You know that widely-accepted meme that the public strongly opposes The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that nearly all Americans purchase health insurance, the one that has been used to help drive the effort to repeal or overturn the law? Turns out that it’s not true when polls put the question to the public with a critical missing piece of information. As Sarah Kiff reports at Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog in “Messaging the Individual Mandate,” her post on the new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, conducted 12/8-13 and released today:

Kaiser found, as a baseline, 65 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the health reform law’s mandated purchase of health insurance. But among those, they found the majority would flip to a positive opinion when they were told that Americans with employer-sponsored insurance really wouldn’t have to deal with the mandate.

In other words, when the public is properly informed about how the “mandate” actually works, you get a strong majority, 61 percent supporting it, with only 34 percent still opposed. Other pieces of information also significantly reduced unfavorable attitudes toward the legislation. Reminding the public that without the mandate, people could “wait until they are seriously ill before buying health insurance, which will drive up costs for everyone” gets support for the law up to 47 percent, with 45 percent still opposed. Telling respondents that no one would be held to the mandate “if the cost of new coverage would consume too large a share of their income” gets the favorable support up to 49 percent, with 45 percent still opposed.
It may seem a little late to be thinking about re-messaging the individual mandate, with the Supreme Court set to rule on it mid-2012. But it is important for Dems to learn the lesson and pay more attention to different ways of messaging reforms, and specifically how to counter-punch when a reform is oversimplified in the opposition’s attacks.
Moreover, it seems to me that very little effort was put into explaining the law to the public after it was passed. The attitude seemed to be, “well, we got that one passed. Now let’s move on to the next fight.” Even though many people were weary of the whole debate, we didn’t really finish the job of explaining the new law in a way that would elicit strong majority support. A simple FAQs mailer to every home could have helped. Let’s not make that mistake again.

A crack in the obstructionist front? Felicia Sonmez’s “Payroll tax cut compromise further divides GOP” at the Post has a good report on the underlying politics behind the Reid-McConnell bipartisan compromise. Sonmez quotes House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD): “We are witnessing the concluding convulsion of confrontation and obstruction in the most unproductive, tea-party-dominated, partisan session of the Congresses in which I have participated.”
Brendan Nyhan takes some reporters to the woodshed in his Columbia Journalism Review post “When Newt Isn’t Newsworthy:The problems with news pegs in campaign coverage.” Says Nyhan: “Unfortunately, reporters’ dependence on news pegs means that they end up substituting opposing campaigns’ judgments about what issues are important for their own, particularly when it comes to a well-known political figure like Gingrich…Reporters: John H. Sununu should not be your assignment editor!”
Barbara A. Perry, Senior Fellow in Presidential Oral History at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, addresses the possible political fallout of major decision facing the High Court’s upcoming session, in “The Supremes v. Obamacare: Will the Court Decide the 2012 Presidential Election?” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “If the court upholds the entire act, Obama will emerge bruised but victorious from the judicial battle. On the campaign trail, he could then emphasize his efficacy in implementing a key pledge from 2008. The court’s complete invalidation of the law, on the other hand, would deal the president a severe blow…A loss on health care could also prompt Obama to make Supreme Court appointments a campaign issue…”
The polls are all over the place about Newt and Romney, but it’s good to see the President’s approval ratings have reached a high since summer, according to a new ABC/WaPo poll conducted 12/15-18 reported by By Peter Wallsten and Jon Cohen in the Washington Post. Speculation, some of it supported by data, credits his new populist message, a lackluster GOP presidential field, congressional Republicans’ obstructionism and a slight improvement in economic trends. It’s just a hunch, but I’m thinking general likability — in stark contrast to his adversaries — may be worth a few points.
Of the 11 Governorships up next year (not yet including the Wisconsin recall effort) “in a decidedly light gubernatorial year”, Crystal Ball wizards Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley rate 5 safe, likely or lean Republican, 2 as toss-ups and 4 as safe, likely or lean Democratic. The authors provide one-paragraph analyses for each race.
Paul Begala has a fun post up at the Daily Beast, “The GOP Candidates Read Wacky Books.” Mitch likes such enlightening tomes as Bush, Jr.’s “Decision Points” and L. Ron Hubbard’s “Battlefield Earth,’ while Newt cozies up with “military texts like Sun Tzu to Buzz Lightyear-style future-babble from Alvin Toffler.” Then there is Michelle Bachman who “cited J. Steven Wilkins’s Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee…Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker tells us that “Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North.” Perry digs the Glenn Beck-recommended “The Five Thousand Year Leap: 28 Great Ideas That Changed the World” by W. Cleon Skousen, a John Bircher who has reportedly been called “an All-around nutjob” by Mark Hemingway of the National Review.
At last, a decent MSM report focusing on Ron Paul’s racist newsletter, “New Focus on Incendiary Words in Paul’s Newsletters” by Jim Rutenberg and Richard A. Oppel, Jr. in the New York Times. Still we wait for an interviewer to ask Paul point blank, “Mr. Paul, are you opposed to racial discrimination against African Americans?”
Looks like the GOP establishment is getting nervous about Ron Paul, as well as Newt. National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru reports at Bloomberg on another worrisome indicator of Paul’s racial views: “In 2004, the House voted 414-1 for a resolution celebrating the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul not only voted no but gave a speech arguing that the act should never have been enacted. Employers who wish to discriminate against blacks, in his view, should be free to do so. A federal government that claims the power to override their decisions, he said, could also impose racial quotas. “Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
We don’t expect our politicians to be saints. But Carl Gershman’s moving WaPo tribute, “Vaclav Havel’s legacy to humanity” raises a question: Why can’t we have politicians like this?
Charles Babington has an AP article focused on Romney’s considerable vulnerabilities on the issue of jobs, spotlighting his profiteering from mass layoffs when he was at Bain capital, as well as his weak jobs record as Mass Governor. “Romney’s record is a target-rich environment, since he threw people out of jobs to make a lot of money,” said Doug Hattaway, a Democratic strategist. “Gingrich is harder to paint as a job-destroyer.”…When Romney was endorsed by Delaware tea party activist Christine O’Donnell — she once declared “I’m not a witch” in a Senate race ad — Obama strategist David Axelrod jumped in. “If Christine O’Donnell really wants to help Mitt, maybe she can cast a spell and make his MA and Bain records disappear,” Axelrod said via Twitter.”

