Mitch Malasky of Sum of Change, has an interesting Daily Kos post, “The Restoration of Rights for Former Felons in Virginia” in which he spotlights an important opportunity that could give Dems a potential edge of thousands of voters in a key swing state.
Malasky notes that only two states, KY and VA have no laws restoring citizenship rights (voting) to convicted felons who have served their sentences. All other states have a voting rights restoration path. Malasky adds,

This puts a plethora of problems and restrictions on former felons, many of whom were convicted of non-violent crimes decades ago but continue have their basic rights, such as the right to vote in elections, the right to drive, and the right to hold office, restricted. The governor has the authority to restore rights to individual felons, but only a small percentage of them apply for restoration (often because the process is unclear) and even fewer are actually approved to have their rights restored. The 48 other states have some sort of provision to automatically restore rights, two states never revoke them in the first place, so we, and many others, feel that it time to change the situation.

A good cause, made urgent priority by a small window of opportunity being opened for Dems in VA. Malasky explains:

This next two weeks are very important for doing just because that is all the time left Virginia has with Democratic Governor Tim Kaine, who will be replaced in two weeks when he leaves office to become the chair of the DNC by Republican Bob MacDonnell. Gov Kaine has personally restored the rights to more former felons than any of his predecessors, but he has the ability to, by executive order, to instantly restore rights to the tens of thousands of former felons who currently do not have them and establish such a system to automatically restore these rights in the future…

According to Malasky, a coalition spearheaded by the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP) is taking the lead in organizing Virginians to support restoration of voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences. The coalition urges Virginians to call Gov. Kaine (804-786-2211) and urge him to sign the executive order. Kaine, who has restored, on a case by case basis, the voting rights of all individual applicants who have completed their sentences for nonviolent crimes, has said “our analysis of Virginia law is that I can’t just do a blanket restoration – I have to restore people by name.”
Felon disenfranchisement is a national disgrace in a nation that prides itself in democracy. Disenfranchising convicted felons who have served their sentences, as do VA and KY, compounds the injustice, as does the fact that a disproportionate share of disenfranchised former felons are African Americans.
As The Sentencing Project notes,

An estimated 5.3 million American citizens cannot vote because of a criminal conviction. Of these, 4 million are out of prison and living and working in the community…This fundamental obstacle to participation in democratic life is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in an estimated 13% of Black men unable to vote…Restoring a person’s right to vote is a critical element to successful reentry into society after incarceration and consistent with our democracy’s modern ideal of universal suffrage.
…More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the “war on drugs,” in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.

According to The Sentencing Project, more than 377,000 Virginians have been disenfranchised as a result of felony convictions, more than 208 thousand of whom are African Americans. In terms of racial disparities in current incarceration rates in Virginia, the ratio of black to white is 5.9:1 and 1.2:1 for Hispanic to white Virginians.
Kaine should go ahead and issue the executive order, not because it helps his party, but because it’s the right thing to do. If it doesn’t hold up as law, he will still have taken a stand to promote awareness of a gross injustice and right a great wrong.
Meanwhile, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) is pushing his Democracy Restoration Act and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has a similar House bill, “the Civic Participation and Rehabilitation Act,” both of which would restore federal voting rights to all citizens released from prison and living in the community. A great cause, and one which should be a more urgent legislative priority — especially for Dems.

