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.

Raven Clabough has a round-up at the right-wing rag, The New American arguing that Dem leaders are almost giddy at the prospect of Newt getting the GOP nod. Sen. Harkin says a Newt nomination would be “heaven-sent.” Rep. Barney Frank: “I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican Party.” Clabough also has an interesting report on Newt’s unhinged self-image, e.g.: “I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it” and “I am now a famous person. I represent real power.” According to Clabough, he has also described himself as an “advocate of civilization, definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization, leader of the civilizing sources.”
Jordan Michael Smith mulls over Newt’s foreign policy at Salon, and concludes it is characterized by “violent grandiosity, faux intellectualism and missionary zeal,” which sounds a lot like Bush II’s eight years of disaster.
At Bloomberg.com Seth Stern and Heidi Przybyla have a refresher course “Gingrich House Ethics Complaint Echoes in Criticism Lodged Today.” Contrary to Newt’s assertion that he was a victim of partisanship, the authors note “the House voted 395-28 to approve a settlement that concluded Gingrich twice misled the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct’s investigative subcommittee and required a $300,000 payment to recover some of the probe’s costs…In the final tally, 196 Republicans supported the rebuke of their own speaker, while 198 Democrats backed it. Twenty-six Republicans and two Democrats opposed it.”
Sure looks like Mitch is scared of the peeps.
Steven Rosenfeld makes the case at Alternet that the “GOP Can’t Erase Dems From Political Map,” despite their big wins in 2010. “Regardless of how miserable the 2010 election was for Democrats – losing a US House majority and the GOP gaining 63 seats, as well as winning majorities in 20 state legislative chambers and 16 governor’s races – it does not appear that the GOP will be able to draw enough new political lines to lock down Democrats for a decade, as many party activist had hoped.”
“Caitlan Halligan Lost, and So Did You” is the title of a post at The Atlantic by award-winning legal commentator Andrew Cohen, concerning the GOP’s obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of a legal “superstar,” Caitlan Halligan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Says Cohen: “…Republican senators now have lowered the standard for what constitutes “extraordinary circumstances”…that would warrant rejection. In Halligan’s case, The Washington Post reported, it was her participation in a lawsuit against gun manufacturers that evidently did her in. Either that or it was her position on detainee rights, which is consistent with Supreme Court precedent (but not current Senate politics).”
Lest Dems get too giddy, Rhodes Cook cautions at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “2012 Republican Race: The Field May Not Be Closed,” since the GOP primary calendar is not as front-loaded as in years past.
Elizabeth Warren is up 7 points, 49-42, over Sen. Scott Brown in a new University of Massachusetts at Lowell/Boston Herald poll — “a 10-point swing in Warren’s favor in less than two months,” according to Joe Battenfeld’s Boston Herald report on the poll.
Do not bet the ranch on any of this making much of a difference.
In his Common Dreams post, “Words That Don’t Work,” George Lakoff warns progressives to avoid getting hustled by a Frank Luntz’s bait. Says Lakoff: “There is a basic truth about framing. If you accept the other guy’s frame, you lose…To attack “capitalism” in this [Luntz’s] frame is to accept “socialism.” Conservatives are trying to cast Progressives, who mostly have businesses or work for businesses or are looking for good business jobs, as socialists. If you take the Luntz bait, you will be sucked into sounding like a socialist. Whatever one thinks of socialism, most Americans falsely identify it with communism, and will reject it out of hand.”
Steven Shepard reports at Hotline on Call that “Gallup Poll Shows Narrowing Enthusiasm Gap.” As Shepard explains: “Forty-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared to 44 percent who say they are less enthusiastic. In a mid-September survey, 58 percent of Republicans were more enthusiastic, while just 30 percent said they were less enthusiastic.”

