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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

J.P. Green

Fourth Estate Cred Endangered

We’ve done our share of MSM-bashing hereabouts, and probably not enough shout-outs to the traditional media reporters and columnists who do a good job of covering politics. But MSM groveling at the behest of FoxTV and the wingnuts does seem to be on the upswing, and it requires a lot of effort just to hold them accountable.
For those who think this may be overstating the case, we refer you to Charles Kaiser’s Hillman Foundation article, published in The Nation, which does a solid job of chronicling some of the recent atrocities. Kaiser’s “The Shame of the Fourth Estate.” presents a thorough account of “the perversion of journalism” by “a band of vicious charlatans,” including in his words:

* Time magazine’s decision to ask Glenn Beck to assess Rush Limbaugh’s importance in America for the 2009 Time 100: “His consistency, insight and honesty have earned him a level of trust with his listeners that politicians can only dream of.”
* A decision by the editors of washingtonpost.com to allow Beck to host a chat there to promote one of his books.
* This hard-hitting assessment of Beck by Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik, who gurgled on, “Sure, he may be selling a sensationalistic message of paranoia and social breakdown. But politics, or basic responsibility, aside, he has an entertainer’s sense of play with the medium of TV that O’Reilly, or perpetual sourpuss Neil Cavuto, don’t.” And why would anybody care about a basic sense of responsibility, anyway?
* A worshipful 1,943-word profile of Fox News founder and president Roger Ailes by David Carr and Tim Arango on the front page of the New York Times–which included this perfectly amoral quote from David Gergen, a perfectly amoral man:
“Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation. He has built a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at times, the political process.” And what a wonderful conversation it is.
* And finally, the most sickening piece of all in this splendid cohort: David von Drehele’s obscenely sycophantic cover story of Beck for Time magazine, which told us that Beck is a “man with his ear uniquely tuned to the precise frequency at which anger, suspicion and the fear that no one’s listening all converge;” that he is “tireless, funny, [and]self-deprecating…a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into possible conspiracies–if he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn’t, necessarily; he’s just asking.”

Here’s Kaiser on the MSM handling of the Sherrod and ACORN smears and Breitbart’s role.

But far worse than the kid-gloves treatment of Fox and its friends was the inexplicably benign approach the MSM took toward Andrew Brietbart, the original source of the doctored video of Sherrod’s speech before the NAACP that started this whole sorry saga.
In the Washington Post, he was a “conservative activist and blogger”; in Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s story in the Times, he was “a blogger” who “similarly…used edited videos to go after ACORN, the community organizing group;” in the Wall Street Journal he was “a conservative Internet activist” who “argued that the Obama administration is insufficiently sensitive to bias against white people”; in the Los Angeles Times, “a conservative media entrepreneur” and to Associated Press television writer David Bauder a “conservative activist” whose website “attracted attention last year for airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.”
But to find out who Breitbart really is, you would have had to read (h/t Joe Stouter) Joe Conason in Salon, who, “recalling Breitbart from his days as eager lackey to Matt Drudge…warned from the beginning that nothing he produced would resemble journalism.”

Regarding Glenn Beck’s splenetic smearing of the President, WaPo‘s Dana Milbank, quoted in Kaiser’s article, has this:

…Consider these tallies from Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News since Obama’s inauguration: 202 mentions of Nazis or Nazism, according to transcripts, 147 mentions of Hitler, 193 mentions of fascism or fascist, and another 24 bonus mentions of Joseph Goebbels. Most of these were directed in some form at Obama–as were the majority of the 802 mentions of socialist or socialism on Beck’s nightly “report.”

Kaiser has more to say about the Sherrod smear and the press being hustled and intimidated by right-wing ideologues, and it all adds up to a very disturbing picture of one of America’s most important nongovernmental institutions. The time has come for America’s most influential print and electronic reporters and editors to do some soul-searching about their fearful compliance with neo-McCarthyism and reaffirm their commitment to social justice and journalism that serves the people.


