We’re going to be arguing about this one for a while, and when we’re done the historians will be mulling it over in their books about the Obama presidency. My guess is that they are going to have tough time making it understandable to readers who wonder– “How in the hell did a liberal Democratic president with a healthy majority in both houses of congress, agree to a deal that extends Bush’s tax cuts for the rich?”
Some will shrug it off, “perhaps he wasn’t that liberal after all.” Others may liken him to General McClellan, Lincoln’s reluctant warrior-chief. The more meticulous historians will walk their readers through the tight timetable Obama was dealing with and the certain senate filibuster the House-passed tax bill the President preferred was facing, before finally settling on the least-bleak option he had.
Arguably, the President’s clock management and bully pulpit deployment should have been better. And jeez, couldn’t he at least have forced the GOP to eat a tax hike for millionaires at a time when corporate profits are shattering records? (Not that it would have reduced the budget deficit much). And as Paul Waldman notes in The American Prospect, the offer of a federal pay freeze now looks even more like a moral and strategic blunder.
What is undeniable, however, is that our politics are dysfunctional when a sharp Democratic president with healthy majorities in both houses can’t pass a moderately progressive tax bill. A lot of smart progressives are sharply critical of Obama’s leadership on the issue, including Paul Krugman, who sees the deal weakening the President’s re-election chances and Katrina vanden Heuval, who makes a persuasive case that it was more a problem of limited presidential will and vision than one of structural limitations.
I come down sympathetic to Obama, although I doubt that this was the very best deal he could get. Ezra Klein, on the other hand, makes a plausible argument that it certainly isn’t the worst case scenario. He didn’t, after all, accept permanent tax cuts for the rich. And as Jonathan Bernstein emphasizes in his New Republic post, “The Tax-Cut Deal Is Actually a Win for the Democrats,” Dems did deliver on tax cuts for the middle class.
None of this will matter much if the economy confounds the pundits and somehow comes roaring back before July or August, ’12, in which case Obama will begin to look like Clinton on steroids. Not bloody likely, but investment in manufacturing has been sluggish for a long time now, so a little hope is not out of the question.
Where we go from here is an all out effort to enact the remaining Democratic priorities, including DADT, the Dream Act and any other doable reforms we can cram into the agenda before Boehner takes over the House. With these reforms enacted and added to the Obama Administrations accomplishments thus far, along with some discernable economic gains, he’ll have a record to run on.