Since the Civil War, only two presidents, FDR in 1934 and Bush in 2002, have seen their party gain seats in the House and Senate as a result of their first mid term elections. FDR broke the pattern with bold economic reforms that inspired confidence in his personal competence and his party, and added 9 Senate seats and 9 House seats for Democrats. Bush did it as a saber-rattling cheerleader at a time when swing voters were receptive, adding 8 House members and 2 Senators to the GOP herd.
Interesting, that these two exceptions were achieved by America’s best and worst presidents, the four-termer who lead the world to economic recovery and won two wars; and the other who gave us an economic disaster of historic magnitude and budget-busting military entanglements of dubious purpose.
One common denominator here might be that bold action, rooted in a patriotic appeal early in a first Administration, can sometimes win an upset. Another common denominator is that both made highly-effective use of the bully-pulpit, more specifically the power of the President to make news. FDR shrewdly leveraged the available media of his day (e.g. radio fireside chats, schmoozing journalists) to maximum advantage, making the New Deal a patriotic enterprise in the minds of swing voters. Both FDR and Bush were cheerleaders. Bush quite literally began honing his chops as a cheerleader for his high school’s athletic teams, and he also benefited from the rising power of conservative media – Fox News and wingnut radio in particular.
While some would say that the Iraq war was the pivotal event that gave the GOP it’s win in ’02, to give W fair credit, he worked his tail off for his Party in 2002. By October of that year, for example, he had held 8 large public rallies expressly for Republican candidates, not merely the usual fund-raisers with wealthy contributors – a lesson that might benefit Obama on Nov. 2nd.
Presidential cheer-leading is more complicated now. By 2006, Bush had squandered all of his media capital, and the six-year itch” took hold as voters gave upsets to the Democrats. Plus, the power of the internet took a quantum leap forward as a force in political communication, with Democrats benefiting most. The internet is even more potent today as a political opinion-shaper.
So the question is worth raising, is there any chance the Dems could actually pick-up seats in congress in November?
Most pundits say no, with their poll-based projections of Democratic losses in the range of 20-30 House seats and 3-6 Senate seats. In the past 17 midterm elections, the president’s party has lost an average 28 House seats, and an average loss of 4 Senate seats. Hard to find many who think Dems could flip the reality in the other direction. The DCCC has even created a “Frontline Program” to protect a designated 40 House seats believed to be in endangered by the GOP. On the other hand, the GOP’s RCCC has designated the 25 most vulnerable House seats they hold to be protected by their “Patriot Program” fund-raising initiative.
Political upsets happen, and they are never based on abandoning all hope because of polls. A favorable turn of events can help. More likely, however, they require a critical mass of pro-Democratic activists to embrace the challenge with undaunted determination. Such an activist coalition would include Democratic candidates, their staffs, Democratic party workers, blogosphere and community activists and progressive journalists, ideally working together as much as possible in harmonizing messaging and tapping the power of their formidable echo-chamber. If the GOP’s edge has been Party discipline, as seems a fair assessment, the Dems’ edge could be a more advanced echo-chamber that now reaches nearly all homes in suburban swing districts.
The stakes are enormous. Imagine what Democrats could do with a real majority of progressives in their congressional ranks, which could be a small as 3 Senate pick-ups and a dozen House seats. Unlikely, probably – but not totally out of the range of possibility given a little luck and some hard work.
On the outside chance that ‘creative visualization’ can have some political benefits, let’s entertain event scenarios in which the Democrats actually gain Senate and House seats in the 2010 midterms. In no particular order, here’s a few:

Our military captures/destroys bin Laden and al Qeda’s top leaders at the optimum moment, sometime between the end of summer and the November vote. Barring the apprehension of bin Laden, however, it’s not easy to visualize any great military victories in Afghanistan before November that could benefit the President’s party.
The economy starts to bloom more energetically than expected. This may be our best shot. There are some signs of an upturn in the making.
Democratic memes concerning health care reform take root in swing voter attitudes (Some combination of “Damn, this health reform deal is better than I thought” and “Jeez, those Republicans really have no credible alternatives). This is one of the few ways Democratic activists can have a deliberate impact. And, President Obama’s strategy of letting congress shape health care reform, without much white house involvement, now looks pretty good, in comparison to the Clinton Administration’s more ‘hands on’ strategy.
The progressive blogosphere should develop some new ways to reach out to a broader constituency, instead of preaching to already-converted liberals. Democrats in general need some creative initiatives to reach swing voters with memes and messages in key districts. Outlets like YouTube and streaming video in general open up new realms of message transmission, although they won’t be widely rooted among less than tech-savvy voters until a couple of mid-terms later. The time is ripe, however, for some creative meme propagation.
Another rash of GOP scandals kicks in. Always possible, given the greed-driven basis of many Republican campaigns, though fortuitous timing is unlikely.

