I imagine a group of Democratic Party insiders holed up in an office somewhere in D.C. sorting through videos and photos of various Republican candidates, and one of the Dems sighs and sums it up: “This one puts out a video saying she’s not a witch. Here’s one prancing around in a Nazi uniform. ‘Terror babies,’ census paranoia — We got a bunch of them on video who want to privatize social security, increase medicare deductibles and give huge tax breaks to the rich…I can’t believe we’re losing to these guys.”
By any measure the GOP’s ‘crackpot factor’ is inordinately high this year. No doubt individual Democratic campaigns are making the best of it on a case by case basis. But the question arises, is there some way to amp up the re-branding of the 2010 GOP as the party of crackpots?
The meme is well-established in progressive circles. But there has to be a tipping point at which a healthy chunk of swing voters, including white blue collar workers — the so-called “Reagan Democrats” — think “Jeez, much as I’d like to stick it to the Democrats, the Republicans really do seem to have a lot of crackpots. Hard to see them doing much to get the economy rolling again.”
We may not be quite at the crackpot tipping point point yet, but it shouldn’t take too much more, although time is running out.
As the crackpot factor expands, ridicule becomes a more powerful Democratic weapon. Tina Fey turned Sarah Palin into the laughing stock of America, and there’s an argument — though no data to back it up — indicating that it was devastatingly effective in making a large number of swing voters dismiss the GOP ticket as saddled with a terminal lightweight. Certainly cartoonists are having a field day with the crackpot factor this year (see here, here and here, for example). But we’re not likely to see an SNL skit as politically-potent as Fey’s Palin impersonations for a long time.
I’m worried about the “decoy effect” of one particular crackpot, Christine O’Donnell. She hogs so much media coverage with her ridiculous pronouncements and history, that other deserving Republican crackpots are slipping under the radar. Rand Paul, for example, the uncrowned King of the tea party loonies, who is in a close Senate race with a solid Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, must be thanking his good fortune for O’Donnell every day. Ditto for Sharron Angle.
It’s a lot easier to show voters why a particular candidate is too loony to vote for than it is to re-brand an entire party as too crazy to take seriously. Still, “I don’t know…the Republicans have too many crackpots” is a meme worth encouraging whenever possible. The wild card is the MSM. If it takes root in the next couple of weeks, it might help. A couple of good national ads projecting the meme couldn’t hurt.

If Democratic media wizards don’t make an ad out of Bob Herbert’s column in today’s New York Times, take it as a signal that the party’s media mavens are utterly clueless. Here’s a vivid image from Herbert’s column, begging to be captured in a widely-televised Democratic political ad:

It’s beyond astonishing to me that John Boehner has a real chance to be speaker of the House of Representatives….I’ve always thought of Mr. Boehner as one of the especially sleazy figures in a capital seething with sleaze. I remember writing about that day back in the mid-’90s when this slick, chain-smoking, quintessential influence-peddler decided to play Santa Claus by handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Congressional sleazes right on the floor of the House.
It was incredible, even to some Republicans. The House was in session, and here was a congressman actually distributing money on the floor. Other, more serious, representatives were engaged in debates that day on such matters as financing for foreign operations and a proposed amendment to the Constitution to outlaw desecration of the flag. Mr. Boehner was busy desecrating the House itself by doing the bidding of big tobacco.
Embarrassed members of the G.O.P. tried to hush up the matter, but I got a tip and called Mr. Boehner’s office. His chief of staff, Barry Jackson, was hardly contrite. “They were contributions from tobacco P.A.C.’s,” he said.
When I asked why the congressman would hand the money out on the floor of the House, Mr. Jackson’s answer seemed an echo of Willie Sutton’s observation about banks. “The floor,” he said, “is where the members meet with each other.”

