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.

For your daily dose of political irony, read “Ron Paul backed by workers he’s aiming to show door, The GOP’s most ardent budget hawk is drawing the most money from federal workers and contractors” by Bloomberg’s Nick Taborek in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. As Taborek reports:

Ron Paul, the presidential candidate who says he’ll shrink government the most, is attracting more campaign cash than any of his Republican rivals from two unlikely sources: U.S. government workers and employees of the biggest federal contractors.
…”There is at the bottom of this a truly bizarre set of paradoxes, where many of the people who are attacking government the most are ultimately heavily dependent on it,” said Don Kettl, dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

According to FEC data,

Paul…has said he’ll cut $1 trillion in his first year in office, leads in donations from federal employees, with $95,085 through Sept. 30. That is more than four times the $23,000 federal employees gave to Mitt Romney, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by Bloomberg…Paul has said he would eliminate the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Interior and Housing and Urban Development.

It’s not just government employees who support the candidate most likely to gut their jobs, reports Taborek:

Paul, who opposed the Iraq war, has raised $76,789 from employees of the top 50 government contractors, a group led by weapons makers such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. Romney has raised $65,800 and Rick Perry $16,250.

Taborek notes that President Obama has raised more money from federal employees than any Republican. That makes sense. Paul’s fund-raising success with federal employees, contractors and military personnel, however, is more of a head-scratcher, especially at a time when government workers are under relentless assault from Paul’s party. According to a recent Paul campaign email, he is “the only candidate who plans to cut about $1 trillion of the $3.5 trillion federal budget in the first year of his term.”
As Taborek explains: “Paul said in an Oct. 5 speech at the National Press Club in Washington that he leads in fundraising from the military because troops support his opposition to foreign conflicts.”
Paul has done well in fund-raising and GOP polls, despite his embrace of a range of quackish economic policies. If it’s because of his isolationist clarity, that’s significant.
Paul is no threat to President Obama. But If his gains are built on tapping a large well of dovish isolationism, then perhaps President Obama should take note and speed up our disengagement from Afghanistan. In so doing, the President just might get a bigger bite of the large number of voters who are tired of funding nation-building abroad.

Indiana has been trending red in polls this year. But it’s beginning to look like Hoosier GOP leaders have been infected with the lemming virus that has driven their Ohio and Wisconsin brethren to the edge of the abyss. Republicans are now preparing to re-introduce so-called “right-to-work” legislation in the upcoming session, according to Mark Guarino’s Monitor report.
Marian Wang explains “Uncoordinated Coordination: Six Reasons Limits on Super PACs Are Barely Limits at All” at Propublica.org.
In his article, “When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?,” New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait wonders if liberal expectations have gotten a little unrealistic, since every Democratic President is a disappointment to progressives. Says Chait: “…Liberals are dissatisfied with Obama because liberals, on the whole, are incapable of feeling satisfied with a Democratic president. They can be happy with the idea of a Democratic president–indeed, dancing-in-the-streets delirious–but not with the real thing. The various theories of disconsolate liberals all suffer from a failure to compare Obama with any plausible baseline. Instead they compare Obama with an imaginary president–either an imaginary Obama or a fantasy version of a past president. ”
Congratulations are in order for Demos, on reaching a milestone — helping one million voters in five states — Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and Illinois fill out voter registration forms since 2007, and implement the oft-neglected section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires public agencies to assist voters.
The GOP’s “voter fraud’ follies get their due in Ryan J. Reilly’s “GOP New Mexico Sec of State Finds Tiny Fraction Of The Voter Fraud She Alleged” at Talking Points Memo. According to Reilly, “New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran said earlier this year that her state had a “culture of corruption” and referred 64,000 voter registration records to police that she thought were possible cases of voter fraud. Now a new report from her office proves she was completely right, 0.0296875 percent of the time…”
The Hill’s Bob Cusack has some interesting scorekeeping in his post at The Hill, “Winners and losers emerge from supercommittee’s partisan stalemate‬.” Cusack sees it as particularly good news for President Obama: “Without a doubt, the debt panel’s flop helps his cause…In the coming weeks, Obama and congressional Democrats will go on the offensive on extending the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance, two issues that were expected to be taken off the table by the supercommittee.
Gene Robinson isn’t having any of the false equivalency Koolaid regarding the Super Committee’s big flunk in his WaPo column, “Robinson: Republican obstinacy doomed the supercommittee.”
It’s always fun when a Republican strategy memo is published to the dismay of its authors, all the more so when the authors include two former members of Speaker Boehner’s staff now working as lobbyists. The memo in question is essentially a pitch from the Geldug, Clark, Lytle and Cranford lobbying firm to the American Bankers Association. The lobbyists would provide a survey of attitudes towards OWS and big banks and an analysis of OWS leaders and backers, and strategy papers on coalition planning and advertising — all for a mere $850K. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes broke the story (video clip exclusive here), MSNBC has the memo here and John Reed of OpEd news puts it in perspective here. One stated goal in the memo: “to provide cover for political figures who defend the industry.”
Upper of the day: Meg Handley’s “5 Reasons the Economy Will Be Better in 2012” at U.S. News Politics.
Michael Bailey and Forrest Maltzman attempt a data driven analysis to answer the question in their American Prospect post title “Will the Supreme Court Overturn Obamacare?” The theory seems a little dicey, but Dems should like their prediction: “here is ours: 6-3 or 7-2 to uphold the law.”

