There is some excellent reporting at The Nation and other progressive websites about the loathsome effort of Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker to gut unions in his state. But it would be hard to find a better video primer explaining the motives behind the scam and what may be at stake than this alarming clip from Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC report, “The Survival of the Democratic Party.”

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Even the anti-Maddow, Sean Hannity acknowledges in his FoxNews diatribe that Walker’s measure “would eliminate collective bargaining rights for most state workers.” Hannity conveniently omits noting that the unions exempted in Walker’s initiative are precisely the three unions that supported Walker’s election campaign, as Maddow points out in her clip above.

Expect the debate about the importance of new media in the nonviolent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt to continue for years, although I’m satisfied that facebook, twitter and cell phones were highly significant tactical tools in both countries.
In terms of strategy, however, give due credit to a central idea in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions — the unique power of organized nonviolence to topple entrenched totalitarian regimes. For a good read on the topic, see “A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History” by New York Times reporters David D. Kirkpatrick and David E. Sanger. As part of their investigation, the authors note the influence on both uprisings of a new England scholar who has dedicated his life to the study and advocacy of nonviolence as a potent political strategy:

Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they…were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.
The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo — a vaguely Soviet looking red and white clenched fist–after Otpor’s, and some of its members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.
Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part on Mr. Sharp’s work. One of the group’s organizers, Hisham Morsy, was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.

Sharp is the founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, an important, though underfunded organization dedicated to the study and promotion of nonviolent action. The author of ground-breaking scholarly works, including “Making Europe Unconquerable” and “Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System,” Sharp has long insisted that his key writings, available on the Einstein Institution’s web pages be translated into Arabic and numerous other languages. He is undoubtedly the foremost expert on nonviolence, in both theory and application, and has been called the “Machiavelli of nonviolence” and the “Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare” — although neither designation does justice to his progressive outlook.
One shudders to consider the countless billions of dollars Sharp could have saved taxpayers, had a long line of U.S. presidents consulted with him before launching expensive nation-building schemes and other military initiatives. In a saner world, he would be a top national security advisor to the President.
Sharp isn’t the only nonviolence advocate being consulted by the young revolutionaries of Egypt. The American Islamic Congress re-published (in Arabic) and distributed in Egypt a 50-year old comic book about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. You and anyone else in the world with internet access can read the entire comic book in English, Arabic and Farsi right here.
Comforting, that along with all of the blundering disasters of U.S. foreign policy over the years, two humble but dedicated Americans could have such a constructive influence on the freedom struggles of oppressed people in the Middle East.

It’s a long way from our national day of despair in Tucson to Egypt’s day of jubilation in Cairo. But it’s a distance worth thinking about as we try to understand how a great democracy like the U.S. can produce such sick young men as Jared Louchner, while an inspiring, nonviolent movement lead by tens of thousands of courageous young people can emerge in a nation ruled by a brutal dictatorship like Mubarak’s regime in Egypt.
Nonviolent movements are not well understood by America’s right-wingers. It’s an article of faith among second amendment fundamentalists that guns are necessary to maintain “freedom.” I guess the young Egyptians didn’t get that particular memo.
Instead they poured into the streets of Cairo, armed only with courage, determination and cell phones (service soon cut off by Mubarak) and brought down a tryranical regime without firing a shot. Had the youth of Cairo been stocked up with firearms, their blood would be flowing in the streets and Mubarak would still be in power, more secure than ever.
Give the youth of Cairo due credit for leading Egypt’s nonviolent revolution. But note that their revolution gained decisive momentum when the workers went on strike.
One of the casualties of their revolution is the western stereotype of Arabs as a violence-prone people. The protestors in Tahrir Square remained nonviolent and refused to be intimidated, even while Mubarak sent in his goon squads, who have now melted away in silence and shame.
The paranoiacs who brought guns to political rallies in the U.S. last year were scary to many at the time. Now they too look more like pathetic, fearful relics of the past, not so unlike Mubarak’s goons with their camels and clubs.
Another casualty of the Egyptian revolution is the terrorist movement based in Muslim nations. No, I’m not saying it is over. They will still be a force. But their argument that terror is the most effective form of resistance to oppression has been irrevocably damaged in the eyes of millions of young people they hoped to recruit. The new generation of Arab youth now have a dazzling example of the power of nonviolence to challenge political oppression.
Meanwhile in the U.S., conservatives are groping awkwardly for a credible response to Egypt’s revolution and to President Obama’s eloquent statement (transcript here, video here) congratulating Egypt’s nonviolent movement. No doubt, the conservatives will fall back on the old fear-filled arguments (like TimPaw here and Newt here) and stereotypes. And there may yet be setbacks to come, as Egypt charts its path to democracy. But Democrats can be optimistic that the leader of our party gets it that a new era of freedom and democracy is awakening in the middle east, one deserving of our respect and support.