Do the American people want such a guy controlling the U.S. House of Representatives? I think not. But it’s up to Democrats to show them who the Republican speaker-in-waiting really is. Herbert has pretty much written the script. All the ad-meisters have to do is hook up a little creative re-enactment.
The scene above should be enough. But, if you need more, Herbert’s got it:

…The amount of democracy-destroying money that manages to make its way into the sleazy environs of what is now known as Boehner Land has increased to a staggering degree.
The Times’s Eric Lipton, in an article last month, noted that Mr. Boehner “maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.
“They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.
The hack who once handed out checks on the House floor is now a coddled, gilded flunky of the nation’s big-time corporate elite.”

Herbert’s got more, much more, so extensive are Boehner’s and the GOP’s predations. Commend Herbert for writing a great column — his Pulitzer is long-overdue. But Boehner’s history should be dramatized, so the public can see exactly what members of congress have been witnessing for years and who will be running the House if they vote for Republicans. If Dems don’t show them, who will?

If the campaigns of 2010 seem more intense than usual, one reason may be early voting. So note Carolyn Crist and Melissa Weinman in their article “Early Voting Is a Game-Changer: Campaigns react to 45-day stretch of casting ballots” in the Gainesville (GA) Times.
The authors cite a huge uptick in early voting in the Peach State:

In the 2008 general election, more than half of voters came in early, about 2 million of the 3.9 million total in Georgia. That showed a large jump from the 2004 election, in which early voting was only allowed for specific reasons. In that election 387,596 voted early of the 3.2 million voters, or about 9 percent.
…Heath Garrett, a Republican political strategist, said early voting has caused a “monumental shift” in the way political campaigns operate. Because the early voting period is so new, there is still a lot to learn.
“Most of the campaigns in Georgia are learning from the 2008 election. 2008 showed that most campaigns, other than the presidential campaigns were not prepared for the impact of early voting,” Garrett said.

As you might imagine, early voting has created a bit of an earthquake in political advertising, sort of a ‘twin peaks’ phenomenon, as Crist and Weinman explain:

Now that voters head to the polls early, campaigns have to catch them early as well. Garrett said campaigning has become more expensive as a result.
“It’s almost like you have to have the same resources you had in the last week to 10 days in a campaign before early voting, but then you have to add onto that the resources to allow you to advertise and engage the electorate in the weeks leading up to early voting,” Garrett said.
“With your paid advertising, you have to peak just before and right around the beginning of early voting, which is 45 days prior to Election Day. And then you have to sustain some kind of paid advertising now for that entire period of time. Then you have to repeak as you get into the week of what we call advance voting heading right into Election Day.”
Garrett said there is a big difference between what the gubernatorial and Senate campaigns can do and how the down-ticket races cope with the costs of early voting.
In a state with a population of 10 million, the cost of advertising and direct mail in Georgia is expensive…”Those campaigns don’t have the budget to do television or radio so they really have to rely on good, old-fashioned grass-roots campaigning,” Garrett said.

The authors add:

[Republican] Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle’s campaign officials said volunteer efforts have been prolonged.
“With an increasing number of early voters casting their ballots before TV commercials air and mail arrives, it’s more important than ever to establish a grass-roots organization that can build support for a candidate prior to early voting,” said Ryan Cassin, Cagle’s campaign manager. “This is why the lieutenant governor has worked so hard to cultivate an aggressive grassroots network in all 159 counties, and grow his team of supporters on social media like Facebook.”…Cagle still plans traditional forms of outreach, such as TV and mail ads, during the latter stages of the campaign. But the grass-roots effort has played a large part of the early campaign, Cassin said.

There are concerns about how early voting affects the overall quality of campaigns, explain Weinman and Crist:

Douglas Young, a political science professor at Gainesville State College, isn’t so sure the 45-day time frame is a good idea…”On one hand, I respect the desire to try to help more people vote because things can always come up unexpectedly on Election Day with the weather or car trouble,” he said. “However, I’m troubled by the fact that Georgians can vote so early. If you look at American history, so often in the last six weeks of campaigning is when important debates occur. So many other events can take place after people have voted.”
This includes news media uncovering new information, candidates disclosing each other’s potential weaknesses and the release of financial information, he said…”A good survey might poll those who voted several weeks early before more information came out and how many regret having voted early,” Young said. “I think a week or two weeks is gracious time to get your act together and get to the polls. Six weeks out is long before relevant information may come out.”