Jeffrey Sachs’s post “The Super Committee’s Big Lie” at the HuffPo has some information Democratic campaigns should find helpful in crafting responses to GOP myth-mongering about taxes. Sachs, a Columbia University economist and director of The Earth Institute, has harsh words for the Super Committee in general. But the most interesting and potentially useful part of his post has to do with making an important distinction between the economies of Southern and Northern Europe:

…Each day, Republicans warn us that if we raise taxes we will end up like Europe, that is, in collapse. Democrats, for their part, go silent, not sure what to make of the argument.
Here’s what to make of it: it’s plain wrong. Europe per se is not in crisis. Southern Europe is in crisis. Northern Europe, by contrast, where the taxes are higher than in Southern Europe, is vastly outperforming the United States.
Consider three key dimensions of the economic crisis: high unemployment, large budget deficits, and high current account deficits (broadly meaning more imports than exports). To compare how countries are doing, I’ll create a simple Misery Index equal to the sum of these three indicators. In 2010, for example, the U.S. had a Misery Index equal to 23.4, the sum of a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, a budget deficit equal to 10.6 percent of GDP, and a foreign (current account) deficit of 3.2 percent of GDP.
When we calculate the Misery Index for the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, we find that, lo and behold, the U.S. ranks among the most miserable performers, 5th out of 20 countries. The country with the highest Misery Index is Ireland, followed by Spain, Greece, Portugal, and the United States. All five countries deregulated their financial markets and thereby experienced a housing bubble and bust.
The lowest macroeconomic misery is in Northern Europe. Norway has the lowest score, followed by Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Demark. All seven countries have lower unemployment rates, smaller budget deficits as a share of GDP, and lower foreign deficits as a share of GDP, than the U.S. We look pretty miserable indeed by comparison.
Yet, miracle of miracles, these seven countries collect higher taxes as a share of GDP than does the U.S. Total government revenues in the U.S. (adding federal, state, and local taxes) totaled 33.1 percent of GDP in 2010. This compares with 56.5, 34.2, 39.5, 45.9, 52.7, and 43.4 percent of GDP in Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, respectively. These much higher levels of taxation are raised through a combination of personal, corporate, payroll, and value-added taxes.
The Northern European countries earn their prosperity not through low taxation but through high taxation sufficient to pay for government. In five of the seven countries, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, and Sweden, government spending as a share of GDP is much higher than in the U.S. These countries enjoy much better public services, better educational outcomes, more gainful employment, higher trade balances, lower poverty, and smaller budget deficits. High-quality government services reach all parts of the society. The U.S., stuck with its politically induced “low-tax trap,” ends up with crummy public services, poor educational outcomes, high and rising poverty, and a huge budget deficit to boot.

