There’s been a lot of discussion in Democratic circles lately about what Dems can do with the fact that Republicans clearly want the economic recovery to fail, at least until the November ’12 elections. Of course, the smarter Republicans deny it, while others like Rush Limbaugh have said it plain.
Wanting the economy to fail is not only unpatriotic; it’s also callously self-serving on a purely human level. it’s a sick political party that will let millions of Americans suffer so it can gain electoral advantage. The question is, how can Democrats turn the GOP’s obstruction of the recovery against them?.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi may have come up with an effective way to address Republican obstructionism. In an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Pelosi explained, “When the … unemployment rate is high, it’s hard for the incumbent to win. I remind you though, we’re not the incumbent. The Republicans are the incumbent.”
Some might say it’s a tough sell, arguing that Republicans are “the incumbent” because they control the House of Representatives, when Dems are a majority of the Senate and hold the white house. But Republicans are exercising functional veto power by obstructing any bipartisan reforms.
The TDS bumper sticker, GOP=Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis is even more painfully true today than it was when we first made it available.
But Pelosi is right that the Republicans are the “incumbents” in the sense that they are the force that is preventing congressional action on needed legislative reforms. The House Republicans represent the status quo that is obstructing public service employment, infrastructure renewal, restrictions on outsourcing jobs and increased tax revenues from multi-millionaires and corporations that are awash in exorbitant profits. They exercise a knee-jerk veto power on all progressive economic reforms that could put people to work and balance the budget. For a good graphic representation of their strategy, see here.
So maybe dubbing the GOP as “the real incumbents” could be an effective meme that might make some of the more thoughtful swing voters pause before blaming Dems for inaction on needed reforms to expand employment. Dems must have a soundbite-sized meme to capture the GOP’s obstructionist opposition to needed economic reforms, and Pelosi’s point is a good one.

Jon Huntsman announced his campaign for the presidency today, which should enliven the campaign for the GOP nomination and possibly set the stage for deepening ideological divisions within his party.
Matt Bai’s portrait of Huntsman in the Sunday New York Times magazine will not cause a lot of concern in the Obama campaign. True, Huntsman won his re-election (Utah governorship) with 78 percent of the vote and Obama ’08 campaign manager David Plouffe said the possibility of a Huntsman campaign back then made him a “wee bit queasy.”
But Bai’s profile of Huntsman reveals an oddly detached and dispassionate candidate with an upper-class pedigree, as heir to his father’s chemical industry fortune. His mother is the daughter of an LDS apostle. Money won’t be a problem for Huntsman, who expects to raise additional dough from wealthy Republicans who have some moderate ‘social issue’ views, place a premium on lowering the capital gains tax, but can’t get their heads around the Romney thing.
Huntsman’s bet for the Republican nomination has to be that the tea party candidates will cancel each other out, and there will be enough Romney-phobes to give him a real shot. This scenario presupposes more charisma than Huntsman may have, although NYT columnist Frank Rich’s description of Romney as “an otherwordly visitor from an Aqua Velva commercial, circa 1985” is not so far off the mark.
It also assumes, not without some evidence, that Pawlenty may be a non-starter. But there’s always the chance that Huntsman’s campaign might boomerang and divide what’s left of the GOP’s moderate conservatives, end Romney’s hopes and make possible the election of one of the more conservative candidates.
Assuming that Huntsman somehow grabs the GOP nod, he will have a tough trek, make that a gauntlet-run, in the general election if the economy improves significantly in the next year. Without an economic axe to grind, Huntsman’s case weakens considerably and he will likely have some ‘splainin’ to do regarding his increasingly sharp attacks against the guy who gave him his most important job. Hard to see how he gets through it without being branded in the minds of many “character voters” as a disloyal opportunist/hypocrite. That baggage isn’t going to magically disappear.
Then there is the flip-flopping, as described by Wayne Holland, chairman of the Utah Democratic party, in Nia-Malika Henderson’s article on Huntsman’s entry in today’s WaPo:

The Jon Huntsman I know supported Barack Obama and President Obama’s recovery act, but said it should have been larger…The Jon Huntsman I know worked with Democrats to pass the cap-and-trade program and said at the time it was the only alternative to a carbon tax. The Jon Huntsman I know signed into law a health insure exchange and proposed an individual mandate for Utah. It now appears that has all changed.