Go negative early seems to be the new political mantra:

Garrett said the effect of such prolonged negative campaigning has yet to be seen…”If you’re in a competitive race, the negative attacks all start earlier,” Garrett said. “I think we’re going to learn a lot this year from that kind of impact.”

Early voting may also amplify the utility of ‘new media,’ especially at local levels, report Crist and Weinman:

Grassroots and social media campaigning is certainly helping Chad Cobb, a Democrat running for Georgia House District 26…”I’m not doing signs because I haven’t had financing as far as getting those, but I do hope to do a radio ad and newspaper ad the week before Election Day,” he said. “Facebook is a gold mine for campaigning. That’s what I started in June knowing I didn’t have a Democrat opponent for the primary. After that, I knew I could reach out and talk to the people in my district. It’s more of a grass-roots campaign.”
For Carol Porter, the Democrat lieutenant governor candidate, social media also is the answer…”Early voting has changed the way we think about campaigns, and the new dynamic is Facebook, Twitter and all the other ways you reach people where they are,” said Liz Flowers, Porter’s press secretary. “Websites are a more prominent campaign tool than in the past, and Carol gets up every morning to post something on Facebook and Twitter. It’s not something the staff does, which happens in other campaigns. She puts down what is on her mind so people can directly connect to her.”

Early voting has apparently added intensity to the traditional ‘boiler room’ GOTV effort, as well, report the authors:

The Democratic Party of Georgia has set up 15 field offices across the state – its most ambitious field program ever – and filled them with people to call registered voters and encourage them to vote early, party spokesman Eric Gray said.
So far, the offices have made more than 100,000 calls statewide. That effort frees up candidates, who are under more strain with the early-voting timetable than the traditional model of nearly everyone voting on the first Tuesday in November.
“This is still pretty new territory we’re trying to navigate,” Gray said. “The candidates have to be everywhere for six weeks before the election instead of one week.”

As a resident of Georgia, I’ve been somewhat awed by the ubiquity of former Democratic Governor Roy Barnes’ internet banner attack ads, lambasting his Republican opponent for Governor, Nathan Deal as “too corrupt, even for congress.” I do a good bit of political net-surfing, and I’ve seen his ads, which I assume are keyed to net-surfer’s zip codes, flickering on websites everywhere during the last month or so. Barnes is surging nicely in a major “red south’ race that pundits are rating in toss-up territory.
Deal has responded with a YouTube video, “…If you go early and get the voting out of the way, you can just fast-forward through all of those bad commercials that my opponent is running,” Deal says.
Game-changer that it is in individual campaigns, early voting hasn’t yet translated into a significant expansion in overall voter turnout. In their article, “Reducing the Costs of Participation: Are States Getting a Return on Early Voting?” in the Political Research Quarterly, Joseph D. Giammo and Brian J. Brox cite “the puzzle” of why governments have implemented early voting when it hasn’t had much enduring effect on turnout, and note further, in the article abstract:

…Early voting seems to produce a short-lived increase in turnout that disappears by the second presidential election in which it is available. They also address whether the additional costs to government are worth the negligible increase in participation. They conclude that these reforms merely offer additional convenience for those already likely to vote.

Makes sense. Folks well-organized enough to vote early would likely vote even if the early opportunity isn’t available. We might see some improvement as boomer generations mature. But I don’t think early voting is the “killer app” for overall turnout that internet/cell phone voting or automatic registration might be.
For the campaigns of 2010, however, expect those candidates who have planned well for early voting to have an edge.