If there was ever a contest for “most polarizing figure in America,” my guess is the final face-off would be Newt Gingrich vs. Paul Ryan or John Boehner, with Gingrich winning by a slam-dunk. Ryan and Boehner are emblematic protectors of economic privilege, true. But Gingrich not only divides America with vicious ad hominem attacks and rhetorical bomb-throwing; he divides the GOP like none of their leaders in recent memory.
The latest corroboration of Gingrich’s divisive fallout in the GOP can be found in Jackie Calmes’ article in the Sunday New York Times, “As Gingrich’s Star Rises, So Do His Party’s Concerns,” which includes a round-up of some of the nail-biting comments being made by Republican insiders:

Since we don’t know how he got here, I don’t know how he can be stopped,” said Ed Rogers, a longtime Washington lobbyist and party strategist who worked for the first President George Bush. …
…Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who served in the House when Mr. Gingrich was speaker, has been an outspoken critic. I’ve had any number of members of Congress come over to me and thank me for what I’m saying,” he said. “They say, ‘This guy is going to kill us if he gets the nomination.’ ”
…Stuart Rothenberg, an independent analyst of Congressional races, said that Mr. Gingrich could hurt other Republicans running next year. “There are some Republican insiders I talk to who think it would be a full-fledged blowout,” he said.
…”The fact that he has no infrastructure scares me to death,” said a party chairman in a battleground state, who asked not to be named given his need to remain neutral…”How do we make sure this train wreck doesn’t happen?” he added. “That’s the conversation among the politicos.”

There is even talk of that most treasured of Democratic fantasies, a brokered GOP convention, as Calmes reports:

Some Tea Party conservatives have even begun talking of a brokered Republican convention in August to push for a candidate they feel is more conservative.
…”What is amazing is how many people feel this way,” said Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, a group affiliated with the Tea Party movement. “If you had a concerted effort, someone could force a brokered convention. The hard part is finding the right person.”

