Wouldn’t it be great, you may have wondered, if some organization with the necessary resources reviewed all the relevant opinion polls on a regular basis and tapped leading experts to hone progressive policies and messages addressing public attitudes regarding critical issues like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, taxes, the budget deficit and the role of unions?
Turns out there is such an organization — The American Majority, which addresses these critical issues from a data-driven progressive perspective and challenges the traditional media when their reporting lapses into bias.
For example, the American Majority cites a Morning Joe/Marist poll, conducted March 25-27, which indicates that “64 percent believe creating jobs should be the president’s and Congress’s top priority; only 33 percent of Americans think the top priority should be deficit reduction.” Take a look here, for a recent round-up of polling on some of the aforementioned issues. This web page lists the top progressive experts the American Majority tracks. On yet another page, “our writers and others explain where the American Majority stands on spending priorities and the federal deficit. They also address the challenge of getting these American Majority positions acknowledged by the media and acted on by Washington.”
It’s an invaluable resource for progressives, and it should play a significant role in helping Dems win on the issues in the elections ahead.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
On Wednesday, supporters of legislation to limit gun violence failed to muster the 60 votes necessary to stop a Republican filibuster of the Toomey-Manchin compromise that would expand background checks to include all commercial gun sales in the United States.
Polls show that universal background checks are supported by 90 percent of Americans — including a vast majority of gun owners and Republicans. A clear majority of senators are fully prepared to pass a background check measure. But no matter — the Republican leadership decided to obstruct the democratic process in the Senate to prevent an up or down vote on the measure.
Conventional wisdom continues to hold that, while the vast majority of Americans support universal background checks, in many areas it is still smart politics not to antagonize the NRA and their relatively small number of very active — very passionate — supporters. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Here’s why:
1). Wednesday’s Washington Post poll shows that 70 percent of all voters and nearly half of Republicans already think the GOP is out of touch with the needs and interests of the majority of Americans. By opposing a common-sense measure like universal background checks, that is supported by nine of out ten Americans, the GOP leadership threatens to further tarnish the GOP brand by appearing to be way out of the mainstream and not on the side of ordinary voters.
2). It is no longer true that large number of voters who favor measures to limit gun violence are less “passionate” about their views. It is also no longer the case that those views will be less likely to affect their voting than opponents of restrictions on guns.
In a poll released Wednesday by Project New America, over 60 percent of voters in Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio said they strongly support background checks for gun purchasers.
And an overwhelming number of voters said they would be more likely to support candidates for Senate that supported background checks — 70 percent in Maine, 65 percent in North Carolina, 64 percent in Illinois, 64 percent in New Hampshire, 62 percent in Nevada, and 56 percent in Arkansas.
3). The GOP lost women 55 percent to 44 percent in the last election. Republican obstruction of gun violence legislation will only make their problem with women voters worse, since they are particularly passionate supporters of legislation to stem gun violence. The same goes for Millennial voters who overwhelmingly support gun violence legislation.

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Ed Kilgore’s “The Era of Big Accomplishments Is Over–For Now” at The Washington Monthly provides a much-needed reality check for critics of President Obama: As Kilgore explains:

Look, everybody knows the score: so long as congressional Republicans refuse to work with Democrats on legislation dealing with the major challenges facing the country, there will be no Era of Big Accomplishments for a Democratic president if the GOP has either control of the House or 41 firm votes in the Senate. Right now they have both, and they know it. As the gun issue has shown, big Democratic advantages in public opinion do not significantly inhibit Republican obstructionism. And even on the one big issue where many Republicans feel it is in their long-range interest to bend–immigration–it’s (a) not at all clear comprehensive reform legislation can survive conservative opposition, and even if it does (b) it will likely be a less progressive reform than George W. Bush was proposing six years ago.
Being as how Democratic presidents have a habit of wanting to govern, of course Obama hasn’t thrown up his hands or thrown in the towel in the face of this situation. He’s laid down second-term markers that reflect what he campaigned for in 2012, and what his supporters expect from him, and has also risked that support by making an offer to congressional Republicans on entitlements that seems designed to further expose their incorrigible obstructionism. He’ll also, I’m sure, try some executive gambits (e.g., on greenhouse gas emissions), though it’s unclear how many he can actually execute without practical control of Congress.
But we’ve known for a good while now that the odds of Obama being able to do much of anything other than protect the accomplishments he achieved before 2011 (and even that will be difficult) were low, and probably won’t improve a great deal after another midterm election cycle where Republicans have all sorts of advantages.
Inveterate Obama critics from the Right, and those on the Left who expect Obama to deploy magical powers to overcome the entrenched power of the GOP, will mock his record for its limited accomplishments. Lord knows he’s made mistakes and isn’t perfect. But at this stage, even if Obama combined the public charisma of FDR with the legislative skills of LBJ, it’s difficult to see how the road gets any easier. An unlikely House takeover in 2014 combined with a continued Senate majority willing to undertake radical filibuster reform might change everything. But anything less won’t change the basic dynamics.