Learning from the Sherrod Smear

In his WaPo op-ed, “Enough right-wing propaganda,”E. J. Dionne, Jr. does a good job of distilling one of the most salient points regarding the Sherrod smear into one sentence:

The traditional media are so petrified of being called “liberal” that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors.

But Dionne points out at some length that it’s not only the wimpy MSM that’s at issue here. He and many progressives rightfully feel that the Obama Administration caved awfully easy on this one:

The administration’s response to the doctored video pushed by right-wing hit man Andrew Breitbart was shameful. The obsession with “protecting” the president turned out to be the least protective approach of all.
The first reaction of the Obama team was not to question, let alone challenge, the video. Instead, it assumed that whatever narrative Fox News might create mattered more than anything else, including the possible innocence of a human being outside the president’s inner circle. She could be sacrificed without a thought.
Obama complained on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” But it’s his own apparatus that turned “this media culture” into a false god.

After giving the Administration a fair share of the blame for being so easily hustled by prevaricating conservatives, however, it’s hard to overlook the shameless laziness/dishonesty of the MSM’s complicity. The headline for the Post article didn’t really get it. Call it wishful thinking, but I liked Truthdig‘s headline for Dionne’s article better: “The End of the Fox News Era.” Hey, we can dream, can’t we?
Dionne goes on to cite other examples of MSM wimptitude, including the sliming of Al Gore for saying he invented the internet (never mind that he never said it), the GOP’s “death panels” fear-mongering getting huge play, and the trumped up coverage of the “New Black Panthers” voter intimidation case.
The coverage of the Sherrod smear has been so extensive, that whatever fair-minded, persuadable voters were mulling over whether Breitbart and the tea party crowd could be trusted are now leaning toward a healthy skepticism regarding them. Breitbart and his defenders have lost some ground on this one. In that sense, the Sherrod smear did some good in terms of unintended consequences.
Some of the better thinkers have pinpointed a more lofty opportunity in the Sherrod affair that merits consideration. Here’s Charles J. Ogletree Jr., executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and Johanna Wald, the Institute’s director of strategic planning, also writing in The Washington Post:

…In some ways, Sherrod’s tale is a metaphor for this country’s aborted efforts to address race. In its entirety, her deeply moving story was about transformation and reconciliation between blacks and whites. It contained the seeds of progress and healing. She spoke of blacks and whites working together to save farms and to end poverty and suffering. But Sherrod, and those listening to her story, could get to her hopeful conclusion only by first wading through painful admissions of racial bias and struggle.
Racial inequality is perpetuated less by individuals than by structural racism and implicit bias….Implicit bias is a reality we must confront far more openly. A growing mass of compelling research reveals the unconscious racial stereotypes many of us harbor that affect our decisions. Such attitudes do not make us prejudiced; they make us human….
The good news is that structures can be dismantled and replaced and unconscious biases can be transformed, as happened to Shirley Sherrod and the family she helped, the Spooners. First, though, they must be acknowledged. We and others researching race and justice are committed to untangling the web of structures, conditions and policies that lead to unequal opportunities. Our nation has to stop denying the complexity of our racial attitudes, history and progress. Let’s tone down the rhetoric on all sides, slow down and commit to listening with less judgment and more compassion. If Americans did so, we might find that we share more common ground than we could have imagined.

Of course, politicians, as well as the media, can be excruciatingly slow learners. But the Sherrod smear ought to sound the knell for the age of MSM gullibility and general gutlessness. Surely, the time has come to put the childish things away and behave like grown-ups. As Dionne concludes

The Sherrod case should be the end of the line. If Obama hates the current media climate, he should stop overreacting to it. And the mainstream media should stop being afraid of insisting upon the difference between news and propaganda.

The one good thing about embarrassing lessons is that they are usually learned well. If it’s too much to ask of the MSM, it ought to be the only alternative for an Administration that hopes to win a second term.


