Campbell Robertson’s New York Times article “For Politics in South, Race Divide Is Defining” scratches the surface of a trend Democrats should try to understand better.
Robertson focuses on Mississippi, the state where African Americans comprise the largest percentage of residents:

At a glance, Democrats may seem to be in better shape here than they are in neighboring states. Republicans won a supermajority in the Alabama Legislature in the 2010 elections and took over the Louisiana Legislature a month later as a result of several party switches, while Mississippi Democrats still control the State House of Representatives. Unlike in Louisiana, Democrats in Mississippi have actually managed to field candidates for a few statewide offices in this year’s elections, and hold the office of attorney general.
But the tale told by demographics is a stark one. Mississippi has, proportionally, the largest black population of any state, at 37 percent. Given the dependably Democratic voting record of African-Americans here, strategists in each party concede that Democrats start out any statewide race with nearly 40 percent of the vote.
…Merle Black, an expert on politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said that point is arguably already here. In 2008 exit polls, he pointed out, 96 percent of self-identified Republicans in Mississippi were white. Nearly 75 percent of self-identified Democrats were black. …Indeed, it is hard to imagine that Democratic support among whites could get any lower when, according to 2008 exit polls, only 6 percent of white males in Mississippi described themselves as Democrats.

The title of Robertson’s article is a little misleading. Robertson is not saying, as the title implies, that white southerners in the polling booth think, “Gee, I better vote Republican because I’m a white person.” Nor are African and Latino Americans voting Democratic at the polls solely because of their skin color. In reality, southerners vote more along the lines of their perceived economic interests.
People of color vote their real economic interests for the most part. The distortion in the south is more about the white working/middle class voters casting ballots against their own economic interests. This happens across the country to some extent, but it is more of a problem for Democrats in the south, where unions are weak and so-called “right-to-work” laws keep them that way.
Robertson notes that there are little pockets of Democratic strength in predominantly white communities throughout the south, with northeast Mississippi being a prime example. However, white progressives in the south are more concentrated in the big cities, closer-in suburbs and college towns.
Outside of the cities, most of the mainstream media targeting the working and middle class are conservative in policy outlook. Too many white voters in rural areas rarely hear or read a well-argued liberal opinion. Hopefully, MSNBC and the growth of the progressive blogospshere are beginning to change that. As income inequality continues to grow unabated, it’s not hard to imagine a tipping point at which southern whites will begin to question the wisdom of ever-increasing tax cuts for the rich and the party that pushes such policies as a panacea for all economic ills.
Robertson quotes Brad Morris, a Democratic strategist, on Democratic prospects, saying “We’ve hit rock bottom,” in the south, and I tend to agree. There’s just not much more room for growth of Republican political influence in the region, given current demographic parameters. And most of the demographic trends going forward favor Democrats.
The Republican echo chamber has been very successful in the south in terms of making demagogic attacks against Democratic candidates and policies stick. State Democratic Party organizations tend to be weaker and underfunded in the south and their messaging suffers as a result, while anti-union corporations in the south make sure Republicans have all the money they need. This is the heart of the GOP’s southern hustle.
President Obama’s victories in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida certainly suggest the Democrats should not write-off any southern states, as some have urged. With stronger candidates, Democrats can win more elections.
Looking to the future, Democrats are going to do better as a result of explosive growth of Latino and African Americans in the southern states. But there must also be more of a conscious effort on the part of state and local Democratic parties to recruit and train stronger candidates. Dems need more candidates of color to turn out these rapidly-growing demographic groups. But they also need more candidates, women in particular, who have white working-class roots and/or know how to reach white working families. With that commitment, a substantially more Democratic south in the not-too-distant future is a good bet.

