Few Democrats need another reason to be outraged by the Citizens United ruling. But Marvin Ammori’s contribution to the Boston Review forum on the Supreme Court decision, entitled “Corruption Economy” should provide cause for serious concern among libertarians and others who consider themselves real “free-market” conservatives and advocates of creative entrepreneurship. Here’s a piece of Ammori’s case:

But Citizens United imperils not only our democracy. It also threatens the U.S. economy. Citizens United adds to the existing institutional tools that encourage a “corruption economy,” long known to waste social resources and reward inefficiency. This economy also systematically disadvantages startups and “disruptive innovators”–companies and individuals whose ideas productively displace entrenched alternatives.
…In 2007 David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times reporter, devoted his book Free Lunch to exploring, in the subtitle’s words, “How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).” He details how certain laws transfer wealth to the politically powerful by, among other methods, capping corporate liability, shifting tax burdens, and generously subsidizing billionaires at the average citizen’s expense.
Taking this one step further, researchers have attempted to quantify the return-on-investment (ROI) of this corruption. A widely cited study by professors at the Universtiy of Kansas shows a 22,000 percent return on $283 million spent lobbying for tax holidays. Another study demonstrates that large companies got a 600-2000 percent return lobbying for tax breaks. Both of these estimates far eclipse the average ROI for Fortune 500 companies, which is less than 10 percent. As Johnston puts it, corporations can more easily “mine gold from the government treasury than the side of a mountain.”

Ammori then closes the argument as far as ‘upstart’ entrepreneurs are concerned:

….A corruption economy disincentivizes investment in new technologies, human capital, and socially useful products and services. It instead encourages companies to invest in lobbyists, political action committees, and campaign ads…A corruption economy rewards those most adept at the D.C. game, not market competition and innovation. The result is higher prices for inferior products and services.
…In a corruption economy, established companies are given the upper hand. They have legions of lobbyists, revenue to allocate to campaign expenditures, and deep and long relationships with legislators. Upstarts usually have none of that, so established companies use their greater access to government and legal avenues to kill off young competitors. For instance, when a new data format (from home video to YouTube) hits the market, established content providers often file copyright complaints. Following similar logic, established telecom companies attempt to interfere with Internet traffic. This changes the behavior of new companies for the worse. An upstart’s first idea should be a product or service, not an appropriations rider; its first employees should be engineers, inventors, and management, not lobbyists and lawyers.

All of which strengthens the case that President Obama’s next Supreme Court appointment — replacing a retiring Republican, God Willing — ought not only have a progressive record with respect to social issues, but also be a clear and unflagging champion of economic justice for workers and small business people, when pitted against the interests of corporate power. Justice Kagan was a good choice in this regard, and the next nominee ought to be equally opposed to the Citizen’s United ruling.
The Citizens United decision is disastrous for small business conservatives, as well as for Democratic Party liberals. If progressives make the extra effort to insure that this message resonates outside the choir, it could help solidify the Party’s image in a favorable light with a key swing constituency.

In his post “Don’t Believe the Reapportionment Hype,” The National Journal’s ‘On the Trail’ columnist Reid Wilson adds some clarity to the discussion about recently-released decennial census data and Dems prospects in the reapportionment process:

…No one should believe that Democrats have had their heads handed to them this decade….Dems Instead, the reapportionment process foretells a changing dynamic of American politics, one in which minority voters will play an increasingly important and influential role. The eight states that will gain House seats this year appear to give Republicans an advantage, but, in truth, the redistricting playing field is far more level.
Eight states–Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington state–will gain representation when the 113th Congress convenes in 2013, figures released on Tuesday by the Census Bureau showed. On its face, those states appear to give Republicans an advantage; they hold complete control of redistricting in all but Arizona and Washington, where bipartisan commissions will draw the new lines.
The outsized growth of those eight states, however, has come largely from dramatic increases in minority populations, particularly among Hispanic voters. Although exact data on race collected by the 2010 census won’t be available for a few months, trends and the American Community Survey, conducted by the Census Bureau, demonstrate that those predisposed toward voting for Democrats have constituted the bulk of the new population boosts.