One of the tactics Republicans favor for deflecting attention from their voter suppression efforts is launching unmerited accusations of fraud on the part of pro-Democratic groups and individuals. For a glimpse of how this works, check out “Despite Dearth Of Evidence, Right Wing Voter Fraud Fear Machine Carries On” by Ryan J. Reilly and Rachel Slajda at Talking Points Memo. The authors recount the smears against ACORN and the phony charge that the New Black Panthers were intimidating voters, and then explain how these incidents are being regurgitated in the latest fear-mongering campaign:

The most prominent example, of course, is the aforementioned New Black Panthers case. After the Obama administration decided only to act against one member, ordering him away from polling places in Philadelphia until 2012, Adams and other Bush appointees cried foul. They allege that Obama’s DOJ, under Attorney General Eric Holder, is purposely dropping cases against black defendants, and got the conservative-dominated Commission on Civil Rights to investigate it. Gail Heriot, who sits on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, expressed concern in one meeting that the New Black Panther who held a nightstick at the polling place could “just hop on a bus” and intimidate other voters on election day this year.
That case has gotten new life in the headlines as the election nears. Last week, the former head of the voting rights division, Chris Coates, defied the DOJ and testified before the commission. Before that, the DOJ’s inspector general announced he would investigate allegations that the department is handling cases based on race.
Other cases trumpeted by the right have similar racial undertones. In Harris County, Texas, a tea party offshoot called True The Vote and the Republican registrar of voters have accused a low-income voter registration program of falsifying thousands of applications in an effort to conduct “an organized and systematic attack.” True The Vote says they found the alleged fraud by scouring voter registration records in districts with a high number of households with six or more registered voters — which also happened to be the predominantly poor, black voting districts. True The Vote is now advocating for proof of citizenship to be required at the polls. And the Tea Party Nation has told its members to “steal their good idea.”

Slajda and Reilly also report that a former ACORN employer, now a “whistle-blower,” Anita MonCrief, is whipping up tea party participants to take up the GOP voter fraud crusade, urging them to monitor welfare offices and bus stops etc., where she claims liberals are ripping off votes. “I called it ‘Operation Darkie Shield,'” she reportedly said at one recent conference.
In Wisconsin, the authors note, someone put up billboards “featuring dark-skinned, jailed figures who admit to voter fraud to warn Milwaukee residents of jail time if they vote illegally.” GOP candidate for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has said “As governor, I will sign into law a bill to require a photo ID to vote.”
So, for Democrats, it comes down to teaching poll watchers the true rules and procedures, so they won’t be hustled by suppression or fraud scams. “We just want to make sure that everyone is clear on the rules — that voters know their rights, that these groups know what they are and aren’t allowed to do,” said Tova Wang, Senior Democracy Fellow at Demos.
“Every single election there are these allegations of voter fraud that turn out to be mostly untrue and every year we find that there might be a very small handful of voter fraud cases but nothing on the order of what is alleged,” Wang said.
The fear-mongering about fraud and the attack against ACORN has worked depressingly well for Republicans. They succeeded in destroying one of the most successful organizations dedicated to registering poor and minority voters. James O’Keefe has since been discredited, but right-wing voter suppression operatives are still at work, as they have been for decades, making false accusations and looking for new ways to suppress progressive voters. Democrats have gotten smarter about challenging their campaigns, but enhanced vigilance is needed.

Just in case you haven’t had enough political loony tunes from the unhinged right today, here’s a couple of tidbits that have recently emerged about Rand Paul’s Senate campaign. First, from Joseph Gerth’s article “Rand Paul part of AAPS doctors’ group airing unusual views” in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters
…Speaking to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons’ annual conference last October in Nashville, Paul said he has been a member of the group since at least 1990…”I use a lot of AAPS literature when I talk,” he told the group.
…Dr. George Nichols, Kentucky’s former longtime medical examiner, said the AAPS’ positions sound like a combination of “pseudo-science, public policy and mysticism.”
And Mother Jones, a liberal magazine that wrote about the group earlier this year, has said the group is “hardly part of a mainstream medical society. Think (Fox News commentator) Glenn Beck with an MD.”