Jim Hightower takes a disturbing look at “The Corporate Takeover of the 2012 Presidential Election” at nationofchange.org. Hightower notes that “Corporate hucksters, intent on political profiteering, are setting up dummy funds with such star-spangled names as Make Us Great Again and Restore Our Future….These groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money…As of August, more than 80 percent of the money in Super PACs backing Republican candidates had come from only 35 people writing six- and seven-figure checks.”
In his post, ‘Decision Season” at The American Prospect, Scott Lemieux considers the political and legal ramifications of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act — during the peak of the 2012 presidential campaign.
Steven Shepard reports at National Journal’s Hotline on Call that President Obama is holding a slight lead over both Romney (+2 percent) and Santorum (+3 percent) in a new Quinnipiac University PA poll, with a 6 percent edge over Perry. The poll also found that 52 percent of respondents want PA to keep its winner-take-all electoral vote allocation, with 40 percent favoring the district allocation scheme proposed by the GOP.
The Rude Pundit has the snark chops needed to put into perspective bloated MSM coverage of Chris Christie’s non-announcement, while all but ignoring the Occupy Wall Street protests.
John Paul Rollert posts on “The Hardy Myth of ‘Job Creators‘” at Salon.com, and offers some interesting observations about the elite group of folks the GOP argues should be exempt from taxation. During the Clinton Administration, notes Rollert, “…Higher taxes on the “job creators” proved no obvious hurdle to economic growth — the economy grew for 116 consecutive months, the most in U.S. history — it did cut the deficit from $290 billion when Clinton took office to $22 billion by 1997 and helped put the country on a projected path to paying off the national debt by 2012.”
Conversely, Brian Cooney’s “GOP in Denial: Tax Cuts Do Not Increase Revenues” in the Lexington (KY) Record brings the numbers that show Republican tax cuts are no panacea for joblessness: “In 2008, tax expert David Cay Johnston reported that “Total income was $2.74 trillion less (in 2008 dollars) during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.” The average family lost $21,000 during this period…The government didn’t do any better. According to the Washington Post, by 2011 the Bush tax cuts had cost, in lost revenue, $2.8 trillion…In September, 2009, the majority staff of the Joint Congressional Economic Committee reported that the Bush economy had the slowest job growth of any administration since Herbert Hoover.”
The Campaign for America’s Future presents “A Contract for the American Dream,” a 10-point agenda to restore America’s economy leading up to the October 3rd “Take Back the American Dream” conference.
We’ve reported on a couple of the unintended beneficial consequences of the ‘Citizens United’ decision, none of which offset the huge damage the ruling does by giving corporations carte blanche in supporting Republican candidates. But In These Times has an article “Corporations Are Not People: A Movement Builds to Fight Corporate Rule and Amend the Constitution,” by Joel Bleifuss, reporting on the emergence of a multi-faceted campaign to address the injustices of the ruling.
Far be it from TDS to gin up paranoia about the integrity of America’s vote-counting systems. But do read Elinor Mills’s “E-voting Machines Vulnerable to Remote Vote Changing” at cnet.com, or at least this graph: “The Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne Laboratory, which is a division of the Department of Energy, discovered this summer that Diebold touch-screen e-voting machines could be hijacked remotely, according to team leader Roger Johnston…As many as a quarter of American voters are expected to be using machines that are vulnerable to such attacks in the 2012 election.”
For a motherlode of clever quotes about economic inequality and greed, check out inequality.org, featuring such pearls as Matthew Arnold’s “Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class” and Robert Lear’s “You have to pay your CEO above average or you’re admitting you have a below-average CEO.”
Speaking of economic inequality, E. J. Dionne, Jr. has a WaPo column explaining “Why Conservatives Hate Warren Buffet,” Says Dionne: “No wonder partisans of low taxes on wealthy investors hate Warren Buffett. He has forced a national conversation on (1) the bias of the tax system against labor; (2) the fact that, in comparison with middle- or upper-middle-class people, the really wealthy pay a remarkably low percentage of their income in taxes; and (3) the deeply regressive nature of the payroll tax.”
At commondreams.org, Former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson takes a look at the latest messaging advice from GOP wordsmith guru Frank Luntz. Grayson has some fun with Luntz’s penchant for euphemisms and suggests some new ones: Vampires are “blood recyclers” and nuclear war is “1000 points of light.” Riffing on Luntz’s “You don’t create jobs by making life difficult for job creators,” Grayson explains that “job-creators” is Republican-speak for “greedy, soulless multinational corporations who don’t give a damn about you.”
Kyle Kondik argues at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball that Dems’ prospects for retaking control of the House of Reps depends on President Obama’s re-election, and he rolls out charts assessing the most competitive House races. If you wanna help, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s ‘Drive to 25’ campaign accepts donations here and ActBlue’s progressive House candidates can be supported here.