Republicans are going to keep bashing away at the president regardless of what he does. Obama’s Democratic critics will continue to fault him for his mistakes, doomed bipartisan overtures and perceived lack of gumption. That’s OK. Democrats are supposed to press the president toward more progressive policies at every opportunity. But let’s get real about the unprecedented wall of obstruction he faces — and the only hope for breaking it, which is a major upset in the 2014 midterms.

The following comes from an e-blast from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research:
Lawmaker positions could impact voter support
Voters in Illinois are ready for changes to gun laws, and there is a large bloc who is more likely to support a candidate who votes for stronger laws. They are not by any means anti-gun, but they strongly favor laws that will help prevent guns falling into the wrong hands and protect their families.
While opposed to conceal and carry generally, if it must happen, voters favor a broad range of limits on who can carry weapons where. They don’t stop there. There is also near universal support for background checks on all gun sales, and strong support for banning military-style assault weapons and limiting ammunition magazines.
Voters do not buy the NRA’s arguments that common-sense gun laws are a slippery slope towards infringing on 2nd Amendment rights and confiscating guns. They believe there is a moderate, middle-ground approach, and are looking for lawmakers who fill that space.
Please click here to read our key findings and recommendations from a survey of 600 registered voters in Illinois, with an additional 300 oversample of Will and DuPage counties. A phone survey was conducted from March 27 through April 2, 2013. Margin of error is +/- 4 percent for the total electorate and +/- 5 percent for Will and DuPage counties (combined).

Page Gardner, president of the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, flags a serious problem for Democrats in her post, “Sinking American Electorate: Unmarried Women On The Edge” at The Campaign for America’s Future Blog. Noting that unmarried women are a key component of the ‘Rising American Electorate’ (RAE) that helped to elect and re-elect President Obama, Gardner explains:

Sadly, unmarried women and the RAE are becoming disengaged. Our research shows that their concerns are not being addressed by current economic policies. If left unaddressed, this disconnect could spell disaster for Democrats in 2014 and beyond. In 2012, it’s true, members of the RAE overwhelmingly supported President Obama. And as the Republican National Committee noted last month in its “autopsy” of the 2012 presidential campaign, the sheer number of these RAE voters is only expected to climb in coming years. “The minority groups that President Obama carried with 80 percent of the vote in 2012 are on track to become a majority of the nation’s population by 2050,” the RNC wrote.
But midterm elections traditionally attract very different voters than presidential races, and Democrats should prepare for what could be a drastic drop-off in voter support. In 2008, for example, unmarried women represented 21 percent of the total vote. But these same women fell to just 18 percent of the vote in 2010, a non-presidential year. And their support is crucial. For all the talk of the gender gap in American politics, the truth is that the marriage gap is even more profound. In 2012, unmarried women supported President Obama over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by 36 points, a massive margin that helped stem other losses. Even though President Obama lost the married-women vote by 7 points in 2012, he made up for it with his overwhelming support by unmarried women. The point: If unmarried women do not turn out in droves on November 4, 2014, Democrats could be in for a long evening.

