The following article is by Stan Greenberg and Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps:
Even as he conceded defeat in his “fight” against the Affordable Care Act — a “fight” that shut down the nation’s government and nearly forced a default on America’s debt — in a statement issued late Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner appeared poised to continue his battle against affordable healthcare.
“Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president’s health care law will continue,” he said. “We will rely on…targeted strikes that split the legislative coalition the president has relied upon to force his health care law on the American people.”
The latest survey by Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund makes clear that the “American people” for whom Boehner purports to speak and pledges to fight are a diminishing minority. Just 38 percent of American voters now oppose the Affordable Care Act. Let us be very clear: As much as he may want it to be, this is not 2010.
We want to be clear because so much of the punditry — and most of the Republicans in Congress — assume that Obamacare is “unpopular.” Even the law’s backers assume that support will only come once the benefits take effect in January. Neither of these assumptions is true. Support has shifted dramatically since 2010, when reforms were unpopular and supporters paid a high political price.
Today, we find that the biggest shifts on favorability are coming from those who are already seeing positive benefits from the law, especially unmarried women, Baby Boomers, and seniors. And the more Republicans make this a debate about implementation, the more voters trust Democrats. When that is the choice, voters trust the Democrats by 17 points (49 to 32 percent) to do a better job. The more Republicans make the period ahead about blocking implementation, the more voters will trust Democrats to do a better job in government.
To be sure, voters have concerns about potential negative effects of the ACA — especially employers cutting jobs or reducing hours. But more important, voters are fed up with insurance companies. As they told us in focus groups, they feel they’re at insurers’ mercy. Too many Americans have been dropped from insurance, hit a lifetime limit, or been denied due to a pre-exisiting condition. The more they hear about the ACA’s protections for consumers, the more favorable they feel towards the law.
Read more about our new findings at Democracy Corps.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The Ted Cruz Republicans made a horrible mess of everything, and the country and the economy are far worse for the experience, but in spite of all the pain and disgust this caused, there is one clear victor out of all this — and you all know who I mean because everyone else including the Republicans are saying it today: the Democrats won this shutdown showdown. By a country mile in a one-mile race.
The amazing thing about all this was how incredibly predictable all this was. I’ve been involved in politics for over 30 years now, in national politics for over 25, and this had the single most predictable outcome of any battle I have ever been a witness to. Several weeks back I was telling my friends that this was definitely going to shutdown, that it would drag on and become merged with the debt ceiling fight, and that it would be settled the 15th or 16th, with the Republicans caving on everything that mattered and being devastated in the polling. For me and other veterans of the Clinton-Gingrich shutdown wars (including a lot of the Republicans involved, who were predicting the same disastrous end), this ending was as obvious as obvious could be.
The Cruz Crazies handed us Democrats this victory, all gift-wrapped and pretty as a picture. We would have had to be political morons to kick it away. But Democrats have had their politically moronic moments at times over the years, and in this case they did not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In this case they held together and stood strong, kept on message and stopped themselves from scurrying off in a dozen different directions. I have never in my long career seen the Democratic party and their progressive allies more fundamentally unified. By showing this kind of unity, they routed the enemy more easily than the U.S. army routed the army of Grenada in the 1980s, and put themselves in a position to do something no one ever thought they would this cycle: to take back control of the U.S. House.
The lesson of this victory is party unity. It would be a wonderful thing if we all remember this going into the next big fights, the showdowns over the next few months on immigration and the budget. On immigration, it seems like we are mostly there, with Democrats, the immigrants’ rights movement, and progressives generally in close alignment on the legislative strategy going forward. But I have fears on the budget negotiations that some people inside the Democratic party might decide to start pushing the awful, old idea of a grand bargain — one where Social Security, Medicare, and/old Medicaid benefits are cut. Creating a huge civil war inside the party and progressive movement on these issues would be a disaster for Democrats, and would blow up the chances for major pick-ups in the 2014 elections. Movement organizations like labor and online groups would gear up to stop Democrats from cutting this deal rather than focusing their fire on Republicans, and the Democratic standing in the polls would slip as we started training fire on each other. Meanwhile the Republicans, currently divided, discouraged, and with their numbers in the toilet, could both exploit the divisions and have the time to get up off the mat and get into fighting form.