OK, queue up Twilight Zone music for this one:

…On its Website, the AAPS included an article in October 2008 titled, “Is Obama a Brilliant Orator … or a Hypnotist?” It cites an unsigned paper suggesting that Obama used hypnotic techniques and speech patterns in his 2008 campaign.
The paper bases its finding on the work of a controversial psychologist, Milton Erickson, who died 30 years ago and pioneered the also-controversial field of neuro-linguistic programming, which purports to use voice patterns to subliminally influence people’s decisions.
The paper claims to examine Obama’s speeches “word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.”
The paper goes on to say that Obama’s “mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because ‘Obama is the greatest leader of a generation’ who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically ‘inspires’ by giving speeches. Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.”
The AAPS article notes that the Obama campaign logo “might just be the letter ‘O,’ but it also resembles a crystal ball, a favorite of hypnotists.”
And it suggests that hypnosis is the reason some Jewish people backed him.
“It is also interesting that many Jews are supporting a candidate who is endorsed by Hamas, Farrakhan, Khalidi and Iran,” the article says.

Oy. Also in the Courier-Journal, Stephenie Steitzer’s “Conway camp calls on Paul to return money from white separatists” reports:

Read more…

Democratic ad-makers should have a gander at Steven Leser’s post at op-ed news, “2010 Election – A Democratic Momentum Shift Begins to Materialize,” not so much for the optimistic outlook as for the way Leser frames his critique of several Republican candidates and their party. Leser cites his reasons for the Democratic surge, including:

Republicans have been trying to make the case since a month into the Obama administration that Obama’s policies were too extreme left (they aren’t, if anything they are center-left). Instead of trying to follow-up that line of attack with center-right candidates, they nominated the most radical right wingnut candidates this country has ever seen. While it seems like I am saying the same things the Republicans and conservative media are saying, from the opposite side of course, unlike the Republicans, I can back up my claim. Consider the following:
While we are accustomed to Republican candidates being against a woman’s right to have an abortion, five high-profile Tea Party Republican SENATE candidates, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, Joe Miller of Alaska, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, are even against a woman’s right to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest! Women would have to have their rapists baby. Girls raped by an uncle or cousin or their fathers would have to give birth to a child from a resulting pregnancy.
…How does that square with the two year long Tea Party talking point that says that government is too intrusive and should stay out of people’s lives? How about the continued Republican/Tea Party fight against gay rights including the right for gays to serve in the military and marry? If you do not have the freedom to have consensual sex with other adults and have a choice over whether you reproduce (particularly if raped), I’d say that the rest of the freedoms really don’t matter much.

Leser goes on to describe the lunacy of Christine O’Donnell’s ideas about religion and science, Carl Paladino’s ugly flirtations with racism and the GOP’s WV U.S. Senate candidate John Raese’s celebration of upper-class privilege, along with Newt Gingrich’s lack of cred as a spokesman for ‘family values.’
With respect to the Republicans’ Speaker in Waiting, Leser notes what a GOP takeover of the House would mean for the speakership:

Regarding the “Pledge” the Republicans put forth, Republican house minority leader Boehner made the lack of a plan in “the pledge” clear on Fox News last Sunday when he said “The Pledge just lays down the pathway towards the possibility of building a framework for possible plan to have a real plan in the future.”