Run, Sharron (& Rand), Run

Here’s hoping the heirs of the late, great Link Wray will allow some YouTube mash-up wizard to use a little piece of Wray’s way-back hit instrumental “Run Chicken, Run” to accompany this video clip of Sharron Angle fleeing reporters:

As Andy Barr of Politico reported:

Sharron Angle walked out of an event to which her campaign invited reporters as soon as they were given the opportunity to ask questions of Nevada’s GOP nominee for Senate.
After giving a three-minute speech on Wednesday on her desire to repeal the estate tax, Angle was asked to make herself available to answer questions from the assembled reporters. Angle turned around without saying a word and left the event, as a video provided by the Nevada Democratic Party shows.

Barr was a little too kind in describing Angle’s exit: She didn’t just walk; Positioned for the quick getaway, she turned tail and hauled ass, as if she didn’t have even two minutes to answer questions. Barr puts Angle’s departure in context.

Angle was followed out of the event by several camera crews and reporters. Without speaking to the media, Angle got into a white Jeep Cherokee with a campaign aide and left the event.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Wednesday’s event was the first to which the press had been invited since she won the June 9 Republican primary.

I particularly enjoyed the inadvertent high comedy of the smarmy m.c. of the press “conference” telling the media “I know Sharron’s got a very tight schedule. But Peter and I and (unintelligible) will make ourselves available for individual questions,” as the bewildered hard-hat guys watch Angle’s sprint, chased by reporters who weren’t into being spoon-fed b.s. by campaign aides. As a stagey political event gone wrong, it couldn’t have been scripted better by Robert Altman.
All of which may help explain why Angle is tanking in the polls. Kudos to NV Dems for capturing Angle in flight. May KY Dems, who also have a media-dodging wingnut to expose, follow suit. It’s not just Angle’s and Rand Paul’s indefensible policy positions; it’s also the fact that both of these candidates for the United States Senate are letting their handlers hide them from open scrutiny by the media. If they refuse to be videotaped answering questions like any candidate with a modicum of personal integrity, then let them be depicted as cowards in flight, which also makes for entertaining television.
Republicans, not just Paul and Angle, but also a slew of tea party House candidates with half-baked policies, have a lot to hide in this election. It will be a sadly-missed opportunity if Dems passively depend on the mainstream media to make them account for it.


Sleazy Attempt to Unseat Sen. Franken Unraveling

Granted, the year is only half done, but if they gave an annual award for the most ridiculous, sour grapes attempt to invalidate an election, it would probably be shared by the Minnesota GOP’s Ex-Senator Norm Coleman and Governor Tim Pawlenty. Perhaps the best account of their sorry attempt to unseat Senator Al Franken comes from Jay Weiner’s Salon.com article, “Get over it, Republicans: Al Franken won.” Nobody’s going to explain it any better than Weiner:

…Minnesota Majority, a very conservative “watchdog” group, released a report (PDF) on June 28 that claims a lot of things. But when you get to the bottom line, the group seems to be saying that according to its research, 341 felons in Hennepin and Ramsey counties who should have been ineligible to vote actually cast votes in the Franken-Coleman election.
The report, flawed in the opinion of most legal analysts, got legs and wings and Internet echo chamber reverberations from — who else? — Fox News last week, and then other news organizations chased it, and right-wing blogs jumped on it, and the Minnesota Republican Party called for a statewide investigation and Coleman called Franken “an accidental senator” and Gov. Tim Pawlenty said there was “credible evidence” that the alleged felons who maybe voted possibly could have flipped the election’s final result. Breathless.

Here’s the math:

Franken, if you remember, won by 312 votes….Now, let’s take one key stat that Minnesota Majority focuses on, that 341 alleged felons from heavily Democratic Hennepin and Ramsey counties voted. For the moment, take that at face value.
That would mean, based on voter turnout numbers, about 70 percent of them (240) would be from Hennepin and 30 percent (101) would be from Ramsey. Taking into account the percentages for Franken, Coleman and others in each of those counties, Franken would net 51 votes.
Remember, he won by 312. Let’s take away those 51 in this silly game. That still isn’t enough to switch the result.