If the economy tanks further, Huntsman would have a decent chance, as would just about any GOP nominee, north of the lowest tier. Even then, however, Huntsman’s lack of any discernible connection to everyday working people could be a formidable obstacle.
JFK proved that brainy rich guys can connect with the pivotal white working-class. But it does require an ability to project warmth, a good sense of humor, compassion and maybe a bit of a track record. I’m not seeing it in Huntsman’s persona, as viewed through Bai’s profile. Huntsman’s working-class cultural creds are pretty thin — apparently his favorite sports are motocross and bungee-jumping. His handlers and ad-makers will have a tough assignment making him seem like a ‘regular guy.’ All in all, it seems fair to say that the GOP field has not been impressively strengthened by Huntsman’s entry.

On May 29, I commented on an article about the, ahem, fruits of Republican immigration ‘reform,’ which have included labor shortages, rotting crops and pissed-off farmers in Georgia. Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Constitution has an update on the disastrous after-effects of the enactment of the legislation. An excerpt:

After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.
…Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.
The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

The solution? Gov. Deal now wants to deploy an estimated 2,000 unemployed criminal probationers who live in s.w. Georgia to pick what’s left of the rotting crops. As Bookman says, “Somehow, I suspect that would not be a partnership made in heaven for either party.” Bookman adds:

The pain this is causing is real. People are going to lose their crops, and in some cases their farms. The small-town businesses that supply those farms with goods and services are going to suffer as well. For economically embattled rural Georgia, this could be a major blow…We’re going to reap what we have sown, even if the farmers can’t.

Other possible “solutions” to the farm worker crisis being bandied about include raising wages — and consumer prices — to hopefully attract more workers and weakening enforcement of the new law, which is not likely to impress migrant farm workers much. Can prison labor be far behind?
Latinos are 8.8 percent of Georgia residents, but approximately 3 percent of Georgia’s registered voters, so the Republicans undoubtedly figure they won’t pay too much of a political price for the new law. Harassing the undocumented workers of Georgia’s leading industry may score a few points with wingnut ideologues for the Republican Governor and state legislators. But Dems may just have gained an edge with Georgia’s farmers, who live and work in the real world.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has a post up at his blog, “Why the Republican War on Workers’ Rights Undermines the American Economy,” which does a good job of pinpointing a critical missing element in the economic recovery effort. Lamenting the passing of the era Reich dubs “The Great Prosperity,” the three decades after WW II when “wages rose in tandem with productivity” and “Americans could afford to buy what they produced,” he holds up the example of Europe’s healthiest economy:

…If you want to see the same basic bargain we had then, take a look at Germany now.
Germany is growing much faster than the United States. Its unemployment rate is now only 6.1 percent (we’re now at 9.1 percent).
What’s Germany’s secret? In sharp contrast to the decades of stagnant wages in America, real average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent there since 1985. Germany has been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.
How did German workers do it? A big part of the story is German labor unions are still powerful enough to insist that German workers get their fair share of the economy’s gains.
That’s why pay at the top in Germany hasn’t risen any faster than pay in the middle. As David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times recently, the top 1 percent of German households earns about 11 percent of all income – a percent that hasn’t changed in four decades.
Contrast this with the United States, where the top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.
The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.

Reich credits strong labor unions as a leading cause of both Germany’s economic health and ‘The Great Prosperity’ era in the U.S. noting “In 1955, over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent are.” Reich adds:

With the decline of unions has come the stagnation of American wages. More and more of the total income and wealth of America has gone to the very top. The middle class’s purchasing power has depended on mothers going into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, finally, the middle class going deep into debt, using their homes as collateral. But now all these coping mechanisms are exhausted — and we’re living with the consequence.
…The American economy can’t get out of neutral until American workers have more money in their pockets to buy what they produce. And unions are the best way to give them the bargaining power to get better pay.