According to virtually every poll taken in the last 5+ years, cutting Social Security and Medicare are incredibly unpopular things to do. Even Medicaid, historically the least popular of the three, has very solid support. The idea that Democrats would stop their strong political momentum dead in its tracks, start a flaming hot civil war within its ranks, and give the Republicans a chance to get back on their feet — all so that they can do something hugely unpopular which cuts benefits from poor and middle class seniors — is bizarre. That won’t stop the D.C. establishment punditry from bloviating about now is the perfect time to for the grand bargain, so expect a lot of that talk in the days to come. But what Democrats need to do is to do what they did to win this big victory: stay unified and keep holding Republicans’ feet to the fire. The GOP is in deep, deep trouble right now, and it is up to us to press the advantage.
The Cruz wrecking ball craziness played and ended exactly as a lot of us predicted it would: with a massive loss for the Republican party. Democrats and progressives can keep winning victories if they stand strong for progressive values, and stand together.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
After his disastrous loss in the government shutdown battle last night, Republican Speaker John Boehner said, “We fought the good fight. We just didn’t win.”
But the Republicans did not simply lose a tough fight that they knew was a long shot. Much of the Republican leadership fundamentally miscalculated their odds of success — and underestimated the consequences of defeat.
Massive miscalculations of this sort generally stem from one of two factors:
A failure to understand the self-interests, capabilities and assets of your adversary, or;
A misalignment between the self-interests of decision makers, and the group for which the decisions are being made.
In this case both were true.
First, let’s be clear, the Republicans were not “defeated” by the Democrats in this battle. They self-destructed. As Congressman Zoe Lofgren said last night, this was not so much a homicide as a suicide.
And let there be no mistake, the shutdown battle has been an unqualified political disaster for the Republican Party. Some Republican pundits claim that “both parties” have suffered. Maybe. But in the political context that can’t be true. The outcome either benefits one side or the other. In this case, the relative damage to the Republican Party was massive.
Public support for Republican candidates plummeted, and its chances of maintaining control of the House and gaining control of the Senate decreased.
Fewer Americans now have a favorable view of the Republican brand than at any other time in the history of polling.
While a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 53 percent disapproved of the way President Obama was handling the budget crisis and shutdown, and 61 percent disapproved of Democrats in Congress — almost three-fourths — 74 percent — disapproved of the Republicans. Republican disapproval extended to 76 percent of independents and 47 percent of self-identified Republicans.
Worse, for the GOP, the shutdown has jeopardized the Party’s control of the House, and its hopes of retaking the Senate in next year’s elections.
Recently, Public Policy Polling (PPP) conducted surveys for MoveOn.org in 36 swing Congressional districts with Republican incumbents and found that, after the shutdown, Democrats could easily win at least 29. Democrats only need 17 seats to take control of the House. In virtually every district the shutdown was highly unpopular and messaging about the shutdown increased the Democratic lead in the survey.
Republicans have to take at least six seats to take control of the Senate next year. But another PPP poll released yesterday in six key swing Senate races — this one sponsored by Americans United for Change — found that voters were extremely unhappy with the shutdown and as a result Democrats led in five and are tied in a sixth. That is particularly true because many of the GOP Senate challengers are currently members of the House majority that helped lead the shutdown effort.
But that’s not all. The shutdown battle exploded divisions and disunity in the GOP. It exposed a civil war in the Republican Party between the Tea Party and the Party’s establishment, the business wing that provides its financial base. And it created greater unity in the Democratic Party and progressive movement than at any other time in the last half century.
Unions, community groups, religious organizations, women’s groups, vets and progressive organizations all worked with passion and complete harmony to mobilize everyday people across America. They generated tens of thousands of calls to Congress, produced TV spots, conducted press events, attended town hall meetings, and generated robust digital programs. The progressive base was inspired by the resolution and clarity of the president and Congressional leadership.
The Republicans started the battle intent on “defunding Obamacare.” When it ended, Obamacare was practically unscathed. In fact, the technical glitches associated with its launch had been completely overshadowed by the shutdown but the program was off and running.
True, the Continuing Resolution that passed Congress extended the low sequester levels of government spending that inadequately fund critical public services for several more months. But that had been true before the shutdown began.
In fact, the Republicans got virtually nothing substantive as a result of the pain they inflicted on million of Americans, tarnishing America’s reputation abroad, and squandering massive amounts of political support.
And they lost large amounts of leverage. In the end the GOP refused to go through with their threats to send the country into default if they didn’t get their way. When a hostage taker with a bomb demonstrates that he is unwilling to actually go through with his threats to blow up himself and his hostage, his leverage is gone.
Why did the GOP miscalculate so badly? Four reasons:

