Political statistics junkies will be buzzing today about Nate Silver’s “A ‘Radical Centrist’ View on Election Forecasting,” a characteristically-perceptive analysis at his Five Thirty Eight blog. It’s a response to a recent critique of Silver’s New York Times Magazine article, “Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election.” The critique, entitled “Why Data Wonks Are Wrong About Presidential Elections,” written by Ron Klain, a former Biden staffer, argues that statistical forecasts don’t help much with campaign strategy.
I haven’t yet read Klain’s post, so I can’t make a sound assessment about how accurately Silver describes his argument. But Silver’s post has merit even as a stand-alone essay on the nuances and concerns of political forecasting, one likely to be widely-discussed in poly sci classes this week.
I can certainly see good uses of forecasting in formulating strategy. Ad placement and timing, candidate travel, messaging and policy positions can all benefit from political forecasting. That’s not to say forecasting is the primary strategy tool for political campaigns, nor to deny that it’s been overvalued.
To a some extent, political forecasting is a sideshow of more immediate use to academics, journalists, gamblers and water-cooler chat than it is to political campaign workers. Accurately predicting which candidate wins gives political forecasters some cred as advisers and commentators. And, “If the election were held today” polls, more than forecasts, can tell a candidate that she/he is not doing well with union members, single women or suburbanites, for example. That can be helpful for tweaking messaging, ads and other campaign activities.
But Silver makes it clear that it would be folly for a campaign to marshal most of it’s resources in response to a forecast or poll and he is quite candid about the limitations and misuses of forecasting:

…Forecasters who are not conscientious about their methodology will wind up with models that make overconfident forecasts and that impute meaning to statistical noise…I would not paint all the forecasters with the same brush. Two political scientists who I know have a very sophisticated understanding of these problems are Larry Bartels at Princeton and Robert Erikson at Columbia. Others, like Hans Noel, will publish models, but provide very explicit disclaimers about their limitations. But there others who tweak as many knobs as they can, and there are bloggers and reporters who take all of the results at face value and don’t distinguish the responsible forecasts from the junk science. The problem is made worse when a game show is made out of forecasting and everyone competes to see who can get the most overfit model published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Silver weighs the relative influence of economic statistics, campaign strategy, candidate skills and ideology and unpredictable events, and discusses the difficulty of quantifying such factors. He notes that a lot of forecasting models flunked last year, and he cautions that the 2012 elections are likely to be especially problematic for forecasters. “We have already had an extremely wide array of outcomes in the various special and interim elections that have taken place around the country so far this year,” says Silver, “and we’ve had a very wild Republican primary, suggesting that voter preferences may be more malleable than normal.” He adds that even the best forecasting models don’t do such a great job of explaining the why of outcomes.
Alan I. Abramowitz, senior columnist for Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball and member of the TDS Advisory Board, also has an insightful critique of Silver’s New York Times Magazine article, noting “several problems with Silver’s model,” among them,

…First, it isn’t really a forecasting model because the growth rate of the economy during the year of the election won’t be known until long after the election is over. In addition, the measure of the opposition candidate’s extremism is highly subjective…More importantly, Silver’s model may underestimate Barack Obama’s chances of winning a second term in the White House because it does not take into account the advantage enjoyed by first-term incumbents. And that advantage, as we have seen, is quite substantial.

But Silver does believe that political forecasting models can be made better and better, and can be increasingly useful in political campaigns. Anyone interested in data-driven political analysis should find Silver’s perspective a good read.