In the longer term, it’s clear that Democrats have to develop a program to increase turnout in off-year elections, particularly among friendly constituencies. Some innovative ideas are urgently-needed here. We should also support a program to accelerate naturalization to increase the universe of Dem-favoring registered voters.
No doubt there are other possible events and trends that could flip to Nov 2nd outcome in Democrats’ favor. The biggest mistake would be to say, “Well, the President’s Party always loses seats in the mid-terms,” and cede unnecessary ground to the Republicans. Even given a favorable turn of events, heightened Democratic activism is needed for our optimum performance in the 2010 mid-terms. Our best possible New Year’s resolution would be to sound the knell for mid-term apathy in the Democratic Party.

The inimitable Mark Schmitt has yet another insightful post at The American Prospect, this one entitled “Machinery of Progress.” But it’s the teaser subtitle, “It’s not just about the president. His successes and failures are tests of the progressive infrastructure” that better illuminates his salient point. As Schmitt explains:

…As the administration’s first year in office comes to an end, the most distinctive thing about it is the degree to which people who should long ago have outgrown Great Man theories of history remain transfixed by a single individual. Every success is interpreted as a measure of Obama’s skills and priorities; every disappointment is read as a revelation of his excess caution, naiveté, or other flaws.
…But even world-historical figures color within lines that they do not draw themselves. What presidents, governors, or even legislators are willing and able to do is defined by forces and efforts outside of themselves. And for progressive politicians, those factors include the condition and power of the progressive coalition and its organizations — its ability to generate and refine ideas, as well as its organizational capacity to bring pressure to bear on the political system. Every success or failure can be seen as a measure of the strength or weakness of that infrastructure.

Schmitt then provides a perceptive account of the long years of hard work that went into the coalition movement that put health care in the forefront of the national agenda as exhibit ‘A’ in the case for the importance of establishing a viable progressive infrastructure. This in stark contrast to the absence of an organized progressive movement for regulatory reform, which made it possible for corporate interests to quickly fill the vacuum. As Schmitt says, “no effort had been made to build a constituency for financial reform.”
Schmitt takes no prisoners in his conclusion:

…The success of his [Obama’s] presidency and this Congress will depend on the strength of the progressive infrastructure. If progressives don’t support these structures for policy development and advocacy, further failure will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the fault will lie not in our star but in ourselves.

Tough medicine to swallow, but a useful antidote to pointless whining by adherents to the ‘great man’ school of history and change.

Democrats have railed, with good reason, for a long time about the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party. But the current political realities, especially the new health care reform deal, indicate that Republicans have also set a new standard of intellectual bankruptcy and strategic disaster, according to a pair of interesting articles by Jonathan Chait in The New Republic.
Chait’s 12/19 post at TNR‘s ‘The Plank’ explains the GOPs strategic blundering it this way:

At the outset of this debate, moderate Democrats were desperate for a bipartisan bill. They were willing to do almost anything to get it, including negotiate fruitlessly for months on end. We can’t know for sure, but Democrats appeared willing to make enormous substantive concessions to win the assent of even a few Republicans. A few GOP defectors could have lured a chunk of Democrats to sign something far more limited than what President Obama is going to sign. And remember, it would have taken only one Democrat to agree to partial reform in order to kill comprehensive reform. I can easily imagine a scenario where Ben Nelson refused to vote for anything larger than, say, a $400 billion bill that Chuck Grassley and a couple other Republicans were offering.
But Republicans wouldn’t make that deal. The GOP leadership put immense pressure on all its members to withhold consent from any health care bill. The strategy had some logic to it: If all 40 Republicans voted no, then Democrats would need 60 votes to succeed, a monumentally difficult task. And if they did succeed, the bill would be seen as partisan and therefore too liberal, too big government. The spasm of anti-government activism over the summer helped lock the GOP into this strategy — no Republican could afford to risk the wrath of Tea Partiers convinced that any reform signed by Obama equaled socialism and death panels.