Many progressive Democrats are still grumbling about President Obama’s participation in the ‘Slurpee Summit’ with Republican leaders, some of whom have proclaimed the destruction of his presidency as the mother of all GOP priorities. These progressives feel he is being suckered again, not without reason, since there are zero indications that Republicans are negotiating in good faith or willing to give up anything at all to cut a deal.
I hope I’m not in denial here, but I have to believe Obama was not being suckered. He knows the Republicans aren’t interested in negotiating, but he feels he has to do bipartisan kabuki for one or more of three possible reasons: 1. polls strongly indicate the public wants Republicans and Democrats to work together, and even a gesture in that direction is better than no outreach; 2. The Slurpee Summit provided an opportunity to raise public awareness of the GOP’s obstructionism, thereby advancing support for holding the line on letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy; and 3. If he must cave, his bipartisan gesture makes it easier for him to cave a little, instead of total capitulation.
The alternative, almost too grim to contemplate but predicted by some observers, is that President Obama will capitulate on tax cuts for the rich because he feels it is his only chance to get other legislation passed in the lame duck session, after which his options diminish severely.
Wince-provoking as was Obama’s apology for not not adequately reaching out to Republicans during his first two years in office, it just may prove to have been a clever opening move. A little humility can become the image of a politician in trouble and enhance his cred as a leader who negotiates in good faith, especially when the other side tends to express disagreements in bilious diatribes. Obama’s proposed freeze on pay for federal workers, however, may look even worse if he caves on extending tax cuts for top earners.
Now the my-way-or-the-highway Republicans are threatening to obstruct all legislation, unless the Bush tax cuts are renewed for the rich. Public opinion data suggests they are on shaky ground. Undaunted, Speaker Pelosi is reportedly preparing a vote on keeping the tax cuts for those earning less than $250K only.
She is on more solid ground in terms of public opinion. There are surveys which indicate that most of the public believes top earners should pay more taxes, such as the Gallup/USA Today poll conducted 11/19-21, which found that respondents favored new limits for “how much of wealthy Americans’ income is eligible for the lower rates” over keeping the “tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income” by a margin of 44 percent to 40, with 13 percent favoring allowing the tax cuts to expire. So, 57 percent of those polled oppose keeping the Bush tax cuts at current levels for the wealthy.
The Republicans, however, are practicing impressive message discipline, always inserting “job-killer” before the term “tax hikes,” and jabbering about how the rich need the Bush tax cuts renewed because they are all hard-working small business folks who, shucks, just want to hire more workers with their hard-earned incomes. Dems can sweeten the expiration of upper income cuts in public perception with a significant tax incentive for small businesses to hire and retain workers.
As has been noted repeatedly since the midterms, polls indicate quite clearly that much of the public has limited faith in the GOP to do what is right for the country, even though midterm voters wanted to punish the majority party. Regarding bipartisanship, a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted just before the midterms found that 56 percent of respondents (66 percent of Democrats, 47 percent of Republicans, 52 percent Independents) agreed that it was more important for “politicians in congress to work with members of the other party and make consensus policy” than to “stick to their principles and hold to the issues they campaigned on.” (38 percent agreed, 29 Dems, 48 Republicans, 39 Independents)
It’s helpful to know that bipartisanship has substantial public support. But it would be good if some poll would shed a little more light on public perceptions about which party is making the most credible bipartisan effort. An August Ipsos/Public Affairs poll indicated that 28 percent of respondents blamed Democrats more for “the fighting between parties and branches of government,” while 36 percent blamed Republicans more. It would be even better to see what opinions about bipartisanship failure do to influence candidate choice. The responses to that one could be very helpful in formulating Dem strategy leading up to 2012.

If we’re going to be good sports like the President and admit Dems got ‘shellacked’ in the midterms, then it’s fair to say we got pulverized in the south. On that topic, Jonathan Martin is getting buzz with his Politico article “Democratic South Finally Falls.”
Martin’s title seems a little melodramatic, considering most of the south has been red territory for a few cycles. But Martin makes a persuasive case, mining a couple of angles:

After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further.
…this year’s elections, and the subsequent party switching, have made unambiguously clear is that the last ramparts have fallen and political realignment has finally taken hold in one of the South’s last citadels of Democratic strength: the statehouses.
…Democrats lost both chambers of the legislature this year in North Carolina and Alabama, meaning that they now control both houses of the capitol in just two Southern states, Arkansas and Mississippi, the latter of which could flip to the GOP in the next election…The losses and party switching, one former Southern Democratic governor noted, “leave us with little bench for upcoming and future elections.”

And according to the Associated Press,

In Alabama, four Democrats announced last week they were joining the GOP, giving Republicans a supermajority in the House that allows them to pass legislation without any support from the other party. The party switch of a Democratic lawmaker from New Orleans handed control of Louisiana’s House to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.
In Georgia, six rural Democratic state legislators — five from the House and one in the Senate — have switched allegiance to the GOP since Nov. 2…In Georgia, the GOP swept every statewide office this year and brought, in the words of state Rep. Alan Powell, “an effective end, at least for the foreseeable future, to the two-party system in state government.”

Martin says ten Democrats in southern state legislatures are switching party affiliation to the GOP, and yes, there will undoubtedly be more. But I’m not too worried about the “bench” factor. Most southern cities have Democratic mayors, and some of them are going to run impressive statewide campaigns in future cycles when the economy is not so sour. Grim as it seems now, we will see southern Democratic governors and U.S. Senators being sworn in down the road. As Martin acknowledges:

For all the bad tidings, there is one important development that could bode well for Democrats in some Southern states. While they may never get back the rural areas that once served as their bulwark, Southern Democrats are now competitive in some fast-growing suburbs in states that have a significant number of transplants. There was a reason why Obama won Virginia and North Carolina in 2008 — both are filled with newcomers who are open to supporting either party.
“The more metropolitan a state has become, the more resilience that gives Democrats,” said Ferrel Guillory, an expert on Southern politics at the University of North Carolina.
So even as Democrats lose long-held seats in places like rural eastern North Carolina, they can potentially make up the difference by capturing districts around Charlotte and the Research Triangle. “As those metro areas continue to grow, Democrats can find a new base of support,” Guillory said.