Peter Nicholas of the L.A. Times D.C. Bureau writes on the importance of President Obama’s Pennsylvania campaign. “It’s too early to say the president is on the ropes,” writes Nicholas. “But there’s no question that his approval ratings have fallen, here as elsewhere. In a Quinnipiac poll last month, 44% of those surveyed said they approved of Obama’s performance in office. The same poll showed him in a dead heat statewide when matched against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney…Registered Democrats still far outnumber Republicans, but the GOP has narrowed the gap by 125,000 since the 2008 election.”
Marc Pitzke’s “The Republicans’ Farcical Candidates: A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses” at Spiegel Online International provides a capsule description of the GOP presidential field in the title. Says Pitzke, “They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They’ve shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe. …What a nice club that is. A club of liars, cheaters, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites and ignoramuses. “A starting point for a chronicle of American decline,” was how David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, described the current Republican race.”
Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul ain’t having it — something about maintaining a semblance of, ahem, dignity — but the rest of the GOP prez aspirants are lining up to kiss the ring of The Donald, reports WaPo’s Aaron Blake.
Clown allusions are all over the blogosphere and the MSM, as the stunned journalistic community struggles to describe the GOP circus. Paul Krugman’s “Send in the Clueless” sheds a little light on the surreal mess the Republicans have made of their pre-primary season: “Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year…You also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security…So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or totally clueless…that’s why the Republican primary has taken the form it has, in which a candidate nobody likes and nobody trusts has faced a series of clueless challengers, each of whom has briefly soared before imploding under the pressure of his or her own cluelessness.”
Not to pile on with the cluelessness theme, but today Romney will proudly welcome the much-coveted Dan Quayle endorsement, according to USA Today On Politics.
Nonetheless, T. W. Farnam reports at Washington Post Politics that 42 billionaires have contributed to Romney’s campaign, and adds “Although donors are limited to giving no more than $5,000 directly to a campaign, new rules allow them to give to “super PACs” that run independent ads supporting the candidates. Donations to super PACs are not limited, so billionaires can donate as much as they want.”
At CNN Politics, Julian Zelizer mulls over “How Democrats could win with a ‘fairness’ campaign.” Zelizer explains: “With President Obama’s low approval ratings, Democratic candidates won’t want to focus on his record. With the economy likely to still be in laggard condition, Democrats won’t be able to boast that it’s morning in America. With economic concerns front and center for most Americans, Democrats won’t be able to make much headway with talk about the foreign policy successes of this administration…This doesn’t leave candidates with many options. Although some could focus on local issues, they will be under pressure to develop a national theme since Republican candidates will be talking critically about Obama.The most potent theme that the party has to offer is the issue of fairness. Democrats can claim that as Americans struggle to survive in this economy, the party has championed policies that aim to soften the blows voters are suffering and to provide support for the middle class in hard times.”
Mark Schmitt’s “Why Republicans Don’t Mind Newt’s Brazen Flip-Flops” at The New Republic ponders the difference between Mitt’s and Newt’s flip-floppage: “Romney’s flips are tortured and self-conscious, shrouded in nuance and implausible stretches to reconcile two, three, or more positions…Gingrich, on the other hand, makes no such attempt to reconcile his positions…Gingrich seems able to live in an eternal present, in which the statements and actions of each moment are unconnected to anything before or after.”
Demos has a post, “Voter Registration for New Americans: New USCIS Guidance on Voter Registration at Naturalization Ceremonies,” that should be of keen interest to Democrats who want to accelerate naturalization — and voter participation — of Latinos in the U.S. The crux: “In October of 2011, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) revised its guidelines regarding the provision of voter registration applications at naturalization ceremonies; and for the first time ever, the USCIS has committed to providing the opportunity to apply to register at every single administrative naturalization ceremony in the country.”
U.S. News Politics has a good update on the campaign for Jewish support. The gist: “Such attention is all being paid in recognition that Jewish voters, though comprising only 2 percent of the electorate nationwide, are an important part of Obama’s base and could make the difference in battleground states including Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada in a close election. Moreover, the Jewish community is an important source of donations, and Obama campaign supporters want to maintain that support as much as Republicans want to chip away at it.”
Things are looking up for Democratic Senate candidates, say Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley, writing in Sabato’s Crystal Ball. The authors’ updated ratings cite improved prospects for Dems running for U.S. Senate in six Senate Races: AZ; FL; MA; MN; NJ and WV. “While we still favor Republicans to take the four seats they need to win control of the upper chamber, we can also see a conceivable if unlikely path for the Democrats to retain control if the breaks go their way, especially if President Obama picks up steam in his reelection bid.” Their report includes state by state analyses of all Senate races.