TDS Advisory Board Member Alan Abramowitz posits an optimistic 2012 scenario for President Obama in his current post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz, author of The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy, cooks up a regression analysis forecasting model using polling, electoral and economic data, and explains:

…The dependent variable in this analysis is the incumbent party’s share of the major party vote. The independent variables are the incumbent president’s net approval rating (approval-disapproval) in the Gallup Poll at midyear, the annual growth rate of real GDP in the second quarter of the election year, and a dummy variable distinguishing between first term incumbents and all other types of incumbent party candidates.
This simple forecasting model does an excellent job of predicting the outcomes of presidential elections, explaining just over 90 percent of the variance in the incumbent party’s share of the popular vote. The model has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1988 more than two months before Election Day. In 2008, the model correctly predicted a comfortable victory for Barack Obama over John McCain at a time when McCain had taken the lead over Obama in a number of national polls following the Republican National Convention.

And Abramowitz adds,

…Regardless of who wins the Republican nomination, even modest economic growth and a mediocre approval rating in 2012 would probably be enough to give Barack Obama a second term in the White House. For example, an annual growth rate of three percent in the second quarter (slightly below the most recent estimate for the fourth quarter of 2010) and a net approval rating of zero at midyear (slightly worse than Obama’s average rating over the past month) would result in a forecast of 53 percent of the national popular vote for the President which would almost certainly produce a decisive victory in the Electoral College.

Abramowitz cautions that, while the model has accurately predicted the winner of the last five presidential elections, the margin of victory has been smaller in four of the elections than the model predicted, possibly because of increasing polarization. He concludes, “If Barack Obama does win a second term in the White House, it will most likely be by a fairly narrow margin unless economic growth and the President’s approval rating both show dramatic improvement in the next 18 months.”

Democratic candidates and campaign workers gearing up for ’12 statewide races, particularly those facing wealthy Republican opponents, should take a couple of minutes to read the L.A. Times analysis of campaign spending and budgeting in the race for the California governorship. The article, by Seema Mehta and Maeve Reston, provides a highly instructive breakdown comparing not only expenditures, but the timing of outlays for the Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman campaigns, as indicated by recently-published financial disclosure reports .
Of course the caveat is that the California campaign was extraordinary in that Whitman set records for spending and she also had a tough primary campaign. In addition, “Brown entered the race with $100 million of name ID,” as Whitman campaign consultant Rob Stutzman put it. What is instructive, however, is how the Brown campaign marshalled its far more limited economic resources, and his strategy may provide a useful template for underfunded Democratic candidates nationwide. Here’s an excerpt:

Meg Whitman vastly outspent Jerry Brown on virtually every facet of the 2010 contest for governor. From focus groups and consultants to private planes and lavish fundraisers, Whitman campaigned like the billionaire she is, spending $177 million to Brown’s $36 million.

The article goes on to compare Brown’s and Whitman’s expenditures for travel, direct mail, signs, event staging, consultants and staff. But the most important revelation:

But in one key area — television advertising — the Democrat nearly kept pace with Whitman during the final sprint of the campaign, allowing him to make his case to voters before they cast ballots…”By holding our fire, we were competitive in the final month and almost equal in the final four weeks,” Brown’s campaign manager, Steve Glazer, said.
…As is customary in California campaigns, both candidates poured the bulk of their money into communicating with voters through television and radio advertisements. Whitman spent more than $120 million — two-thirds of her campaign treasury — producing and airing commercials. Brown spent for that purpose nearly three-quarters of the $40 million he raised. Between Sept. 1 and Election Day, Whitman spent $40 million buying airtime to Brown’s $29 million. But much of Brown’s spending occurred in the final month, allowing him to maximize his efforts precisely when voters were preparing to cast ballots.