The main flaw in Martin’s article is that he doesn’t put the pro-Republican trend in the southeast in economic context. According to the most recent BLS data, two-thirds of southeastern states have higher unemployment rates than the national average (9.6 percent in October). The anger about the economy is at least as palpable and politically-consequential in the southeast as it is in the rust belt and elsewhere. If the economy rebounds during the next two years, the GOP will lose some of its edge in the south.
Large African American populations in southern states, particularly MS (37.1 percent), LA (31.5), GA (29.7), SC (28.3) and AL (26.2), will eventually serve as a solid base for Democratic candidates who only have to win the support of a third or so of white voters to get elected. NC (21.2 percent black pop.) and VA (19.5) have the additional demographic factor of rapid in-migration from residents of less conservative states.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latino voters are still a small segment of southern voters, with the exception of Florida, where they were 14.5 percent of eligible voters in 2008, followed by VA, where Latinos comprised just 3.3 percent of eligible voters. While Florida’s Cuban-Americans have tended to vote Republican, they are today less than a third of FL Latinos. Meanwhile, Hispanics as a demographic group are growing rapidly in NC and GA.
Despite the daunting situation facing Democrats in the south in the wake of the midterms, there is cause for optimism about the future — particularly if Dems invest needed resources in party-building and leadership development in the region. If we are going to be a healthy political party with strong roots and a promising future, we have to work at being competitive everywhere.

It being Thanksgiving and all, it’s hard to resist a quick ‘thumbs up’ response to the verdict convicting Tom DeLay for money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2002, ostensibly in order to funnel corporate contributions to Texas GOP legislative candidates.
As Robert Barnes and R. Jeffrey Smith explain it in their WaPo report, prosecutors argued that,

…a political action committee that DeLay started in Texas solicited $190,000 from corporate interests and sent it to an arm of the Republican National Committee. They said that group then distributed the money to seven legislative candidates in an effort to skirt Texas law, which forbids corporate contributions to political campaigns.
Prosecutors said that the money helped the GOP win control of the Texas House and that the majority then pushed through a DeLay-organized congressional redistricting plan that sent more Republicans to Congress.
…Punishment for the first ranges from five years to life in prison, but the former congressman from the Houston suburb of Sugar Land could receive probation…The conviction follows years of investigation of DeLay, 63, who came to symbolize the intersection of money and politics in Washington. He made a mission of solidifying the Republican majority in Congress, and his ability to raise campaign cash was part of his power and eventual downfall.
For a time, DeLay was the Republicans’ chief vote counter and patronage dispenser, and he earned his nickname, “The Hammer,” for the dictatorial style with which he commanded House Republicans – and tormented President Bill Clinton and Democrats.

DeLay may win his appeal or walk after a wrist-slapping. Mine is not to gloat here, as do some, tempting though it is, given DeLay’s snarling arrogance and oft-stated contempt for all things Democratic. But it’s not about DeLay. He’s been over for a while.
This verdict is worth a thumbs up for a practical reason — it will discourage saner Republicans from skirting campaign finance laws willy-nilly, at least for a while. In the post ‘Citizens United’ era, that could be significant, coming after the GOP’s midterm takeovers of state legislatures and governorships and consequent redistricting leverage.
So spare a holiday toast for the good jurors of Travis County, Texas, who refused to be hustled by DeLay’s pricey lawyers. Justice lives in the Lone Star state, and somewhere, Molly Ivins is smiling proudly.