No one should get euphoric about the latest unemployment rate snapshot of 8.6 percent despite the drop, because it’s still too high and there are all kinds of stipulations and cautionary notes that come with it. Still, as this chart, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, (created by Matt McDonald at Hamilton Place Strategies and posted by WaPo’s Chris Cillizza) indicates, the unemployment trend line has improved significantly overall during the last year.
With unemployment figures, the trend is more important than a snapshot. As Cillizza wrote back in April,

Economists spend their lives poring over numbers that provide detailed information about how and whether the economy is growing. Average people, on the other hand, tend to look at a single number to assess the economy’s relative health: the unemployment rate.
And, it’s not even the exact number that most people fixate on. It’s the trend line. Are things getting marginally better, marginally worse or staying about the same?
That trend line is the single most telling image of how the American public feels — and how they are likely to vote on — the economy heading into the 2012 election….But, a downward trend line on the unemployment rate — if not a drastic reduction in the actual number — will allow the President to make the case that the economic policies he put into place over his first term in office are working and, therefore, he needs a second term to make things even better.
One need only to look as far as Ronald Reagan for evidence of the power of the economic trend line…In March 1983, the unemployment rate stood at 10.3 percent. It steadily declined over the intervening 20 months and in October 1984 it stood at 7.3 percent….While a 7.3 percent unemployment rate was no one’s economic dream scenario, the movement was in Reagan’s direction. And voters reacted accordingly — handing him a 49-state re-election victory over Walter Mondale.

There’s something about simple charts like the one above that can convey a sense of optimism when words describing the same thing fail to do the job. With a little luck, President Obama will have an impressive chart to show the public next October. It’s still early for high-fives, but Dems can be hopeful.

Kos gives due cred to OWS. “Until Tuesday, Republicans had been lukewarm on extending President Barack Obama’s payroll tax cut for workers…In the world where Occupy had never happened, Republicans would’ve held these tax cuts hostage without suffering any ill repercussions…In this world, Occupy has thrust income inequality to the forefront of the political debate — so much so that typically immovable Republicans are afraid to feed that narrative. In other words, a ragtag bunch of hippies with supposedly no demands have done what Democrats have never been able to do — get Republicans to cry ‘uncle’.”
For an interesting ‘down-home’ regional take on OWS, read “Tale of a Southern ‘Occupy’: Nashville aims to bridge political divides” by MSNBC’s Miranda Leitsinger. As one Occupy Nashville protester puts it in Leitsinger’s article, “This is a place where if people were really going to come together and form that ‘purple’ (combination of blue and red political affiliations) that everybody lusts for, it’s going to probably happen in this camp.” Says another, “We kind of pride ourselves on being a common denominator movement.”
George LaKoff has a different idea at HuffPo, where he urges OWS to “occupy elections” as the next step for the protest movement: “Whatever Occupiers may think of the Democrats, they can gain power within the Democratic Party and hence in election contests all over America. All they have to do is join Democratic Clubs, stick to their values, speak out very loudly, and work in campaigns for candidates at every level who agree with their values.”
Kyle Trygstad has a Roll Call Politics profile of the highly-regarded veteran Democratic Ad-maker Joe Slade White.
Joanne Boyer has a disturbing post up at OpEd news.com, “Is Your Vote Really Being Counted?,” which takes a suspicious look at electronic voting systems in the U.S. Boyer quotes voting technology expert Brad Friedman, who explains, “You now have one person, who with a few keystrokes on a computer can flip the results of an entire election with no possibility of ever being detected. It’s just that easy…we’ve seen scientific studies in state after state show how easy these voting systems are manipulated.”
If you’ve ever wondered what evidence there is that presidential candidate travel has a measurable influence on campaigns, John Sides has the answer at Nate Silver’s Five Thirty Eight blog.
More bad news for GOP union-busters, and especially the more clueless Republican presidential candidates who have popped off on the topic in NH. As John Nichols reports in The Nation: “On Wednesday, after months of wrangling over the issue, the New Hampshire House of Representatives killed a plan promoted by the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to make New Hampshire a so-called “right-to-work” state. The law was blocked because not just Democrats but almost two dozen Republicans rejected the counsel of presidential candidate Perry — who addressed the legislature Wednesday morning — and voted with organized labor and community groups that rallied to defend collective-bargaining rights.”
At Polls and Votes, poll analyst Charles Franklin charts the fall and rise of Newt Gingrich in light of his unique ‘recognition’ factor and “steady progress, rather than a sudden bounce.”
At HuffPost Pollster, Mark Blumenthal looks at recent Quinnipiac and YouGov polls to explain why “Newt Gingrich Likely To See Poll Bump Should Herman Cain Exit Race.”
I believe this. But I also believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
CNN Politics’ Jessica Yellin and Ted Metzger take a look “Inside Obama’s re-election math” and his campaign in Pennsylvania in particular. There are routes to 270 without the Keystone State, say the authors. But it’s hard to see any of them materializing if Obama can’t take PA, with it’s bellwether demographics.
Lots of buzz out on the internets about Ron Paul’s attack ad targeting Newt. But it strikes me as dingy, melodramatic and lacking humor, even from a Republican point of view — not unlike Paul himself. I think Dems can do much better, when the right time for it comes, which would be after Newt’s bull-in-the-china shop act plays out, Romney’s coiffure has gotten all frizzed and his party has formed a perfect circular firing squad.