It would take a very close GOP delegate count next August to force a brokered convention. But, however unlikely, the buzz is out there, a perverse tribute to Newt’s staying power as poster-boy for polarization.
I would not be shocked if Romney’s big money supporters begin pouring dough into Ron Paul’s Iowa campaign as part of a desperate ‘Stop Newt’ effort. A Paul upset in Iowa would slow Newt for a minute, but even a strong second-place finish in New Hampshire would keep Gingrich afloat. For Dems, the good news is that a long, hard-fought Republican primary season is likely, given the volatile polls we have seen thus far.
At a minimum, the emergent GOP front-runner will have already been subjected to some of the most thoroughly-tested and brutal campaign ads yet created, which Dems can tweak, polish and amplify. Incumbents still have an important advantage as the more unified party.
Odds are, the Republicans will nominate a seriously damaged candidate. But, whether it’s Newt or Romney, they will likely unify at the convention and line up to support the nominee. Much depends on how much damage they do to each other in the primaries — maybe not as much as the economic trends going forward, but their fall campaign could be impaired by still-echoing internecine strife.
The Obama campaign’s early attack ads targeting Romney are understandable, since they believe he is the more formidable opponent. And it’s easy to envision ‘blowout’ scenarios in which Newt’s reverse coattails help Dems down-ballot.
But Dems should not underestimate Newt, nor overestimate Romney. If Newt shines compared to Obama in the last Presidential debate and the economy is trending downward, expect a close race. Gingrich has to be one of the most power-crazed presidential candidates ever, and he knows this is his last chance to win the white house. He will bring his ‘A’ game.
Romney, on the other hand, is not as good a debater as Newt, and his flip-flop baggage is extensive. Obama should best him in most of the debates. Romney’s best hope for beating Obama is a worsening economy.
I get the ‘Root for Newt’ mantra attributed to the Obama campaign. Axelrod and Plouffe, who have already conducted one impressive presidential campaign, are still among the smartest strategists in the Democratic Party. And the delicious prospect of a down-ballot disaster for the GOP under Newt sweetens the pot considerably. It’s hard to envision a similar rout for down-ballot Republicans if Romney is nominated, despite his significant vulnerabilities.
Both Republican front-runners can be beat, especially if favorable economic trends kick in. They are stuck with a largely discredited monomania about tax cuts for the rich being the panacea for all economic ills, and polls show the public isn’t buying it. The Obama campaign’s hopes for Gingrich’s nomination are understandable. But Dems should prepare for a fierce, close race regardless.

Timothy Noah’s “Poll: It Isn’t Both Sides’ Fault” at The New Republic provides a strong validation Of James Vega’s December 5 TDS post about the folly and fraud of ‘false equivalence’ in assigning blame to both political parties for legislative gridlock and economic decline. Citing a new Pew Center poll conducted 12/7-11, Noah explains in the nut graph:

…The really interesting finding is that the public does not accept the “objective” message spoon-fed by the press that both sides are equally at fault. Instead, it (accurately) assigns most of the blame to the Republican party. Forty percent say Republican leaders are more to blame, as against a mere 23 percent who say Democratic leaders are more to blame. A larger proportion blames the GOP than blame both parties (32 percent). And among independents, 38 percent say Republicans are more to blame, against 15 percent who say Democrats are. So much for the hack story line that partisanship and political games-playing is paralyzing Washington. Partisanship and political games-playing by Republicans is paralyzing Washington

It gets better:

Which party, Pew asked, is more extreme in its positions? Fifty-three percent say Republicans, against 33 percent who finger Democrats. (Only 1 percent says that neither side is more extreme.)
Which side is more willing to work with the other? Fifty-one percent say it’s the Democrats, against 25 percent who say Republicans.
Which side can better manage the government? Forty-one percent say the Democrats against 35 percent who say the Republicans.
Which side is more honest and ethical? Forty-five percent say the Democrats, against 28 percent who say the Republicans.

Noah goes on to cite polling data showing that even Republicans agree that their party is at more at fault. More and more it appears that the MSM’s false equivalency puppets and parrots have a very tough sell.

One of the conclusions you get from Jedediah Purdy’s Democracy post “The Roberts Court v. America” is that the Democrats were too hasty in confirming the current CJ and the other conservative justices.
Subtitled “How the Roberts Supreme Court is using the First Amendment to craft a radical, free-market jurisprudence,” Purdy paints a disturbing portrait of a court majority dedicated to gratifying wealthy elites at the expense of working people. Most Dems were generally aware of this, but Purdy’s report should heighten concern about the future of economic progress in America under a High Court dedicated to de-regulation. As Purdy summarizes the philosophy of the current High Court:

In the last few years, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have shown a new hostility toward laws that regulate the economy and try to limit the effects of economic power. They have declared a series of laws unconstitutional, most famously limits on corporate campaign spending (the Supreme Court) and a key part of Congress’s 2010 health-care reform act (among others the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta; the Supreme Court will decide the issue in the coming year)… and struck down other state laws that try to constrain the effect of wealth on elections. These decisions don’t just trim around the edges of regulation: They go to the heart of whether government can act to balance out private economic power in an era of growing economic inequality and insecurity. These decisions chime with some of the more troubling themes of the time. They fit well with the economics-minded idea that most of life is best seen as a marketplace, and with the right-wing mistrust of government that has metastasized into Tea Party contempt and anger.
Liberals have denounced many of these decisions, but they have not yet spelled out the larger pattern. What’s missing from the criticism is a picture of what these cases add up to: an identity for the Roberts Court as the judicial voice of the idea that nearly everything works best on market logic, that economic models of behavior capture most of what matters, and political, civic, and moral distinctions mostly amount to obscurantism and special pleading.

The author believes the current court is headed in the direction of the “Lochner era,” named for an emblematic case which in which the Supreme Court of 1905 launched an era of some 200 decisions bashing worker rights and undermining economic fairness to benefit the already-wealthy, laying the foundation for unfettered corporate abuse. “The new cases have different doctrinal logic, and the economy has changed vastly, but the bottom lines are eerily alike: giving constitutional protection to unequal economic power in the name of personal liberty.”
Purdy sketches the ideological underpinnings of the Roberts Court:

The Supreme Court’s several-pronged attack on the regulation of spending, selling, and buying reinforces one of the most persistent and pernicious intellectual mistakes of the time…the idea that markets are natural phenomena, arising from their own organic principles and free human action, while politics and lawmaking are artificial interferences with this natural activity. In fact, as sophisticated economists, lawyers, and others have always understood, markets are the products of law, which defines and enforces the ownership and exchanges that set the market in motion. A laissez-faire market arises from one kind of law, a more social-democratic market from another. There are things to say for and against both kinds of markets, and any real-life economy has complex blends of both elements–for instance, minimum-wage laws, bans on racial discrimination and prostitution, speed and weight limits for long-haul truckers, and so forth are all straightforward limits on laissez-faire market freedom. It is obscurantist to suggest that some version of the laissez-faire market is a natural baseline, and anything that departs from it needs special justification…

Of recent decisions by the Roberts majority, Purdy adds,

That is the spirit of the new cases. Taken to their limit, they would set aside the intellectual and political gains of decades of struggle in the twentieth century: the New Deal recognition that the country must take responsibility for shaping its own economy, and the decision to remove the old American romance with economic libertarianism from constitutional judging…The new jurisprudence shares some special features with the old–in particular, a meshing of constitutional principle with economic libertarianism that calls into question the authority of democratic government to shape markets and, above all, check economic power.

Regarding the upcoming deliberations on HCR, Purdy writes, “The most extreme scenario would begin with invalidating the 2010 Affordable Care Act, but, win or lose, the mere fact that there is a viable constitutional argument against the law is a sign of how far the new economic libertarianism has gone.” Regarding elections and spending, he writes “It is in this market-fixated climate that courts can declare that spending is speech, advertisement is argument, and the transfer of marketing data is a core concern of the First Amendment.”
President Obama was able to get Justices Sotomayor and Kagan confirmed. But now the Senate Republicans are about blocking all Obama court appointments. If the Republicans win, Dems should put Republican court nominees, and particularly their economic philosophy, through more intense scrutiny. One more free market ideologue on the court, and reforms like the minimum wage, health and safety regulation and all remaining elements of the social and economic safety net will all be endangered, if not shredded.
Of course, the term “Robert’s Court” somewhat disses the four liberal/moderate court justices, who may be in the majority on occasion. There is also an argument that one more reactionary Supreme Court Justice won’t make such a big difference. But a 6-3 High Court would prolong the rule of the ‘free’ market purists, potentially for decades longer than the current 5-4 conservative majority.
Progressives have been fairly vigilant in monitoring the records of Court nominees with respect to their views on abortion, gun control, Gay marriage, prayer in school and all of the social issues. But it’s clear that Dems have been too lax in giving conservative court nominees a free ride on their economic philosophies, which are proving hugely consequential to America’s future.
There’s lots more in Purdy’s article that Dems should read to better understand what’s at stake in the November elections. But if political moderates needed just one good reason to vote Democratic in 2012, Purdy’s got it.