For a striking visual representation of how geographically broad-based was the victory over union-bashing in Ohio, take a gander at the map in Dante Atkins’s Daily Kos post “That’s not ‘overreach.’ That’s just the Republican Party.”
Also at Kos, Chris Bowers reports on the Walker recall campaign, along with the effort to recall GOP Wisconsin state senators, as well as dirty tricks being used to obstruct the recall.
With just a few more states to go in the redistricting process, Stuart Rothenberg’s Roll Call post “House Overview: What’s In Play? Democrats Look to Take Back the Chamber in 2012” has an iffy prognosis for Dems. “At this point, with redistricting still up in the air in key states, Democrats appear positioned to gain House seats, but not all that close to the 25 seats they would need to regain a majority in the House…Democrats need some breaks in the final redistricting states, some additional recruits and almost certainly a shift in the national political environment to improve their chances of winning back the House.”
Elizabeth Warren’s first TV ad is out with a simple, direct populist message that ought to win some Bay State swing voters. ActBlue has raised over $2.5 million for her campaign from almost 60 thousand supporters.
Again at Kos, via Alternet, in his article, “10 Stories of People Moving Their Money, Despite Banks” Efforts to Stop Them,” Markos Moulitsas succinctly debunks the myth that banks really welcome the withdrawal campaigns because it relieves them of the administrative costs associated with smaller depositors. Says Kos, “…Not only do they relentlessly advertise for new business on billboards, TV, direct mail and other places, but they fight tooth and nail to prevent people from closing their accounts.” Kos could have also mentioned that megabanks have bent over backward to persuade migrant workers to become depositors, despite their very modest average balances.
Did you know that a third of 18 year-olds have no driver’s license? Further, “18 percent of Americans over the age of 65, one- quarter of African-Americans, and 15 percent of low-income voters do not have a photo ID.” These and other facts bearing on voter suppression can be found in “Protecting The Right To Vote: Testimony for the Committee on the Judiciary” submitted by Demos.
Voter suppression is critical for Republican success in the southern states, where the African American and Latino populations are growing fastest. The Economist doesn’t take voter suppression into consideration in “The politics of the South: Hunting for votes,” but the overview of Democratic prospects in the region in light of recent elections is discouraging, with some exceptions. Still, as The Economist warns, President Obama “will struggle to keep his job next year unless he can win at least one of the three southern states he carried in 2008: Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.” Without addressing the topic directly, the article lends support to the argument that the Obama campaign may now have better prospects in the Rust Belt.
Speaking of Democratic ineptitude in the south, Ashton Pittman, progressive columnist for “The Student Printz,” serving southern Mississippi, has a revealing column explaining why “Democrats Can Only Blame Themselves” in the magnolia State. Pittman explains: “For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans are likely to hold the majority in the Mississippi House of Representatives. In an election that saw progressive victories all across the country, including a major one right here in Mississippi, the Democratic party in Mississippi has only itself to blame..Things were so bad for the Democratic party that it wasn’t even able to field candidates for lieutenant governor, secretary of state, or auditor.” But it’s the whys of it that makes Pittman’s column a good read for Dems who want to do better in the deep south, where highly favorable demographic trends are in motion.
Danielle Kurtzleben of U.S. News Politics has a fun featurette, “The 10 Most Unionized U.S. Cities.” Hint: If you guessed Frisco and Vegas like I did, you would be wrong. Interesting, though, that all but two of the top ten are in CA or NY.
Ezra Klein has a stinging critique of “The Democrats’ Peculiar Negotiating Strategy” up at his WaPo wonkblog. After citing a depressing litany of right turns and cave-ins in the negotiating process, Klein concludes, “So far, Republicans have not said yes to any of the deals the Democrats have offered. They continue to assume a better deal is just around the corner, and thus far, they have been right.”
Also at The Post, Eugene Robinson makes a persuasive case that “Republicans aren’t closing the deal with voters.” Says Robinson: “The Republican field has utterly failed to develop a convincing narrative about the economy. The candidates act as if widespread disappointment with the performance of Obama and the Democrats will be enough to win the election. But voters are being given every reason to suspect that GOP policies will make things worse.”

Mallory Simon reports at CNN on the likely timetable for the U.S. Supreme Court hearings and their decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act:

Oral arguments would probably be held in late February or March, with a ruling by June, assuring the blockbuster issue will become the topic of a hot-button political debate in a presidential election year.

As Simon reports, a key issue to be decided by the Supremes is “whether the ‘individual mandate’ section of the law – requiring nearly all Americans to buy health insurance by 2014 or face financial penalties – is an improper exercise of federal authority.”
The Republican hope is that the high court will rule the Act unconstitutional. Simon quotes CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, “Many states have challenged this and said, ‘This is different because it requires individuals to buy a private product, that is health insurance,’ and that is something [they feel] the federal government simply does not have the authority to do.”
If the court made such a ruling, would that mean state laws requiring drivers to purchase car insurance would also be in jeopardy? It’s OK for state governments to make such a requirement, but not the federal government?
As for the political consequences of the Supreme Court ruling, Toobin speculates:

“If the law is struck down, if the central achievement of President Obama’s domestic policy is struck down, I think that would be very, very bad for him; the idea that he spent all this time on something that was unconstitutional,” Toobin said. “If he wins, I think it’s a benefit. Gratification by a basically conservative Supreme Court, I think, will be seen as a victory for him and will likely give him some momentum heading into the convention…”

Mallory reports that the White House nonetheless feels confident about the challenge, since three out of four circuit courts have upheld the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality, including rulings by “highly conservative judges.”
It also appears that the tide of public opinion may be turning in favor of the Act. According to “CNN Poll: Support rises for health insurance mandate” by Bill Mears and Paul Steinhauser,

The public is divided over the idea of requiring all Americans to have health insurance, according to a new national survey. But a CNN/ORC International Poll [conducted 11/11-13] also indicates that support for the proposal, a cornerstone of the 2010 health care reform law, has risen since June.
According to the poll, 52% of Americans favor mandatory health insurance, up from 44% in June. The survey indicates that 47% oppose the health insurance mandate, down from 54% in early summer…”The health insurance mandate has gained most support since June among older Americans and among lower-income Americans,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “A majority of independents opposed the measure in June, but 52 percent of them now favor it.”

