favor the solution that’s typically called “progressive” – lifting or raising the cap on payroll taxes so that higher income levels are subject to the tax. All four Republican candidates strongly oppose this idea, which is their voters’ preferred option.

Jan and Eskow are not alone in commenting on the free ride in big media being enjoyed by the GOP field and Eskow concludes with this blistering observation:

Some voters noticed the omission. As USA Today reported on the morning before the debate, “people are frustrated that the Republican presidential candidates have largely avoided the issues of Medicare and Social Security.” You’d think that would have made the subject even more important for CNN to raise. A news organization’s job is to ask candidates the questions they don’t want asked. Surely they could have squeezed one in, perhaps after asking the First Lady question? (Gingrich graciously said they’d all be wonderful at the job.)
Remember the movie “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”? This week’s Florida primary should be renamed “Don’t Tell Grandma Social Security Will Be Dead – and Medicare Too – If We’re Elected.” Mitt Romney’s already on record as saying income inequality shouldn’t be discussed openly. Was there some sort of “gentleman’s agreement” to ignore Social Security too?

The kindest interpretation is that Blitzer was somehow distracted from asking the hardball questions on Social Security and Medicare, which is the news anchor’s equivalent of whiffing in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs in an important play-off game. But his softball question about the role of the candidates’ wives as first ladies suggests a lightweight posture toward the debates at best.
No doubt other journalists have contributed to the problem with weak coverage of the candidates positions on Medicare and Social Security. In any case, the Florida presidential primary is way too important for any major media to function as lapdogs, whether by oversight or design. Voters have a right to expect better.

Being chosen to deliver the opposition party’s rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union Address is a mixed blessing under the best of circumstances. It’s a tip of the hat to the status of the designee, but it’s not always so easy to look good when your assignment is to go as relentlessly negative as possible. Despite some of the pundit gush, Gov. Mitch Daniel’s speech was one of the most dreary, joyless SOTU rebuttals ever. This is the face of the GOP’s future? See Rachel Maddow’s hilarious take-down here.
As long as you’re noodling about Maddow’s website, might as well watch her shred Politifact. Krugman agrees, elaborates.
For more credible fact-checking, Daniels gets a well-deserved spanking from FactCheck.org’s Lori Robertson.
Terry Greene Sterling has an excellent report, “Obama and the Dems’ Strategy to Win in Arizona: Heavy Courtship of Latinos ” at The Daily Beast. Sterling notes “the wildly popular Arizona “citizenship clinics” sponsored by the social-justice nonprofit, Mi Familia Vota, and the Spanish-language television network, Univision” and adds “Latinos make up about 30 percent of Arizona’s population though historically have low voter turnout. But the “sleeping giant,” galvanized by what it sees as racist legislation and state policy, recently flexed its muscle.Hispanics were a key force behind two recent political coups–the recall-election defeat of immigration law sponsor and Tea Party Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, and a Latino firefighter’s trouncing of an established Anglo politico for a Phoenix City Council seat.”
Harold Meyerson nails the economic nitty-gritty of Obama’s SOTU address.
A new Wall St. Journal/NBC News poll has very good news for President Obama and Democrats: “Some 30% believed the country was headed in the right direction, up eight percentage points from a month ago. Some 60% said the country was on the wrong track, down from 69% in December…” As Sara Murray and Janet Hook report at the WSJ, the poll “raised caution signs for Mr. Romney’s strategy of putting the economy at the center of his campaign…Partial results from the poll, released Wednesday, found voters feeling more positively about the economy and of Mr. Obama’s handling of it.”
The long-range implications of the Citizens United decision are even worse than you thought.
Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley discuss “The Republicans’ Electoral College Newt-Mare” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Their article provides color-coded maps demonstrating the disastrous potential of Newt’s nomination. Say the authors: “Under this map, all of those states — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — would be tough territory for Gingrich. If his candidacy were a disaster, those new Republican gerrymanders could unravel. The close battle for the Senate could also be affected — Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia all have competitive Senate races this year, and all of those states get bluer on our map under a hypothetical Gingrich candidacy.”
Ron Brownstein sorts it all out at National Journal in “Romney’s Florida Formula: Return to Divide and Conquer,” discusses Mitt’s resurgence and argues, “…To overcome Romney in Florida, Gingrich must consolidate the party’s populist wing more effectively than he’s doing so far. And, especially since Gingrich is being outspent so badly in the state, his best, and perhaps last, opportunity to do that will come when he steps on the stage in Jacksonville Thursday night.” Expect mayhem.