Read more…

The following article by TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira, is cross-posted from Think Progress:
As most are now aware, the Republican Party is taking a beating at the polls. GOP favorability is now at historic lows and they are taking the brunt of the blame for the government shutdown.
These numbers are bad enough for Republicans. But the situation may be far worse. The GOP is not only being defeated, but it is in some serious danger of falling apart. Republican infighting could cost Republicans enough votes among its white base to take out of serious competition in national politics.
The contours of the coming GOP crackup were ably identified by John Judis in a recent New Republic article. Judis sees a the beginning of an insurrection by a newly empowered base against the traditional GOP power structure:

The battle over the shutdown has highlighted the cracks and fissures within the party. The party’s leadership has begun to lose control of its members in Congress. The party’s base has become increasingly shrill and is almost as dissatisfied with the Republican leadership in Washington as it is with President Obama. New conservative groups have echoed, and taken advantage of, this sentiment by targeting Republicans identified with the leadership for defeat. And a growing group of Republican politicians, who owe their election to these groups, has carried the battle into the halls of Congress. That is spelling doom for the Republican coalition that has kept the party afloat for the last two decades.

All parties of course are coalitions of interest groups, factions and more. It is when the differences between these groups become irreconcilable that serious trouble arises. We may be at that point right now.
Republican moderates, still a quarter of the GOP rank-and-file according to recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner analysis, are completely disenchanted with what’s going on. “Establishment” Republicans in and around Washington feel they have lost control of the party and are being made to walk the plank by crazed populists from the Tea Party.
An increasing proportion of the GOP’s business support feels the same way. The Tea Party populists are ever more insistent on fiscal purity, even at the expense of exclusion of anyone else’s agenda (including evangelical and social conservative priorities).
This is a recipe for big-time conflict. We are already starting to see calls from business/establishment Republicans to stand up to the Tea Party and challenge Tea Party candidates. We’ll likely see more of this and, if it crystallizes into a genuine counter-movement, the civil war among Republicans will be joined.
A civil war among Republicans is also a civil war among white people, since there is little else in the party these days. This clarifies just how close to the brink the GOP may be. A civil war among white people will surely hurt the party right where it cannot afford any slippage: among white voters.
It is only the very large majorities the GOP has been running lately among white voters that are keeping the party competitive. Indeed, majorities that not only remain large but increase are at the heart of what passes for GOP electoral strategy these days. Start cutting those majorities and the strategy goes up in smoke, replaced by immediate and serious electoral danger.
Consider that Congressional Republicans got 60 percent of the white vote in the 2010 election, compared to just 37 percent for the Democrats. What if, as we move into 2014, the war among white people breaks out in earnest, with the Tea Party on one side, business and establishment Republicans on the other and white working class voters already suspicious about the party’s Paul Ryan-inspired drive to cut Medicare and Social Security watching from the sidelines?
All this would make it prohibitively hard for the party to replicate its 60 percent showing among white voters in 2014. Say white support subsides to, say, 55 percent, with Democrats edging up to 42 percent. Assuming that the minority share of voters rises by a couple of points relative to 2010 and support for Democrats clocks in close to 80 percent, we are then in take-back-House territory, a popular vote margin of 6 points or so.
Impossible you say? Hark back to 2006 where Democrats only lost the white vote by 4 points, 47-51. Democrats don’t need to do that well in 2014. In fact, they don’t have to come particularly close. All they have to do is compress the GOP’s 2010 margin so it is still strong but not overwhelming.
Loss of white support would certainly put the GOP’s hold on the House in danger. But it would make them positively uncompetitive in Presidential elections. A “mere” 13 point margin among white voters would translate into a crushing 10 point defeat in the 2016 Presidential popular vote.
The coming war among white people could transform our politics even faster than demographic change already is. A rational party would pull itself back from this brink. But sometimes parties do not act rationally.