Some might argue that there is little reason to hope that the Supreme Court has gotten any better since Gore v. Bush, in terms of doing of the GOP’s bidding. But it seems to me that there is less cover here for a politicized decision, particularly in light of the courts of appeals rulings. It’s going to take some awfully tortured reasoning by five justices to argue that the coverage requirement is illegal. It could happen, but I’m betting that there is at least one conservative justice who doesn’t want such an embarrassing mockery on his legacy.
In sum, the legal arguments supporting the law’s constitutionality are strong, and the public, though divided, favors the mandate, and increasingly so. Unless the High Court is now hopelessly — and shamelessly — politicized, the law will likely be upheld.

In his National Journal post, “A Model for Obama?,” Ronald Brownstein sorts out the political leanings of white workers in Ohio, in light of a Hart Research/AFL-CIO survey of voters conducted 11/6-8 and the vote on issue 2, which repealed the ban on collective bargaining for Ohio public workers. Brownstein explains:

As impressive as the depth of the win was its breadth…the survey, released Wednesday afternoon, offers the best picture available of the coalition that overturned Kasich’s prized legislation:
–The repeal campaign won broad support. Fully 86 percent of union members voted to repeal, but so did 52 percent of non-union voters. A solid majority of every age group voted to repeal. Not only did 92 percent of liberals vote to repeal but so did a preponderant 70 percent of moderates. (Conservatives supported maintaining the law by almost two-to-one). Nearly three-fifths of independents voted for repeal, along with over nine-in-ten Democrats. Almost three-fifths of whites, as well as a big majority of minorities, voted to repeal.
–The repeal vote reached well into the groups that powered the Republican surge in 2010. A 54 percent majority of whites older than 60 voted to repeal, according to figures from the survey provided by Hart Research’s Guy Molyneux. So did a 61 percent majority of whites without a college education. Even a 55 percent majority of non-college whites who do not belong to a union voted to repeal. All of those are groups that have not voted much in recent years for anything favored by Democrats. Even 30 percent of self-identified Republicans and one-fourth of voters who backed Kasich in 2010 voted to repeal.
The success of the repeal vote among the overlapping groups of senior and blue-collar whites – each of which, nationally, gave 63 percent of their votes to Republican House candidates in 2010, according to exit polls – might be the most striking result in the poll. For Democrats who want a class conscious message from Obama in 2012, it’s evidence that these prodigal Democratic voters can still be reached with an edgy on-your-side appeal.

The white house should learn the important lesson from the vote and the poll, argues Molyneux:

The idea that you can get Democratic voters, not just young and African-American voters, but working class voters energized and excited about fighting for their economic interests is a lesson I hope the White House will take on this…What killed Kasich was the sense that he was looking out either for the rich and powerful or his own party’s political interests. Either way he was not focused on helping average working families in Ohio. And I think that’s what Obama needs to set up about his opponent – motives and concern and in whose interest they are going to govern.

In his New York Times op-ed “How Obama Can Win Ohio,” John Russo, co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University, offers this encouraging assessment:

According to CNN exit polls from the last few elections, union household voters remain a strong presence in Ohio, even after more than three decades of de-industrialization. Twenty-eight percent of Ohio voters come from union households, compared with 23 percent nationally. In 2008, they underperformed for Obama, who won 56 percent of their votes in Ohio versus 59 percent from union households across the country. No similar data exists for the 2010 midterm election, but many labor leaders admit that Kasich beat the Democratic governor, Ted Strickland, in part because voters from community groups and union households either voted Republican or stayed home (essentially giving half a vote to Kasich).
If union households in Ohio lost their enthusiasm for Democratic candidates in recent years, Kasich’s actions, together with the national Republicans’ just-say-no politics and kill-Medicare initiatives (like the Paul Ryan budget), have made the Democrats look a lot better than they did in 2010.
It all comes down to math. In 2008, 2,933,388 Ohioans voted (or 51.5%) for Obama, 258,897 more than McCain won. If union households maintain their proportion of the electorate, and if just 1 percent more of them vote for Democrats, they can add 15,700 votes to the Democratic vote and subtract the same number from the Republicans – a swing of more than 31,000 votes. If Ohio’s union household voters increase their support for Democrats by 3 percent – that is, if they match the national average for union household voters – they would generate 47,100 additional votes for Obama, a swing of 94,200 votes. That alone could give the president Ohio’s electoral votes.
But because of Senate Bill 5, we might reasonably expect an even larger shift. A recent Quinnipiac poll suggests that the anger generated by the anti-union bill and the organizing fostered by the effort to overturn it has 70 percent of union household voters planning to support Obama and the Democrats in 2012. That translates into an increase of 219,829 votes for Obama, a swing of almost 440,000 votes. Put differently, a mobilized Ohio labor movement with 742,000 members, including many teachers, police officers, and firefighters who have often voted Republican, will be more likely to vote for Democrats in 2012.