Weiner, author of the forthcoming “This Is Not Florida: How Al Franken Won the Minnesota Senate Recount,” dissects the twisted logic of the report:

…What makes anyone think felons would vote only for Franken? Indeed, it was Franken’s legal team during the recount’s election contest trial that raised the prospect that felons voted in the election; Franken’s lawyers found one such voter in a northern Minnesota county who voted for Coleman. Dare I ask: If Franken opened the door on such an avenue, why didn’t Coleman’s lawyers pursue this felon-voting issue then? They had their chance. And why does the Minnesota Majority report focus on the core-city counties?

Three guesses on that one. Weiner has more to say, reflecting unfavorably on the integrity of Governor Pawlenty, who is frequently mentioned as a possible GOP Presidential candidate:

As for the governor, he has spoken three times about the recount, and he’s been a bit fast and loose with his facts. First, in the early days of the recount, he spread — on Fox News — the completely untrue story about Minneapolis ballots that were supposedly being driven around in the alleged trunk of an unknown and nonexistent elections official. He spoke of this days after it was reported that the story was a fable.
Later, in a call with reporters, he overstated by thousands of percentage points the increase of absentee voters in 2008, trying to say that Franken won the election because of that…In fact, Franken won the recount by 49 votes before absentee ballots were counted.
Now, there are his comments — on Fox News — about the Minnesota Majority report and how it’s “quite possible” felon voting tipped the election. The facts aren’t there.

Pawlenty’s transparently blundering partisanship is not likely to sit well with mainstream MN voters, who have already endured an excruciating marathon recount process for the Franken-Coleman race. With his latest wallow in the sour grapes, Coleman may be destroying whatever fading chance he had for a re-run against Franken.
Franken, meanwhile, is doing an exceptional job of establishing himself as an able legislator and a happy warrior with a great sense of humor — a worthy heir to Paul Wellstone.


Jobless Benefits Extension Popular With Independents

Here we go again with the talking about ‘independents’ as if they had a coherent, unified ideology. Writing at Dailyfinance.com, Pallavi Gogoi describes independents as “an important, influential and powerful voting bloc,” disregarding the fact that Independents have varied political leanings. Some are too liberal for both major parties, some are too conservative, while others see themselves as right in the middle between them. Still others simply dislike both parties, and many others don’t have a clue about what either party stands for.
Golgoi does, however, cite a useful statistic of particular interest to Democrats, the fact that 59 percent of Independent respondents in an ABC News/Washington Post poll support extending unemployment benefits (compared to 80 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans). She points out that in March, 12 percent of Independents were unemployed, compared with 11 percent of Democrats and 6.5 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup poll analysis prepared for DailyFinance.
In other words, Republican leaders bad-mouthing and/or opposing the extension of unemployment benefits may be scoring points with the arch-conservative element of their constituencies. But a healthy majority of the politically-amorphous group self-identified as Independents, and even 43 percent of Republicans, think they are wrong. Democrats would be wise to emphasize the extension of jobless benefits as critically important to the economy, as well as to the jobless, in a series of nation-wide ads.


2010 Mid Terms: Shades of ’82, Not ’94

Now that all possible angles comparing the 2010 mid terms to those in 1994 have been explored, Rebecca Kaplan argues at Slate.com that the more relevant comparison is the 1982 elections. According to Kaplan’s post, “The Lessons of 1982: Why Democrats need not fear the ghosts of 1994“:

…Speculation is running rampant, particularly in the media and especially among Republicans (and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs), that 2010 could be a replay of the Democrats’ lowest political moment in the last half-century: the 1994 midterms, when Republicans seized 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, taking control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. But the similarities between 2010 and 1994 are superficial. The more relevant election–the one that gives a better gauge of the magnitude of losses the Democrats may see–is the 1982 midterms. Although some political scientists were predicting that the Democrats would gain as many as 50 seats, on Election Day they took only 26 seats from the Republicans.
…In many respects, today’s economic conditions are identical to those in 1982. The yearly change in real disposable income per capita is a key factor in predicting midterm outcomes: When their wallets are fuller, people are more likely to send their representatives back to Washington. And right now this number is almost the same as it was at this point in 1982. For the third quarter of 2010, Moody’s Economy.com is predicting a 0.4 percent increase in real disposable income per capita from last year–a fairly stagnant number that does not show much economic growth for the average citizen. In the third quarter of 1982, the change in real disposable income per capita was 0.5 percent–also fairly flat. The unemployment rate is also eerily familiar; it’s now pushing 10 percent, while in 1982 it was 9.7 percent. In 1994, meanwhile, the economy was in better shape than it is now or was in 1982, with a 6.1 percent unemployment rate and 2.3 percent increase in personal disposable income from the third quarter of 1993.