From a new Pew Research Center poll, conducted October 9-13, 2013 among a national sample of 1,504 adults:

Despite deep frustration with national conditions, the public’s views of Washington political leaders have shown only modest changes since before the government shutdown began. Approval ratings for President Obama (43% approve), Democratic congressional leaders (31%) and GOP leaders (20%) all are at or near all-time lows, yet are not substantially more negative than they were in early September, a month before the shutdown started.
Republicans continue to get more blame than the Obama administration for Washington’s fiscal policy stalemate, but the balance of opinion has not changed in the past week. In the new survey, 46% say Republicans are more to blame for the deadlock in Washington over the government shutdown and debt limit; 37% say the Obama administration is more to blame. A week ago, when the question asked just about responsibility for the government shutdown, the public said Republicans were more to blame, by 38% to 30%.
…An early read of voter preferences for the 2014 midterm shows that the Democrats have a six-point edge: 49% of registered voters say they would vote for or lean toward voting for the Democratic candidate in their district, while 43% support or lean toward the Republican candidate.
In November 2009, a year before the Republicans won a House majority, Democrats held a five-point edge (47% to 42%). In September 2005, 14 months before the Democrats won a House majority for the first time in more than a decade, Democrats held a 12- point lead (52% to 40%).
The Democratic Party continues to be viewed more favorably than the Republican Party: 47% of adults have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party while 38% view the GOP favorably. As in the past, the public by wide margins views the GOP as more extreme in its positions than the Democratic Party (55% to 34%) and less willing to work with its political opponents (32% say the Republican Party, 50% the Democrats).
…Just 20% approve of how Republican leaders in Congress are handling their jobs, while a record-high 72% disapprove. Yet, the change from a month ago, when 24% approved and 68% disapproved is modest, and current ratings are not far from where they have been for much of the past year…n Obama’s case, only Republicans rate his job performance lower today than a month ago.
With just a 20% approval rating, Republican leaders in Congress trail not only the president but also their Democratic counterparts (31% approve). This difference is driven mainly by the relatively high levels of criticism from Republicans themselves. Just 42% of Republicans approve of how GOP leaders in Congress are doing their jobs. By comparison, among Democrats, 60% approve of Democratic congressional leaders, and 79% approve of the president’s job performance.
…The Democratic Party continues to be seen as more willing to work with the opposing party than Republicans (50%-32%), and far more say the GOP is more extreme in its positions than the Democratic Party (55%-34%).
…More than a year ahead of the 2014 midterm congressional elections, Democrats hold a slim edge over Republicans. Overall, 49% of registered voters say that if the elections for Congress were being held today, they would vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate in their district, 43% say they would vote for the Republican candidate.
…Democratic voters are slightly more likely than Republicans to say that their own representative should be reelected: 47% of Republican voters and 54% of Democratic voters favor their own representative’s reelection, as do 43% of independent voters.
…Currently, just 38% of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party while 58% have an unfavorable opinion.
…The Democratic Party continues to receive better ratings than the GOP, with about as many offering a favorable (47%) as an unfavorable (48%) opinion. Democratic Party favorability had also fallen to a low of 41% in July, and has returned to a roughly even divide that is consistent with polling over the past few years.

If anyone needed further verification that GOP economic brinksmanship is steering their party towards defeat in 2014, this Pew poll should do nicely.

Conceding that historical patterns favor the party out of the White House in mid term elections, especially second mid-term elections, EricF’s Daily Kos post “Can Democrats win in 2014?” notes the three exceptional years 1934, 1998, and 2002 in which the President’s party did well, and offers this hope:

Of course, with 1998 and 2002 being consecutive, maybe they merely clustered, but maybe the “midterms suck for the president’s party” rule no longer applies. I’m using the unusual circumstances theory nonetheless. I promise to reconsider after a few more midterms, if the rule seems to no longer be rule, but we’re going with the unusual year for now, and it’s where I see some hope. 2014 looks like an unusual year.
Of course, we’re still a year away, and this is being written during the manufactured crises of the simultaneous shutdown of the federal government with the debt ceiling about to force a default if it isn’t raised. A year is a long time and possibly none of this will apply next year. We do however have polls showing the Republicans are self-inflicting damage beyond Democratic hopes. The Republicans are taking much more of the blame for actions which turned out to be unpopular (too bad no one tried to warn the Republicans, aside from everyone not lost in a tea party haze), and Sam Wang analyzed the most recent polls and determined that if the election were held now, Democrats would flip about 30 House seats.
30 seats may not sound like a lot, but to put it in perspective, 17 would give the Democrats the House. In the three elections where the president’s party won, in utter defiance of the midterm rule, they won seats in the single digits. When you expect to lose a bunch, you’re quite happy with a tiny gain. So that indicates the size of the potential wave, but also the low likelihood of pulling off such a win in an election coming a year after the crisis. If the crisis or something like it goes on until close enough to election day however, then maybe we are talking about the fourth weird midterm, even if a blue wave seems like asking an awful lot.