Political Animal Steve Benen has a strong post up at The Washington Monthly — the most persuasive case yet made that the good of the country is not even on the radar screen of Republican leadership priorities, compared to their quest to defeat President Obama. Yes, it’s been said before, but not this well:

NONE DARE CALL IT SABOTAGE…. Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?
You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any kind of stimulus investments. You’d also want to cut spending and take money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You’d no doubt want to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency Fund) so you could kill it.
You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to lower the unemployment rate. You’d also no doubt want to create massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States into default….

Benen quotes Matthew Yglesias to underscore the point:

McConnell has clarified that his key goal in the Senate is to cause Barack Obama to lose in 2012 which if McConnell understands the situation correctly means doing everything in his power to reduce economic growth. Boehner has distanced himself from this theory, but many members of his caucus may agree with McConnell.
Which is just to say that specifically the White House needs to be prepared not just for rough political tactics from the opposition (what else is new?) but for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage.

Democrats have been reluctant to impugn the patriotism of those with different political beliefs as unseemly. But given the Republican leadership’s open admissions that defeat of a Democratic President is the priority that trumps all others, then they are raising the question, not Dems. Benen continues:

We’re talking about a major political party, which will control much of Congress next year, possibly undermining the strength of the country — on purpose, in public, without apology or shame — for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012.
Maybe now would be a good time to pause and ask a straightforward question: are Americans O.K. with this?

A good question. I doubt that there are any polls that frame the question in such a way as to get a definitive answer. But my guess is that few Americans would endorse McConnell’s stated priorities. And it’s getting worse, as Benen explains:

For months in 2009, conservatives debated amongst themselves about whether it’s acceptable to actively root against President Obama as he dealt with a variety of pressing emergencies. Led by Rush Limbaugh and others, the right generally seemed to agree that there was nothing wrong with rooting against our leaders’ success, even in a time of crisis.
But we’re talking about a significantly different dynamic now. This general approach has shifted from hoping conditions don’t improve to taking steps to ensure conditions don’t improve. We’ve gone from Republicans rooting for failure to Republicans trying to guarantee failure.

Benen cites Jon Chait’s concern about using terms like “deliberate sabotage” when describing Republican motives, which is a valid consideration. However, as Benen notes,

…Jon’s benefit-of-the-doubt approach would be more persuasive if (a) the same Republicans weren’t rejecting ideas they used to support; and (b) GOP leaders weren’t boasting publicly about prioritizing Obama’s destruction above all else, including the health of the country.
Indeed, we can even go a little further with this and note that apparent sabotage isn’t limited to economic policy. Why would Republican senators, without reason or explanation, oppose a nuclear arms treaty that advances U.S. national security interests? When the treaty enjoys support from the GOP elder statesmen and the Pentagon, and is only opposed by Iran, North Korea, and Senate Republicans, it leads to questions about the party’s intentions that give one pause.

All political parties want control of the political process. But it’s difficult to see how democracy is served when one political party refuses bipartisanship on any significant piece of legislation as a matter of openly-stated principle. When the raw pursuit of political power is defined as the end goal of a political party, that is cause for concern about the motives of its leadership. As Benen concludes,

If a major, powerful political party is making a conscious decision about sabotage, the political world should probably take the time to consider whether this is acceptable, whether it meets the bare minimum standards for patriotism, and whether it’s a healthy development in our system of government.

Benen’s concern is well-echoed in this excerpt from Paul Krugman’s New York Times column today:

…Our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize. …The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing… The G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment.

Or, as one of the readers of Benen’s post put it in the comments, “During the Clinton presidency, Rush Limbaugh began every show with the words “America held hostage day …Unfortunately, it looks like that’s exactly what is happening now. Republicans are holding the economy and security of the U.S. hostage in order to win the White House..”

Those sensitive pachyderms are beginning to twitch, hem and haw over a growing chorus of accusations that they are being hypocritical in calling for repeal of federally-subsidized health insurance for working people while accepting it for themselves (see my backgrounder on the topic here). Well, not absolutely all of them…yet.
Into the fray rides Bill Johnson, incoming freshman Republican from northeastern Ohio, who maybe, just maybe might be the one exception, who practices what he preaches regarding the Affordable Care Act, as Jonathan Riskind reports following an interview he conducted with Johnson for the Columbus Dispatch:

“I have not made a final decision, but I am leaning toward not taking it,” Johnson told The Dispatch last week on Capitol Hill as he and other incoming members of Congress went through orientation classes and voted for party leaders.
But Johnson, who as a retired Air Force officer also has veterans health insurance available to him, seems to be in a minority among the new GOP House majority in drawing a comparison between criticizing the health-care reform law and participating in a congressional health plan.