Democrats can not afford to rely on the GOP’s miserable image with unmarried women, because 2014 is going to be all about turning out the RAE base and these voters must have something to vote for, in order to get them to the polls. Gardner urges Democrats to focus more intensely on concerns and priorities that energize this key demographic group:

So what should leaders of both parties focus on? Our research shows that the top priorities for all women are protecting retirement benefits, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Unmarried women care deeply about Medicare, investing in job training and making college more affordable. Other major priorities include helping women-owned businesses, expanding preventive health care for women, raising the minimum wage and making child care more affordable. And, importantly, unmarried women want equal pay for equal work. Today, an unmarried woman has to work more than 19 months to earn what a married man earns in just one year.

Any formula that leads to Democrats taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives, or even holding a majority in the U.S. Senate, must include an energetic appeal to unmarried women, rooted in the priorities Gardner cites. Without that, Dems will likely be defeated in the mid-terms.

The following article is cross-posted from Greeenberg Quinlan Rosner Research:
Consensus
By: Brady Campaign to Reduce Gun Violence and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner
The overheated rhetoric in Washington belies a broad consensus among voters and gun owners that it is possible to reduce gun violence in this country while protecting the Second Amendment. Voters and gun owners come together to support basic, common sense steps, such as strengthening background checks, expanding and promoting safety courses and training to improve responsible gun ownership, or increasing penalties for those who illegally traffic in guns, that can make a difference. Few voters we talked to believe additional gun laws will stop all gun violence in the country, but voters support taking steps that can address some of the violence. At the same time, few voters we talked to, including gun owners, believe any effort to strengthen gun laws is inherently a violation of the Second Amendment.
In contrast to the political discord they see in Washington and in some state capitals, gun owners and non-gun owners alike find common interest in promoting a culture of personal responsibility. Gun owners are among the first to recognize the responsibility that comes with the right to own a gun. Gun owners and non-gun owners alike also believe that, like other public safety threats including smoking and car crashes, we can reduce gun violence through research, education, and keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill.
This memorandum reflects key highlights from a national survey of 1,000 registered voters. This survey includes an oversample of 300 gun owners, bringing the total number of gun owners to 629. The survey was taken March 11-24, 2013. The overall margins of error is +/- 2.72 at 95 percent confidence interval. The margin of error for gun owners is +/- 3.91.
Key Findings
Voters and gun owners overwhelmingly believe that it is possible to reduce gun violence while protecting the Second Amendment.
An 83 percent majority of voters believe it is possible to protect the rights of Americans to own guns and protect people from gun violence at the same time. This includes 85 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of both men and women, 88 percent of liberals, 77 percent of conservatives as well as 85 percent of gun owners and 81 percent of non-gun owners.
Gun owners and non-gun owners find common ground.
Gun owners and non-gun owners recognize a common interest in creating a system that both reduces gun violence and protects individuals’ right to own a firearm. And they find common ground in the promotion of education, research, personal responsibility and efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, the mentally ill and children. An 88 percent majority of both gun owners and voters agree, “People have the right to own a gun, but they also have the responsibility to educate themselves and be responsible gun owners. They should attend gun safety classes, have firearm insurance, educate others and keep their guns locked away until needed. The active participation of responsible, law-abiding gun owners can play a part in reducing gun violence” Similarly, 87 percent of voters and 85 percent of gun owners agree, “There are many causes of gun violence. While we may not be able to solve the entire problem or save every single life, there are solutions that can make a real difference. Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and those that do not own guns, parents and spouses, can come together to pass common ground solutions for gun violence than can save lives.”
Most voters want stronger gun laws.
By a 56 to 6 percent margin, voters prefer laws covering the sale of guns be made stronger rather than less strong. Another 36 percent believe these laws should be kept as they are now. Notably, nearly half (45 percent) of gun owners agree gun laws should be made stronger.
Strong support for basic steps to reduce gun violence.
As most public polling has made plain, strengthening background checks are simply not controversial outside of the halls of Congress, various state legislatures, and among K Street lobbyist. A 91 percent majority support requiring background checks on all gun purchases, 88 percent among gun owners. There are very few public policy questions with 91 percent support in this country, let alone a question subject to a filibuster threat. Voters and gun owners deliver similar levels of support for imposing new penalties for people who buy guns for convicted criminals who cannot purchase their own (83 percent favor among voters, 85 percent among gun owners).
A 53 percent majority of voters (47 percent among gun owners) are more likely to support a lawmaker who supports background checks on all gun sales. Just 9 percent are less likely (12 percent among gun owners).
Conclusion
The failure so far, at least at the federal level, to pass legislation to reduce gun violence four months after the tragedy in Newtown is a failure of politics. It is not a failure of the country to come together, gun owners and non-gun owners alike, and find consensus, but a failure of the country’s leadership to overcome its politics and pass legislation than can make a difference.