So even in cutting-edge California, home of the digital vanguard, television still rules as the primary conveyance of political persuasion. The L.A. Times analysis does not take into account the quality of the candidates’ ads and Whitman’s image problems. But it does indicate that, investing heavily in air time during the final campaign weeks can offset an opponent’s overall economic advantage.

I’m probably not alone in feeling ambivalent about Senator Jim Webb’s announced retirement from the U.S. Senate. I had already given up on the notion of him as a promising southern Democratic leader. He had made it pretty clear that he just didn’t have the fire in the belly to become a major player in Democratic politics. Webb always seemed a bit stiff in the limelight, more the introverted writer than the exuberant public figure.
A decorated veteran and policy wonk, Webb had the creds and brains to do more. He was progressive on economic issues, and I was hoping at one point that he could help awaken a progressive populist spirit among southern voters. I liked the way he stood up to Bush on Iraq, and his response to Bush’s ’07 SOTU got well-deserved plaudits. He took some heat from women activists for his comments in another statement about women in combat, and Latinos, regarding his hard line on immigration issues. Perhaps he could have healed those wounds, but it’s all moot now.
I think Dems have a good chance of holding Webb’s seat. Polls, schmolls, if the economy improves significantly, Tim Kaine, Terry McAuliffe or Tom Periello could beat George Allen, who faces a bruising primary battle with a tea party candidate. Of the three Dems, Kaine has the stronger track record, cash and VA know-how, but he has made “not interested” noises. McAuliffe has dough, but lacks charisma, though Allen is not exactly flush in that department either.
Whoever Dems nominate, it should be a marquee Senate race. Dems need this seat, especially given the GOP advantage in having to defend far fewer Senate seats in ’12. The “upper south” (Va and NC) is critical for Dem hopes in ’12, and this seat could be the lynchpin.

The Sunday centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birthday will be an occasion for MSM paeans to our 40th President. The hagiographic tributes will probably be lead by his former speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, who set the stage with her 2002 memoir, “When Character Was King,” the gold standard for unbridled Reagan-worship. A fact-focused distillation of the contrarian view follows:

1. Time magazine reports that documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, as President of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan and first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, “provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.” Yes, “believed.”
2. A former supporter of FDR and the New Deal, Reagan began dissing “big government” after taking a lucrative job as spokesman for General Electric.
3. Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Running for Governor in 1966, he reportedly said, “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so.” Be surprised if this is noted on Meet the Press this Sunday.
4. Reagan appointed Justice William Rhenquist to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, despite testimony that Rhenquist not only advocated segregationist views, but had personally participated in “ballot security” campaigns to prevent African Americans from voting in 1962 and 64.
5. In 1976 Reagan complained about a “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone. He had also made frequent disparaging mention of a “welfare queen” driving her cadillac.
6. In 1980 he launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town most famous for being the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. Reagan seized the opportunity to declare “I believe in states rights” in his speech. It’s hard to see him as anything but a divisive figure in terms of race relations. And then there was that yucky Bitburg cemetery tribute to Nazi soldier “victims.”
7. Reagan became the chief mouthpiece in the effort to defeat the initiative that became Medicare, warning listeners in a recording he made for radio, that if they didn’t write to their congressional representatives to prevent it “we will awake to find that we have so­cialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.” As President, he did a flip-flop, and protected Medicare.
8. Unemployment averaged 7.5 percent during Reagan’s presidency, according to BLS statistics.
9. Despite President Reagan’s vocal support for tax cuts, he signed bills providing tax hikes in every year from 1981-87, with most of the burden falling on the middle class, reportedly doubling the tax for those earning less than $40K per year..
10. Reagan’s two terms produced an uptick in federal income tax receipts (1980-89), from $308.7 billion to $549 billion.
11. No President ever dissed government spending more than did Reagan. Yet, federal Federal spending grew by 7.1 percent annually during the Reagan Administration, according to budget statistics. Reagan often portrayed himself as the soul of fiscal responsibility. But Under Reagan the national debt nearly tripled, from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion.
12. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration provided covert arms sales to Iran to fund military aid to Nicaragua’s Contras to overthrow a democratically-elected government in violation of U.S. law, resulted in 14 indictments among Reagan staff members, and 11 convictions.