Chait then describes Republican Senator Olympia Snowe’s role as a sort of GOP shill, feigning a willingness to compromise as a delaying tactic, attempting to “run out the clock” so Dems wouldn’t have time to put health care reform behind them and get focused on jobs in time to get in optimum position for the mid-terms. Thus the Republicans forced the Dems into a 60-40 partisan strategy, motivating even “relentlessly centrist” Democratic senators, like Evan Bayh to give up on the possibility of a bipartisan deal. As a result, Chait concludes:

The Republicans eschewed a halfway compromise and put all their chips on an all or nothing campaign to defeat health care and Obama’s presidency. It was an audacious gamble. They lost. In the end, they’ll walk away with nothing. The Republicans may gain some more seats in 2010 by their total obstruction, but the substantive policy defeat they’ve been dealt will last for decades.

In Chait’s longer 12/21 article, “The Rise of Republican Nihilism,” he explores the equally-unimpressive Republican bankruptcy of ideas behind the strategic blundering. As Chait notes in a couple of nut graphs,

In the days following the 2008 election, some Republicans predicted that the party would retool itself in response to reality–not just political reality but the actuality of policy challenges. “Republicans,” wrote conservative Ramesh Ponnuru in Time, “will have to devise an agenda that speaks to a country where more people feel the bite of payroll taxes than income taxes, where health-care costs eat up raises even in good times, where the length of the daily commute is a bigger irritant than are earmarks.” Nothing like that rethinking has happened or will happen.
…The administration has selected three main issues as the focus of its domestic agenda: the economic crisis, climate change, and health care reform…In all three areas, the Republican Party has adopted a stance of total opposition, not merely because it disagrees with aspects of Obama’s solutions, but because it cannot come to grips with the very nature of the problems of modern American politics.

Chait goes on to describe the GOP ‘alternatives’ to Democratic approaches in the three areas, which boil down to: tax cuts for the rich; denial of global warming and “fantastical geoengineering schemes”; and “plans that mostly reflect the right’s embrace of the failed market system that created the health care disaster.” More specifically, on health care reform, Chait explains:

The Republicans’ favorite reform is to let people buy insurance from any state they want. Currently, states require insurance plans to offer certain basic services–psychiatric benefits, maternity care, and so on. That creates another subsidy from the healthy to the sick–healthy people have to buy insurance that pays for all kinds of care they probably won’t need, keeping down the cost for people who do need it. If you let people buy out-of-state insurance, states will lure insurance companies by offering lax requirements, and the healthy will follow. That would allow all the healthy, inexpensive customers to have cheap plans with other inexpensive, healthy people, while sick, expensive customers would get stuck in expensive insurance plans with other sick, expensive customers.
Almost nobody takes these plans seriously as legislative proposals. They are a response to the cross-pressures of the general public’s demand that the party appear to have a positive vision on health care and the base’s demand of fealty to the ideals of the free market. So the House Republican plan would require states to establish plans to cover people with preexisting conditions, but it makes no suggestion for where the funding for such plans would come from. Likewise, the “Health Care Freedom Act,” sponsored by DeMint, is funded by repealing the financial bailout and demanding a prompt repayment. If you’re wondering what the consequences of immediately repealing the bailout might be, or where this plan would find its financing after the bailout funds ran out, you’re missing the point of the exercise. The main role of these plans is to serve as a prop for the disingenuous party talking point that Congress should defeat Obama’s plan and “start over” with “real reform.”

Chait attributes the shallowness of Republican alternatives to “the deepening hold on the GOP of anti-government ideology.” He links to an amusing but revealing TNR collection of quotes by Republican leaders during the last century, predicting certain doom following the enactment of reforms like Social Security, regulation of child labor, the minimum wage, womens’ suffrage and Medicare. Particularly noteworthy is this dilly from conservative icon Ronald Reagan, now hailed as his party’s great visionary, arguing against Medicare in 1961:

The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

Ridiculous as it reads, this Reagan quote is emblematic of the sort of fear-mongering that remains the core of the GOP’s strategy, absent any credible alternatives to Democratic health care reform proposals. Chait is exactly right in terming Republican strategy as nihilism, eloquently depicted in this YouTube clip featuring one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. One key — make that critical — challenge for Democrats in 2010 is to inculcate the nihilism of the GOP as a meme among swing voters.