One of the treasured cliches of American politics is that the “the states are the laboratories of democracy.” It’s an appealing notion. It would be great if the 50 states were truly innovative in enacting cutting-edge legislation, which encourage other states to emulate what works and avoid what doesn’t.
It’s possible to cite recent examples of bold statewide initiatives, as do Ronald Brownstein and Stephanie Czekalinski in their National Journal article “How Washington Ruined Governors.” But there is mounting evidence that the states are now mimicking national polarization, more than experimenting with creative policies that have the potential for building consensus. As the authors explain:

…On gun control, gay marriage, immigration, taxes, and participation in President Obama’s health reform law, among other issues, states that lean red and those that lean blue are diverging to an extent that is straining the boundaries of federalism. “I can’t recall any time in American history where there was such a conscious effort to create such broad divisions, without any sense of how it is all going to turn out,” says Donald Kettl, dean of the public-policy school at the University of Maryland and an expert on public administration.
In many places, this widening gap is recasting the role of governors. Well into the 1990s, state executives considered themselves more pragmatic than members of Congress; they regularly shared ideas across party lines and often sought to emerge nationally by bridging ideological disputes. Some of that tradition endures. But now, governors are operating mostly along parallel, and partisan, tracks. On each side, they are increasingly pursuing programs that reflect their party’s national agenda–and enlisting with their party on national disputes such as health care reform. “Everything has been infected with the national political debate,” says Bruce Babbitt, who served as Arizona’s centrist Democratic governor for two terms and later as President Clinton’s Interior secretary. “And it’s really destructive.” Tommy Thompson, who launched a flotilla of innovations emulated by governors in both parties during his four terms as Wisconsin’s Republican chief executive, agrees. “Anyone who looks at this in an impartial way has to say we have become a more partisan nation,” he says. “I think we have [become] much more doctrinaire with our philosophies and much more locked into our positions.”

Progressives and Democrats applaud reforms in the blue states, as do conservatives in the red states, and Czekalinski and Brownstein provide plenty of examples of recent reforms and do an excellent job of providing historical context. What we are not seeing today, however, is much bridge-building at the state level — policies that reasonable people of different political parties should be able to support. It appears that political polarization at the national level is contagious and has infected the state houses. The authors quote former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson to dramatize the states’ diminishing role as ‘laboratories’:

During the national welfare-reform debate, Thompson and other GOP governors even publicly sided with Clinton to oppose a central component of the House Republican plan–something else Thompson doesn’t think would happen now. “We were much more willing to take on individuals in our political party when we knew it was right for our state,” he says. “Politically today that would not be a smart move. Back then it was much more of the right thing to do.”

But the calculus is different today:

…In most cases, the path to prominence for governors today is very different. In today’s highly polarized political environment, they are more likely to emerge as national figures by championing and advancing their party’s core ideas than by defying or rethinking them…This competition has inspired ambitious activity in both red and blue states. But many analysts question whether these initiatives really embody the “laboratory of democracy” ideal of state tinkering or rather reflect a centrally directed model in which states, often at the prodding of national interest groups, serially fall in line behind their party’s national agenda. Babbitt expresses a widespread concern that states have diminished their capacity to genuinely innovate because their every choice is framed through the national partisan struggle. “The divergences in the laboratory-of-democracy idea ought to grow out of grassroots experience” in the states, he says. “It’s not the case now. It’s a top-down divergence being driven by national ideological arguments. It’s not an experimental model, and it’s not a very productive exercise.” Rather than ideas rising from the states to Washington, he says, governors are being “conscripted and corrupted into the national political debate.”