The sudden retirement announcement of Rep. Barney Frank provides an instructive case study in the importance of Democrats paying more attention to the redistricting process. If an influential Democratic congressman in the most Democratic of states can be forced out, something is very wrong.
True, Massachusetts is just one state, and Dems have shown some strategic prowess in redistricting elsewhere, e.g. Texas, even though the GOP runs the show there. Frank’s departure could be chalked off to an unusual situation. But it’s nonetheless disturbing that one of the House’s sharpest critics of Republican policies can be bounced because of lousy redistricting — by his own party.
Perhaps the best inside skinny about the Frank debacle so far would be “Frank says new voting map edged him out” by the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser and Christopher Rowland:

…US Representative Barney Frank yesterday accused Beacon Hill lawmakers of drawing the new congressional map in a way that shortchanged him in favor of fellow congressmen Edward J. Markey and Stephen F. Lynch. Had they done otherwise, said Frank, he might have run again.
“Markey and Lynch were protected, and the rest of us got what they didn’t want,” he said. Losing the chance to pick up some choice suburban towns for his district, Frank said, retirement became a more attractive option.
On redistricting, Frank said he spoke with legislative leaders at the State House several weeks ago about the new lines for the Fourth Congressional District, to which he was first elected in 1980. They wanted him to take a reshaped district grounded in Southern Massachusetts, centered away from his base of Newton and Brookline. He rejected that idea, he said, but still ended up with a district that “unpleasantly surprised” him.

Maybe the calculus was that Frank had a better chance of winning in a weakened district than did Markey and Lynch. In any case, Frank saw it as a loser, and he knows these districts as good as anyone. As Frank explains:

Frank asserted that Markey, with a suburban district that now extends west to Framingham and Ashland, and Lynch, from South Boston to the South Shore then west to Dedham, were given good districts. Several others — including himself; William R. Keating of Quincy; John Tierney of Salem; and Niki Tsongas of Lowell — got a bad deal, Frank said, even though those districts are still considered by many as safe Democratic seats.
“I talked to Ed Markey, and frankly I was a little disappointed there,” said Frank. “I think Ed had some influence with them, but it was spent mostly on his own district…”There was stuff that Eddie got that, if I could have shared some with Eddie, it would have been a better district.”…When asked whether he would have run for another term had his district not been altered as significantly, Frank said, “If the district had been substantially similar, I would have felt obligated to run again.”

Markey responded that “independent analysts are concluding that all nine are safe Democratic seats,” and State Rep. Michael Moran, House chairman of the redistricting committee agreed with Markey. But obviously Frank strongly disagrees.
There are always tough calls to make in redistricting and yes, the key decisions are supposed to be nonpartisan and not favoring incumbents. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bay State’s most influential Democratic congressman and one of the Democratic party’s toughest war horses deserved more consideration in the redistricting process. Hard to imagine Republicans making the same mistake.
Massachusetts should have one of the best Democratic Party organizations, one that Democratic state parties can model to good advantage. For now, however, they will have to look elsewhere.

WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. has explains why it would be folly for moderates to create “a centrist third party” to challenge for the presidency next year. “We need moderation all right, but a moderate third party is the one way to guarantee we won’t get it. If moderates really want to move the conversation to the center, they should devote their energies to confronting those who are blocking the way. And at this moment, the obstruction is coming from a radicalized right.”
Brad Knickerbocker reports at the Monitor on “Ron Paul’s strategy for winning: Independent and cross-over voters,” an instructive read for Dems who want to initiate some preparation for the possibility of a third party challenge.
Gerald F. Seib has a Wall St. Journal article, “GOP Hopes to Keep 2012 Edge in Voter Intensity,” noting that “…Republican intensity seems to be a kind of negative intensity: GOP supporters appear a lot more fired up about voting against Mr. Obama than they are about voting for any of his potential Republican foes…Still, the numbers represent a big warning sign for Democrats.”
At Forbes, Loren Thompson discusses a tough challenge for the President and Dems, “Why Defense Cuts Could Doom Obama’s Re-election Bid.” Says Thompson: “There aren’t many sectors left in the U.S. economy where old-line industrial unions still have as much presence as defense. And there aren’t many institutions where retirees and dependents rely more heavily on federal funds than the armed forces. Such groups are usually considered core components of the Democratic base, but when they are associated with the military they seem to get ignored in White House political calculations. If Obama’s political team doesn’t wake up soon, these groups will be more inclined to vote Republican in 2012 — potentially denying Democrats the margin of victory needed to carry swing states essential to the president’s reelection.”
The Nation’s John Nichols has an update on the petition drive to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — more than 300K signatures — more than half of the required signatures (540K) — after only two weeks, with a disproportionately large percentage coming from rural areas, where Walker ran well last year.
Republican strategist Javier Ortiz describes President Obama’s lead in The Hill’s Congress Blog: “…Polling conducted for Univision, the largest and most influential news outlet among Hispanics, reported President Obama experiencing a huge lead among Latino voters,” with larger than 2-1 margins against Cain, Perry and Romney, according to Univision.
And apparently Newt Gingrich isn’t exactly poster-boy for a compassionate immigration policy after all, as Ginger Gibson reports at Politico.
Greg Sargent comments on Thomas B. Edsall’s buzz-generating NYT op-ed, arguing that Dems have decided on a 2012 strategy that bi-passes the white working class. Says Sargent: “My read: Obama’s team knows that he is unlikely to win back blue collar whites in the numbers that he needs, and they are looking at ways to offset that problem…But I don’t see any evidence that the Obama team is writing off those voters as permanently lost. They are hoping to compete aggressively for those voters and for college educated whites, and are pursuing multiple routes to 270.”
Republican Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback shows how to turn a throw-away insult from a high-schooler into a widely-publicized three day story reflecting poorly on him, forcing his apology. A.P.’s Bill Draper has the story here.
Libby Copeland reports at Slate.com on “How To Hit a Woman: The new anti-Elizabeth Warren ad, and how political attack ads differ when the target is female,” an interesting look at the psychology behind GOP attacks vs. women candidates in recent years.
Also at Slate, Christopher Hitchens believes the GOP presidential candidate field may actually be benefiting from it’s endless gaffes, which help to paint a cumulative portrait of regular guy incompetence many find reassuring. Sort of a dog whistle to knuckle-headed voters.

It’s good to see the DNC is playing hardball in its new political ads, most notably “Mitt v. Mitt: The Story of Two Men Trapped in One Body.” The ad below is tough and creative, and it should get lots of play. We can be sure that the Romney campaign is dithering about how to respond to it.