Wilson goes on to note that minorities are already more than a quarter of the population in 6 of the 8 aforementioned red states, including “a whopping 43 percent in Texas” and the section 5 preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act will insure that they are fairly represented. He sees demographic trends in ‘perennial battlegrounds’ Florida, Nevada and Arizona favoring Democrats, and adds that GOP strategists are now “worrying about their chances for maintaining their grip on Texas’s Electoral College votes.”
The overall political impact of exploding minority population growth, says Wilson, depends to a great extent on exactly where (in which districts) the minorities are now living, and that Census data has not yet been released. But I’d like to see some figures on the frequency of Hispanic and African American residential changes before placing too much stock in snapshot analysis of where they are at any given moment.
Ironically, notes Wilson, “…In the long run, the voters who guaranteed Sun Belt states their new congressional seats will likely turn those states, slowly but surely, into promising Democratic targets.”
Wilson flags a nifty treat at the end of his post, this link to The Redistricting Game, a fun, educational game which teaches participants the tricky complexity of drawing your own districts.

The November shellacking notwithstanding, yesterday’s Census Bureau announcement of initial figures for the decennial population count clearly indicates that major demographic trends strongly favor Democrats, with people of color accounting for more than three-fourths of the U.S. population gain over the last decade.
Republicans will spin the announcement to make it sound like good news for them, along the lines of this excerpt from The New York Times report by Sabrina Tavernise and Jeff Zeleny put it,

The figures will influence the landscape for the 2012 presidential race and the makeup of the Electoral College, with Republican-leaning states from the Sun Belt gaining more political influence at the expense of Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states.
According to the new counts, Texas will gain four seats, Florida will gain two, while New York and Ohio each lose two. Fourteen other states gained or lost one seat. The gainers included Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina and Utah; the losers included Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

And yes, the redistricting fallout from the shellacking will give the GOP major short term advantage in congress and state legislatures. In the longer run, however, there is every reason to believe that Democratic candidates will continue to receive overwhelming support from African American voters, in the range of 90 percent, as well as upwards of 65 percent of Latino voters.
GOP opposition to the Dream Act was largely based on their concerns about the increase in Hispanic voters — About 40 percent of the population growth came from immigration. Many of the Hispanic immigrants will not be able to vote for a while, until they establish citizenship. But that could change rapidly, with a stronger federal commitment to the naturalization process.
As for Latino citizens, Republican votes against the Dream Act should strengthen the Dems’ edge with this key constituency, as will President Obama’s appointment of Justice Sotomayor. Republicans always point out that many Hispanics are conservative on social issues. But when Republicans go out of their way to make life harder of Latino immigrants, it’s difficult to see how they can expect more than a third of Hispanic voters to support them.
As for African American voters, whatever cred the Republicans hoped to get in the African American community from the appointment of Michael Steele as RNC head and Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as Secretaries of State, will surely be offset by the negative publicity given to the more recent ‘Trent Lott moments’ of Rand Paul and Haley Barbour.
As for the longer range, Ruy Teixeira explained in a 2004 interview:

…Pretty much all the demographic trends are going to continue moving in progressive directions for the next 20 years. Just as one obvious example, we’re going to become an increasingly diverse society over time. By the year 2023, the majority of children will be minorities, people under eighteen. By the year 2042, we’ll be a majority minority nation… We’re going to see continuing increases in the proportion of single women; we’re going to see even the millennial generation, as I mentioned earlier, adding about 4 million eligible voters to the voter pool every year until the year 2018. So I think if you put these things together…the potential is there for a durable and pretty strong progressive majority looking pretty far out into the future.

The red tide will seem to be rising in the months ahead. But demographic trends indicate that the political maps of the not too distant future will morph to purple, and then a lovely shade of blue.