Thus the authors’ concluding lament: “Not long ago, the states mostly operated as an exception to the war between the parties in Washington. Now they look more like an extension of it.” Indeed it’s hard to see a game-changing solution to the problem, other than an overwhelming, nation-wide defeat for the party most committed to legislative obstruction.

The following article by Ed Kilgore is cross-posted from The Washington Monthly.:
It’s no secret that political scientists as a tribe tend to downplay the importance of ideology and even of “issues” as active factors in American politics. Elections, they say (as an often-welcome corrective to Game Change-style overinterpretation of campaign events), are largely determined by “the fundamentals,” especially economic conditions and the identity of the party in power. Partisan attachments by voters, they often point out, are far more durable than anything you can explain by the day’s, month’s, or year’s controversies and positioning.
So it didn’t totally shock me that in a Salon piece on the “broken” nature of our political system, my esteemed friend the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein issues a disclaimer about the role that conservative ideology plays:

It’s not partisanship. It’s not polarization. It’s not even extremism.
It’s the Republican Party. The GOP is broken. Not too conservative; not too extreme. I have no view of where the GOP “should” be ideologically, and I don’t think there’s much evidence that being “too conservative” per se is losing elections for Republicans.

Having ruled out ideology as an explanation, Jonathan ranges far in identifying the actual reasons for the dysfunctional habits of the GOP. Do GOPers sometimes act like they prefer obstinacy to electoral victory, or are forever insisting on “pure” candidates? Maybe the “conservative marketplace,” in which there’s money to be made by looniness, and plenty of money to back primary challengers, is the problem. Do Republicans seem to have no idea how to actually govern? Well, they’ve had some very bad role models, from Nixon to George W. Bush.
I don’t disagree with any of those insights, but when Jonathan comes up with his list of the GOP’s bad habit, I can’t help but notice ideology would explain every single one.

* An aversion to normal bargaining and compromise

That’s natural to rigid conservative ideologues who are not focused on government as a means to “bring home the bacon” (the bacon is brought home by corporate supporters who for the most part need little from politicians other than the destruction of taxes and regulations), and view “bargaining” over government policies as playing on the other team’s field.

* An inability to banish fringe people and views from the mainstream of the party.

The whole point to the conservative movement’s drive to take over the GOP is to redefine the “maintream” and identify “RINOs” as the fringe, which is exactly what has been happening.

* An almost comical lack of interest in substantive policy formation

When your ideologically determined goal is to restore the policies of the Coolidge administration, what sort of “substantive policy formation” do you actually need? That helps explain the constant confusion Republicans have distinguishing “policy” from “messaging” or packaging.

* A willingness to ignore established norms and play “Constitutional hardball”

Jonathan uses a felicitous term here: “constitutional conservatives” think their agenda is the only legitimate direction for the country; “established norms” are the lubricant that has made possible the destruction of constitutional government.

* A belief that when out of office, the best play is always all-out obstruction

When you view the enactment of positive legislation as inevitably adding to a Welfare State that went out of control fifty or seventy-five years ago, there’s rarely any downside to obstruction, and a lot of imputed virtue.
Are there non-ideological factors, Jonathan’s and others, that can explain Republican dysfunction? Of course. And there’s never one single “cause” for much of anything in politics. But my own personal Occam’s Razor sure keeps leading me back to ideology and extremism as impossible to ignore in the saga of the GOP’s, and thus the American political system’s, recent dysfunction.