Russo believes that Obama must press the case for “a positive economic vision and a program for economic change” and the President’s jobs legislation and Obama’s recent initiatives on mortgages and student loans should help.
Writing in The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky adds in his post, “Ohio Vote Shows Obama Winning Back the Rust Belt“:

…The larger context in which this vote took place is important, too. And that context is Operation Wall Street, income inequality, Republicans in Congress killing the jobs bill piece by piece, Obama finally getting some blood flowing through those veins again instead of water. People have started to care about class issues, and it’s pretty clear what they think: The Republican Party isn’t representing them (unless they happen to live in a household with an income of at least $368,000 a year). In the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 76 percent agreed that “the current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country.”
What this means for next year is twofold. First, it suggests that Davids Plouffe and Axelrod should work the Rust Belt. Plouffe in particular has been signaling a strategy that would put more emphasis on Virginia and Colorado and North Carolina (where the convention is being held) at the expense of states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But the way Democrats and majorities of independents are acting in those Rust Belt states now, they’re looking more like states Obama can hold. You may have seen the Ohio poll in which, despite his low approval rating, Obama beats all the Republicans handily–Mitt Romney by nine points, 50 to 41, and the others by double digits.

Tomasky believes the Ohio vote debunks the conventional wisdom that Dems can win either the base or the center, but not both. As Tomasky says, “…What the Ohio result shows is a way to unite liberals and moderates, Democrats and independents, behind one message that both want to hear. That hasn’t happened much in recent American history. The White House had best be alert to it.”
In the wake of the Ohio vote it’s now clear that the GOP made a huge blunder in declaring class war on unionized workers, providing Dems with a powerful weapon. As Molyneux puts it, “…If the class-conscious Ohio repeal campaign genuinely offers Obama a roadmap to remaining competitive with more older and blue-collar whites, he can keep graying Rust Belt states like Ohio and Wisconsin in play – and reduce his need to repeat his 2008 breakthroughs in the diverse and fast growing new swing states across the Sun Belt.”

Alan I. Abramowitz writes on “Why Barack Obama Has a Good Chance of Winning a Second Term, And why Nate Silver may have underestimated his chances” in Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. As Abramowitz says, “According to the Time-for-Change forecasting model, which has correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every presidential election since 1988, Barack Obama has a good chance of winning a second term in the White House next November. The main reason for this is that the Democratic Party has only held the White House since 2008. That makes Obama a first-term incumbent, and first-term incumbents rarely lose…Could Barack Obama be the next Jimmy Carter? There is clearly a chance that he could, if the condition of the U.S. economy deteriorates in 2012 and/or the president’s approval rating slips further into negative territory. But because of the first-term incumbent advantage, the model gives Obama a good chance of winning a second term even with fairly modest economic growth next year and an approval rating in the low- to mid-forties…”
Also at the Crystal Ball, Glen Bolger’s “Obama’s Destiny: Does It Lie in Demographics, or in the Political Environment?” gives Obama the edge in demographics, but the shaky economy makes it too close to call.
Nation of Change has has an update on Bank Transfer Day, noting “The day was a huge success with over 250 events in every corner of the country and over 10,000 people attending, and that’s counting only the events tracked by MoveOn.org and Rebuild The Dream…Move Your Money made local news all over the country – in Madison, Oakland, Detroit, Atlanta, Baltimore, Seattle, Albuquerque, St. Louis, and dozens of other cities…Let’s make every day Bank Transfer – continue to spread the pledge to your neighbors and communities. Demand that banks be held accountable.”
In his Washington Post column, “The right-wing’s shellacking,” E. J. Dionne Jr. has an insightful observation about the one downer in the Ohio vote: “One of the only referendum results the GOP could cheer was a strong vote in Ohio against the health-insurance mandate. While health-reform supporters argued that the ballot question was misleading, the result spoke to the truly terrible job Democrats have done in defending what they enacted. They can’t let the health-care law remain a policy stepchild.”
For the centrist take on Tuesday’s elections, check out Mark Trumbull’s Monitor post, “Election results 2011: Voters signal that GOP overreached.” Also Joe Klein’s Swampland post “Election 2011: A Victory for the Silent Majority.”
Seniors may be a fairly quiet high-turnout demographic. But that doesn’t mean they are not pissed off. Jennifer C. Kerr reports for the AP that “The Associated Press-LifeGoesStrong.com poll found a baby boom generation planning to work into retirement years — with 73 percent planning to work past retirement, up from 67 percent this spring…In all, 53 percent of boomers polled said they do not feel confident they’ll be able to afford a comfortable retirement. That’s up from 44 percent who were concerned about retirement finances in March.”
A blue tide is rising in the once-red ‘burbs of Philly. The Inquirer’s Anthony R. Wood and Josh Fernandez have the skinny here.
Guess who is taking Michigan for granted. Lisa Lerer and David J. Lynch report at Bloomberg.com on “Romney Defends Auto Bailout Opposition in His Native State.” Their article quotes David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor: “”Without the intervention of the Bush and Obama administrations, we would have seen the liquidation of both Chrysler and probably GM,” Cole said in August. “That would have taken the whole industry down. We would have seen a disaster in terms of the job impact.” Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder agrees: “It wasn’t just one or two companies at risk, but the entire national supply chain,” Snyder told the Detroit News. “Losing that would have had a devastating impact on the economy.” But Romney just doubled down in last night’s debate: “My view with regards to the bailout was that, whether it was by President Bush or by President Obama, it was the wrong way to go…”
Romney nonetheless got a free ride from his competitors last night, according to Paul Begala’s zinger-rich review of the proceedings at The Daily Beast. Begala observes: “I am astonished that no one laid a glove on Mitt Romney. They didn’t even take a swing. (And yet his hair was oddly tousled. How much you wanna bet he focus-grouped the new ‘do?).” As for Perry, Begala eulogizes “It was as dramatic and cringe-worthy a self-immolation as I’ve ever seen. I was in the room, 10 feet from Howard Dean when he screamed in Iowa. I was in the hall in Richmond when George H.W. Bush looked at his watch in the middle of a debate. But I have never seen a more devastating moment of self-destruction. What’s next, Perry endorsing Cain’s 9-9… ummm, what’s the third number?”
Perhaps this video clip of tea party Congressman Joe Walsh’s meltdown could be a useful resource for Psych 101 classes studying the “type A” and “authoritarian personality.”
Where are the Democratic women candidates? Democratic gains notwithstanding, there wasn’t much in Tuesday’s elections to cheer about in terms of women’s empowerment, as the Center for the American Woman in Politics reports: “Women failed to gain ground in the 2011 state legislative elections…With legislative contests in four states, even if every outstanding race is decided in favor of a woman, the national total will drop from the current number of 1740,” observed CAWP director Debbie Walsh…”The national total of women elected statewide will increase by just one — to 72 — as a result of elections in three states. It’s discouraging that we’re nowhere near the peak statewide number of 92 women, achieved in 2000.”