Reich is well-aware of the enormous difficulties of meeting this challenge, particularly the “Republican War on Workers,” which includes eviscerating collective bargaining rights for public workers and “open shop” initiatives to prevent unions from collecting dues, along with attacking the National Labor Relations Board.
Clearly, Reich is not talking about a quick fix in time for next year’s elections. Rather, this is a long haul struggle that will require sustained commitment from both unions and progressives. There are critical reforms, like the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which could help strengthen unions. But it these reforms will require restoring strong Democratic majorities in congress.
The outpouring of protests against public worker union busting in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana offer the hope that the public is waking up to the dangers of weakening unions further. Organized labor’s embrace of new organizing tactics, such as those being used to recruit Wal-mart workers into a union-like organization called “OUR Walmart” may open up new directions for union growth.
The image of unions is in need of a make-over, since anti-labor propaganda has been relentless and it looks like its going to get worse. Senator Rand Paul has apparently been appointed the new poster-boy for union bashing. In response, the labor movement could use a major Ken Burns-style prime-time documentary series showing how much unions have done to help American families have a better quality of life. Unions have also got to do a better job of tooting their own horn, not just in the shops they hope to organize, but throughout American society.
Like every Democrat, I’m hoping economic recovery will soon kick in strong enough to do some good for Dems in ’12. But if we want to create a sound foundation for a more enduring recovery benefiting American workers — call it “The Great Prosperity 2.0,” Democrats will have to focus more on supporting unions.

The blogosphere is awash with references to Tim Pawlenty’s limp performance in the GOP opening debates, paired with positive spin about Michelle Bachmann’s comparatively strong presentation, prompting considerable snarkage about who really leads the MN GOP (Hint: It ain’t the ex-guv).
The punditariat is a tad mystified as to why Tim-Paw refused to elaborate on his pre-debate “Obamneycare” trial balloon, which many observers thought was a pretty clever zinger against the front-runner. Perhaps Pawlenty figured Romney had an equally-clever counter-punch at the ready, so why blunder into it. But the wide read on Pawlenty’s reluctance, especially after being pressed by CNN moderator John King, is that it did make him look evasive. Here’s how Josh Marshall described it in his post “Pawlenty’s Pitiful Moment” at Talking Points Memo, which also includes the video clip :

…The key moment where Gov. Pawlenty hemmed and hawed and ducked and weaved and wasn’t willing to repeat his criticisms to Romney’s face. Embarrassing. People get that. They have words for it.

Elsewhere at TPM, Marshall adds:

…The big story here was Pawlenty. He choked at a critical moment when he wouldn’t repeat the criticisms he’s made of Romney to his face. That makes him look weak. And more than weak I think it cuts against people’s sense of fair play and just being what we Jews call being a mensch. If you criticize someone when they’re not around. Be ready to stay it to their face. If you’re not, you’re just not for real. That’s elemental and I think people understand and remember that in a way they just don’t with the endless run of policy details candidates toss out.

Well, it wasn’t pretty. But I doubt it will prove fatal just yet, although another such choke would likely do him in as a viable candidate. Marshall is not alone in giving the night to Romney, and others give Bachmann a thumbs up as well, if only because she avoided making any characteristic blunders.
Newt and the others failed to make much of an impression, either way, although Ron Paul was gutsy, in GOP context, about bailing out of Afghanistan. I doubt he’ll get much cross-over support from anti-war moderates as a result, though, owing to his past association with some of the ugliest expressions of racial bigotry in recent times, even though the mainstream media has been too timid to call him on it.
No doubt the Romney camp is all smiles today. It won’t last. The GOP field, such as it is, will soon come after him with well-honed verbal pitchforks. I gather Romney’s nomination strategy includes letting the more conservative candidates divide the wingnut/tea party vote, so he can squeak by with the support of the saner Republicans. It’s not all that bad of a strategy, but the road ahead is increasingly pocked with political landmines bearing his name.

Nate Silver’s investigation of the relationship of the unemployment rate to presidential re-election prospects will probably become a staple of poly sci courses, with its rigorous analysis of the data and prudent conclusions. It might also be good for Journalism majors to chew on it, especially aspiring political writers, since it provides a good example of why the rag of record hired Silver — to give some data-driven heft to their reportage.
Credit Silver with doing a lot of good work and providing intelligent analysis, such as the following:

…Historically, the relationship between the unemployment rate and a president’s performance at the next election is complicated and tenuous…An article in today’s Times notes, for example, that “no American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.” The 7.2 percent figure refers to Ronald Reagan, who resoundingly won a second term when the unemployment rate was at that number in November 1984.
This type of data may be of limited utility for predictive purposes, however. Reagan won re-election by 18 points in 1984, suggesting that he had quite a bit of slack. An unemployment rate of 7.5 percent would presumably have been good enough to win him another term, as might have one of 8.0 percent, 8.5 percent or even higher.