The big political story of the weekend has to be the election of City Controller Annise Parker as the first lesbian mayor of Houston. Yes, that’s right Houston, big-oil stronghold, Bush-rearing, 4th-largest-city-in-America Houston.
Although Democrat Parker is not the first openly-gay candidate to win an election for mayor of a major American city — Providence, RI and Portland, OR have had gay mayors — she will be the first openly-gay mayor of a megalopolis. She won with 52.8 percent of the vote in a run-off against another Democrat, highly-respected African American civil rights attorney, Gene Locke, who received 47.2 percent of the tally. Locke was supported by much of Houston’s business establishment.
Parker’s election is being heralded as, not only a major milestone for gay rights, but also a harbinger of new urban politics. But there are many traditional aspects of her election — low turnout (16.5 percent of eligible voters); her status as a born-and-raised, Rice-educated, life-long (except for 2 years) Houstonian; her fiscal conservatism creds, enhanced by a strong background in urban financial management; and her employment in the oil and gas industry for 20 years.
Although Parker and her partner for 19 years have adopted three children, Texas still has a state law that bans same-sex marriage. And Houston’s city council had earlier voted down benefits for same-sex partners.
According to The Houston Chronicle wrap up by Bradley Olson.

Her victory capped an unorthodox election season that lacked a strong conservative mayoral contender and saw her coalition of inside-the-Loop Democrats and moderate conservatives, backed by an army of ardent volunteers, win the day over Locke, a former civil rights activist who attempted to unite African-American voters and Republicans.
…In many ways, the race was framed by the financial anxieties voters have experienced over the past 18 months. At the polls, voter after voter cited Parker’s experience watching over the city’s $4 billion budget as a primary consideration in their choice…Instead of being turned off by a politician reluctant to promise the world, voters responded to Parker’s straight talk about all that might not be possible in the coming years. Dozens of Houstonians interviewed by the Houston Chronicle said they appreciated her often blunt answers that made Locke’s proposals seem vague.

In Rick Casey’s incisive analysis, also in The Chronicle, he adds:

His [Locke’s] backers had nothing against Parker but did not believe she could overcome the lesbian label. They believed Locke could win by combining the black vote with a substantial portion of Republicans who would vote against Parker because of her sexual orientation…That turned out to be wrong. For one thing, as the low turnout indicates, neither candidate had the star power to boost voter participation.
More important for Locke, his appeals to Republicans, particularly as a law-and-order candidate, didn’t stick, and the anti-lesbian vote turned out to be smaller than expected.
…Greg Wythe, a bright political analyst and blogger (www.gregsopinion.com) who has joined Mayor Bill White’s gubernatorial campaign, did a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the first-round of votes. It showed Parker coming in first or second in such Republican areas as the West Side, Kingwood and Friendswood. Locke came in a poor fourth in those areas.
I believe it was Locke’s performance in those areas that led his finance team members to take the desperate step of aligning the campaign with gay-bashing Steve Hotze — thereby pushing undecided white liberals and moderates into Parker’s well-run campaign without turning out enough anti-gay votes to win.

Despite the gay-bashing in the late weeks of the mayoral campaign, her sexual orientation was clearly a non-factor for most voters. The two most salient lessons of Parker’s election for Democratic candidates might be that gay-bashing doesn’t work in city-wide elections and impressive financial management creds are a formidable asset in urban politics.