Ohio voters had their say on Tuesday, and more of them voted against the Republican union busting law than voted for Governor John Kasich. According to the latest returns (with 99 percent of precincts reporting), 61 percent of voters opposed the union-busting legislation, which stripped collective bargaining rights from 350 thousand public employees, with 39 percent supporting it.
A visibly shaken Governor Kasich hemmed and hawed on camera about how he was going to take some time for “reflecting” on the vote. Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that Ohio voters respected their teachers, fire fighters, police and other public servants more than fat-cat ideologues who want to crush trade unions in the Buckeye state.
You won’t be shocked to learn that union-busters tried the usual dirty tricks, including the old “Election day is tomorrow” (not today) robo-calls. GOP media errand boy Mike Huckabee even ‘jokingly’ suggested creating confusion about election day at a pancake breakfast/rally in Mason, Ohio on Friday, according to Molly Reilly’s HuffPo report:

“Make a list,” said Huckabee, referring to supporters’ family and friends. “Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done…The crowd laughed at Huckabee’s remarks. In 2009, he made a similar joke in Virginia, saying, “Let the air our of their tires … keep ’em home. Do the Lord’s work.”

What ‘Lord’ would that be? This one doesn’t quite pass the ‘WWJD’ sniff test.
Indeed, his remarks raise a serious question: If someone repeatedly advocates illegal voter suppression in a ‘joking’ manner, should he/she be held accountable? Maybe it’s time for the authorities to answer that question.
So, how did the ‘We Are Ohio’ coalition defeat the lavishly-funded union-busters? Mike Hall explains it well in his AFL-CIO Blog post “Ohio Voters to Kasich: “No, No, No“:

After the Ohio legislature rammed the law through in late March–ignoring an outpouring of public opposition including demonstrations that brought thousands to the state capitol in Columbus–Ohio working families began a massive mobilization to repeal the law.
In just a matter of weeks, volunteers from the We Are Ohio coalition collected more than 1.3 million signatures to put S.B. 5 repeal on the ballot. With polls showing growing support for repeal and a rapidly shrinking approval rating, in August Kasich even offered a so-called compromise. But working families rejected the deal and continued the fight for full repeal.
As the election drew near, unions and community groups knocked on doors, made phone calls and distributed literature around the state. In the past weekend alone, volunteers knocked on more than 450,000 doors.

When well-organized people power goes up against big right-wing money, don’t bet against the people.