On January 5th the Senate will consider proposals to change the body’s rules to implement filibuster reform (See Ari Berman’s Alternet post on filibuster reform for a good update). Like many progressive Democrats, I say it’s long overdue and much-needed to restore majority rule, which is a central feature of functioning democracy. But there are three “what if” questions all Democrats should think about over the next 18 days:
1. What happens if we succeed, then in 2012, we lose both the presidency and our senate majority?
2. Would filibuster reform then mean we have greased the skids for Republicans to reverse everything we have achieved during the Obama Administration?
3. Might it be better to postpone filibuster reform until after we see what happens in the 2012 elections?
If I sound a little schitzy here, it comes from weighing the negative consequences of the filibuster since 2008 (and before) against the destruction the Republicans could launch if they dominate all three branches of government, with no filibuster threat. Yes, the threat of a filibuster has cost Dems dearly in terms of the public option and a host of other reforms we could have enacted. But if we keep it, and the Republicans take the white house and senate, we will likely be able to use the filibuster to prevent them from doing their worst. Also, with the GOP controlling the House, if we implement reform on Jan 5, it may not help Dems much, other than shaking loose some judicial nominations in the senate.
Yes, all of this is based on the worst case electoral scenario, but one that is not all that far-fetched, given the current economic reality. I don’t place much value on the “institutionalist” argument of some opponents of filibuster reform, which seems to me is pretty much based on maintaining a form of senate domination, authorized by finagling the rules, as opposed to being expressly granted by the Constitution. But I think we have to at least think through strategic and tactical considerations of the worst case scenario before piling on the filibuster reform bandwagon.
If Obama is reelected in 2012, on the other hand, the risk to Dems of implementing filibuster reform after that election goes down considerably, regardless of which party wins the senate. He can veto bills and make it stick, unless the Republicans have two-thirds of Senate votes for an override.
There are two strong arguments for implementing filibuster reform on January 5: 1. it may be our best shot at it, since some Republicans may support it as part of their bet on a rosier 2012 for their party, and 2. Obama has a good chance of winning in 2012, in which case filibuster reform on Jan 5 won’t hurt Dems.
After weighing all of these considerations, the wise course may be to go ahead and get it done. Filibuster reform is a good thing on principle. But the timing of it can be a little tricky, and a little more discussion about it can’t hurt.

Despite all of the heated debate in the media and among the politicians about the current tax cut debate, count me among those who are puzzled by the general docility of the public, which supports the tax cut deal in polls, if not all of its key provisions. I chalked it off to the old “Oh whatever, as long as I get mine” impulse. But American Prospect’s Paul Waldman offers a more thoughtful explanation for one part of it in his Tapped post, “The Oddly Unpopular Estate Tax“:

As Kevin Drum says, “Polls routinely show that a substantial majority of people favor higher income taxes on the rich. But polls also show that a substantial majority of people favor repeal or reduction of the estate tax.” At the time (this was back in 2000), I thought it might have to do with a misconception, namely that lots of people assumed that everyone who inherits anything has to pay the estate tax. So we did an experiment in a survey where we asked two versions of the question, one of which asked whether people thought the tax should be repealed, and the other of which explained that the tax was only paid by people who inherited a million dollars or more (or whatever the exemption was back then), then asked whether people thought it should be repealed.
The results didn’t show much of an impact of the information: While support was lower among the group that got the explanation, it was only lower by about 10 points. As I recall, it was something like 65 percent supporting repeal without the information about the exemption, and 55 percent supporting repeal with the information (the data are in here somewhere, if you care to track them down)…

According to an ABC News/Washington Post Poll conducted 12/9-12, 29 percent of respondents “support strongly” a policy of “Increasing the exemption on inheritance taxes so that only estates worth more than five million dollars are taxed,” with another 23 percent saying they “support somewhat” such a policy. And 16 percent were in the “oppose somewhat” category, with 25 percent in the “oppose strongly” group.
Waldman quotes Drum attributing the phenomenon to “…a very deep, very primitive protective instinct that most people sympathize with no matter how rich you are” — leaving money to your kids. Waldman also cites the unrealistic belief of most people that one day they might be rich along with the shrewd propaganda of Republicans, who branded the estate tax the ‘death tax.” He also notes that opinions about estate taxes tend to be most strongly held by the rich and most others don’t care enough about it to take action.
As far as progressive messaging goes, Waldman recommends, “Why shouldn’t Paris Hilton have to pay taxes, just like people who work for a living?” Not bad. It does crystalize the issue succinctly. Not everyone will buy the Hilton stereotype whole hog, since many would understand that not all heirs are that undeserving. But Waldman’s suggestion does get the conversation started. Building support for a progressive estate tax, however, will also require a sustained education campaign so people have more of a sense of the scope of the issue and what seems fair. It’s too late for 2010, but next time a little more public education about the issue might serve Dems well.

Those who would like to see a little more fighting spirit from Democratic leaders should find ample encouragement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has just made it quite clear that he’s not in a mood to take any unnecessary guff from Republicans.
Reid had raised the possibility of calling the Senate back for a short session after Christmas to deal with START and other unfinished business. Here’s Reid, via Talking Points Memo, responding to comments from Sen John Kyl (R-AZ), who accused Reid of “disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians.” and Jim DeMint (R-SC), who whined that it would be “sacrilegious” for the Senate to vote on the START treaty so close to Christmas:

As a Christian, no one has to remind me of the importance of Christmas for all of the Christian faith, for all their families, all across America,” he said. “I don’t need to hear the sanctimonious lectures of Sen. Kyl and [Sen. Jim] DeMint to remind me of what Christmas means.