This last point regarding joblessness is not so reassuring. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, if the economy was better in ’94, and we still got creamed, how is that encouraging for Dems?
Kaplan points out that Dem and GOP congressional candidates are spending about equally now, as they did in ’82. While in 94, Republicans outspent Dems by an average of $91,383 in each race — or nearly $5 for every $3 spent by Dem candidates. Clearly, Democratic candidates have got to match their GOP adversaries in 2010, if they want to keep running the House and Senate. Kaplan goes out on a bit of a limb, noting “Without outspending the Democrats, it is unlikely the Republicans will be able to achieve all the pickups they are hoping for.”
As Kaplan explains, Republicans, under Gingrich’s “message mastery” did a particularly good job of working existing media in 94, while Democrats have a significant edge with new media in 2010. She adds that Clinton “lost control of the national conversation” and was distracted by non-economic issues, while Republicans hammered away. That is not the case today.
In a sense, however, all comparisons are not as relevant as some would have us believe. The information revolution that has occurred since ’94, and even more so since ’82, is a huge wild card. Political messaging has been transformed by the internet, Fox-TV and now MSNBC. Not to diminish the importance of economic indicators, but it matters a lot that candidates now have more opportunities to communicate with voters, and progresives seem to have an edge over conservatives in tapping this vein — for now.
Kaplan makes another good point in noting the deepening division in the GOP constituency exemplified by the tea party circus, which has produced some dicey candidates, like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, while Dems have so far eschewed the circular firing squad of earlier years.
Here’s hoping Kaplan’s insights pan out. The key thing for Dems is to learn from electoral history, not to be limited by it. If Kaplan is right, the key challenges for Dems are to keep “control of the national conversation” and invest the bucks needed to fire up the base and win a healthy share of the persuadables.


Is Small Package Legislation a Wiser Strategy?

These days, most blogging about political strategy is understandably focused on the mid term elections. But longer-term strategic thinking merits more attention if Democrats want to make the party more effective. Michael Lind’s Sunday WaPo article, “Comprehensive reform is overrated. For real change, Washington must think small” is a thoughtful contribution in this regard, and he provides a number of insightful observations that merit consideration. The problem, acocrding to Lind:

Washington has fallen in love with “comprehensive reform” — legislation aimed at solving all aspects of a big problem in one dramatic and history-making move. We saw it with health care. Now comprehensive financial regulatory reform has passed in the House, with a Senate vote expected soon. Up next may come energy legislation, following President Obama’s Oval Office speech last month proclaiming a new “national mission” to wean America off fossil fuels. Comprehensive immigration reform, which failed back in 2007, waits in the wings, with the president calling for such an effort in a July 1 address. And a push for comprehensive fiscal reform will surely come on the heels of the recommendations this fall from Obama’s deficit commission.
…But it does not follow that each complex, giant problem must be addressed by one complex, giant bill. If anything, history shows that piecemeal reforms are often more lasting than a legislative Big Bang.