A good place to begin your Tuesday reading would be John Nichols article in The Nation, “Occupy the Polls: Tuesday’s Critical Tests of Political Power” which spotlights a ten-pack of elections being held around the country today to watch for clues. Number one is the Ohio referendum to restore labor rights, which progressives are expected to win.
Dems should also keep an eye on swing state Virginia, where top Democrats are rallying to prevent Republicans from controlling the state senate, the last Democratic bulwark in the Old Dominion. The Washington Times’ David Sherfinski has a report here.
Seizing on a newly-released Florida poll indicating that a near-majority of respondents believe the Republicans are sabotaging the economy at the same time as the President’s approval rating is 41 percent in the sunshine state, Jonathan Chait makes the case that Obama’s low approval ratings are being overemphasized by the pundits. Chait notes that Bush’s mid-forties approval numbers improved significantly in ’04 as many voters decided they couldn’t cast ballots for Kerry. Says Chait: “…incumbent approval rating isn’t something that’s independent of the opposing candidate. Voters may shape their view of the incumbent by making a comparison…We have to be a little cautious about interpreting the importance of Obama’s mediocre approval ratings in the face of a polarized electorate and a still-discredited opposition party.”
Mounting opinion poll data indicates that the public believes the GOP is intentionally stalling the economy to hurt the President’s re-election prospects, according to Brian Beutler’s post “Three’s A Trend: Polls Show Voters Believe GOP Intentionally Stalling Economic Recovery” in Talking Points Memo. Salon’s Steve Kornacki has more to say about it here.
Ed Pilkington reports in The Guardian on “Koch brothers: secretive billionaires to launch vast database with 2012 in mind.” For those who were unaware of the extent of the brothers’ grandiose ambitions, Pilkington notes “The voter file was set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money…It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs.”
Martha C. White has a Time Moneyland report “Bank Transfer Day, The Day After.” Although aggregate numerical data is not yet in, some anecdotal reports are impressive. Noting that the facebook-generated campaign had 86K supporters, White adds: “The Denver Post says more than 1,000 protesters marched from bank to bank and urged customers there to close their accounts, while the Colorado Independent says local credit unions have acquired $100 million in new deposits within the past month… In Sacramento, Golden1 Credit Union opened for extended hours, and Vice President of Marketing, Scott Ingram said “It’s a busy day for us. We were anticipating we’d see a lot of new members and that’s what’s happening at every branch,” reported
reported Leigh Paynter of News10 KXTV. Elsewhere, Suzanne Kapner of the Wall St. Journal reports “On Saturday, the Boeing Employees’ Credit Union in Seattle signed up a one-day record 659 new members. At the grand opening of a Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union branch in Pflugerville, Texas, the parking lot was so full that customers had to leave their cars across the street.” You want video? Anna Almendrala of HuffPo has some Youtube footage here.
Most of the action was in the west, but not all of it. Looking to the east, Rashid Mian of the Long Island Press reports in his “Bank Transfer Day: Hundreds Switch to LI Credit Unions” that “Bethpage Federal Credit Union reported that more than 1,200 new accounts were opened on Saturday alone, far more than the usual 300 accounts the credit union opens on average per week.” “We’ve been so busy I’ve been handling customers that are overflow,” says David Glaser, vice president of the National Capital Bank of Washington, in Washington, D.C. The two-branch bank has one location open on weekends, and Glaser says it added six new customers on Saturday. Ordinarily, he says a Saturday might yield just a single new customer or none at all,” according to White’s report in Time, cited above.
Dems need not be intimidated by GOP bluster and cherry-picked polls arguing for a return to “market-based” healthcare,’ because some polls show show quite the opposite, As Sarah Kliff of Ezra Klein’s wonkblog reveals in her “Unexpected chart of the day: Americans want more government in health care.”
Elizabeth DiNovella has a penetrating report in The Progressive on “The Group Behind the Republican Takeover,” the Republican State Leadership Committee, which “played a decisive role in the 2010 elections, and helped flip twenty state legislative chambers from Democrat to Republican. Republicans now control more state legislatures than at any time since 1928.” DiNovella notes that, “Able to raise unlimited funds, the Republican State Leadership Committee is a stalking horse for corporate America. Top contributors to the group include Altria (formerly Philip Morris), Anheuser-Busch, Citigroup, Comcast Cable, Exxon Mobil, Home Depot, Monsanto, PhRMA, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Verizon, and WellPoint.” Just thought you oughtta know.
Anyone who has any doubts that ‘felon disenfranchisement’ laws being strengthened by Republicans across the country are racially-motivated, should check out “Who Gets to Vote?,” a revealing NYT op-ed by New York law School professor Erika L. Wood.
Ronald Brownstein discusses “The Two Worlds of Whites” revealed in the Pew Research study last week in his National Journal column. Says Brownstein: “On the day after Barack Obama’s sweeping victory in 2008, veteran Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg described the modern Democratic coalition as diverse America and the whites who are comfortable with diverse America…That appears to be even more true today. The line between whites who are comfortable with the racial and ethnic change transforming America into a “world nation” and those uneasy about it increasingly looks like one of the most important boundaries of the 2012 campaign.”

After the doomsayers and Pollyanna’s of both parties have all had their say, Ron Brownstein can be counted on for a sound analysis of the political moment in presidential politics. His current National Journal post, “Back to Basics: Can Barack Obama’s amplified populism galvanize the modern Democratic coalition?” provides a carefully-calibrated weighing of the challenges facing the Obama campaign. Brownstein explains:

Regardless of the Republican nominee, those on the Obama team recognize that their biggest obstacle is voter disappointment with his performance, particularly on the economy. They believe one of their biggest opportunities is that voters generally prefer the president’s ideas for dealing with jobs and the deficit over Republican alternatives. They understand that their biggest challenge is to improve the retrospective judgment about his performance while simultaneously encouraging voters to focus more on the prospective comparison with the GOP.
In most national surveys, Obama’s approval rating is running around 45 percent. (Some top Democrats worry that the actual number among likely voters is lower.) Even more ominous, more than two-thirds of Americans surveyed routinely say the country is on the wrong track, the highest level in decades. On both fronts, those numbers more resemble the profile of presidential losers than of winners.