When I first heard the outlines of the “Team of Ten” deal, well-limned in Ed’s post below, I assumed there would be a fierce storm of opposition from the most pro-public option Senators and among progressive bloggers and organizations. Thus far, however, the critique has been surprisingly mild, with a couple of exceptions.
One of the exceptions would be Steve’s post “One Lame-Ass Effort” at The Left Coaster, where he disses the deal, “…voters see no benefit from any of it until after the 2010 midterms, which is a recipe for a Democratic drubbing next year.” Mother Jones Senior Editor James Ridgeway concurrs, adding at Alternet that “…any genuine, government run public option, which so many saw as the key to true health care reform, is nothing more than a corpse being dragged through the streets.”
Other progressive bloggers have been less critical. Also at Alternet, Adele Stan sees merit in the latest Senate compromise, explaining:

…The formula for public options considered by senators were so watered down as to be virtually meaningless. In its place, reports say, the bill will offer two features that could lead to a more progressive form of health-care reform in the long run:
an opening of Medicare to people between the ages of 55 – 64
a federal health-insurance exchange based on the system enjoyed by federal employees and the senators themselves

Stan adds, that “by experimenting with the expansion of Medicare to include a younger population, we have something of a laboratory for a future single-payer system.”
At Open Left, Mike Lux concedes “The loss of a public option is a bitter pill to swallow,” but adds “there is still plenty of good in this package.” His Open Left colleague, Chris Bowers seems even more optimistic about the deal and makes an important point about the campaign for the public option doing considerable good:

Read more…

All of the arguments referenced in Ed’s post yesterday on the substance and symbolism of the public option in health care reform, pro and con, have some validity. Yes, the public option has been watered down to the point where it’s value has been seriously compromised. And, yes, it’s quite possible that “larger subsidies for insurance purchases and tighter regulation of private insurers would accomplish more” than the public option as presently constitued, as Ezra Klein argues.
On the other hand, bloggers Digby and Open Left‘s Chris Bowers share the concern that ditching the public option would compromise liberal strength, and that is sufficient grounds for continuing to fight for it. Liberal strength and solidarity are important. But there are a couple of better reasons to fight for the public option.
First, we need a public option ‘beachhead’ codified in health care reform. Even a weak public option can be strengthened as political circumstances improve down the road. Establish the precedent now, while we have a chance, even if it requires some sort of ‘trigger.’ If we fail now, it could damage prospects for enacting any kind of public option well into the forseeable future, especially if Dems lose seats next year, as many commentators expect. With even a rudimentary public option established, amendments to broaden access to it piece by piece, would later have a much lower profile and better chances of success. The ‘trigger mechanism’ could be loosened up later, with the loudest stage of the ideological clash over public vs, private behind us.
Secondly, I know ‘rules is rules,’ but to cave and allow a relatively small number of obstructionist Democrats kill the public option entirely when a majority of both houses of congress support the proposal sets a dangerous precedent. If a healthy majority of Dems opposed the public option, I would say, OK ditch it, even though it’s the best idea out there. But that’s not the case. In addition, public opinion indicates that most Americans want it. Are we going to let a few Senators trump all that?
If we do, it will only embolden them to do it again and again. Much better to make them justify their untenable positions under the increasingly hot glare of public scrutiny, until they begin to offer more reasonable compromises. Thus far, they have all been able to get by with vague generalities. Better to make them fully accountable than to roll over. Otherwise, there will be no end to it.

The Republican reaction to the President’s Afghanistan speech was predictable enough, centering their negative spin on Obama’s setting an 18-month time frame for beginning de-escalation. A key challenge for Democrats, however, is to allow room for the skepticism of many anti-interventionist Dems, while tweaking the policy as needed to build a broader consensus. As The Washington Post‘s editorial on the President’s speech said, “he is embarking on a difficult and costly mission that is opposed by a large part of his own party.”
The skepticism was well-presented by Senator Barbara Boxer, who is quoted in Carl Hulse’s New York Times reaction round-up: “I support the president’s mission and exit strategy for Afghanistan, but I do not support adding more troops because there are now 200,000 American, NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 al Qaeda.”
In WaPo‘s ‘Topic A’ wrap-up of the views of selected foreign affairs scholars, opinion analysts and leaders, Rep. Dennis Kucinich voiced the left-progressive critique:

Why are we still in Afghanistan? Al-Qaeda has been routed. Our occupation fuels a Taliban insurgency. The more troops we send, the more resistance we meet. The people of Afghanistan don’t want to be saved by us; they want to be saved from us. Our presence and our Predator drones kill countless innocents and destabilize Pakistan. The U.S.-created Karzai government is hopelessly corrupt and despised by the Afghan people…We’ve played all sides in Afghanistan, and all the sides want us out. They do not want our presence, our control, our troops, our drones, our way of life

Even some moderate Dems have reservations, including Sen. Arlen Specter, who asks,“If Al Qaeda can operate out of Yemen or Somalia, why fight in Afghanistan where no one has succeeded?”
Maria Newman reports in her blog at ‘The Caucus’ in The New York Times that MyDD‘s Jerome Armstrong predicted that Obama’s Af-Pak policy is “going to drive a deep division into the Democratic Party” that will make “the current healthcare reform debate look like patty-cake play.”
Harold Meyerson observes from his post “The Right Anthem for this War” at WaPo’s ‘Post-Partisan’ WaPo blog,

Every American war has its distinctive anthems, and on due consideration, the one that seems most appropriate for our almost simultaneous escalation and withdrawal in Afghanistan is Groucho Marx’s entrance song in Animal Crackers: “Hello, I Must Be Going.”…In a sense, “Hello, I Must Be Going” is the appropriate song for an empire in decline. Like imperial Rome and Churchillian Britain, the United States can no longer afford to fight the wars it once took on with reckless abandon, even when it concludes it can’t quite abandon the battlefield, either.

Some influential Democratic leaders were more cautious in their assessment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a noncommittal statement on the speech, saying “the American people and the Congress will now have an opportunity to fully examine this strategy.” Senator Durbin said “I am going to take some time to think through the proposal he presented tonight.”
Others were more supportive. Bill Nelson said the President had “a sensible plan.” Evan Bayh argued We must do what it takes to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a platform for attacks on the United States.” Majority Leader Harry Reid said President Obama made a “convincing case” that the deployment serves our national security.
As I go to press there are no reports of polls or focus group reaction to the President’s speech. A USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted before the speech, from 11/20-22, found that 35 percent of adult respondents approved of “the way Barack Obama is handling the situation in Afghanistan,” with 55 percent disapproving. Asked if they would support an increase of 40K troops sent to Afghanistan, 37 percent supported the increase, with 39 percent prefering to “reduce the number” of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 10 percent wanting to increase troop strength by less than 40K. The poll also found that “a slim majority of Obama’s fellow Democrats approve of his handling of the issue.” Given President Obama’s formidable powers of oratorical persuasion, so ably demonstrated in his speech, I expect this percentage to increase shortly.
But many Democratic doves (myself included) will continue to view large-scale military occupation of Afghanistan with skepticism regarding its prospects for creating lasting security, even while recognizing that we have legitimate security concerns in that nation. If the President can figure out how to begin withdrawing troops even sooner than his suggested timetable, he — along with other Democratic candidates — should benefit substantially in 2012.

Jonathan Singer takes a skeptical look at a pair of Politico posts by Josh Kraushaar (one via Dave Wasserman at the Cook Political Report) concluding that Democratic prospects for the midterms are looking bleak based on some questionable indicators. Here’s Singer, after quoting Kraushaar:

Three potential Democratic candidates in long-held GOP districts that lean as many as 13 points more Republican than the nation as a whole decide not to run for Congress in 2010 and it’s “a telling indicator that the political environment in 2010 is shaping up to be favorable for Republicans,” yet news that the Democrats have gotten a stellar candidate to change his mind in favor of running against a potentially vulnerable Republican incumbent and it’s an entirely separate story that doesn’t weigh in on the meme. Interesting.