Yesterday TDS flagged a HuffPo post, “No Casa Blanca for the GOP” by Maria Cardona. It’s too good of a piece to let it go at that, so here’s a bigger bite in hopes of encouraging more Democrats to read it:

As a Latina…I find myself scratching my head and wondering whether the GOP candidates even know – or care – there is a powerful and growing Latino voting population in critical swing states that hold the key to any Republican who wants to work in the Oval Office.
During the last several GOP Presidential debates, I sat dumbfounded on several instances where the GOP candidates were unwilling or frankly, unable to even articulate a single thing they would do to capture the Latino vote. When that question was posed at the GOP Tea Party debate, not one candidate mentioned how they would create additional jobs for Latinos, or create additional economic opportunity. Instead, they tripped over each over trying to see who could use the phrase “government dole” more times, and who would do a better job of keeping the “illegals” out. It was downright offensive.

Cardona analyzes some election and polling data, and finds the GOP in big trouble with Latinos:

Matthew Dowd, a Republican pollster said in 2004 that if George W. Bush did not garner at least 40% of the Latino vote in that year’s election, he would not be elected. He got exactly that. So imagine if in 2004, the required GOP Latino vote share was 40%, in 2012, after an explosion of growth around the country and in key battleground states that percentage has got to be at least 44 or 45% if not more. But for the sake of keeping things statistically correct, let’s stick with 40%. In a few recent polls by Latino Decisions, a polling firm specializing in polling Latinos, the vote share for the Republican Party does not break 19%. That is a 21 point, jaw-droppingly huge gap the Republicans need to bridge in order to have a prayer of winning the White House in 2012.

Cardona has more to say about GOP cluelessness and/or indifference regarding priorities of Hispanic voters:

…If you look at the recent history of GOP candidates across the board and how they have run their campaigns, it seems the truth is much more disturbing….On every single issue that is important to Latinos – jobs, education, health care, small businesses, Social Security, and yes, immigration, the GOP presidential candidates are on the complete opposite side.
On jobs, the GOP candidates would drastically slash budgets and programs that would help keep Latinos employed or help the millions of unemployed Latinos across the country. On education, the GOP candidates would slash education investment and Pell Grants which have given hundreds of thousands of Latino students the chance to go to college. The GOP candidates would all repeal “Obamacare,” when it has provided 9 million Latinos health care coverage who didn’t have it before. We already know what the GOP wants to do with Social Security – if they are not calling it a Ponzi scheme and saying it is unconstitutional, they want to privatize it and put it in the hands of Wall Street. Social Security kept 20 million Americans out of poverty including almost half of Latino seniors.
On immigration, what Republicans don’t understand is what Latinos hear when GOP candidates say “We are for legal immigration but against illegal immigration.” When the GOP makes this statement, they normally follow it up with something like “we need to secure the border first.” To Latinos, this is code for “We will never support a path to legalization for the millions of ‘illegals’ who are here.”

As Cardona explains, “Again, the GOP is playing to their base, offering extreme right-wing platitudes and no real solutions, and continuing to alienate Latinos in the process. This is not a policy answer to the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants who are here and are not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Viewing videos and reading articles about the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ campaign (e.g. here and here), I was encouraged, even though it was only a few hundred protesters, mostly idealistic young people, who will likely evaporate before too long. “Hell, at least somebody is in the street,” I mumbled to no one in particular.
Although the stated goals of the Wall St. protesters seem broad, who knows, this could be the beginning of an ‘American Spring,’ Al Gore and others have called for. One of the common denominators with the Egyptian uprising is that we, too, have a large number of bright, well-educated young people looking at lousy job prospects, though not yet at the crisis levels Egypt is suffering.
The difference between the Wall St. protests and the London riots may just be a matter of time. The progressive hope is that the Occupy Wall St. protest will take on more of the scope, substance and goal-oriented militance of the Wisconsin uprising.
Whether it’s Wall St. occupiers, Madison unionists, London rioters or Cairo demonstrators, working people everywhere want stable, secure employment. Regardless of what the Ayn Rand ideologues and the financial barons say, a decent job ought to be considered a fundamental human right in any nation that calls itself a democracy, and most certainly in the world’s most prosperous democracy. And when the private sector fails to deliver, government should step in and put people to work on needed public works projects.
The American Jobs Act which President Obama has proposed is a start. Reasonable progressives can disagree about how good of a beginning it is and what more needs to be done. But we have to begin somewhere, and right now this is the best single jobs bill we have. Let’s pass it and then fight for more. We might not be able to pass it before the election. It might even take a few years. But let it not be said that it failed to pass because of weak support from the Democratic rank and file.
The American Jobs Act may be a grandiose title for what the legislation actually delivers. But the thing is to view it as a small but important part, a first step goal of something bigger, call it the American Jobs Movement. Such a movement must be a broad-based, well-organized coalition that puts feet in the street and in the halls of congress as citizen lobbyists, not just here and there but continuously, until we exhaust the opposition. Numerous polls indicate that we already have the numbers to make it happen. We just need the organization.
In addition to legislative reforms, an American Jobs Movement could also leverage consumer economic power, in the form of ‘selective patronage’ campaigns, stockholder activism and even targeted boycotts if necessary, to persuade American companies to provide and keep more jobs in the U.S. This part of the American Jobs Movement would not depend on or be limited by any politician. We can only blame our political leaders so much, if we don’t organize our economic power to compel investment in American jobs. After that, it’s on us.
We’ve had a lot of dialogue in the MSM and blogosphere about the need for jobs and what should be done. And some great ideas and insights have been shared. But the missing ingredient has been a mass movement focused on securing the reforms that can produce jobs for Americans. It’s time to add it in and stir it up.