As long as there is an electoral college, U.S. presidents will be elected by 50 different elections, which makes for a complicated calculus. As Brownstein says, “…Even senior Obama strategists acknowledge that they feel more confident about states where his approval rating reaches 47 percent or above.” Brownstein adds that the 47 percent approval figure is “the same number transfixing many Republicans.”
It’s always possible that the economy will pick up during the next year, but Brownstein notes that “…The glum conclusion inside the White House is that the economy isn’t likely to provide him much of a tailwind before Election Day.” Brownstein believes “The smaller-scale administrative initiatives he’s now consistently announcing may help only at the margin.”
But Brownstein does not dismiss the Obama campaign strategy, which he describes:

…Obama’s team is most optimistic about improving his ratings through the comparison with the eventual Republican nominee. That debate, they hope, will remind people of first-term accomplishments like the auto-industry rescue and shift attention toward ideas such as reducing the deficit through a mix of spending cuts and upper-income tax increases, which consistently outpolls the GOP’s cuts-only approach. Put another way, they hope that clarifying the choice will help them win the referendum…Obama strategists say that no matter whom the GOP nominates, the president will deliver the same core message: A Republican president would rubber-stamp the agenda of the GOP Congress and return to policies that caused the crash, favor the wealthy, and squeeze the middle class….

Brownstein recounts the weaknesses of the GOP presidential candidates, most notably Romney, whose “boardroom background” could alienate the largest swing constituency — blue collar whites — which is how Ted Kennedy whipped Romney in the ’94 Bay State Senate race. But Brownstein also cites political strategist Mark Penn’s argument that an over-emphasized “class warrior” message might alienate white collar workers who have been trending Democratic in recent elections.
Brownstein acknowledges that Republicans will “remind voters about the aspects of Obama’s term they like least–such as his stimulus failing to dent high unemployment.” But he leaves the door open for a possible Obama victory, concluding “Obama’s sharpening populism reaches back to his party’s traditions. Whether it can galvanize his party’s modern electoral coalition remains to be proven.”
I would only underscore that, despite historic precedents concerning approval ratings and unemployment rates, there are some major unprecedented factors bearing on the 2012 presidential election, which could be game-changers.
First, The entire GOP field is riddled with well-publicized vulnerabilities, personal and political. Secondly, we have never before seen a Republican party so hell-bent on legislative obstruction at all costs, and there are indications that this is not playing well with the middle class. Third, today’s GOP is more shamelessly devoted to protecting the wealth of multimillionaires from even modest tax increases than ever, contrary to overwhelming public support. Lastly, the public is well-aware that the Republican party is focused on destroying a sitting president as its openly-stated raison d’etre — even if it means voting against putting hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans to work fixing our dangerously decaying infrastructure.
it will take some skillful politicking to exploit these new factors effectively. But if Dems listen to the right strategists, these assets ought to be worth a few points in a close election.

Matthew D. Lassiter, author of “The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South.” has a New York Times op-ed, “Who Speaks for the Silent Majority” arguing that “Mr. Obama’s challenge in 2012 is not the ideological fervor of Tea Party conservatives, but rather the recognition by many working-class and middle-class voters that both parties favor Wall Street over Main Street. While activist groups on the right and left compete to portray big government or big business as the enemy, the silent majority is still out there in the volatile political center, up for grabs.” Since not all Dems “favor Wall St over Main St.,” Lassiter’s point would be more credible if he said “perception” instead of “recognition.”
Peter Beinhart’s “The GOP’s War Hypocrisy” at The Daily Beast puts to rest any worries anti-war Dems may have entertained about the GOP presidential candidates coming up with a coherent alternative to the Administration’s Afghanistan policy.
The fate of same-day voter registration in Maine is on the line next Tuesday, when voters will cast ballots affirming or rejecting the restoration of the measure. Chris Bowers reports that it’s a close call, with 48 percent rejecting a measure to require voters to register at least two days in advance, and 44 percent supporting it, according to a recent Public Policy Poll. As you might guess, supporters of same-day registration are being outspent by the voter obstruction crowd. Those who want to help correct the imbalance can contribute here.
Marco Rubio (R-FL) is down, but not out, as a possible GOP veep candidate, according to George Bennett’s Palm Beach Post report on a new Suffolk University/WSVN-TV poll.
But Rubio’s “anti-Latino record” is far too problematic for him to do the GOP ticket any good, according to Democratic strategist Maria Cardona’s well reasoned post at CNN politics.
There are encouraging numbers for President Obama in the new Quinnipiac Poll, reports Kyle Leighton at Talking Points Memo, with “big gains among the groups with whom he has had the most problems – whites and men. Women also shift from a five-point negative to a four-point positive,” according to Quinnipiac Institute spokesman Peter Brown…The President leads all his possible GOP challengers outside the poll’s margin of error…Romney is the only GOP candidate that pulls more support from independent voters than Obama, although Cain comes within one point. The key against Romney is female voters — Obama gets 50 percent against Romney’s 38, while they evenly split males.”
Apparently not all rich guys are financial wizards. Mayor Bloomberg popped off on Tuesday, loudly parroting the conservative meme that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act caused the financial meltdown. Krugman shreds the meme, noting that Fannie and Freddie accounted for “very little subprime lending” and adding “this is cheap, politically motivated stuff, motivated by a deliberate desire to mislead. And if Bloomberg actually believes this stuff, he has very bad judgement, not just about the facts, but about who he should trust.”
Dems who want to get a better understanding of the living standards and concerns of young voters should check out a new report posted by Demos, “The State of Young America: the Databook,” especially its splashy Charts and Graphs.
Chris Isidore reports at CNN Money that Harvard student supporters of Occupy Wall St. walked out of an Intro Econ class being taught by Bush economic advisor Greg Mankiw. A student statement said that the protest was being conducted “to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course.” Perhaps it’s time for OWS to hold teach-ins on income inequality on America’s campuses — with strong Democratic support.
Redistricting is serious biz for political junkies, but ProPublica gooses a little levity out of the topic in their catchy ditty “The Redistricting Song.”
Kim Geiger of the L.A. Times Washington Bureau reports that a third party advocacy group funded by secret donors, ‘Americans Elect,’ has just announced that it has secured 1.9 million signatures needed for a spot on the Ohio presidential ballot for 2012. The group has already qualified in Florida, Michigan and Nevada, Arizona, Alaska and Kansas — “and is awaiting certification in California, Utah, Hawaii and Arkansas.”