Leser provides a video showing more of Boehner’s ridiculous jive-talk. Leser concludes:

…While most Americans are normally too busy to take note of the latest Republican manufactured outrage or conservative media hyperbole, when it gets down to the 60 days before an election, people start taking a closer look. The trend in polling shows that what the American people are seeing with that closer look is not to their liking. Republicans, of course, see the danger in what is happening and in response, many campaigns are pulling back from media appearances and canceling debates with their Democratic opponents. I think it is too late and the momentum has shifted. It became too late when the Republicans nominated these wingnutty teabaggers for house and senate seats.
…The polls say the American people are having second thoughts about putting the Republican/Tea Party bums in the driver’s seat. You can almost hear what they are thinking. What are these Tea Party folks trying to sell us? Who are these crazy candidates? Why is a more severe version of the same stuff that put us into the economic crisis we are in better than the policies that have stabilized the economy? With those questions, the Republicans are seeing the Senate slip away and their hope of a Republican majority in the House start to appear in jeopardy.

Leser’s analysis makes good sense. and Democratic candidates may be able to draw from some of his framing to good effect.

Democrats have plenty to worry about over the next five weeks, but it nonetheless behooves Dems to get up to speed on the latest voter suppression scams. In that regard, Demos and Common Cause have partnered to present a must-read report on the topic, “Voting in 2010: Ten Swing States: Problematic election laws and policies in ten swing states could impact enough voters to determine election outcomes.” (PDF Executive Summary here)
The report profiles ten states (AZ, KY, CO, IL, LA, MI, MO, NV, NC and OH), where close elections are expected. The report focuses on laws and policies built into the structure of state election codes, rather than the illegal suppression practices that popped up in FL and OH during recent presidential elections.
The fact sheet on Kentucky, for example, reveals the obstacles Democratic candidates face in that state, including cutting off registration 28 days before the election, draconian felon disenfranchisement disqualifying 24 percent of African Americans, no legal mandate to disseminate voter information and a poor record of complying with the legal requirement to register people at public assistance agencies.
The report also credits each state for “exemplary voting laws” where applicable.
There are also reports of a voter caging operation underway in Wisconsin. According to Karoli’s post, “Voter Suppression in Wisconsin, Courtesy of the GOP and Americans for Prosperity” at CrooksandLiars.com,

Here’s how it works: A mailer is sent to registered voters. Any mailers returned by the post office are put in a database and those voters are submitted to be purged from voting rolls. Of course, the targets are never Republican voters. They’re Democrats, and generally minority voters in particular….One Wisconsin Now has uncovered this plot with evidence, but don’t assume this is limited to Wisconsin. I guarantee you it isn’t. They are targeting as many states as they can, but particularly swing states. Expect Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona just to name a few to have the exact same operations afoot.

And here’s a recent report on voter suppression in Texas.
In addition to the aforementioned laws and policies, and ‘caging,’ Dems should be ready for other suppression practices, like switching poll places, intimidation, parking obstruction, misleading and incorrect poll information, inferior computer equipment at polls in minority neighborhood polling places,
Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh also have a contribution to the topic in their “Early and Often” post at the Boston Review, in which they note,

Registration problems create barriers to voting and make it difficult for administrators to communicate with voters, identify voters at the polls, and audit elections after the fact. Reforms following the 2000 election sought to improve the accuracy and currency of the voter-registration lists. Most important, all states now have statewide voter files. So how good are the files today?…
This summer the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project issued the first comprehensive, nationwide analysis of the quality of information stored on voter registration lists…Nationwide, approximately 1 in 16 entries on the registration lists is unmailable. The magnitude of the problem varies greatly throughout the country. In California, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., about 1 in 50 entries is problematic, but in Arkansas, that number is 1 in 5.

The authors provide a chart ranking every state. This is not just about incompetence and sloppy registration management. The states are all well-aware of their rankings and the reasons for it, and in most cases it’s a matter of political manipulation — almost always to the detriment of Democrats.