The most treasured of Reagan myths is that he single-handedly ended the Cold War, staring down the evil empire like Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon.’ Scant mention is made of the fact that he was given a huge, pivotal gift in the person of his adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the saner leaders of the 20th century. Most presidents would have done what Reagan did, which was keep military spending high until the Soviets caved. Crediting Reagan with ‘courageous’ leadership here is a bit of a stretch.
I’m sure President Reagan had his good points, and we can be assured that they will be repeated ad nauseum on Sunday. He was certainly an excellent orator and highly effective in implementing the conservative agenda in many respects. And he did achieve major progress in nuclear arms control. But it will be surprising if hard-headed critiques of his presidency will get a fair hearing, which is important given the centrality of the Reagan myth in Republican propaganda.
In his WaPo wrap-up review of three documentaries about the Reagan years, Hank Stuever acknowledges that the ’80s did produce a lot of grand rock and pop music. However, his selection of the emblematic song for the Reagan era, “Seasons in the Sun,” which was popular during Reagan’s tenure as California Governor and concludes one of the documentaries, brings a queasy chill. I envision a bunch of Bohemian Grovesters in drag or lederhosen or whatever they don at those gatherings, remembering the Reagan era, swaying tankards and warbling “We had joy, we had fun. We had seasons in the sun.” And I’m awfully glad it’s no longer morning in America.

I’m in wholehearted agreement with Ed Kilgore’s point, made in his post on Romney’s stake in Judge Robert Vinson’s ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), that, “conservative commitment to federalist principles is almost certainly being overrated on this issue as on many others over the years. …federalism is primarily a mean to a desired end, and is disposable otherwise.”
Ed cites conservative support for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and the high court’s decision in “Bush v Gore” as the leading examples of conservatives’ extravagant flexibility on federalist arguments. I would also cite the latter as cause for concern that the Supreme Court’s partisan conservatives may set a new standard for activist interpretation when it comes time to rule on the ACA.
As Ed noted, conservatives will use the full range of legal challenges to invalidate the Act. The only question is whether the conservative high court justices are politicized to the point where they will do the Tea Party’s bidding.
Legal commentator Jonathan Turley thinks the Act is weakened by the omission of a “severability clause,” expressly allowing courts to remove provisions of the law as unconstitutional, while allowing the rest of the law to stand. A severability clause was removed from an earlier draft of the bill. However, provisions have been severed in previous rulings on other laws, even when there was no severability clause.
Senator Dick Durbin makes a strong case that the Act is on solid legal grounds. His remarks in a recent television interview provide excellent boilerplate for Dems seeking a succinct rebuttal to the conservative meme that the law is somehow unconstitutional. Here’s the text, followed by a video of the interview with Senator Durbin, one of the Dems’ better soundbite craftsmen:

This law has been challenged in 16 diffferent federal courts. Twelve judges have dismissed the challenges. Four have considered it. Two ruled that it was constitutional, two unconstitutional. So it isn’t exactly a wave of sentiment against the law.

The quote kicks in about a quarter of the way into the interview:

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Smooth.