The GOP can no longer be defined solely by the acronymn terms “Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis.” The “sabotage” meme is also begining to stick, as Political Animal Steve Benen observes in the Washington Monthly: “…the “sabotage” question — concerns that Republicans are deliberately hurting the country, holding back the economy on purpose, for the express purpose of undermining the Obama presidency — is gaining mainstream traction.”
Stanley Greenberg, James Carville, and Erica Seifert have a DCorps report on a new GQR survey exploring attitudes toward the Occupy Wall St. Movement and revealing “an intensely anti-establishment, anti-Washington, anti-Wall Street moment.” The report also indicates “On our thermometer scale, voters give chilly ratings all around. Everyone has dropped substantially, but support for the Republican Congress has completely disintegrated. More than half of all voters give these Republicans a negative rating, with a mean rating under 40 degrees. With House Republicans getting a remarkable 65 percent disapproval, the race for Congress is now dead even, after Republicans won by 8 points in 2010.”
Julian Brookes has a Rolling Stone post, “People are Ditching Their Banks and Shredding Their Cards,” noting: “Efforts like the Facebook-based Bank Transfer Day,, which is urging depositors to switch to a (low-or no-fee) credit union before Nov. 5, and Move Your Money, are having an effect, and local news outlets are reporting an uptick in fund shifts from big banks and into nonprofit institutions. Understandably, credit unions are piling on with ad campaigns urging potential customers to “ditch their banks” and “shred their cards.” Some credit unions have seen a 30 percent bump; others have doubled their membership.”
David G. Savage of the L.A.Times D.C. Bureau has an update on the GOP’s nation-wide voter suppression campaign, “Election laws tightening in GOP-run states”
Ron Brownstein’s National Journal post, “The Stained Glass Divide,” shows Dems doing a little better among the faithful than I expected: “Looking then at all adults, Republicans lead Democrats in identification among the very religious by 49 percent to 36 percent; Democrats lead Republicans among the non-religious by 52 percent to 30 percent; and Democrats narrowly lead among the moderately religious by 44 percent to 38 percent.”
In his CNN opinion post, James Carville makes a pretty tight argument “Why Rick Perry’s presidential bid is toast.”
Daniel Stone has a clip ‘n share for Dems at The Daily beast, “The Tea Party Pork Binge,” hammering conservative politicians for the disonnect between their pious government-bashing on the one hand and their eagerness to grab all the pork they can for their constituents, Eric Cantor being exhibit ‘A.’: “But away from the cameras, Cantor sometimes pulls right up to the spending trough, including the very stimulus law he panned in public. Letters obtained by Newsweek show him pressing the Transportation Department to spend nearly $3 billion in stimulus money on a high-speed-rail project–not the one he derided in Nevada, but another in his home state.” More juicy revelations here.
Jessica Brady has an interesting post at Roll Call Politics, discussing how conservative challengers in GOP primaries are a potentially-powerful asset for Democrats in their quest to retake majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Chris Bowers reports how “One part of Republican plan to derail Wisconsin recalls collapses,” when Republican state Senator Dale Schultz took a stand against a bill requiring the recall effort to be conducted under new, redistricted state maps. Bowers notes, however, that the state GOP has another bill in the hopper, which could obstruct the recall by requiring that recall petititions be notarized.