Somebody finally said it plain. In his “Land of the Free, Home of the Turncoats” American prospect Co-Editor Robert Kuttner argues persuasively that “Republicans are out to destroy government’s ability to govern. This attack, not on policy differences but on government itself, is new and ominous….The right’s reckless assault on our public institutions is not just an attack on government. It is a war against America.”
David Nir discusses a new Public Policy Polling survey, in his Kos post “MA-Sen: Elizabeth Warren Leads Scott Brown in New Poll.” it’s just 2 points, within the M.O.E., but not too shabby for openers.
Kris Kromm has an enlightening Facing South post on how “Redistricting battles highlight political barriers faced by Latinos,” focusing on gerrymander games in TX, GA and FL.
“Mainstream Pundits vs. Mainstream Voters” by Washington Monthly Political Animal Steve Benen uses recent polling data to shred the arguments against the president’s jobs proposals being made by “centrist” pundits David Brooks, Mark Penn, and Mark Halperin.
The Daily Beast has Michael Tomasky’s “GOP’s Class Warfare Sham,” in which he makes the case that “This tax fight will be the great test of the Obama presidency. All else–stimulus, bailouts, financial reform, even health care–was prelude. The tax debate is the money shot…”
Robert Reich agrees in his blog post “Make the Rich Pay More Taxes! How Obama’s Pledge to Fight for a Fairer Tax Policy Sets Off the Real Battle of 2012.”
Ben Nuckels, former campaign manager for Democratic Governor of Illinois Pat Quinn, has a useful post up at Campaigns & Elections, “How to Spend Late Money the Smart Way.” Nuckels tells how to buy TV time on the last weekend of a campaign and also offers some tips on which methods of GOTV contact provide best bang for bucks.
Campaigns & Elections is also offering an interesting freebie from their 1988 archives “How to beat a Republican” by Rahm Emanuel. Despite the 22+ years that have passed since then, Emanuel’s insights are as interesting as his track record is formidable. One of his tips:”…Just because the law may tolerate ethical missteps does not mean voters will. And even if your early ventures fail to pan out, keep digging. The untainted Republican has not yet been invented.”
The progressive coalition resisting the GOP’s voter suppression campaign in Ohio is working overtime to get 231,300 signatures on petitions to protect early voting from a Republican-passed ban on voting 3 days before the election, which also shortens the early voting period and stops automatic mailing of absentee ballots. in key counties Says coalition leader Brian Rothenberg: “Reducing early voting to three weeks will have a major impact…the current system was put in place after 2004 when we had all the long lines. Some people waited over 10 hours to vote.” Devin Dwyer of ABC News/Politics has the story here.