Silver then speculates that FDR’s experience may be relevant since he won re-election with serious double-digit unemployment (16.6 in ’36 and 14.6 in ’40), but it was headed downward.
Silver argues that “the rate of change over a president’s term — is probably the more worthwhile approach. But it too is not always reliable.” He cites the examples of Nixon, W and Ike, all of whom who got re-elected with rising joblessness, although Ford, Carter and Papa Bush got defeated. Silver crunches the numbers for the last century and demonstrates that there is no positive correlation between “the unemployment rate to the incumbent party’s performance in the popular vote” and only a “weak” correlation between “the change in the unemployment rate over the course of a presidential term” and incumbents’ reelection prospects.
Silver concedes that there may be a predictive formula relating joblessness and other economic statistics to reelection prospects that works, but he cites a host of complicating factors and notes,

Some political scientists prefer other economic indicators to the unemployment rate, and there is evidence that measures like growth in real disposable income do a better job of predicting election results. Here too, however, we ought to be cautious. There are literally thousands of plausible models that one might build, using different economic indicators measured in different ways and over different time periods, taken alone or in combination with one another, and applied to different subsets of elections that are deemed to be relevant.

In the comments following Silver’s post, various responders suggest factoring in underemployment, “the change in unemployment during the final 12 to 24 months of a presidency,” gas prices, The CPI etc. It’s possible that there may be some formula that does a credible job of predicting electoral outcomes. Perhaps another stat wizard, like Alan I. Abramowitz could ferret it out.
As Silver acknowledges, however, the common sense argument for reducing unemployment is strong enough, even without statistical verification. For Dems, job-creation must remain a critical priority, the daunting difficulties of doing so cited by Andrew Levison in his recent TDS Strategy Memo notwithstanding. As Levison shows, Keynesian job-creation remains a tough sell with a significant segment of the public. Same goes for encouraging the private sector to invest in jobs when consumer demand is limp. Fresh ideas to break these two logjams are urgently needed.

Georgia is often classified with the reddest of states, not without some reason, even though a third of the voters are people of color. But the new Republican Governor Nathan Deal has just signed into law a bill which could push some white rural voters, thoughtful farmers in particular, into the Democratic column.
The reason is nicely encapsulated in the title of Jeremy Redmon’s Atlanta Constitution article “Farmers Tie Labor Shortage to State’s New Immigration Law, Ask for Help,” which explains:

This month, Gov. Nathan Deal signed House Bill 87 into law. Among other things, the law punishes people who transport or harbor illegal immigrants here. It also authorizes police to investigate the immigration status of suspects they believe have committed state or federal crimes and who cannot produce identification, such as a driver’s license, or provide other information that could help police identify them.
Georgia’s agricultural industry — the largest in the state — vigorously opposed HB 87 in the Legislature, arguing it could scare away migrant workers and damage the state’s economy

The consequences thus far, are less than impressive, according to Redmon:

Migrant farmworkers are bypassing Georgia because of the state’s tough new immigration enforcement law, creating a severe labor shortage among fruit and vegetable growers here and potentially putting hundreds of millions of dollars in crops in jeopardy, agricultural industry leaders said this week.
…Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, said he has been in close contact with Labor Commissioner Mark Butler and Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black about the shortage, calling it the most severe he has seen. Hall said it’s possible state officials could hold job fairs to steer some of Georgia’s unemployed workers to these farm jobs, which pay $12.50 an hour on average. The state’s unemployment rate is now at 9.9 percent.
Farmers, however, say they often have little luck recruiting Georgia residents to work in their fields because it is temporary, hot and physically demanding. To recruit more workers, some farmers are offering signing bonuses, Hall said.
The law doesn’t take effect until July 1 but is already making migrant Hispanic farmworkers skittish, said Dick Minor, a partner with Minor Brothers Farm in Leslie in southwest Georgia who says he is missing about 50 of his workers now, threatening as much as a third of his crops.
Some farmers who work in Georgia’s $1.1 billion fruit and vegetable industry are now reporting they have only two-thirds or half the workers they need now and for the weeks of harvesting to come, Hall said. Farmers said the full extent of the shortages won’t be known until the coming weeks as they harvest their remaining crops, including watermelons and sweet corn. Hall estimated such shortages could put as much as $300 million in crops at risk this year.