“Leaning toward” — wowsers, what a masterful example of principle and integrity. We await his “final decision” with baited breath.
Riskind reports that other Republicans are trotting out the old “apples and oranges” cliche to deny their hypocrisy on the topic. Happily, by the time they are finished explaining the nuanced distinctions between their acceptance of government-subsidized insurance and that provided to everyday working people under the ACA, they sound like Irwin Corey on speed.

Fun to watch the Republicans stumble and trip all over themselves in search of a non-existent justification for their unbridled hypocrisy on the topic of health care reform. It appears Dems have a potent attack weapon here, and they should not hesitate to wield it with all of the ferocity at their command.

Brian Beutler reports at Talking Points Memo on four Democratic House members’ creative expose of Republican hypocrisy on health care reform:

Four members — Joe Crowley (NY), Linda Sanchez (CA), Donna Edwards (MD), and Tim Ryan (OH) — are rounding up signatures for a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Speaker-to-be John Boehner, encouraging them to press their members to refuse their federal health benefits based on the same principles underlying their opposition to health care reform.
“It is amazing that your members would complain about not having health care coverage for a few weeks, even after campaigning to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which will help provide coverage to millions of Americans who find themselves without health insurance for months or even years,” the letter reads. “It begs the question: how many members of the Republican conference will be forgoing the employer-subsidized FEHBP coverage and experiencing what so many Americans find themselves forced to face? If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk.”

A fair question, not that the Republicans will answer the Dems’ letter with anything resembling candor. But it is a question that decent political reporters should keep asking Republicans who have been calling for repeal of the Affordable Care Act until they get some answers. The letter continues:

…You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don’t happen to be Members of Congress. It is worth noting that in 2011, the Federal government will pay $10,503.48 of the premiums for each member of Congress with a family policy under the commonly-selected Blue Cross standard plan.
It is important for the American people to know whether the members of Congress and members-elect who have called for the repeal of health insurance reform are going to stand by their opposition by opting out of the care available to them at the expense of hard-working taxpayers. We look forward to your response in the coming days about exactly how many of the members in the Republican conference will be declining their taxpayer-supported health benefits.

The controversy about Republican opponents of HCR who accept government-subsidized health insurance was re-ignited when GOP incoming House freshman Andy Harris complained that his health insurance wouldn’t kick in until a month after he began working.
In addition to the hypocrisy Republicans are displaying in calling for repeal of the Affordable Care Act while accepting government-subsidized health insurance for themselves, many GOP outspoken opponents of earmarks are also on very shaky ground when you look at their track records. For example, according to Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Independent:

Just days after saying she had requested zero earmarks for her district, Rep. Michele Bachmann admitted to Fox News’ Brian Wilson that she had indeed requested millions in earmarks in 2008. But, she says, it’s not a big deal because her earmarks were less than the average earmarks for the rest of Minnesota’s congressional delegation.
…Bachmann secured $3,767,600 for her district in 2008. As Think Progress has pointed out, the average earmark for Minnesota’s delegation is $2.1 million…

When Republican House members talk about their positions on HCR repeal or banning earmarks, apparently what they say depends on which face you are hearing from.