I’ve always thought it odd that Florida, a mega-state that has such a powerful effect on presidential elections, has generally had fairly lack-luster Democratic candidates in it’s congressional and state-wide elections. In her Florida Sun-Sentinel article, “Florida Democrats seek fresh faces to battle GOP in 2012,” Kathleen Haughney suggests that this may at long-last be changing:

Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, who will become the Senate Democratic leader in 2012, requires a greater emphasis on candidate recruitment and organization, and a de-emphasis on ideology.
As he puts it, “I’m not looking for a Democratic prototype, but a Democrat who can represent a district.” Party chair Smith added that the party must get better at “the blocking and tackling of running good campaigns with good candidates …
…Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political-science professor, echoed those comments but noted that the Democratic Party’s liberal image turns away moderate-to-conservative voters…”Democrats have got to sort of do a makeover of the party,” he said. “Then of course, it comes down to candidates. They’ve got to do a better job of getting candidates up there.”
……The party is reaching out to its local members, hoping to find people who have been active in business or public service and are willing to be first-time candidates. Helping is Gov. Rick Scott’s unpopularity; his low poll numbers have become a “point of rallying,” said Democratic consultant Christian Ulvert.

The numbers facing Dems in the state legislature are daunting. Currently, Republicans have a 28-12 margin in the state senate and a huge 81-39 advantage in the House. With just a few more wins, however, Dems could slow Republican legislative gains. But the demographics are certainly in place for better Democratic performance in Florida. As Haughney notes :

…Democrats haven’t turned out their voters. As of July, Florida had 4.6 million registered Democrats, compared with 4.0 million Republicans and 2.6 million nonaffiliated or minor-party voters. That edge helped carry the state for Obama in 2008 but has not been apparent for statewide candidates or in legislative races.

Senator Obama’s win in Florida suggests that more exciting Democratic candidates can make a big difference in Florida. And it may be that Florida Dems’ prospects are about to brighten. But there are formidable obstacles in place that Dems must overcome in the Sunshine State, as Haughney notes:

First, the GOP — thanks in part to its control of state government — has outraised the Democrats so far this year by 3-to-1: $8.4 million compared with the Democrats’ $2.3 million.
Second, because the Republican-controlled Legislature is drawing new legislative and congressional districts, Democrats won’t even know what the districts will look like until next spring…”Recruiting candidates is very difficult when you can’t really tell them what district they’re going to run in,” said House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders, D-Key West.
And finally, the Democrats haven’t turned out their voters….Said former state Rep. Bill Heller, D-St. Petersburg, one of the five Democratic House members ousted in the 2010 elections: “It’s no good to have the majority in the state if the people don’t vote. You’ve got to get your supporters to the polls, and we didn’t accomplish that last time. And I know that wasn’t just the issue in my district.”
Another part of the problem is that Democrats are concentrated in South Florida — especially Broward and Palm Beach counties — and in urban parts of Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville and Tallahassee. Republicans are spread more broadly, throughout the suburbs plus Southwest and North Florida…Orange County GOP Chairman Lew Oliver said that on the local level in particular, Democrats are more independent and more disorganized than Republicans.

It sounds a lot like the main problems facing Florida Democrats are organizational and/or structural. A well-designed candidate-recruitment system makeover just might be a game-changer.

Should you find your enthusiasm for activist politics waning, Robert Reich has a Monday morning energizer in his latest blog entry “Don’t Be Silenced,” via RSN:

We’re on the cusp of the 2012 election. What will it be about? It seems reasonably certain President Obama will be confronted by a putative Republican candidate who:
Believes corporations are people, wants to cut the top corporate rate to 25% (from the current 35%) and no longer require they pay tax on foreign income, who will eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, raise the retirement age for Social Security and turn Medicaid into block grants to states, seek a balanced-budged amendment to the Constitution, require any regulatory agency issuing a new regulation repeal another regulation of equal cost (regardless of the benefits), and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.
Or one who:
Believes the Federal Reserve is treasonous when it expands the money supply, doubts human beings evolved from more primitive forms of life, seeks to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and shift most public services to the states, thinks Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, while governor took a meat axe to public education and presided over an economy that generated large numbers of near-minimum-wage jobs, and who will shut down most federal regulatory agencies, cut corporate taxes, and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.