Georgia’s pain may translate into Florida’s gain, reports Redmon:

Manuel De La Rosa, who recruits workers for Minor’s farm, confirmed many migrant workers are skipping Georgia for other states, including Florida. He said these workers became afraid after they heard Hispanic television news programs comparing Georgia’s new law to a stringent one Arizona enacted last year.
“Some of the people who were coming over here to [pick] cucumbers said: ‘No. They are going to catch us. They are going to put us in jail,’ ” said De La Rosa, a U.S. citizen. “Some of them were going to try another state where they have not passed this law yet.”

While white southern voters have often displayed a singular genius for voting against their own economic interests, the sheer idiocy of Republican immigration “reform” in Georgia and other states should give rural Georgians pause the next time some Republican leader prattles on about GOP pro-business creds. Redmon adds:

Meanwhile, the state’s Republican labor and agricultural commissioners are discussing issuing a joint statement in the coming days about what they intend to do about the labor shortage, a Labor Department spokesman confirmed Thursday.

No doubt Georgians await the next edition of GOP business acumen with baited breath, while state consumers may not be too thrilled with expected price hikes at the supermarket, courtesy of the Republican Governor and legislators. Here’s hoping Georgia Dems call them out.

Pollster Mark Mellman has a brilliant piece of opinion data analysis, “Winning the Medicare Fight,” up at The Hill. Mellman’s post is of interest, not only for those concerned with political strategy and Medicare policy, but also for anyone interested in how to analyze a poll. Here’s some of Mellman’s nuanced analysis of a recent Gallup poll regarding deficit-reduction through Medicare reform, which was hailed by conservatives:

Gallup’s findings seemingly suggested Republican fears were exaggerated. The pollsters’ analysis noted that “Ryan’s plan includes a complete restructuring of Medicare for people younger than 55.” Nevertheless, to Republicans’ evident glee, Gallup reported, “Pluralities of middle-aged Americans as well as those 65 and older prefer Ryan’s plan to Obama’s.”
Republicans took heart from these findings too quickly. Nowhere does the question explain, or even reference, Ryan’s Medicare plan. Respondents were simply asked which was “the better long-term plan for dealing with the federal budget deficit — the Republican plan put forth by Congressman Paul Ryan or the Democratic plan put forward by President Barack Obama?” Voters dividing evenly on which party is better at dealing with the deficit should surprise no one. Indeed, if these numbers contain any surprise, it is that Democrats perform as well as they do on this traditionally pro-GOP issue.

Mellman mines other polling data to test his argument:

According to a Kaiser poll, 57 percent oppose any reduction in Medicare spending to help reduce the federal deficit, and another 32 percent would countenance only “minor” spending reductions. An ABC/Washington Post poll found 78 percent opposed cuts in Medicare spending to “reduce the national debt.”

However, cautions Mellman,

While Republicans, who marched almost in lockstep in support of the Ryan plan, err grossly in taking solace from the Gallup poll, Democrats too have lessons to learn from this poll and other recent data.
First, shorthand rarely works — and certainly doesn’t work here. Vague references to the “Ryan plan” mean almost nothing to voters.
Similarly opaque references to “vouchers” likewise fail to galvanize public anger. According to the Kaiser poll, just 12 percent have any idea what “premium support” means, and an equally anemic 30 percent claim to know what vouchers are in the context of Medicare. In another test, use of the word “voucher” increased opposition to the Ryan plan by a single point. Even “privatization” fails the test. These terms may rally the informed base, but they carry little meaning to the wider electorate.
Second, some of the concepts Democrats find abhorrent are not quite so loathsome to voters. When Kaiser explained premium support — “people choose their insurance from a list of private health plans … and the government pays a fixed amount toward that cost” — voters divided about evenly between keeping Medicare as it is and adopting that alternative.

Mellman also cites an ABC/WaPo poll indicating that 65 percent of respondents opposed a plan in which people over 65 would get a government check to shop for health insurance in the private sector. He adds that the Kaiser poll found 68 percent of respondents opposed, even when informed of the GOP assertion that it would “reduce the deficit, save Medicare and encourage competition.”
As Mellman concludes,

While neither shorthand nor wonky explanation works, clear, crisp arguments do raise voters’ hackles about the GOP’s Medicare plan. The core message focuses on cutting Medicare benefits and putting insurance-company bureaucrats in charge of seniors’ healthcare…This is a debate Democrats can win decisively, but only with an oft-repeated and carefully honed message in place of shorthand and jargon.