This article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The big lie in American politics today is that “America is broke” or “in this time of austerity we have to tighten our belts.” America is not broke. We are not in a time of “scarcity” and when we buy into this fallacy, we contribute to political decisions that actually will do damage to our standard of living and that of our children.
This lie is used relentlessly to argue that “America just can’t afford” investments in education, or infrastructure, or jobs programs. It is used as the justification for the need to cut Social Security benefits, shift the cost of Medicare to senior citizens, increase the costs families bear to send children to college, or cut back on food for low-income children.
The fact is that for ordinary people times are tough. Median per-person income for ordinary Americans hasn’t increased for 20 years. And the federal, state and local governments are short of revenue.
But America is not broke — far from it. Ask the gang on Wall Street. Ask the bankers whose recklessness caused a massive financial collapse, yet continued to get multi-million dollar bonuses, if America is broke.
The reality is our economy is producing a higher gross domestic product per capita — the best measure of the sum of goods and services produced by our economy per person — than at any other time in American history. Gross domestic product per capita slumped after the Great Recession that was caused by the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks. Then it once again began to increase and has now reached record levels.
Overall, America is still the wealthiest nation in the world — and wealthier today than it has ever been.
In fact per capita gross domestic product increased over eight times between 1900 and 2008. That means the standard of living of the average American today is over eight times higher than it was in 1900. Average Americans today consume eight times more goods and services than they did at the beginning of the last century. We are eight times wealthier today than we were then.
And note that GDP per capita has increased six fold since Social Security was passed in 1935 and 2.3 fold since Medicare was passed in 1965. Demographic trends, like the number of seniors in society, have been massively outstripped by increases in our per capita gross domestic product — or standard of living. Those who claim that while we might have been able to afford Social Security and Medicare when they were passed, we just can’t afford them anymore, are just plain wrong.
So if per capita gross domestic product keeps going up, how could it be possible that the median income of ordinary Americans hasn’t increased in twenty years? And why do we have such big budget deficits? Why do we feel so broke in our everyday lives?
The answer is that we are not living in a time of scarcity. We have been living in a time of enormous inequality. Look at a guy like John Paulson. In 2007, as the financial crisis descended, he made $4 billion in personal income betting against subprime mortgages that helped sink the rest of the economy. In 2011 he made a record $5 billion in personal income as the manager of a hedge fund.
In 2011, Mr. Paulson made as much as 100,000 of his fellow citizens who earned $50,000 per year.

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This article, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
In the first three years of the Clinton White House, there were two memorable budget wars, in 1993 and 1995. The open fights with the Republicans were brutal, highest-of-high stakes white-knuckle showdowns where Clinton’s entire presidency was on the line. Behind the scenes, though, our internal fights inside the White House were almost as intense. One thing I will never forget was a meeting where my old friend Bob Boorstin, one of the earliest staffers to join Clinton’s campaign, was fighting to keep some important line items that would help the poor in place and bluntly told President Clinton, “Your budget represents your values.”
While those of us fighting for more spending to help low and middle income people lost a few rounds in these internal debates, we won more than we lost, and in both 1993 and 1995 the budgets Clinton presented and the ones he ended up negotiating with Congress were quite progressive. The 1993 budget raised taxes on the wealthy, lowered taxes on the poor through a big expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and increased investment in programs like education, the environment, Head Start, and Student Grants and Loans. In the 1995 budget showdown with the Republicans in Congress, Clinton rejected the advice of people like Mark Penn that he avoid a showdown, and decided to draw a line in the sand to save “Medicare, Medicaid, Education, and the Environment” from cuts that Gingrich wanted to impose, and he decisively won that battle. In all of the budgets that Clinton proposed and negotiated with Congress while president, he for the most part embraced Democratic values.
20 years after Clinton’s first epic budget battle, our current Democratic president is wrestling with what budget to propose to Congress. The House and the Senate have already proposed radically different ideas of what a budget should look like, so obviously what Obama proposes is just one part of a much longer budget debate, but symbolically, as a presentation of his values, it remains a very important moment. The president has been spending the last year and a half talking about how he wants to fight for the middle class, and his budget should reflect those values. This is why it is so deeply troubling, as the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets are now reporting, that Obama is strongly considering putting a Social Security cut into his budget document. By doing this, the president can no longer fall back on what he has been telling progressives and Democrats in Congress, that he doesn’t want to cut Social Security but is willing to trade it for some good things that the Republicans would give up in a budget deal. By embracing — embracing! — Social Security cuts as part of his budget, his statement of values, the president is telling the American public, senior citizens, and progressives that he wants to cut what they overwhelmingly and passionately support.

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