That’s the default scenario, the one which will become reality if Democratic apathy is allowed to fester. The rest of Reich’s column is more of a challenge to progressive/left Dems to fight for the causes that once made the Democratic Party a great champion of working people:

…Within these narrow confines progressive ideas won’t get an airing. Even though poverty and unemployment will almost surely stay sky-high, wages will stagnate or continue to fall, inequality will widen, and deficit hawks will create an indelible (and false) impression that the nation can’t afford to do much about any of it – proposals to reverse these trends are unlikely to be heard.
Neither party’s presidential candidate will propose to tame CEO pay, create more tax brackets at the top and raise the highest marginal rates back to their levels in the 1950s and 1960s (that is, 70 to 90 percent), and match the capital-gains rate with ordinary income.
You won’t hear a call to strengthen labor unions and increase the bargaining power of ordinary workers.
Don’t expect an argument for resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act, thereby separating commercial from investment banking and stopping Wall Street’s most lucrative and dangerous practices.
You won’t hear there’s no reason to cut Medicare and Medicaid – that a better means of taming health-care costs is to use these programs’ bargaining clout with drug companies and hospitals to obtain better deals and to shift from fee-for-services to fee for healthy outcomes…Nor will you hear why we must move toward Medicare for all.
Nor why the best approach to assuring Social Security’s long-term solvency is to lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes.
Don’t expect any reference to the absurdity of spending more on the military than do all other countries put together, and the waste and futility of an unending and undeclared war against Islamic extremism – especially when we have so much to do at home…
Although proposals like these are more important and relevant than ever, they won’t be part of the upcoming presidential election.

The choice facing progressive Dems is between whining and hand-wringing about inadequate leadership of the Party on the one hand and doing something to change it on the other. Reich sounds the call to arms to put real progressive policies back on the agenda:

…I urge you to speak out about them – at town halls, candidate forums, and public events. Continue to mobilize and organize around them. Talk with your local media about them. Use social media to get the truth out.
Don’t be silenced by Democrats who say by doing so we’ll jeopardize the President’s re-election. If anything we’ll be painting him as more of a centrist than Republicans want the public to believe. And we’ll be preserving the possibility (however faint) of a progressive agenda if he’s reelected.

Re-read that last graph. That alone is reason enough to push hard from the left inside the party — it actually strengthens Dem defenses against the GOP default scenario and it lays the foundation for a stronger progressive future for the Democratic Party, win or lose in 2012.
Still not juiced? Reich’s clincher:

Remember, too, the presidential race isn’t the only one occurring in 2012. More than a third of Senate seats and every House seat will be decided on, as well as numerous governorships and state races. Making a ruckus about these issues could push some candidates in this direction – particularly since, as polls show, much of the public agrees.
Most importantly, by continuing to push and prod we give hope to countless Americans on the verge of giving up. We give back to them the courage of their own convictions, and thereby lay the groundwork for a future progressive agenda – to take back America from the privileged and powerful, and restore broad-based prosperity.

Grumble and gripe about inadequate leadership in your party, if you will. But do something this week to advance progressive policies and federal, state and local candidates who support them. Your actions add legitimacy to your critique.

Forbes, ‘the capitalist tool’ has a post by Ed Cain, “Of Trifectas and the Electoral College,” pointing out that 20 states now have Republican control of all houses of their state legislatures, plus the governorship. Cain riffs on Nick Baumann’s Mother Jones piece I flagged yesterday, which discusses the Republican plans to ‘reform’ their electoral college vote allocation in PA and perhaps other states. (Nate Silver also weighs in with a longish analysis of the GOP’s PA gambit in today’s five thirty eight blog).
But Cain’s post also sounds an alarm about the danger facing Dems when 40 percent of the states are under complete Republican control. Only 8 states, 16 percent of the 50 states, have Democratic trifectas. In the remaining 22 states no party controls both the governorship and state legislatures.
The consequences include, as Cain explains:

Now that Republicans now control twenty trifectas across the country (state governments run by one party in the House, Senate, and Governorship) changes to state laws, redistricting, and electoral rules are all fair game. This could tilt not only future congressional elections, but the presidential election in 2012.
Since 2010 was a census year, districts will be drawn up without a fight in 20 states by Republicans, and changes to these districts won’t happen again until 2021, after the 2020 census. This is a major structural shift, and one that gives Republicans, who already benefit from the Electoral College more than Democrats, a serious advantage leading into the 2012 election cycle.
…The redistricting across the country could give Republicans a firm control of the House until as late as 2022, making the 2010 victory a possible 12 year coup, and making another federal trifecta, like the one Democrats enjoyed for two brief years between 2008 and 2010, exceedingly unlikely for Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, have the electoral upper hand for the conceivable future.
…Republicans are very good at politics, and they’re especially good at taking old rules and using them to achieve legislative victory. As we’ve seen in Wisconsin and Michigan in the past year, Republicans are willing to take extreme positions even in the face of public outcry. That’s why we’ve seen union-busting in Wisconsin in spite of protests and public backlash, and equally radical moves in Michigan under its own Republican trifecta.