EricF speculates that “…the self-destructive impulses of the modern Republican Party will continue to govern them. They might learn from this shutdown/debt ceiling disaster, but there’s nothing in their recent history to suggest they will.” He adds:

*The polls tell us it’s not just our hope or impression, but the Republicans have inflicted a shocking degree of damage on themselves;
*The Republicans show no signs if learning to control their self-destructive impulses, even if they don’t do anything this stupid again before election day 2014;
*President Obama seems to have learned from the midterm debacle of 2010 and the debt ceiling debacle of 2011 that he can’t reason with Republicans, and he can’t stay outside the midterm campaign;
*If they’re the same people who worked on his presidential campaigns, then the president has the best people working on 2014;
*The Republicans have done nothing to reach out to the Democratic-leaning demographic groups (DLDGs) groups they’ve been alienating, which I suppose could be filed under their self-destructive impulses, but which means we still have the DLDGs if only we can solve the problem of drop-off voters;
*Presumably the Republicans are trying to catch up in data and ground game, but even as fast as electoral politics moves, accomplishing this so quickly is unlikely, especially if Democrats haven’t sat on their analytic laurels;
*Suppression of DLDG voting is hardly intended to help Democrats, but we’ve gotten better at fighting it, and there’s the theory that the blowback actually increased DLDG turnout in 2012, so maybe it will again;

In short, the Republicans have never put themselves in a worse position a year ahead of midterm elections. The mid term jinx does depend to some extent on ‘business as usual,’ and the extremists in their party have blown that foundation to smithereens. In such an environment, Democratic leverage can become more formidable.

From VoteVets.org: A “powerful new ad running in several key districts.” The caption for the video says “The voices of veterans and military family members are the key to ending the Republican-led government shutdown.” The ad should resonate with seniors, as well as veterans and their families.

From E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s Washington Post column, “Obama can’t cave, even a little, in the face of GOP extremism“:

Now it is said by people who see themselves as realists that, because he is dealing with irrational foes, Obama has to be the “adult in the room.” The definition of “adult” in this case is that he must cave a little because the other side is so bonkers that it just might upend the economy.
Giving in is exactly what Obama cannot do. The president offered Boehner a face-saving way out on Tuesday, suggesting that he’d be happy to engage in broad budget talks if the government reopened and there was at least a short-term increase in the debt limit. To go any further would be to prove to the far right that its extra-constitutional extremism will pay dividends every time.
What’s required from the outside forces who want this mess to go away is unrelenting pressure on Boehner and the supposedly more reasonable Republicans who say they want to open the government and pay our debts. Up to now these Republicans have been the enablers of the tea party faction. They’re the ones who must become the “adults in the room,” because they’re the ones who allowed all this to happen.

Now that the juveniles have had their ineffectual tantrum in the ‘time out’ room, those who have learned the lesson can come out and join the grown ups who are trying to move America forward.

The following post is by Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps:
Today we are releasing data from the latest survey by Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund — and the numbers aren’t good for the GOP.
Our poll shows that the congressional vote is moving against the Republicans. In July, our survey showed Republicans with a marginal 1 percent lead among likely voters. Today’s poll shows Democrats up by 3 points among that group. Among likely 2014 voters, 46 percent say they would prefer Democrats to control Congress, while just 42 percent would prefer Republican rule.
The trends beneath these numbers are important. Voters are not punishing both parties equally for the current mess in Washington. Republicans in Congress are now at one of the lowest points we have ever recorded, with 51 percent viewing them negatively — a 5 point increase since March. Voters remain disdainful of how they are handling their job in charge of Congress, with over two-thirds (69 percent) saying they disapprove; almost half (48 percent) strongly disapprove, a 6 point increase since July.
And on the big issue of the day — health care reform — 49 percent say the Democrats have a better approach, compared to just 35 percent who say Republicans do. When asked whether the GOP’s position on the government shutdown makes voters more or less likely to vote for their Republican incumbent, voters in Republican districts say”less likely” by a 6 percent margin.
This does not bode well for Republicans in 2014, given voters’ strong disapproval of the Republican Party’s current course. As this intransigence appears to have no end in sight, we should expect Republicans to pay next November.