Singer’s skepticism is warranted, and he makes three salient points Dems should keep in mind, looking toward the midterms:

Don’t get me wrong, the 2010 cycle isn’t looking like the 2006 and 2008 cycles. It’s not a cornucopia of Democratic successes, with the Democrats playing offense everywhere. That said, the hastiness with which the campaign watchers are willing to proclaim a Republican revival is quite remarkable. The Democrats continue to recruit strong candidates, though in fewer numbers than in recent years, and have thus far managed to stem a tide of retirements, generally a leading indicator of losses to come. What’s more, as mentioned here and elsewhere, the GOP isn’t raising anywhere near the type of money necessary to run a competitive nationwide effort next year. So up to and until there are some actual metrics pointing to a GOP takeover of the House in 2010 rather than mere assumptions that the Republicans are on the rise, I am remain skeptical of the Beltway common wisdom.

And a commenter named “the mollusk” responds to Singer’s post with another pertinent observation:

None of us know how we’ll feel after Health Care Reform passes. Personally, I think people are underestimating the importance of that in the current dynamic. The process feels stalled right now and that feels like a Democratic defeat. If it comes in December or January, a lot of Congressors will have a good stump speech when they go back home. The Repubs, on the other hand, will just have to go back and say “I voted against the single biggest reform measure in 60 years and it passed anyhow”. Flaccid stuff.

A wise perspective. With Democratic recruitments holding their own, retirements low, GOP fund-raising lagging and health reform legislation soon to be enacted, predicting a big year for the Republicans seems a tad premature. The Republican strategy going forward requires incessant spin trumpeting a mounting, through mythical, backlash against Democrats. Smart pundits and bloggers will take it into account before accepting the GOP spin wholesale.

Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo has a short, but informative post “The Final Four: Who’s Standing In Reid’s Way, And Can They Be Won Over?” discussing the motives of four senators now stalling enactment of a decent health care reform bill. Beutler dishes on what’s driving Sens. Lieberman, Lincoln, Nelson and Landrieu.
Lieberman, he says is most likely driven by the insurance industry’s formidable clout in his home state, and Beutler also wonders if Lieberman is consciously giving some “cover to his centrist friends,” who would like a more bipartisan final vote to end debate. This last notion seems a little calculated, but it may be part of his gambit. However, there’s no denying the influence of the insurance industry in CT.
Beutler cites Sen. Lincoln’s waffling on the public option — her website and recently-stated postions re the public option are at odds — as symptomatic of her tough re-election campaign. Lincoln, says Beutler, “would like to present her conservative constituents with a scalp to prove she didn’t roll over for the liberals in her party.” Sounds about right. She may also be enjoying the unprecedented media attention, if not the heat.
Sen. Nelson “always prefers the option that liberals in the party don’t…” He feels his cred with constituents depends on his being the maverick Dem on most issues. He wants to show them that his leadership made the reform bill more responsiblle in terms of cost-containment.
Beutler puzzles a bit over Landrieu, who isn’t up for re-election until ’14. She is dealing with a trickier constituency, since the flight of too many Dems from Louisiana since Katrina. I’m thinking she is leveraging her position to get more much-needed aid for her state, as she did on the vote-to-debate. Pretty clever, actually.
Beutler makes mention of Sens. Carper and Snowe, both advocates of a ‘trigger mechanism,’ but he doesn’t say much about exactly what can be done to win the support of any of the six senators in question. Poor Harry Reid is playing a very difficult game of three-dimensional chess, in which concessions to any of the six have to be precisely measured, then weighed against worst and best-case scenarios.
Since Lieberman is out of the picture for any kind of public option, the logic of the political moment points to some kind of trigger-like amendment, or perhaps a private/public hybrid. As a Baltimore Sun editorial puts it, “If the public option survives, it will be watered down like a discount cocktail at a low-rent nightclub.”
If progressive Dems have to eat a weak public option, a much more substantial broadening of eligibility for access to the ‘insurance exchanges,’ as Sen. Wyden has been advocating could sweeten the bitter pill. What is unacceptable is that four, or even six senators be allowed to gut the public option supported by a majority of both houses of congress, with no quid pro quo reflected in the final bill.