Some of the damage is done, since reapportionment after the 2010 census is in place in some states and the consequent gerrymandering is set or in motion. But the good thing is that the margin tilting the balance of power in state legislatures is often a matter of flipping a few votes, and that can be changed every two years. If Dems have just a fair year in 2012, it is possible that it could make a big difference in the “trifecta” spread.
I would encourage all Dems to do a little research and adopt a candidate or two in a state legislature where the margin for busting a trifecta is fairly close (map here has a useful rollover widget for this), and make a contribution. It doesn’t have to be your own state. It would be great if some energetic blogger could put together a list of state legislature candidates across the country who have a good shot at winning a race in states where the GOP trifecta margin is fairly close.
Just thinking here.

There is simply no end to Republicans screwing around with election laws to gain political advantage at every opportunity. The latest GOP scam, well-reported in Mother Jones by Nick Baumann, has Pennsylvania Republicans planning to do away with the state’s winner-take-all electoral vote allocation, and replace it with a congressional district-based allocation system. The goal, of course, is to dilute the electoral power of a pivotal state that awarded its 21 electoral votes to Senator Obama in 2008. As Baumann explains:

The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college. Every political junkie knows that the presidential election isn’t a truly national contest; it’s a state-by-state fight, and each state is worth a number of electoral votes equal to the size of the state’s congressional delegation. (The District of Columbia also gets three votes.) There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs; win 270, and you’re the president.
Here’s the rub, though: Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan–which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett–Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes–one for each of the state’s two senators–would go to the statewide winner.)
This could cost Obama dearly. The GOP controls both houses of the state Legislature plus the governor’s mansion–the so-called “redistricting trifecta”–in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats.

Cute, huh? Baumann fleshes out the scam:

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight–six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state’s two senators) for winning the state. Since Obama would lose 12 electoral votes relative to the winner-take-all baseline, this would have an effect equivalent to flipping a medium-size winner-take-all state–say, Washington, which has 12 electoral votes–from blue to red.* And Republicans wouldn’t even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.
If the president wins the states John Kerry won in 2004 plus Ohio–otherwise enough to give him a narrow win–changing the electoral vote rules in Pennsylvania alone would swing the election to the Republican nominee.

Former PA Governor Ed Rendell says Dems should file a lawsuit against the measure, if it is enacted. But The GOP plan may be legit within the parameters of the Constitution, according to law professor Karl Manheim, quoted in Baumann’s article. “The Constitution is pretty silent on how the electors are chosen in each state,” says Manheim, adding that the Republican plan “would certainly increase the political advantage of politically gerrymandering your districts.”
Worse, the time seems ripe for Republican electoral vote manipulation to spread, as Baumann reports:

…After their epic sweep of state legislative and gubernatorial races in 2010, Republicans also have total political control of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, three other big states that traditionally go Democratic and went for Obama in 2008.* Implementing a Pennsylvania-style system in those three places–in Ohio, for example, Democrats anticipate controlling just 4 or 5 of the state’s 16 congressional districts–could offset Obama wins in states where he has expanded the electoral map, like Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, or Virginia. “If all these Rust Belt folks get together and make this happen, that could be really dramatic,” says Carolyn Fiddler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which coordinates state political races for the Dems.