I gather the strategy behind the ad is that Mitt Romney is the GOP’s most formidable opponent for President Obama, and weakening him now could help one of the more vulnerable Republican candidates get the GOP nod, thereby improving Obama’s reelection prospects. The strategy is a bit risky in any case. The GOP has other candidates who are electable in a declining economy, despite the clown show of recent months.
No doubt some would argue that its a little early for Dems to be spending money attacking a GOP presidential nominee, especially one who seems stuck in the low twenties in polls of the GOP presidential field. Of course it’s a bit of a crap shoot, since no one can predict the twists and turns in the race ahead.
But the Republican attack ads against President Obama are already rolling and they should be answered, and not with defensive whining along the lines of “they distorted my record,” which is always a loser. Dems have to launch attack ads now, and Romney is the obvious individual target. If the ads help Romney’s opponents and lead to further internecine polarization in the GOP, that’s a plus for Dems.
Yet, congressional Republicans are now at an historic low in approval ratings. Dems should also craft some equally-clever ads that target the GOP as the institutional guardian of extreme wealth at the expense of the middle class. Occupy Wall St. has helped make economic injustice a front page issue for the first time, but the MSM is still mired in false equivalence in assigning blame for economic decline. A strong Democratic ad campaign to correct the false equivalence meme can only help.
There’s no evidence that ads are the pivotal element in political campaigns. Any number of other factors, like economic trends, candidate debates and GOTV can be much more important in determining political outcomes. But ads are a significant messaging tool, and Dems have an important message to amplify — that only one political party has the interests of working people at heart, while the other seems wholly dedicated toward protecting the rich from paying a fair share of taxes.

Thomas B. Edsall’s op-ed, “The Future of the Obama Coalition” in the Sunday New York Times has opened up heated discussions about what Dems should now do about the white working class in terms of the presidential election. Edsall believes that Democratic “operatives” have made their decision:

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

Edsall spotlights what he believes to be the changing strategic orientation of TDS co-editors Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira to bolster his argument:

It is instructive to trace the evolution of a political strategy based on securing this coalition in the writings and comments, over time, of such Democratic analysts as Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira. Both men were initially determined to win back the white working-class majority, but both currently advocate a revised Democratic alliance in which whites without college degrees are effectively replaced by well-educated socially liberal whites in alliance with the growing ranks of less affluent minority voters, especially Hispanics.
The 2012 approach treats white voters without college degrees as an unattainable cohort. The Democratic goal with these voters is to keep Republican winning margins to manageable levels, in the 12 to 15 percent range, as opposed to the 30-point margin of 2010 — a level at which even solid wins among minorities and other constituencies are not enough to produce Democratic victories.

Noting a shift in the support of white workers from progressive to conservative parties, not just in the U.S., but in industrialized nations in general, Edsall says the goal is now to cut white worker support of Republicans, rather than try to win them for the Democratic nominee. “In order to be re-elected,” writes Edsall, “President Obama must keep his losses among white college graduates to the 4-point margin of 2008 (47-51). Why? Otherwise he will not be able to survive a repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63-33.”
Edsall cites a recent memo by Greenberg “that makes no mention of the white working class,” describing instead a “new progressive coalition” made up of “young people, Hispanics, unmarried women, and affluent suburbanites.” He cites Greenberg’s doubts about winning back the ‘Reagan Democrats,’ a concern he and Teixeira both shared as a central priority in the 1990s.
But Edsall appears to be overstating his point about the memo, a section of which says:

Non-college voters across the groups respond in particular to evidence of
strength and conviction. The white non-college-educated voters in these groups
were particularly fed-up with politics altogether. They now say ― “it does not matter
who wins,” even as some are attracted to conservative leaders who show
strong convictions. Re-engaging them will be a difficult project, but it is certainly
possible. More than any other group, these voters are re-engaged when leaders
show strong conviction and say, ―”I’m ready for him to get in there and kick some
butt.”

Certainly many in the white working-class are increasingly clear that the GOP has little to offer, and, for them a vote for Obama is not out of the question, given the hard-to-justify alternatives. The trick is turning them out.
Edsall nonetheless gives the revised strategy, which was successful in ’06 and ’08, “a 50-50 chance in 2012” and says it’s now all about focusing on states like VA, CO and NH, with their “high percentages of college educated voters.” He lays out two basic scenarios:

One outcome could be a stronger party of the left in national and local elections. An alternate outcome could be exacerbated intra-party conflict between whites, blacks and Hispanics — populations frequently marked by diverging material interests…

The Republicans have unity problems of their own. But Edsall notes that the GOP is more than eager to exploit the fragile tension points of such a new Democratic coalition. Indeed, this may be why most of the GOP presidential candidates (Newt and Perry excepted) are so hot for unbridled immigrant-bashing. But, if that and tax cuts are all they have to offer in terms of economic benefit to white workers a year from now, the GOP may have a tougher sell than President Obama.