Reid notes that their concerns about the timing are somewhat inconsistent, asking “Where were their concerns about Christmas [when they were posing] filibuster after filibuster of every piece of legislation during this entire Congress?”
Reid didn’t need any help to make his point. But if he did, quite a few readers had barbed zingers to add to the fray in the comments following the post, like this from ‘Spider Pig’:

So if the Senate can’t work before or after Christmas, can I call in lazy, too? And my wife, the Federal employee, what about her? Is it too holy for her to work next week, too? When’s the freaking cut-off for when it’s appropriate to work before or after Christmas? What about the 13 Jewish Senators currently serving? How about they hold court while everyone else goes home for Christmas? Oh, wait, they’re ALL Dems. PERFECT!

…And this from IndyLinda:

Yes, and it’s sacrilegious to expect anyone to work for several days before and after Christmas. Horrors! Just ask all the cops, teachers, firemen, nurses, doctors, and anyone else with a real job who isn’t guaranteed two weeks off at Christmas time…

…And this gem from mJJ:

While I would not has said it exactly that way, the gist of what you said is absolutely correct. I am LDS and I do not appreciate Kyl acting like Harry Reid knows nothing about Christian behavior. But alas, my party held up legislation so often during this last session of the Senate that it serves them right for their unpatriotic stalling. Last I heard, Democrats still have the majority in the Senate and that is why Reid has the right to schedule as he pleases. But Kyl’s whine is so disgusting. Thousands of people work even on Christmas. I am a retired RN and for years until I became a Nursing Supervisor, I often had to work during the Christmas holiday. Obviously Kyl, even after our party obstructed all they could, is now whining about working AFTER the Christmas holiday and before New Years. We will think twice before re-electing this dolt who cares less for common folks and the horrible Christmas they will have.

This is not just a feel-good lashing out against Republicans. It’s important, make that essential, not to let any form of disparagement of religious commitment of Dems pass unchallenged. If the situation was reversed the Republicans would be screaming for blood. Reid responded perfectly.

Political Animal Steve Benen has a worthy take-down of Roger Simon’s Politico screed, “Class warfare is not the ticket.” Benen’s post will resonate with those who have rolled their eyes at the much-parroted conservative meme that progressives actually hate the rich, not just the tax policies that reward them.
Benen’s post, well-titled “Roger Simon Gives a Straw Man Quite a Lashing,” targets Simon’s silly allegation that “Some Democrats hate the rich. Most Americans, on the other hand, would like to become the rich…. Congressional Democrats want us to hate the rich for being rich.” Benen adds:

Simon supports these observations by pointing to… nothing in particular. There are “many” congressional Democrats who consider the wealthy “swine,” but Simon doesn’t quote or mention any of them. “Some” Dems, we’re told, “hate the rich.” Which Democrats? Simon doesn’t say. I guess we’re just supposed to take his word for it.
I don’t. This kind of analysis is lazy and wrong, and Simon really ought to know better than to peddle such cliches.
There’s a meaningful debate underway over taxes, economic inequalities, and how best to generate growth, sparked in part by the disagreement over the tax policy agreement reached by the White House and congressional Republicans. I happen to think the deal, despite glaring and offensive flaws, is probably worth passing. But I also know better than to think those on the left who disagree with me are motivated by some anti-wealth spite. There’s a reasonable, persuasive progressive case against this deal; to chalk it up a Democratic desire to convince Americans to “hate the rich for being rich” is ridiculous.

Simon’s Dems-hate-the-rich cliche is a staple of Fox News, Limbaugh and other wingnut outlets and serves as a handy cheap shot, usually made by those who lack the chops to mount an articulate defense of unfair tax policies. In all my years of hanging out with Democrats, however, I’ve yet to hear even one Democratic official express a hatred for someone because they have dough, which is why Simon provides no examples, much less any opinion data. Sure there’s lots of anger about policies that promote gross income inequality, but I’ve never heard any Democrat, elected or otherwise, make it as personal as Simon suggests. It’s every bit as ridiculous as the NRA’s “Dems-want-to-take-away-our-guns” meme.
Simon’s post is undoubtedly a reflection of GOP nervousness about possible changes in the estate tax. Let them twitch and mutter, but the Senate vote on The Deal suggests conservatives don’t have much to worry about as far as ‘class warfare’ is concerned.