Lind adds “Politicians are seduced by comprehensive reform because history tends to glorify presidents and legislators who pass big, definitive laws.” He cites smaller, incremental legislation, such as the Glass-Seagall Act of 1932, the Securities Act of 1933, which required public disclosure of corporate information to shareholders, followed by the 1934 Securities Exchange Act and 1935 Banking Act — a series of individual laws adding up to an impressive financial reform package, but over time, not all at once.
The question arises whether a piecemeal enactment of the health care reform provisions in the Obama reform package might also have included a public option, if it could have been tackled as a separate proposal, with no other distraction. Or alternatively, whether an incremental strategy would have bogged down into even longer debates with no resolution. it’s possible that the comprehensive packaging of health care reform was an asset because it encouraged supporters to sign on, despite doubts about particular provisions.
Lind acknowledges the frequently noted argument for big package reform — that the interconnected nature of many social problems, such as health care or immigration reform may require more complex legislative solutions than in earlier eras. Breaking the packages down into a series of individual reforms and debating and fighting over them one-by-one might be even more exhausting for politicians and the public.
He sees three “critical problems, however, with choosing a comprehensive reform strategy over piecemeal, or incremental reforms: 1. “Excessive leverage” and “bargaining power” to influence legislation against the collective will of a bill’s supporters are given to individual Senators, such as we have recently seen with Sens, Joe Lieberman and Nelson; 2. Big Package reform presumes an absurd amount of accurate foresight on the part of mere mortals who happen to be elected officials — “The longer the time horizon, the greater the hubris of those who claim to be solving problems not just for today but for generations to come.” and; 3. There may not be legislative solutions to all problems — “…Some challenges are not problems to be solved, but situations to be ameliorated or endured.”
Lind argues further,

Instead of striding boldly into the future, we should grope our way cautiously forward, ever ready to back up upon encountering an obstacle and always prepared to consider an alternative path if the road is blocked…Instead of aspiring to achieve irrevocable, comprehensive reform by the second Monday of next month, let’s consider reforms that are piecemeal and reversible if we discover they do not work.

I would add that piecemeal/incremental reform doesn’t have to be slow-paced, although it can be, when necessary. Perhaps enacting the “lower-hanging fruit” in a reform package first, building up to the more contentious proposals, would be more effective than trying to sell it all at once.
Lind is undoubtedly right that a little humility would serve reform advocates well. Or at least, a little more candor in admitting that reform legislation can be tweaked later to adjust to changing conditions or mistakes.
He touches on the important point that smaller packages are smaller targets, and “less vulnerable to attack” and distortion. Coming at it from a slightly different angle, smaller packages can be explained more coherently to voters — a simple reform that serves both justice and good economic sense is easier to understand than a complex package with myriad bells, whistles and moving parts.
Lind quotes FDR’s remarks during the 1932 campaign to compelling effect: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation…It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Amazing, that 78 years later, that sounds like a credible approach for our times, coming from the Democratic Partys’ most effective champion of reform.


Don’t Sweat Independents So Much

Michael Hais has an interesting myth-buster, “Democrats, Not Independents or Republicans, Will Decide Who Wins in 2010 and Beyond” at ndn.org. Hais, a fellow with the New Democratic Network and the New Policy Institute, reasons,

Like the constant buzz of the vuvuzelas during the World Cup, leading members of the inside-the-Beltway punditry like Chris Cilliza and Chuck Todd have generated an ever louder chorus of warnings recently that “angry” independent voters will determine the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections and, in so doing, threaten the Democratic Party’s current congressional majorities.
Actually, however, it is not what independent-or even Republican-voters do that will determine what happens in this November’s elections. It is what Democrats do, or perhaps not do, that will be decisive. This is true for two reasons. First, a significantly greater number of voters now identify with or lean to the Democratic Party than to the GOP. Second, only a relatively small number of politically uninvolved and disinterested voters are independents that are completely unattached to either of the parties. As a result, the big election story in 2010 will be the extent to which the large plurality of Americans who call themselves Democrats shows up at the polls this fall, and not the voting preferences of unaffiliated independents or Republicans.

In stark contrast to 1994, when a major poll indicated that Dems and the GOP each had 44 percent party i.d. support from the public,

This year…the Democratic Party holds a party identification advantage over the Republicans. In a June national survey conducted for NDN by highly regarded market research firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, 47% of voting age Americans identified with or leaned to the Democratic Party, well above the 33% who identified with or leaned to the Republican Party and the 19% who claimed to be unaffiliated independents. Even among registered voters the Democratic advantage over the GOP was 11 percentage points (47% vs. 36% with unaffiliated independents dropping to 17%). These numbers were replicated in an early July Pew survey showing the Democrats with a 49% to 42% party ID lead over the Republicans among registered voters.