A majority, 58 percent of Americans want Congress to enact the payroll tax reduction, with 35 percent wanting it to expire, according to a new Associated Press-GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications poll conducted 12/8-12. “Letting the payroll tax break expire would cost a family making $50,000 about $1,000…If an agreement is not reached by the end of the year, payroll taxes will jump on Jan. 1 from this year’s 4.2 percent back to their normal level of 6.2 percent,” explains Laurie Kellman in her AP report. It’s not just Dems who support the extension, she notes: “Republicans were evenly divided,” while “Conservatives supported an extension, 54 percent to the 42 percent who prefer to let the reduction expire.”
It must be done. Think of it as basic training for Democratic warriors, this exploratory journey via AmericanCrossroadsWatch.org through the rancid belly of the beast.
Paul Waldman’s “Is the GOP Base Willing to Lose in 2012?” explores the interesting question also raised by Ed Kilgore about whether the ‘true believers’ are OK with Obama winning re-election — provided they get control of the Republican Party.
You go, guy.
Dems have been saying all along that unemployment compensation benefits the entire economy, as well as the jobless. And a new study by Mark Zandi and Alan Binder flagged at Demos finds that “UI has been one of the most effective forms of stimulus…Each dollar spent on extended UI benefits produced $1.61 in economic activity and has helped to mitigate the worst effects of the economic down turn…According to study by the Economic Policy Institute, letting extended benefits expire as a result of the debt ceiling deal will take $70 billion out of the economy in 2012, reduce GDP by 0.4 percent, and result in 528,000 fewer jobs.”
There are serious questions that should be answered about Ron Paul’s racial attitudes (audio clip here), but at least he’s transparent about his reactionary views on Medicare.
On the racism issue, Michael Tomasky speculates at the Daily Beast about Paul’s share of the youth vote: “I wonder what these young and gender-transcendent and differently melanined people would make, for example, of the racism charges. There is debate on this point, but back during the 2008 campaign, The New Republic’s James Kirchick tracked down old copies (late 1980s and early 1990s) of a newsletter that went out to subscribers under Paul’s name. The sentences that appear in these documents are so astonishing that they’d have stood out in Alabama in 1960…The name of New York City should be changed to “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” or “Lazyopolis.” David Duke’s near-win in the 1990 Louisiana Senate primary was celebrated. Mountains of material about welfare cheats and animals and arming oneself for the coming race riot and so on.”
Good news in The Keystone State — Obama up 10 points since August.
Public Policy Polling also has welcome news for the white house: “PPP has polled Virginia four times in 2011 and has come to the same conclusion every time: Barack Obama just hasn’t slipped there to the extent he has nationally. That’s a finding with major, major implications for his reelection prospects because if he wins Virginia he’s probably going to win the Electoral College…and our polling in the state over the course of the year has certainly suggested he’s in a good position to do it. Right now we find Obama on positive ground in the state with 48% of voters approving of him to 47% who disapprove…in Virginia he has a very strong base behind him…Obama leads both Mitt Romney (48-42) and Newt Gingrich (50-43) by margins comparable to his 6 point victory over John McCain in 2008. He leads both of them with independents- Romney by 4 and Gingrich by 8. And between the two match ups he’s picking up as many Republicans as he’s losing Democrats, again something we just aren’t seeing in very many places.” (Full results, cross tabs here)
Check out these interesting maps of five possible paths to 270 electoral votes for Obama.
Massimo Calabresi reports at Time Swampland on “Texas Trifecta: Control of Presidency, Congress and Courts May Be at Stake in Redistricting Fight,” and he does it with way-cool, jazzy maps. In addition to four new congressional seats at stake, the fight over the legality of the redistricting plan threatens to delay the TX primary from Super Tuesday, (March 6) to May 29, “nearly three extra months of expensive and damaging intra-party attacks between GOP candidates.”