Democratic candidates and campaign workers take note. Meeting this challenge in communications strategy could prove decisive in winning both support from seniors and close elections.

One of the staples of federal, state and local Democratic campaigns is the call for a major investment in upgrading the infrastructure. Dems have been great at making the call, less impressive in delivering the upgrades. Yet the need remains so compelling that it would be hard to identify an American city of significant size that doesn’t need major improvements in roads, bridges, transportation systems, harbors, airports, utilities or waste disposal facilities.
In his post, “Obama Should Call Chamber’s Infrastructure Bluff,” Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America’s Future works a slightly different angle to illuminate the problem and a strategy for addressing it more effectively:

The Chamber of Commerce claims it supports spending on infrastructure. President Obama should call them on it because a majority of the public supports rebuilding our infrastructure and millions of us need work. The President should tell the Chamber to take its rhetoric seriously and support spending what is needed. Imagine the jobs it would create and the boost it would give to our economy now and in the future. The President should make it the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

Johnson does an excellent job of documenting the extent to which many other nations are taking infrastructure upgrades far more seriously to enhance their competitive advantage, while the U.S. muddles on, quibbling about budget cuts and deficit reduction. Republicans have dodged the infrastructure issue artfully, often parroting libertarian cliches about privatization as a solution to the problem.
Johnson notes the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $2.2 trillion investment is needed to get America up to current standards. According to the ASCE, “Years of delayed maintenance and lack of modernization have left Americans with an outdated and failing infrastructure that cannot meet our needs.”
Johnson notes that 80 percent of the public supports major infrastructure upgrades, according to a survey by Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies for the Rockefeller Foundation. Even the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce recognizes the need, as this excerpt from its web page indicates:

The U.S. Chamber is leading the charge to modernize and expand our nation’s transportation, telecommunications, energy, and water networks. Without proper investment and attention to our infrastructure systems, the nation’s economic stability, potential for job growth, and global competitiveness are at risk.

With all of the conservative whining about the need for budget cuts, it’s hard to imagine a multi-billion dollar infrastructure upgrade program, much less a two trillion dollar one get much traction. But, with 80 percent public support, maybe a little bully pulpit could help elevate infrastructure upgrades as a national priority. As Johnson suggests,

This is a tremendous opportunity for the President to lead with a plan for massive investment in infrastructure, employing millions and positioning the country to compete in the world’s economy again. The publiic is overwhelmingly behind this. The Chamber says they support updating our infrastructure, and the President should challenge them to really support it. This popular plan is good for the country and is the right thing to do, and that makes it the right thing to do politically as well.

FDR showed what a President could do with an iron clad, refuse-to-take-no-for-an-answer commitment to infrastructure improvement. To a lesser extent, President Eisenhower was ‘the infrastructure President’ of the post-war period, modernizing the nation’s interstate highways into the finest system ever created.
America will have to upgrade our infrastructure sooner than later. I’d hate to think that it’s going to take another Republican to meet this challenge (“Only a Nixon can go to China” sort of paradox) The need has never been more urgent, and President Obama should make the commitment to be ‘The Infrastructure President’ who takes America into the 21st century.

John Nichols post at The Nation, “The Post-Wisconsin Game Plan” provides a nuanced ‘where-do-we-go-from-here’ consideration of progressive strategy to mobilize middle class voters for the 2012 elections. Nichols sees the still-strong outrage against the effort to eradicate collective bargaining rights for public workers in Wisconsin, Indiana, Maine and Ohio as a powerful force, which can be leveraged to strengthen the Democratic party and its prospects:

Post-Wisconsin, there is a tentative but emerging consensus that mass movements at the state level might matter just as much to the broader goals of labor and the left as traditional election-oriented campaigning. As Steve Cobble, former political director of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition campaigns of the 1980s, argues, “The energy that’s developed in Wisconsin and Ohio, and that could develop in a lot of other states, is what’s needed to renew the coalitions that can re-elect Obama in 2012 and elect a lot of Democrats. But it should go further than that. With the right organizing push, unions can build a base that forces Obama and the Democrats to take more progressive stands and to govern accordingly.”
The size of the demonstrations in the states, and the agility with which protest movements have pivoted to political fights that could shift control of governorships and legislatures, has prompted this reassessment of strategy by labor and its allies. Rather than a single-minded focus on electing Democrats–or the rare friendly Republican–the idea is that more might be accomplished by directing cash and organizing hours to (as one SEIU draft document suggests) “mobilizing underpaid, underemployed, and unemployed workers” and “channeling anger about jobs into action for positive change.”