In his live blogging of the SOTU, Andrew Sullivan was mostly unimpressed with President Obama’s speech, which drew rave reviews elsewhere. While many Obama supporters focus on his formidable public speaking skills, Sullivan sees Obama’s great strength more in his ‘long game’ strategy.
Sullivan’s insightful “How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics” featured in a controversial Newsweek cover story, as well as in The Daily Beast, made a compelling case that President Obama is playing a very shrewd hand, much to the dismay of his critics, left and right. As Sullivan says of Obama’s critics:

…I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply–empirically–wrong….given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb. Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game–and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008.

Sullivan notes his own disappointments with a few of Obama’s policies, then recounts the Romney/GOP litany of attacks and responds with a description of the mess Obama inherited from Bush:

…None of this is even faintly connected to reality–and the record proves it. On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt–lagging indicators–were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.

Then Obama’s response:

But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion…All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.

Despite the failure of Obama’s most optimistic recovery projections to materialize as quickly as he had hoped, Sullivan explains that “the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.”
Despite the most treasured of Republican conceits that theirs is the party of tax and spending cuts, Sullivan clarifies Obama’s record:

…Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition…

As for spending, Obama again trumps the GOP record:

…His spending record is also far better than his predecessor’s. Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama.

As Sullivan sums up their respective claims to fiscal rectitude:

…You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor…Obama has had to govern under the worst recession since the 1930s, and Bush, after the 2001 downturn, governed in a period of moderate growth. It takes work to increase the debt in times of growth, as Bush did. It takes much more work to constrain the debt in the deep recession Bush bequeathed Obama.

Sullivan also sets the record straight about the economics of ‘Obamacare’:

Read more…

Just to make it clear what kind of future they envision for America, Republicans have chosen union-busting Governor Mitch Daniels to respond to President Obama’s state of the union address. Meanwhile, workers take their protest against Indiana’s so-called ‘right-to-work’ law to the home of the Republican speaker of the Indiana House, Brian Bosma. Video clip here.
Dana Bash, CNN’s senior congressional correspondent, reports on “GOP angst: Gingrich’s rise could be their downfall.” A typical quote unearthed by Bash “If he’s the nominee, it’s a disaster. There is no way to sugar-coat it,” said one GOP congressional strategist describing the tension after Gingrich won South Carolina.” At CNN, see also James Carville’s memo to the Republican establishment, “You have a disaster on your hands.”
If you wondered if there was something a little, well, odd about the over-the-top audience responses to Newt’s every comment in recent debates, you are not alone, as Rachel Weiner notes in The Fixx.
Democrats don’t have to worry much about losing the Jewish vote, according to Peter Beinhart, writing at The Daily Beast: “Every four years, Republicans vow to use Israel to pry Jews from their nearly century-old allegiance to the Democratic Party. And every four years, they fail. The reason is that only about 10 percent of Jews actually vote on Israel…Most American Jews don’t really vote as Jews at all…They vote as secularists…Jews aren’t that far left on economics, but on the issues where secular and traditionalist Americans clash–abortion, church and state, gay rights–their secularism pushes them into the Democrats’ arms.”
New poll has vulture capitalist and bomb-thrower in stat-tie in Sunshine state. Talking Points Memo average of three polls has Newt ahead by 6.2.
Greg Sargent reports on a new WaPo-ABC news poll which indicates that Romney is tanking with blue collar voters.”…Among whites with incomes of under $50,000: His negative numbers among them have jumped 20 points, from 29 percent to 49 percent. ”
Demos has a new report, updating the status of voter-suppression in Florida and other states, and concluding “Congress, clear-sighted state legislators, the U.S. Department of Justice, election officials, voting rights activists and concerned Americans must continue to fight against vote suppression proposals and for legislation that affirms all citizens’ fundamental right to vote and have those votes counted.”
Susan Saulny’s New York Times article, “As Race Moves to Florida, Facing Political Implications of a Housing Crisis,” discusses how the crisis spells trouble for Mitt and Newt, in particular.
If President Obama is looking for a well-stated idea or two for his SOTU, he could do worse than check out Robert Borosage’s suggestions at his Campaign for America’s Future blog. He should also read Robert Reich’s “Jobs Won’t Come Back to America Until the Government Pushes Greedy Corporate Executives to Invest at Home” at Alternet.