In his interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Senator Dick Durbin came up with what could serve as an apt political catch-phrase for the holiday season: “…We’ve got to eat the spinach and keep moving on.” Durbin’s remark provides a timely reminder that (political) life sometimes presents unpalatable choices, but there comes a time when the choice must be made to avert even more unpleasant outcomes.
The Deal is expected to pass the Senate today. I hope the House will be able to compell the Republicans to accept at least some tax increases for the very wealthy, doubtful as it looks at present. We do have to ‘walk the walk’ as a Party that not only gives lip service to the principles of tax fairness and fiscal responsibility, but actually stands for them, if we are ever going to win the consistent support of the middle class.
Many progressives are ticked at the President for his leadership in creating this situation. I know he’s privy to all kinds of inside political and economic information I’ll never see. But I’ll never be sure he negotiated the best possible deal. The Republicans may hang tough in opposing even a modest tax hike for millionaires, but we sure as hell ought to at least try to make them accept one.
Still, it’s a high stakes gamble to leave it all up to the next congress, in which the Republican-controlled House could pass an even more reactionary tax bill, force the Senate to accept most of it, and then hold extension of unemployment benefits and other Democratic priorities hostage. I’ve yet to see a convincing argument that it couldn’t get worse if Dems stiff The Deal.
Obama may go down as “the spinach President.” He made enraged Republicans eat their spinach on health care reform, because something had to be done for the good of the country, as well as the uninsured, since health care was taking an unacceptably large bite out of GDP, in the range of 20 percent compared to 10 percent in other industrial nations, damaging our competitiveness. Now he’s coaxing angry progressives to eat their spinach, because he believes, wrongly or rightly, that this is the best tax deal available under present political circumstances.
if the current controversy means that President Obama could be a one-termer, it appears he is willing to make the sacrifice to do what he believes is right. The scariest statistic I’ve seen recently comes from Robert Creamer’s reminder in the post below that, “After all, no president has been reelected in the last century when the unemployment rate was above 7.2 percent.”
Thus a lot is riding on the prompt extension of unemployment benefits and increased economic stimulus, however adequate, is even more urgently needed to get the unemployment rate down as quickly as possible. Republicans know it and they will delay any cash infusion into the economy as much as they can if The Deal fails. Obama has busted historical precedent before. But it would be folly to expect re-election with the national unemployment rate north of 8 percent.
If the sharpest political strategists on the Hill determine that we can’t make the Republicans accept even a modest tax hike for the rich, by all means grumble, gripe and complain. But at that point, pass the spinach — and quickly.

The political predicament facing Dems as a result of the GOP-Obama tax cut deal provides yet another example of how the threat of a filibuster frustrates Democratic reforms and undermines democracy. The House passed a perfectly reasonable tax bill, the provisions of which are supported by a majority of Americans in opinion poll data. A majority of the Senate supports it, but the bill is dumped because it doesn’t have 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and avoid the threat of a filibuster.
The distinction between the threat of a filibuster and an actual filibuster is important,as Tim Fernholz of the American Prospect explains in his post, “Challenging the Filibuster Old Guard: A new group of Democratic senators is poised to challenge the filibuster in the next term.” Says Fernholz in this excerpt:

“By a vote of 53 to 36, the Senate defeated a proposal to extend tax cuts first on those earning up to $250,000 in income,” Capitol Hill’s Roll Call explained over the weekend. It was a typical Senate defeat, where a majority supported the losing measure and a minority achieved a filibustered veto.
It’s been well observed in Washington that it doesn’t cost much to filibuster: Senators don’t have to speak or stay on the floor of the Senate. They only need to say a few words to their leaders, and the whole institution grinds to a halt. The public, of course, doesn’t see that level of detail, which makes things difficult for those interested in reform — but that could change.

Fernholz reports that Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has accepted the challenge to provide the needed leadership for filibuster reform:

Merkley has floated a proposal to reform the filibuster by forcing senators to actually take to the floor to obstruct Senate debate and by limiting the number of times the maneuver can be used to stop a piece of legislation. He and several allies hope it will win the support of 51 senators when the new Congress comes into session in January, the easiest time to amend the Senate’s rules.