House Dems have got two months to kick butt. OK, less, considering the Christmas vacation and holiday slow down. I have no doubt Speaker Pelosi will do the best possible job with the resources she has. But it would be good for Dem rank and file activists to pay close attention during this period, because it’s likely to be the last chance for positive legislative action before the party of Gridlock, Obstruction and Paralysis takes over the House. After that, it’s pure defense for at least a couple of years.
Time to give all of the finger-pointing, hand-wringing and Monday-morning quarterbacking a rest and get focused on helping Pelosi, Reid and Obama get something done. Toward that end, the editors of The Nation have a good read, “An Agenda for the Lame-Duck Congress” to get the juices stirring again. Here’s an excerpt:

…The period after an election is not set aside for rearranging furniture; Congress sits for two years, not twenty-two months, and it’s supposed to do its job for the entire term. That doesn’t mean Democrats should be blind to the election results; to the contrary, they should respond to them–while getting things done for the American people….
…Pelosi is smart to link the defense of healthcare reform, financial regulation and long-term commitments to maintaining Social Security with the need to create jobs. She can highlight the linkage during the lame-duck session by focusing on fundamentals: extending unemployment benefits, shoring up Medicare and Medicaid, and assuring that a stopgap spending bill contains funding not just to keep the federal government operating into the next year but to help state and local governments and school districts across the country do the same. These are all popular initiatives; Pelosi and Harry Reid–who still controls the Senate for the next two years–have no reason to accept the conventional wisdom that the election produced a mandate for conservative ideas, neglecting the plight of jobless Americans, cutting social services or forcing teacher layoffs in the middle of the school year.
…Democrats should take the moment to argue for letting the Bush tax cuts expire and using the new revenue to maintain federal, state and local services in tough economic times…If compromise is necessary, the only credible one is giving relief to working families–not billionaires. The American people will get the point if Democrats make it aggressively and without apology.
Pelosi should also move the Fair Elections Now Act onto the floor for a vote, advancing a debate on an issue that Republicans don’t want discussed. We just finished the most expensive midterm election in US history; shouldn’t House and Senate committees hold hearings to look at how much was spent by corporations and billionaires, at the impact of that money on the elections and at the influence it will have on government? Republicans will scream, and incoming House Oversight chair Darrell Issa will surely shut down those hearings in January while opening hundreds of investigations on Democratic reforms. Bring it on. In her new role as minority leader, Pelosi could use her bully pulpit to ask essential questions. What is the GOP trying to hide? What do Republicans want to roll back? That’s a fighting stance, not a surrender position.

That’s a lot to take on in a short time, and there may not be time to do justice the the last idea. Joan McCarter flags an even more ambitious agenda in her recent post at Daily Kos, including:

Not a single spending bill has passed. A stopgap bill is needed to avoid a government shutdown.
…Without action by Congress, 2 million unemployed people will lose jobless benefits averaging about $300 a week nationwide by the end of December. It’s by no means a sure thing that the benefits could be extended in the post-election session….
…Taxes: Obama supports renewing most of the Bush-era tax cuts, but not those for family income exceeding $250,000. Emboldened Republicans will insist, however, and with Democrats splintered, many observers think a one- or two-year extension of everything is most likely. Otherwise, it’ll fall to the new Congress to decide. Already expired tax cuts, like AMT relief, are likely to get done in the lame duck.
…Unemployment benefits: Congress has always extended unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed when the jobless rate has been this high. But it took months earlier this year for Congress to extend jobless benefits through the end of November, and Republicans are likely to insist that any further extension be financed by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. That could limit any extension to just a couple of months.
…Social Security: Before the election, Democrats promised a vote on legislation to award a $250 payment to Social Security recipients, who are not receiving a cost-of-living hike this year….

And McCarter adds,

That doesn’t include the masses of judges and executive appointees that haven’t been confirmed. Nor does it include the DREAM Act, which Harry Reid needs to make good on his promise to the Latino community that was absolutely instrumental to his reelection. Nor does it include the bogged down defense spending bill and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now on the record urging Congress to accomplish.

Whew! It will be a miracle if Dems get half of it passed. Pelosi and Reid will select the most doable priorities, the Republicans will go into full obstruction mode and Dem activists will have to mobilize to get it done. All hands on deck.