For a more extensive breakdown of the data in Sach’s ‘misery index,’ see here.
It’s a point that merits more repetition in public debate. I’ve noticed that even many liberals, including some commentators, talk about the ‘troubled European economy,’ in part because of a misguided tendency to think of the EEC as an economic entity that trumps the economic policies of individual nations. I once saw Sachs make the correction with a couple of sentences in a televised panel discussion to good effect, leaving his fellow panelists and viewers better educated about the possible effects of fair taxes, as well as what’s really going on in Europe. It’s not the kind of message you can boil down into a soundbite, but I’m thinking Sach’s argument could be leveraged to help Dems with high-information swing voters.

Beth Fouhy explores the intersection of electoral politics and OWS in this morning’s AP update, “Democrats See Minefield in Occupy Protests.”
Many pundits agree that President Obama’s strong card is his impressive accomplishments in international affairs. But how much his achievements will factor into voter choice is an open question. Maryland University political scientist Thomas F. Schaller offers some insights in his post, “Will Obama’s Foreign Policy Wins Lead to a Win Next Year?” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Robert Kuttner’s “Don’t Save Republicans from Themselves” at The American Prospect makes the case, short and sweet, for Dems to hold the line and refuse to sign on a Supercommittee deal favored by the GOP before the automatic cuts kick in. Says Kuttner: “The Democrats are holding all the cards. Is this really the moment to save the Republicans from themselves?”
Republicans are running scared about the Supercommittee deliberations. According to a Newsmax.com report, “Norquist: Democrats Sabotaging Supercommittee to Help Obama” by Paul Scicchitano and Kathleen Walter, the GOP’s chief government-basher has gotten his knickers all in a twist over, horrors, a political party putting political advantage before the good of the country.
Gingrich’s GOP opponents would have no trouble compiling a richly-detailed “Top Ten Reasons Why Newt is Unelectable,” list. But this latest revelation could be the deal-breaker.
David Catanese’s Politico update, “Outside groups begin assault with ads” reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is shelling out $1 million for their first salvo of ad buys targeting a dozen [Democratic} Senators and 50 congress members, including Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT).
Here’s the Chamber’s attack ad targeting Sherrod Brown because he opposed unlimited drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and supported ending oil subsidies.
Meanwhile, Republicans are apparently having a hard time finding well-rounded candidates to help them take back control of the U.S. Senate, reports Jennifer Steinhauer in her New York Times article, “Feuding Hurts G.O.P.’s Hopes to Win Senate.” “The biggest fear among Republicans is of divisive primaries in which Tea Party-backed candidates prevail in states where they cannot win the general election, as happened in 2010 in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada, or that weaken the preferred candidate in the process.”
The Grey Lady also has a nicely-packaged wrap-up of “The Battle for the Senate” to date with a color-coded map and snap-shot summaries for each race.
The Republican House Freshman aren’t doing so well in fund-raising, reports Fredreka Schouten in USA Today. “Two-thirds of the Republican freshmen who captured Democratic-held seats in the GOP’s 2010 takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives saw their fundraising dip in the past quarter, campaign-finance reports show…The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has seen its fundraising surge, collecting $6.6 million in September, nearly double its August haul. The National Republican Congressional Committee raised $3.8 million in September, a 27% increase from its total the previous month.”
2011 may go down in U.S. political history as the GOP’s year of strategic blunders. Evan McMorris-Santoro of Talking Points Memo piles on in his post, “The Arizona Immigration Bill Seems To Have Created A New Swing State.”
Barbara Morrill has posted “The John Boehner Cries Caption Contest” over at Daily Kos. More than 200 entries so far.