Such measure, if adopted, would drastically reduce the use of the filibuster, the threat of which is deployed more than twice a week on average, compared to about three times a year back in the 1960’s, according to Fernholz. He reports that Sen Dodd and other “institutionalists” oppose reform, basically because they feel it weakens Senate power relative to the House.
But Merkley responds,

This is not the framework in which anyone who cares about the function of the institution would feel like the institution is functioning well…If we turn the clock back 30 years … senators understood that for them, individually, to hold up the work of the Senate, it had to be an issue of profound importance to the nation. That understanding is gone.

On Jan 5th Sen Tom Udall will try to bring a filibuster reform measure to the senate floor, reports Fernholz. But it too can be filibustered, with two-thirds of ‘those present and voting’ needed to invoke cloture on a rule change. Despite the concerns of the “institutionalists,” Democrats should support it. It’s just unacceptable that nothing can pass without 60 senate votes, and this is one of the few measures that might be able to help.
Some Dems may argue that we could lose a lot of senate seats in ’12, since we have 21 senators (plus 2 pro-Dem Independents) up for re-election and the GOP has only 10. We could also lose the presidency, in which case the filibuster begins to look like a tool we can use to obstruct Republican legislation, including the gutting of health care reform. It’s a solid argument, as far as it goes.
The fact remains, however, that Democratic prospects for enacting significant reforms that reflect progressive values are slim, as long as the opposition can trot out the mere threat of a filibuster to obstruct any legislation they don’t like. Reforms supported by the Democratic Party are being held hostage by the threat of filibusters, and we need to put an end to it.
Yes, the GOP is enjoying the benefits of filibuster threats right now, because it serves their obstructionist agenda. But, looking forward, some of them have to be thinking “we could have a majority in both houses, plus the presidency after the ’12 election. Then the filibuster is our problem, so maybe changing the rules now is our best option for enacting our legislative agenda.” Some GOP votes in favor of Merkley’s proposal are not out of the question.
The old JFK adage (borrowed from a Chinese proverb) about every crisis presenting both dangers and opportunities applies nicely at this twilight political moment, when partisan power distribution is fairly equal, but in flux.
There are other possible routes to filibuster reform, including reducing the number needed to invoke cloture or even abolishing the filibuster altogether. But right now Merkley’s proposal is the one that seems to have the energy behind it. We may not get another chance for a long time.

Since the House ain’t having it, the deal is going to have to be renegotiated in part, unless of course, the my-way-or-the-highway caucus of the GOP prevails. In that event, the tax fight in the next congress will make the health care battle look like patty-cake.
For the sake of argument, let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume that there are some grown-ups hiding in the GOP shadows who get it that they won’t look like wimps if they compromise a little. Maybe Scott Brown or Richard Lugar or some other Republicans in the Senate are thinking “Hmmmm, maybe it’s time for a little adult supervision…Maybe voters are ready for different leadership from our side. Darth Boehner is already tripping. Mitch thinks he’s Patton. I could look pretty good as the lead dog voice-of-reason Republican for a bipartisan solution.”
I know it sounds crazy, because we haven’t seen any Republicans demonstrate a sincere bipartisan spirit for many, many months, if not years. There are no “red dogs” or anything resembling the “gypsy moths” of earlier decades. Plenty of Dems have no problem breaking party ranks, but it’s hard to name even one prominent Republican who has shown a willingness to do so on major votes.
Republican leaders are proud of the party discipline they have demonstrated in 2010. But they may be approaching the point where their strength is poised to become a weakness and look more like indefensible rigidity. All polls indicate a majority/plurality of voters oppose tax cuts for the rich. The GOP could reap most of the backlash if congress bogs down in another prolonged, acerbic conflict. Some Republicans have to be thinking that they could look a lot better by giving a little here and there to make the deal palatable to enough Democrats. A sure win-win outcome is a lot better than gambling on a we-win-they-lose scenario, especially when public opinion data favors the opposition.
If some Republicans rise to this challenge, it’s likely that enough Dems will be open to tweaking the numbers a little here and there. Just for openers, let’s suggest having the Bush cuts expire for those earning over $500K, and cranking up the estate tax rate to 40 percent, kicking in at $3 mill. (If no deal is negotiated before the new year, the estate tax rate is scheduled to increase to 55% for over $1mill, and the Republicans emphatically don’t want that. We do have that leverage.) The Republicans would undoubtedly respond with a counter-offer.
Whatever the magic figures may be, it’s time to stop playing chicken and start negotiating in good faith until we find the numbers that both houses of congress can live with.