It’s not easy, being a Mighty Job-Creator, especially when Kevin Drum is on the case, challenging the conservatives’ central meme in his Alternet post, “Rich People DON’T Create Jobs: 6 Myths That Have to Be Killed for Our Economy to Live.”
John Sides has a reminder at The American Prospect about “More Hype about Political Independents.” Sides grouses about a new Third Way report about independents which has “No acknowledgment of the fact that most of them lean toward a party and tend to vote loyally for that party. Or that presidential candidates routinely lose independents but win elections (at least the popular vote). See Jimmy Carter, Al Gore in 2000, and George W. Bush in 2004…”
Alyssa Battistoni’s “5 Anti-Environment Policies Republicans Don’t Want You To Notice” at Mother Jones should be of interest to Dems looking for an edge with green voters.
Fredreka Schouten of USA TODAY Politics has an update on the Republican war on early voting and the resistance to it. As for the motivation, Schouten makes it clear enough: “Overall, 34% of voters in the 2008 general election cast ballots before Election Day, up from 22.2% four years earlier, according to data from the Associated Press and Edison Research…In Florida, 54% of African-American voters cast their ballots early in the 2008 general election, and blacks made up nearly a third of statewide turnout the Sunday before Election Day, when some black churches organized a “Get Your Souls to the Polls” voter drive…”
This looks like fun, flagged and plugged by Digby.
Give Steve Kornacki’s Salon.com post, “When Cooter Took on Newt” a read. Kornacki interviews Ben Jones, a two-term Democratic congressman/Dukes of Hazard actor who whipped Republican Pat Swindall and did battle with Gingrich, and got soundly trounced by redistricting more than anything else. Jones, one of the savvier Newt-watchers calls Gingrich “a great demagogue. He has the ability to fire people up and appeal to the worst in them…I’ve known presidents of the United States, and foreign potentates, and real big-shot movie producers and actors. Newt is the only one who I thought really considered himself to be an important world figure – a transformative sort of historical figure. I mean, he has that image of himself…If anything is ever going to galvanize the Democratic Party, which is somewhat dispirited at this point, it would be a Newt Gingrich candidacy.”
The New Republic staff has a round-up of establishment Republicans dumping on Newt (They forgot to include Peggy Noonan). Call me paranoid, but there is something about the timing of the GOP old guard attacks that smells a little, well, concerted. The assault on Newt has a desperate “save Romney” feel about it. The prudent wing of the GOP is clearly worried.
Nate Silver goes kinda long on “Jon Huntsman’s Path to Victory“. I don’t see it happening (Huntsman doesn’t bring enough crazy for the 2011 GOP), but an interesting read nonetheless.
Suzi Parker’s “2012 Political Online Ad Tsunami Coming” at US News Politics reports on a new development that could transform political advertising: “CampaignGrid, a Washington-based tech company, has figured out how to hyper-target any website a registered voter visits and drop in political ads aimed directly at the user.” They’ve got a data base of 135 million registered voters, and yes, it’s done with cookies.
At The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky ponders “Could Obama Be Headed for a Landslide?” Tomasky cites recent polls showing Obama narrowly beating Gingrich and Romney in SC and leading well outside the margin of error in FL, while Republican Governors of both states are tanking like leaden koi.
Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network also sees cause for Democratic optimism in his post, “A Year Out, The National Landscape Is Changing.” As Rosenberg notes, “President Obama is Stronger, Romney Weaker – President Obama is beating Mitt Romney in a direct head to head, 49% to 43%, up from 46%/44% in October. This puts Obama almost at 50, and at the same margin of victory as his landslide victory in 2008…Going deeper into the data there are many examples one can find of unexpected Obama strengths and surprising early Romney weakness. 64 percent say that Obama has performed better or just about as expected. On basic favorability, his number is net positive, 45/40. In all the measures about favorability and enthusiasm, Romney fares much worse than President Obama…”

In his New York Times opinion piece, “Let’s Not Talk About Inequality,” Thomas B. Edsall does a good job of tracing the change in public attitudes toward Republican economic policies in the wake of the 2008 meltdown.
Edsall quotes Gingrich’s and Romney’s pious pronouncements about workers needing to “become more employable” (Newt) and achieving “success and rewards through hard work” (Mitch), which is a little hard to digest, coming from a guy who gets six figures for a speech and another who made his fortune in hedge funds. This in “an American economy sharply skewed towards the affluent, with rising inequality, a dwindling middle class and the persistence of long-term unemployment.”
Not all Republicans are quite so clueless. Edsall quotes GOP framing guru Frank Luntz, “I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort” because “they’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” Edsalll also quotes Democratic strategist Geoff Garin, who explains “…The Republican/Tea Party narrative about the economy has been superseded by a different narrative – one that emphasizes the need to address the growing gap between those at the very top of the economic ladder and the rest of the country.”
Garin cites poll data indicating stronger support for “a set of policies generally favored by Democrats calling for the elimination of tax breaks for the rich and tougher regulation of major banks and corporations” and that the public believes the federal government should “pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans.” He also cites polling data spelling big trouble for the GOP:

The job ratings of Republicans in Congress have tanked at 74 percent negative to 19 percent favorable, dropping more steeply than Obama’s, which are 51 negative-44 positive. But the Post survey also found that congressional Republicans run neck and neck with the president when respondents are asked “who would you trust to do a better job” on handling the economy (42-42) and creating jobs (40-40). On an issue on which the public traditionally favors Democrats by wide margins, “protecting the middle class,” Obama held only a 45-41 advantage over congressional Republicans.