Nichols acknowledges that some progressives are skeptical about this approach:

…Henry has conceded that the decision to focus more on nonunion workers is risky. The talk is of a major expenditure of resources, with some 1,500 SEIU staffers fanning out in seventeen cities to knock on more than 3 million doors–including those of millions of non-SEIU members. Some worry that this is not the most strategic use of resources. Veteran organizer Jane McAlevey argues that intensive engagement with union members should take precedence over a diffuse attempt to mobilize nonunion workers for mass rallies with an uncertain purpose. “The go-big, go-wide and go-shallow model may generate 2012 voter IDs outside their base, but it’s not going to mobilize a real fight for a fair economy,” says McAlevey. “To do it right requires deep work with their members and their members’ organic connections in their communities.”

There is an emerging consensus, explains Nichols, that “the greatest threats to unions as forces in the workplace and in political life are posed at the state level–where GOP governors and legislators are attacking collective bargaining rights while proposing brutal cuts in spending on education and services…” But he notes the overwhelming complexity of meeting this challenge:

States have unique political cultures, quirky voting patterns, divides between heavily union and nonunion regions that can be finessed only by those who understand the territory. “I’ve heard from people in other states who want to know how they can do what’s been done in Wisconsin, and I tell them it’s not that easy,” says Ben Manski, an organizer of the Wisconsin Wave protest coalition. “They have to focus in on their own strengths, their own history and their own challenges.”

Nichols provides a succinct summation of current initiatives, post-Wisconsin:

Whereas Wisconsin activists are focused on recall elections this summer that could remove Republican state senators who have backed Walker’s antilabor agenda, Mainers are lobbying moderate Republican legislators to break with right-wing Governor Paul LePage. While there is talk in Michigan of trying to recall Governor Rick Snyder, in Ohio there is no recall option. But Ohio has a veto referendum provision that unions are using to try to overturn Governor John Kasich’s attacks on collective bargaining.
Every one of these state battles turns a labor struggle that initially played out in the streets into an edgy political fight. Instead of waiting for the next election, labor and progressive campaigners are forcing votes on their schedules to address unprecedented assaults on union rights and public services.

Naturally some Democrats are very concerned about the deflection of needed labor resources from the Presidential contest next year. And there is concern, reports Nichols that the White House should be doing more to support unions, although the President’s approval ratings are still high in Wisconsin.
Nichols spotlights Sen Sherrod Brown (D-OH) for taking a gutsy, pro-union stance other Democratic politicians have avoided — a gamble that appears to have paid off in the latest opinion polls. He quotes Publi Policy President Dean Debham, “Sherrod Brown appears to be in a much stronger position now than he was just three months ago…There’s been a very significant shift in the Ohio political landscape toward the Democrats.”
As Nichols says “…the challenge is to build state-based movements that are muscular enough to win immediate fights (blocking bad legislation, preventing cuts, preserving embattled unions, organizing new workers) while pulling Democrats–including the president–away from the politics of caution and compromise.” He credits SEIU, CWA and National Nurses United, MoveOn and other progressive groups for innovative “neighborhood organizing, coalition building and demonstrations” against tax give-aways to the wealthy, home foreclosures and assaults on Medicare and Medicaid.
President Obama would do well, says Nichols, to heed the example of FDR in 1936, “after a wave of militant labor organizing and localized general strikes had swept cities across the country,” when he crafted “a populist appeal for unity…to battle the economic royalists who would turn the country back toward ‘the old law of the tooth and the claw.'”
Sad that 75 years later the “economic royalists” description still fits the modern Republican party so well. Hopefully, FDR’s example will not go unnoticed by President Obama, who has recently had his own lesson in how bold leadership can win public support.