Jane Mayer has an interesting post at The New Yorker, based on her telephone interview with former Vice President and Democratic Presidential nominee Walter Mondale in advance of his forthcoming memoir, “The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics.”
While it’s always good to give a fair hearing to the political advice of Democratic winners, like Bill Clinton, I think there is also value in hearing what smart candidates who have lost elections — those who have learned the lesson — have to say. I would say Mondale fits this description, perhaps better than his ticket mate Jimmy Carter, based on Mayer’s article and Carter’s recent comments about Senator Kennedy blocking health care reform.
Here’s Mondale, comparing his experience as Carter’s veep to the Democrats current predicament, as reported by Mayer:

…He could not help noting the similarities between Obama’s embattled White House and Carter’s. The problems that he and Carter faced from 1976 until 1980, he recalled, often seemed “overwhelming,” with “no good answers” in sight. As the economy was ravaged by what was known as “stagflation,” he said, the public “just turned against us–same as with Obama.” He went on, “People think the President is the only one who can fix their problems. And, if he doesn’t produce solutions, I’m telling you–when a person loses a job, or can’t feed his family, or can’t keep his house, he is no longer rational. They become angry, they strike out–and that’s what we have now. If you’re President, they say, ‘Do something!’ ”
…Mondale recalled that President Carter, as his standing in the polls slid, “began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public.” The President, he said, should have “got out front earlier with the bad news and addressed the people more.” He sees a similar problem with Obama: “I think he needs to get rid of those teleprompters, and connect. He’s smart as hell. He can do it. Look right into those cameras and tell people he’s hurting right along with them.” Carter, on the other hand, he said, might not have been able to. “At heart, he was an engineer,” Mondale said. “He wanted to sit down and come up with the right answers, and then explain it. He didn’t like to do a lot of emotional public speaking.”
…”In my opinion, Obama had a few false presumptions. One was the idea that we were in a post-partisan era.” The other was “the idea of turning things over to Congress–that doesn’t work even when you own Congress. You have to ride ’em.” Further, he suggested that Obama should stop thinking about what he can get from the Republican opposition: “You should explain clearly what you want, and, if they oppose you, attack them for it.”

Mondale worries about the public’s “outsized expectations,” but he says of Obama “he’s in a fairly good position to keep the Party united.” Coming from one of the lions of Democratic liberalism, that’s encouraging.

Wanna see what happens when a Democratic House candidate confronts a murky group spending big bucks on ads attacking him? Check out Amanda Terkel’s HuffPo post, “Rep. Peter DeFazio Turns The Tables, Confronts Shadowy Conservative Group Running Attack Ads Against Him (VIDEO).”
Terkel’s post is of interest for a couple of reasons: 1. These shadowy groups are popping up all over the country, with little accountability, in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision giving them free reign, and 2. DeFazio shows how to reveal their sleazy origins.
Here’s an excerpt of Terkel’s post:

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is turning the tables on a political group launching attack ads against him in an attempt to bring its shadowy practices to light. On Friday, he went to the Capitol Hill headquarters of the Concerned Taxpayers of America to deliver a letter and speak with members of the organization about making its donors public. But the person who answered the door misrepresented himself and lied, saying he had never heard of Concerned Taxpayers, even though subsequent information shows that he is affiliated with the group…According to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings, Concerned Taxpayers is spending $86,000 for ads to help DeFazio’s opponent, Art Robinson.

Terkel goes on to explain that the ads try to portray DeFazio as “a puppet” of Speaker Pelosi, even though he has opposed her on key legislation. Terkel notes that Concerned Citizens’ treasurer is Jason Miller, who is with a Republican political consulting firm, Jamestown Associates, according to the FEC filings and she continues:

DeFazio decided to confront Concerned Taxpayers on Friday, intending to deliver a letter requesting that the group make its donors public. “Since you intend to try and buy Art Robinson a congressional seat, by raising and spending ‘unlimited amounts of money,’ the voters of Oregon are entitled to know who is picking up the tab,” wrote DeFazio.
The Huffington Post, along with a couple of journalists from The Washington Post, accompanied DeFazio on the short walk from the Rayburn House Office Building over to Concerned Taxpayers’ headquarters, listed as 10 E St, SE, which turned out to be a small grey townhouse. DeFazio had to ring the doorbell, knock, and yell through the mail slot before someone came to the door. The man identified himself as Mike Omegna and he told the congressman that he had never heard of Miller or Concerned Taxpayers, nor was his voice on the organization’s voicemail…