Republicans are scrambling to figure out how to blame Democrats for worsening inequality, explains Edsall. But “The issue of inequality is inherently dangerous for Republicans who are viewed by many as the party of the upper class.” Further,

An Oct. 19-24 CBS/New York Times poll asked respondents whether the policies of the Obama administration and the policies of Republicans in Congress favor the rich, the middle class, the poor or treat everyone equally. Just 12 percent said Obama favors the rich, while 69 percent said Republicans in Congress favor the rich.

And when Ryan’s budget scheme is explained to voters, they “are horrified by it,” according to Garin. Edsall marvels at the GOP’s blindness in making it possible for their two front runners to get bogged down in arguments about how much more to give the wealthy while weakening Medicare benefits for the middle class — “in a climate of stark economic adversity for millions of unemployed Americans.”
Edsall is right. Democrats could not have hoped for a more self-destructive scenario in the Republican camp. If Democrats can project a credible message that offers hope for a better future for middle class voters in the months ahead, the optimism that has begun to emerge in Democratic circles will be justified.

The must-read of the day has to be “Pssst … Wanna Buy a Law?: When a company needs a state bill passed, the American Legislative Exchange Council can get it done” by Brendan Greely and Alison Fitzgerald at Businessweek. Much of the article focuses on the organization’s conniving to control internet access for it’s member’s benefit in LaFayette, LA. But the article also reveals quite a lot about ALEC’s power, pro-corporate and pro-Republican biases, secrecy and unsavory influence on legislators, including:

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit based in Washington, brings together state legislators, companies, and advocacy groups to shape “model legislation.” The legislators then take these models back to their own states. About 1,000 times a year, according to ALEC, a state legislator introduces a bill from its library of more than 800 models. About 200 times a year, one of them becomes law. The council, in essence, makes national policy, state by state.
ALEC’s online library contains model bills that tighten voter identification requirements, making it harder for students, the elderly, and the poor to vote. Such bills have shown up in 34 states. According to NPR, the Arizona bill that permits police to detain suspected illegal immigrants started as ALEC model legislation. Similar bills have passed in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and Utah, and have been introduced in 17 other states. Legislators in Oregon, Washington, Montana, New Hampshire, and New Mexico have sponsored bills with identical ALEC language requiring states to withdraw from regional agreements on CO2 emissions. Sound a national trend among state legislators, and often you will find at the bottom of your plumb line a bill that looks like something that has passed through the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Paul Weyrich started the council in 1973 with a group of Republican state legislators. Weyrich also founded the Heritage Foundation and coined the phrase “moral majority.” More than 2,000 state lawmakers belong to ALEC; each pays $50 in yearly dues. A look at former members now on the national stage suggests the organization is a farm team for Republicans with ambition. There are 92 ALEC alumni serving in the U.S. House, 87 of them Republicans. In the Senate, eight Republicans and one Democrat are ALEC alumni, according to information found on ALEC’s website in April that has since been removed. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a Madison (Wis.) research group, four sitting governors were members, including John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin…ALEC is open and helpful about some parts of its work and quiet and evasive about others. It tends to withhold information that might shed light on its corporate members, the ones that pay almost 99 percent of the council’s $7 million budget.

In addition to the aforementioned voter suppression and anti-pollution control legislation, ALEC champions a range of bills to protect corporations from regulations, as the authors explain:

The broader ALEC library includes bills that limit how much a parent company might have to pay for asbestos-related injuries or illness caused by a company it acquired, another that bans cities and counties from requiring restaurants to post nutrition information or food ingredients, and a bill that would shift the tobacco tax burden from big cigarette makers such as Altria Group (MO) to smaller chewing tobacco companies…
None of this is illegal. And it’s effective. It allows companies to work directly with legislators from many states, rather than having to lobby in each state individually to get language into a bill. ALEC says its mission is to help state legislators collaborate around the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty. It does this, and something else, too. It offers companies substantial benefits that seem to have little to do with ideology. Corporations drop bills off at one end, and they come out the other, stamped with the imprimatur of a nonprofit, “nonpartisan” group of state legislators. Among other things, ALEC is a bill laundry.