I tend to side with the viewpoint that ads don’t matter so much in creating a wave election, or in the overall outcome of congressional elections. Sure, ads can make a big difference in individual races, as many believe LBJ’s “daisy chain” ad did in 1964. But when you are looking at the aggregate result of races for 435 House seats and one-third of Senate seats, larger forces, like economic insecurity, are going to determine which party comes out on top. Ads can stress or understate economic fears, but not too many voters are going to let ads change their perceptions of the economic realities they are experiencing.
Still, it’s instructive to look at effective ads – as well as those that boomeranged, and how they may have helped decide individual elections. One example of the latter was Christine O’Donnell’s widely-ridiculed “I’m not a Witch” ad, although she was probably doomed before it came out. A better example was Democratic senatorial candidate Jack Conway’s “Aqua Buddha” ad in his campaign against Rand Paul. Writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Brandeis Professor Russell L. Weaver observed,

…The evidence started coming in as soon as Conway’s more sensational ads began running….According to Real Clear Politics, a nonpartisan group that lists election polls, the electorate started moving decisively away from Conway shortly after he began his most outrageous attack ads. What had been a close race (a 4 percent differential in favor of Paul, but one that was within the margin of error) quickly expanded to eight points, then to twelve points, and then 15 points. Ultimately, Paul won by 12 points.
Interestingly, during this period, overall support for Conway dropped, and the percentage of people who viewed him negatively rose significantly. While it is possible that future candidates will interpret this election as simply a wave election, and conclude that Conway had no chance with or without the attack ads, I’m hoping that they will see the election as illustrating the potential perils of negative advertising. One wonders what would have happened in this race had Conway taken the high road and run positive advertising that emphasized his record.

I had to eat some crow on this one, having written that Conway could have been the Dems’ best shot at a pick-up. Conway may well have lost even without the ad — Dems got trounced across the board in KY, with a couple of exceptions. In stark contrast to his better speeches, Conway’s ad was so ill-conceived and poorly executed that it even elicited expressions of disgust from some liberals and iced the election for Paul.
Conway should have known better. There was the example of Democrat Kay Hagan’s victory in NC’s ’08 senate race, which some observers attributed to incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole’s “Godless” ad attempting to link Hagan to an atheist group. Hagan, a Sunday school teacher, responded brilliantly.
Conway’s real point was to take Paul to task for mocking Christianity when he was a college student, a dubious idea at best. It was easily spun to sound like Conway was disparaging Paul’s faith, and the tone was nasty enough to backfire on Conway. Plus, the ad was visually ugly and the buzz may have left many swing voters with an unsavory image they associated more with Conway than Paul.
James Vega had a more promising idea — to make Paul explain his ardent reverence for Ayn Rand, a militant atheist philosopher who mocked religion, as a way of demonstrating Paul’s hypocrisy. This would be more effectively revealed by reporters or a non-campaign source. While attacking an opponent’s religion is clearly a loser, exposing hypocrisy as a character flaw is fair enough game, if done carefully.
Ridicule can be an effective campaign tactic, but there are limits. Conway’s experience reaffirms the warning that calling attention to an opponent’s religion is a dicey proposition at best, and blasting a candidate for long-ago college pranks makes the attacker look petty and desperate. Sharp ridicule should come from a source that is not affiliated with a candidate. The Republicans know this, and let the shadowy groups empowered by the Citizens United decision do their dirtier work.
No doubt there were many other ads besides the ‘witch’ and ‘Aqua Buddha’ ads, which backfired, particularly in lower-profile races. Rep. Alan Grayson’s ‘Taliban Dan’ ad, for example, was instrumental in his defeat, according to Charlie Cook.
The 2010 campaigns included attack ads that served their sponsors extremely-well, none with a bigger prize at stake than Jerry Brown’s much-applauded ad revealing eMeg parroting the same failed policy cliches – almost verbatim – as Governor Schwartzenegger. Brown probably would have won without the ad, but it generated great anti-Whitman buzz, and his numbers trended significantly upward after the ad debut. The firm that made it will get plenty of work from Democratic candidates in the next election. Conversely, it appears that Democratic Governor-elect John Hickenlooper’s clever anti-attack ad scored well with pro-civility voters in his close race in CO.
Campaigns will continue to pour millions of dollars into political ads, well-aware that they don’t always work. But Democrats should do so knowing that the sounder strategy is to use ads to gradually promote a candidate’s visibility, name recognition and credibility, and to build a strong case against the adversary, rather than stake everything on one hideous attack ad.