So how do these favorable identification sympathies square with voting intentions?

As is the case in virtually every U.S. election, almost all of those who identify with or lean to a party plan to vote for the candidates of that party this coming November. In the NDN poll, about 95% of both Democratic and Republican identifiers who have made a choice say they expect to vote this fall for the congressional candidate of the party with which they identify. Meanwhile, among the presumably decisive independents, almost two-thirds (61%) are as yet undecided in the race for Congress. The remainder is split almost evenly between the two parties, with 21% preferring the Republicans and 18% the Democrats.

Hais concedes that the GOP does have an edge in voter registration among the polled identifiers, and in measures of enthusiasm for midterm participation — Republicans have an 11 percent advantage among those who say they are certain to vote. He applauds the DNC decision to budget $50 million this year to energize turnout among “first time voters” — young voters, African-Americans, Latinos and single women.
He also advises against Dems embracing a centrist timidity, since polls indicate strong support for progressive policies:

Democrats also need to resist advice to turn to the right as some pundits suggest. Conservative columnist, George Will, is certainly correct in noting that the Democratic disadvantage this year in voter enthusiasm and commitment could hurt the party in November. But his assertion that the lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters stems from their party’s being “at odds with an increasingly center-right country,” is challenged by recent poll results.
The NDN survey portrays a country that is anything but center-right. A solid majority of Americans prefer a government that actively tries to solve the problems facing society and the economy (54%), rather than a government that stays out of society and the economy to the greatest extent possible (31%). Three-quarters of Democrats (76%), and just over half of independents (52%), favor an activist government, while 60% of Republicans want a laissez faire approach.
Similarly, a clear plurality of the electorate (49%) wants government to ensure that all Americans have at least a basic standard of living and level of income, even if it increases government spending. Only 34% supported the alternative approach of letting each person get along economically on their own, even if that means some people have a lot more than others. A solid majority of Democrats (69%), and half of independents, opt for governmental policies aimed at increasing economic equality, something that is opposed by two-thirds (65%) of Republicans.

Hais advises “highlighting, not downplaying” Dems legislative achievements under Obama. And he slams a final stake in the heart of the “Independents are the key” strategy for Dems:

Democrats would also be well advised not to base their campaign on pursuing independent voters, angry or otherwise. For one thing, the much-vaunted independents are far less likely to be registered (72%) and certain to vote (52%) than are either Republican or Democratic identifiers. While aiming at unaffiliated and uninvolved voters may be a good idea for a party that has fewer, or even the same number, of identifiers as its opponent, it is not the best strategy for a party that holds a clear party identification lead within the electorate. Doing everything that it can to mobilize its own supporters makes far more sense, and is likely to be far more effective…

If Hais is right, a stronger emphasis on leveraging Democratic resources toward turning out the base, instead of winning the support of the amorphous group called “independents,” could determine who controls Congress next year — and which Party is better positioned for 2012.


Sleazy Strategy to Hold TX Governorship May Backfire

If you were wondering how low could the GOP go in order to hold the governorship of Texas — yes, that Texas, the one that has the Governor who talks up secession — take a peek at Suzy Khimm’s Mother Jones article “Serial Butt-Biting GOP Operative Sinks Teeth Into Texas Race.”
You probably heard that Governor Rick Perry is in serious electoral trouble, which is no small achievement in one of the reddest of states. Perry, it seems is in a dead heat with Houston’s Democratic Mayor Bill White, who Khimm calls “the strongest gubernatorial contender that Texas Democrats have seen in years.” Here’s Khimm on the Perry campaign’s latest connivance in cahoots with Charles Hurth III, a GOP operative who has a somewhat bizarre personal history:

…Last month, Hurth and two other GOP operatives–one a former top aide to Texas Gov. Rick Perry–were implicated in a scheme to bankroll a petition drive to put the Green Party on the ballot. It is an apparent ploy to siphon votes away from Perry’s Democratic challenger, former Houston Mayor Bill White. He’s an appealing target: Tied with Perry in the latest poll…
…Hurth’s first claim to fame was being sued in 1987 for approaching a fellow law student in a bar and biting her on the buttocks so hard that she required medical attention. During the trial, Hurth admitted that he’d used the same toothy overture to approach two other women at fraternity parties–and he said that his latest victim should have taken the gesture as a compliment. The jurors didn’t buy it, and Hurth was successfully sued for $27,500. Since then, he has dedicated himself to being a persistent pain in the butt for Democrats, setting up shop in a tiny Missouri town to create a clearinghouse for Republican electoral schemes. The latest came this spring, when Hurth and his allies succeeded in getting the Greens on the 2010 ballot.