Until recently, ALEC has largely escaped public scrutiny, partly because the MSM generally does a lousy job of reporting on state legislation. But ALEC’s influence is more potent than ever, especially after the 2010 elections:

…Republicans didn’t just flip the House in November 2010. They also won from Democrats 675 state legislative seats and now control both chambers in 26 states, up from 14 before the election. ALEC membership has grown by 25 percent this year. Sitting out there are new state legislators, and they’re looking for something to do in the fall.
…Membership in ALEC, among both legislators and companies, has increased. In its member brochure for the 2011 annual meeting, ALEC listed 82 companies as sponsors, almost double the 42 sponsors from 2010. Those companies included Altria, BlueCross and BlueShield, and BP America (BP), all $50,000 chairman-level sponsors, according to ALEC’s website.

Equally disturbing is the lack of transparency for such an influential organization. As Fitzgerald and Greely note,

…When bloggers from a liberal website, ThinkProgress, tried to photograph the panels, they were hustled out of the conference by security guards. Another blogger from the website AlterNet was denied credentials and then kicked out of the hotel’s public lobby two days in a row for tweeting the names of ALEC members who passed by him.

There is a lot more worth reading in their article. Democrats are understandably focused on the GOP primary circus and the doings in congress and the white house, which is where nearly all the political media coverage is trained. But it’s clearly time for Democrats to pay more attention to what is happening in America’s state legislatures under the lengthening shadow of ALEC’s manipulation.

There are always good reasons to be skeptical about articles arguing that current presidents should emulate the examples of previous presidents. Such articles have no doubt been appearing since the first Adams administration. Often, there is some merit in the argument, but the adequacy of the suggested template for addressing current struggles is almost always exaggerated.
A good example of the phenomenon is Joseph Califano, Jr.’s WaPo op-ed “What Obama Can Learn from LBJ,” in which LBJ’s chief assistant for domestic affairs(1965-69) and President Carter’s HEW Secretary (1977-79) makes the case:

…As political and private-sector leaders nationwide realize that an engaged president is key to progress, many wish that Barack Obama was more like Lyndon B. Johnson. The refrain of many Democrats — and some Republicans — is that at least with LBJ, Washington worked and we got something done….Obama will never be like Johnson, but LBJ’s presidency offers lessons that could help him win a second term…

Califano reviews the impressive legislative accomplishments of LBJ’s Administration, which were truly extraordinary, a litany which includes landmark civil rights bills, Medicare, Medicaid, anti-poverty initiatives and other historic reforms. Arguably, no other president achieved so much without being elected to a second term.
But Califano complains that “LBJ spent enough time in the House and Senate and working with presidents to understand that Washington functions best with strong and involved presidential leadership. Obama does not seem to get that.” What Califano doesn’t seem to get here is that Obama simply didn’t have the time to forge the productive relationships that LBJ developed over many years. It’s crazy to suggest that he has the same leverage as did LBJ, who certainly earned the sobriquet “Master of the Senate” long before he assumed the Presidency.
I think there is an even bigger blind spot in Califano’s argument — his assumption, against all evidence, that today’s Republicans are as amenable to compromise as were the GOP leaders of Johnson’s time. Califano points out that Republicans could be pretty hard-assed back then. But there are no Dirksens or Javitzes or Margaret Chase Smiths around today. Gypsy Moths and even reasonable Republican leaders in congress have been hounded into near-extinction. The few that are left are still cringing in dark corners, until the tea party finds its rightful place on the dung heap of history. Only then will we again see Republicans who are willing to negotiate in good faith. Only then will real bipartisanship become possible again.
Moreover, President Obama has bent over backwards to compromise with Republicans to no avail whatsoever. I agree with those who argue that he has already given away too much of the store. But I’m glad that he now seems ready to do battle.
Despite Califano’s blind spot, I think he has a good point that President Obama could channel a little of LBJ’s hard-ball negotiation style, as well as FDR’s fighting spirit. But every president has had their strengths and weaknesses, LBJ included (Vietnam, ‘domino theory’). The challenge is to emulate the strengths when possible, but not buy into the whole template.