Terkel adds,

It appeared that Omegna was dissembling. The Huffington Post called Concerned Taxpayers’ phone number, and the message, in Omegna’s voice, said:
You’ve reached Michael Omegna at Jamestown Associates. I can’t get to my phone right now, but if you leave me your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. If this is regarding Concerned Taxpayers of America, please leave a detailed message and I will respond back as soon as possible.
So not only did Omegna clearly have an association with Miller — who works at Jamestown Associates — but he also has a tie to Concerned Taxpayers and his voice was on the answering machine, despite what he told DeFazio.

There’s more. But the important thing is that DeFazio got in their face and exposed their origins, as Terkel reports:

…”We’ve got to take it to them,” he told HuffPost. “I’m an activist, always have been my whole life, and I’m going there to confront them and say, ‘Who are you, and why are you so afraid to disclose where your money come from? Would it totally discredit your attacks on me and other Democrats? Would it totally discredit your organization?’ We don’t know who they are. And as I said earlier, how can we enforce existing law, which does say it can’t be a foreign government, a foreign entity, a foreign individual, but if we are allowed no disclosure, how will we ever know who funded these campaigns?”

It’s clear that, by revealing the source of the ads as something other than a genuine independent ‘citizens organization,’ — and showing his guts in getting a videotaped confrontation — DeFazio increased the chances that the ads will backfire. If DeFazio wins, it may be because enough swing voters admired his courage.

You will have no trouble finding both thoughtful critiques and richly-deserved snarkage regarding the Republicans newly-unveiled credo, “A Pledge to America: A New Governing Agenda Built on the Priorities of Our Nation, the Principles We Stand For & America’s Founding Values.” I liked David Corn’s post on the topic at MotherJones.com, which succinctly exposes the GOP document as a collection of predictable Republican cliches and distortions:

…it offers few surprises: tax cuts for all (including the super-rich), slashing federal spending (without specifying actual targets), downsizing government, more money for the military (especially missile defense), and repealing the health care bill. It decries deficits–though it advocates proposals that will add trillions of dollars to the deficit. It calls for reforming Congress–but in non-significant ways (such as forcing legislators to place a sentence in every bill attesting that the legislation is connected to a principle in the Constitution). It’s full of Hallmark-style patriotism: “America is more than a country.” It’s infused with tea party anger: Washington has plotted “to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values.” It is likely to have little impact on the elections….

Corn links to other critiques, left and right:

liberal Ezra Klein dissects its internal contradictions; tea partier Erick Erickson decries the “Pledge” as a sell-out of the tea party movement; Republican curmudgeon David Frum finds it retro and short on “modern” and “affirmative” ideas for governing during a recessionary year.

But I like Corn’s reverse content analysis:

…Below is a list of words and phrases and the number of times they are each mentioned in the 45-page “Pledge.”
Wall Street: 0
Bank: 0
Finance: 0
Mortgage crisis: 0
Derivative: 0
Subprime: 0
Lobbying: 0
Lobbyist: 0
K Street: 0
Campaign finance: 0
Campaign contribution: 0
Campaign donation: 0
Disclosure: 0
Climate change: 0
Environment: 1 (“political environment”)
Alternative energy: 0
Renewable: 0
Green: 0
Transportation: 0
Infrastructure: 0
Poverty: 0
Food: 0
Food safety: 0
Housing: 0
Internet: 0
Education: 0
College: 0
Reading: 0
Science: 0
Research: 0
Technology: 0
Bush administration: 0
That list is as telling as the actual contents.

Democratic candidates should be able to leverage Corn’s list for crafting responses. Corn is probably right that the Republicans’ latest nothing burger will have considerably less political impact than the ‘Contract for America,’ revealing though it is of the GOP’s intellectual and moral bankruptcy.