If that wasn’t sleazy enough,

…The Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in early June against a Hurth-run nonprofit called Take Initiative America, as well as Arizona-based GOP consultant Tim Mooney and “unknown conspirators” for their role in the effort. Mooney has admitted that he funneled money through Hurth’s organization to pay Free and Equal Inc., a Chicago-based petition-gathering company that ended up amassing 92,000 signatures for the Texas Green Party’s ballot drive. According to a court document, Hurth’s group spent $532,500 on the effort.

Yes, there’s more:

…This isn’t the first time that Mooney and Hurth have resorted to such schemes to help Republicans at the polls. In 2004, Hurth set up an organization called Choices for America that furtively solicited help from Republicans to get then-presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in New Hampshire, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, among other states. Mooney assisted with Hurth’s 2004 effort, along with Dave Carney, George H.W. Bush’s former political director who’s now one of Rick Perry’s top consultants. At the time, Carney acknowledged to the Dallas Morning News that he was trying to gather signatures for Nader in order to help George W. Bush get reelected. According to the script for the petition drive, canvassers were instructed to tell Bush supporters, “Without Nader, Bush would not be president.”
Three years later, Hurth undertook yet another effort to manipulate electoral politics to the Republicans’ advantage. In 2007, Take Initiative America funded a California ballot initiative that would have distributed the state’s 55 electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-takes-all. Had it succeeded, the effort would have greatly benefited Republican presidential contenders in the state. Hurth similarly refused to reveal the donor behind the effort, who finally came forward after Democrats accused the group of money-laundering and California officials vowed to investigate. Paul Singer, a hedge-fund manager and major Giuliani fundraiser, admitted that he gave $175,000 to the effort…

Khimm goes on to report that the Texas Green Party accepted the money, probably knowing that it could be coming from Republicans and that the state Democratic Party is continuing its legal challenge to ascertain exactly who funded the GOP-backed petition drive. It would be ironic indeed if the fallout is such that Perry narrowly loses because the efforts of Republican activists to divide the Democrats ends up winning them the majority of swing voters who don’t like underhanded ballot manipulation games.


Heck, They Got Color TV Sets

I don’t know how much Rand Paul’s latest tin-eared gaffe will cost him in terms of votes in the KY senate race (AP report here). But I’m pretty sure he didn’t win any hearts and minds in the Louisville forum, where he commented on poverty. Paul said “The poor in our country are enormously better off than the rest of the world…” and referenced an old propaganda film that showed color TV sets in homes of the poor.
For sheer arrogance, it may not top Jim Bunning’s ‘Tough Shit’ response to a question about unemployment, but it reflects a similar, clueless spirit. Kentucky has been hit harder by unemployment than most states, and tied for second of the 50 states in percentage of residents living in poverty.
Paul’s Democratic opponent Attorney General Jack Conway didn’t pounce on Paul’s remark, a missed opportunity to make Paul back up and eat it. All is not lost, however. Conway should still be able to make Paul elaborate. One possible response to get things rolling:

Mr. Paul’s remarks reveal a disturbing callousness about poverty and a profound ignorance about the economic hardships many Kentuckians are experiencing. Kentucky doesn’t need another deaf ear toward working people in the U.S. Senate, and we certainly don’t need another errand boy for the rich representing our state.

Kentucky is tricky political terrain, fairly described as a red state in recent years. That’s not the same thing, however, as saying a majority of KY voters have unlimited tolerance for would-be leaders who keep making embarrassing remarks.