This may seem like a strange question on election day, but how many times have you been annoyed when some friend or acquaintance says, often with self-righteous intonation, “I vote for the person, not the party”?
My answer would be, “a lot,” so commonplace the phrase has become in political discussions. My hunch is that there is a pretty good chance you have also heard the expression in the last couple of months.
It can be a conversation-ender, depending on your tolerance for political dialogue with those who don’t give politics much thought, unprincipled dimwits or otherwise intelligent but apolitical people. But the expression is emblematic of a larger problem, the failure of the Democratic Party to inspire broad-based loyalty of similar magnitude as progressive parties in other nations.
Steve Benen has an interesting observation about “The Limited Value of the ‘Vote for the Person’ Maxim” at The Washington Monthly. As Benen notes,

…I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people say, with some degree of pride, “I vote for the person, not the party.” I get the sense those who repeat it consider it evidence of high-minded independence.
…The “I vote for the person” crowd is making an odd argument. These folks seem to be suggesting they’re not especially concerned with policy differences, policy visions, or agendas, but rather, are principally concerned with personalities. Maybe the candidate seems more personable; maybe they ran better commercials. Either way, as a substantive matter, the “vote for the person, not the party” approach seems pretty weak. Indeed, it’s what leads people to express a series of policy priorities, and then vote for a candidate who opposes all of those priorities — a dynamic that’s as exasperating as it is counter-productive.

Benen quotes Michael Kinsley to underscore the point:

…There is nothing wrong with voting for the party and not the person…. A candidate’s party affiliation doesn’t tell you everything you would like to know, but it tells you something. In fact, it tells you a lot — enough so that it even makes sense to vote your party preference even when you know nothing else about a candidate. Or even vote for a candidate that you actively dislike.

There are several reasons for the failure of the Democratic Party to inspire the kind of loyalty that motivates voters to support their candidates, even when a candidate’s charisma is lacking. Multiparty parliamentary systems seem to do this better. They have more ‘street’ or neighborhood presence, which builds solidarity. America’s culture elevates individual achievement over accomplishments based on ideological solidarity. And there’s no denying that the Democratic Party could do a lot better job of defining and projecting what it stands for.
I raise this issue today because the “I vote the person” maxim will have a particularly sour echo on a day like today. I find it hard to believe that majorities of voters really believe that Sharron Angle, Rand Paul or Nathan Deal are truly persons of superior character, competence or likability, compared with their Democratic opponents. In a way support for those candidates is based on party, but not party loyalty — numerous polls indicate voters don’t like the GOP very much. Rather, indications are that many are angry with Democrats for what they perceive as inadequate commitment to economic recovery.
Dems did not sell the very real economic achievements of their party during the last two years very well. I don’t recall seeing any ads in which Dems claim credit for saving the auto industry, talk about the impressive number of jobs created by the stimulus, explain that TARP is proving to be a cost-effective investment, or brag about the life-saving benefits of HCR. Instead they relied on interviews and speeches to get the message out, with limited results. As Joe Klein observed on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’

…This is one of the weirdest campaigns I’ve ever seen. The Democrats pass all this legislation — stuff they wanted to pass for 60 years — and then they run away from it. They don’t even bother to explain the stuff that they passed…

Painfully true. Lots of ads are necessary to tell a party’s story properly and unedited by outsiders, because TV editors clip interviews and speech excerpts, often drastically, to suit their programs.
But there is still hope that Dems can build a stronger spirit of party loyalty. The seeds are there, as James Vega has noted,

…During the 50’s and 60’s, in dozens and dozens of congressional districts blue- collar Democrats loyally voted for Democratic candidates who were much more liberal than they were on social issues. They did it out of a combination of party loyalty and trust that the Democratic candidate would be more pro-labor on economic issues.

Dems need a stronger commitment to assertively promote the party and its agenda, not just our candidates in their individual races. The image of the Democratic party has dwindled down into a collection of candidates who stand for different reforms in varying degrees with little solidarity between them. Party building is not just about recruiting good candidates; It’s also about creating a collective identity that inspires voters and invites them to be a part of it.