Neither political party has much to gain by engaging in “Who lost Egypt?” finger-pointing, since both parties have demonstrated a high tolerance for Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship for 27 years. Such are the realpolitik considerations of mideast diplomacy.
Of course that didn’t stop Max Boot from waxing nostalgic in Commentary about Ronald Reagan’s supposed confronting Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Boot’s less than subtle suggestion that the GOP has a superior record in confronting abusive regimes and would somehow be doing better than President Obama in addressing the events in Egypt falls flat. Smart Republicans don’t want to subject their human rights policy toward South Africa, China, Nicaragua and a dozen other abusive dictatorships to comparative scrutiny. Not that Dems have all that much to brag about, other than Democratic congressional leadership’s passage of some significant human rights measures like anti-apartheid legislation.
What Dems should rethink is the nature of our means of confronting abusive regimes. Clearly, we can no longer afford open-ended, large-scale military occupation of nations, nor multi-billion dollar budgets to subsidize repressive governments. We should more assertively question the value of subsidizing abusive regimes just because they serve our geopolitical interests, while abusing the human rights of their citizens. It’s always been wrong; Now it’s a bad investment as well.
President Obama gave a great speech in Cairo in 2009, challenging Arab nations to embrace Democracy, and offering them hope and opportunity in return. Democrats should now rally around his vision with a new focus on our policy towards Arab nations. What we can escalate instead is our efforts to educate “at-risk” populations about the benefits of tolerance, secular government, free speech and democracy. Let a stronger engagement in the effort to win hearts and minds replace military force. That’s the kind of nation-building that merits our sustained support, and it’s a lot more cost-effective in the long run than squandering billions every week on military operations that win temporary victories at best.
It’s highly unlikely that the uprising in Egypt will do much to directly influence voters in the U.S. to support one party or the other. But the protests in Egypt do provide a timely reminder that the days when subsidizing repressive dictatorships were a sound investment are coming to a close. We need a new grand strategy to win respect, instead of fear, in the strife-torn nations of the middle east, and Democrats should lead the way.

It’s unlikely that anyone at 1600 PA Ave. will lose much sleep about the left critique of Obama’s SOTU speech, and the white house is understandably euphoric about glowing reviews of the President’s state of the union address. In a CNN/Opinion Research survey, 84 percent of those who watched the speech liked Obama’s address; and 52 percent responded “very positively.” A CBS News/Knowlege Networks poll indicated 91 percent favored the president’s proposals.
But progressive critics nonetheless made some good points that merit consideration, mostly having to do with what was not said.
The Nation’s contributing editor Robert Scheer offered the left’s most acerbic review, saying,

I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble….The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole. Instead, the president conveyed the insular optimism of his fat-cat associates…

American Prospect editor-at-large and WaPo columnist Harold Meyerson raised an omission I wondered about:

If we’re going to rewrite our corporate tax code, why don’t we rewrite it to reward those companies that employ workers at good jobs here at home?…Why can’t our tax laws discriminate between those companies that both develop and manufacture their products here and those that go abroad for cheaper labor?…We can at least use tariffs and taxes to reward those corporations that invest at home and penalize those that disinvest in this nation’s future. …That carrot and stick is what’s missing from the president’s commendable-as-far-as-they-go proposals.

Open Left’s Mike Lux had a mostly favorable review of SOTU, calling it “a solid, steady performance,” but with some pointed concerns:

…There also were some anti-progressive, irritating moments, too: screwing consumers on medical malpractice, screwing government workers with a wage freeze, screwing us all with the five-year freeze on domestic discretionary spending (which is actually at least a 7 percent cut if you factor inflation in).

Yesterday the Washington Post weighed in with an editorial taking the President to task for not even mentioning gun control, despite having the family of Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year old girl murdered in Tucson sitting with the first lady:

The lack of urgency is appalling. How many more tragedies must occur before the president is moved to act? How many more stricken families will be forced to sit through Washington dog-and-pony shows while those with the power to stem the violence do nothing?

To be fair, some leading progressives had a more positive reaction, including New Republic senior editor John B. Judis, who called the 2011 SOTU Obama’s “best speech as president.” And MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who echoed some of Ed Kilgore’s take, credited the President with “wrenching the center back from the right” and “stopping the country’s rightward drift.”
It may be that President Obama does intend to address all or some of the aforementioned progressive concerns with reform proposals. It’s not always good strategy to state absolutely everything you want or plan to do in one SOTU speech. I just hope he does plan to push forward a saner firearms policy and some of the carrots and sticks to keep jobs in the U.S. Meyerson noted.
Few would doubt, however, that the schitzy conservative response to the President’s address — Ryan’s uninspiring, visionless view of the possibilities ahead and Bachman’s weird, blundering screed — was a mess. Compared to that, at least, progressive and moderate Dems should have no trouble agreeing that President Obama won the day.