Chris Bowers reports at Daily Kos that Republicans are taking the opposite tack in Nebraska — changing to a winner-take-all electoral vote system to benefit their party’s candidate. (In 2008, Obama picked off one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes).
Fiddler adds: “This would effectively extend the effect of gerrymandering beyond Congress and to the Electoral College. State legislatures could gerrymander the Electoral College.” John Fortier, an electoral college expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Reuters, “It would be harder for Democrats to win in a close election if this goes through.”
Baumann doesn’t discuss what could happen in the event of an anti-incumbent sweep next November. If fed-up voters give Republicans control of the Senate and Democrats control of the House, it’s possible the GOP manipulations could backfire, as Democrats take back districts now held by the GOP. But Republican gerrymandering in place would offset the effects of an anti-incumbent sweep to some extent.
Another backfire scenario would occur if Republicans win a majority of PA votes, and Dems hold some districts and get a chunk of PA’s electoral votes. “Despite Obama’s easy win in Pennsylvania three years ago, he is now broadly unpopular there, with 52 percent of Pennsylvanians saying he doesn’t deserve reelection in a recent Franklin and Marshall College poll.,” reports Aaron Blake in WaPo’s The Fix.
It’s a gamble, but it looks like one the PA Republicans like, since they haven’t won any of the state’s electoral votes since 1988. The National Popular Vote Compact probably won’t be in place in time to offset the electoral vote shenanigans for 2012. But the GOP’s manipulation of election laws certainly underscores the importance of the compact as a potential remedy leading to direct popular election of the president down the road.
After the 2000 fiasco, many called for direct popular election of the President of the United States, but the calls for reform faded out. It’s even more clear today, however, that it is the only way to permanently put an end to the GOP’s campaign to undercut the will of the people in electing our President. It should be a top priority the next time Dems get the votes to make it happen.

There’s no denying the GOP crowing rights for their twin victories in NY-9 and NV-2 yesterday. Stat wizard Nate Silver reviews the vote and rolls out a grim (for Dems) assessment in today’s edition of his Five Thirty Eight blog. First, he acknowledges the special circumstances in New York :

There are good reasons to think that local issues may have loomed especially large in New York’s 9th Congressional District, where the Republican Bob Turner won on Tuesday. President Obama had significantly underperformed his Democratic predecessors in the district in 2008, and the large split in voting between the Brooklyn and Queens portions of the district — the Brooklyn parts are more heavily Jewish — implies that Israel-related issues may have played a role.
There were other local factors as well: influential endorsements for Mr. Turner by Democratic leaders like former Mayor Ed Koch and the Assemblyman Dov Hikind, and local rabbis; the close timing of the election with the Sept. 11 anniversary; the fact that the district had been vacated by a Democrat, Anthony Weiner, in a scandal; and perhaps gay marriage in a district that is economically liberal but fairly religious, with pockets of social conservatism.
Still, even if those issues played a role, even if they swung the result, the Democrat David Weprin would likely have performed better had the national environment been stronger for his party.

Silver crunches the numbers and then analyzes the NY election in light of the “partisan voting index” (“a measure of how the district voted relative to others in the past two presidential elections.”). Silver concludes that the Republican victor, Bob Turner, pulled off a net swing of +18 percent from the p.v.i.
Silver runs the Nevada results through the p.v.i. analysis:

The Nevada Second, for instance, has a P.V.I. of Republican plus-5, meaning that the Republican candidate would be expected to perform 5 points better there than a Republican might nationally. Since a vote for the Republican is (usually) a vote against the Democrat, you need to double that number to project the margin of victory. In this case, that would imply a Republican win by 10 points given average candidates and a neutral overall political environment.
The Republican Mark Amodei, however, leads by 22 points as of this writing, an easy victory, meaning that he overperformed the P.V.I. by 12 points.

Ouch. No matter how you spin it, there’s no avoiding the conclusion that Republicans did substantially better than expected in Tuesday’s elections.
Silver acknowledges the big Democratic win in NY-26 in May, a +17 swing from the p.v.i., noting that Obama’s approvals were much higher then, along with the less impressive Democratic July win in CA-36, where Dems underperformed in p.v.i. terms. He averages the four special congressional elections of 2011 and finds a score of R+7 and concludes that “Democrats may still be locked in a 2010-type political environment.”
Worse, Silver adds that special elections have a “statistically significant correlation to the outcome of the next general election,” although “…the relationship is weak and frequently runs in the wrong direction, as it did in 2010.” He points out that special elections are weak measures of anti-incumbent sentiment, since there are no incumbents on the ballot. He also notes that polls indicate Dems are “roughly tied” with the GOP in therms of the generic ballot polls for House races.
Silver concludes “Nevertheless, these are waves that portend trouble…At the very minimum, they imply a reduction in the odds that after three consecutive “wave” elections, 2012 will show a tidal shift back toward Democrats.”
A more optimistic analysis for Dems would point out that Dems are 2 and 2 in 2011 special elections. There are 13+ months left and, if the economy begins to turn around faster than expected, all bets are off. Nonetheless, as Silver makes clear, the possibility of a broad rout of Democratic candidates is a very real concern, and President Obama will have to campaign harder and smarter to prevent it.