There was a time not so long ago, writes Ronald Brownstein in his National Journal post, “Why the Culture Wars Now Favor Democrats,” when Republicans thrived on the divisions the so-called wedge issues cause among Democrats. For decades, Democrats struggled with policies to address “crime and welfare to immigration and gay rights,” while Republicans reaped the benefits. As Browstein notes:

…Initially, wedge issues were mostly a Republican weapon. Tutored by political strategists such as Paul Weyrich and Lee Atwater, GOP leaders for years highlighted cultural and racially tinged disputes (such as abortion, school prayer, welfare, and affirmative action) that split Southern evangelicals and working-class Northern whites (particularly observant Catholics) from the Democratic coalition as if shearing an iceberg. The process peaked in the 1988 presidential race, when George H.W. Bush, at Atwater’s direction, used these cudgels to disqualify Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis as a liberal elitist “born in Harvard Yard’s boutique.”

Today, however, demographic convulsions and more relaxed attitudes among political moderates, along with increasing rigidity in the Republican party, have combined to flip the burden to the GOP:

In a mirror image, Democrats across these fronts are moving with uncommon confidence. In Congress, the party has overwhelmingly unified behind immigration reform and gay marriage and is only somewhat more divided on guns; in many blue states, Democrats are also pushing gun-control and gay-rights agendas. “Guns and gays, which we used to run away from, we’re now running on,” says Democratic strategist Tad Devine, a top aide in Dukakis’s 1988 campaign. If congressional Republicans block President Obama on immigration or expanded background checks, the 2016 Democratic nominee likely will revive–and benefit from–those causes.
Republicans gained from wedge issues when the blue-collar whites they were aimed at constituted a majority of voters. But the growing number of nonwhite or religiously unaffiliated voters and the socially liberal tendencies of the rising millennial generation have reversed the equation. At the presidential level, these noneconomic issues are mostly benefiting Democrats, not so much by dividing Republicans as by unifying the Democratic coalition of minorities, millennials, and college-educated whites, especially women.

Although some wedge issues, like immigration and gun control remain unsettled, looking towards the future, it’s hard to see how Democrats can lose their current edge with culture wars wedge issues — at least in the short run.

Tomasky: I Think Obama Is Bluffing

Liberals are upset today because Obama’s budget is going to include a call for chained CPI and some means-testing of Medicare. Krugman thinks he seeks the approval of the Serious People. Chait concurs. Ezra Klein tweeted earlier today that it appears that Obama is once again opening a negotiation at the other side’s halfway point. In 140 characters he didn’t have room to denounce this, but presumably that’s what he meant.
Well, could be. But I tend to agree with Kevin Drum on this one. Drum writes that Obama doesn’t really expect the GOP to budge on taxes and therefore doesn’t expect a deal at all. And that Republicans, rather than make a deal, would prefer to continue to have the deficit as an issue to bang Obama with…

…it’s mostly a charade. And it’s a good one! One of the very best, in fact. Cutting the deficit polls well, it lends itself nicely to demagoguery, and it’s an all-purpose excuse to oppose any spending proposals they don’t like. So why on earth would you cut a deal to take it off the table? That would be crazy. And if they’re forced to swallow a tax increase as well, that makes it even crazier. There’s literally no benefit at all in this for Republicans.
So they won’t do it. Obama’s real hope–since I assume he’s not an idiot and knows all this perfectly well–is that Republicans will indeed refuse to make a deal, and this will turn the public against them in the 2014 midterms. I suppose that’s possible, depending on how well he plays his hand. It’s certainly more possible than assuming that Republicans will voluntarily commit electoral suicide by agreeing to a deal.

This sounds right to me. The risk Obama runs here is that the GOP calls his bluff and does a 180 and says, “Okay, you want some tax increases? We’ll go to $300 billion.” Or some other smallish figure. Then he’ll have to play ball.
But I think the risk of that is small. Can you picture the Republicans giving ground on taxes before 2014? I can’t. They’ll keep demagoguing the deficit and run on that. The risk for them is that the deficit really goes down and no one gives a crap about it anymore. It’s expected to be $845 billion in October. It could be lower. And then what if it’s just $500 billion the following October, the month before the election? It’ll fade as an issue. Obama will be able to run around on the campaign trail saying he reduced the deficit nearly $1 trillion in two years in such an event. Not implausible.
All that said, people like Bernie Sanders should keep up the pressure in the meantime. But I see no incentive for the GOP to come to terms, and I think the Potus knows it.

Chait: This appears to be a message strategy

…this appears to be a message strategy aimed at advocates of BipartisanThink, who have been blaming Obama for failing to offer the plan he has in fact been offering. The strategy is that, by converting their offer to Boehner from an “offer” to a “budget,” it will prove that Obama is Serious.
On the one hand, this strikes me as completely ridiculous. On the other hand, it might actually work! BipartisanThinkers like Ron Fournier (“a gutsy change in strategy”) and Joe Scarborough (“Now THIS is a real budget … exciting”) are gushing with praise.
For the strategy to really succeed, the BipartisanThinkers have to help persuade Senate Republicans to strike a deal, and then somehow get John Boehner to secretly agree with it and let it come to a vote in the House, even if almost all the House Republicans naturally vote against it.
The fallback option is that the BipartisanThinkers stop blaming both sides and start blaming Republicans, though this seems like an extremely forlorn hope — more likely, the BipartisanThinkers will eventually redefine Obama’s compromise position as Big Government liberalism and the center as the halfway point between that and Paul Ryan’s plan to kill and eat the poor.

if you have felt despair about the relentless dominance of the MSM as a force for stifling progressive change, ‘Proglegs’ has a Daily Kos post that should lift your spirits considerably. Here’s a taste:

Ever since hate radio golden boy Rush Limbaugh’s disgusting attacks on Sandra Fluke a year ago, karma has been a real bitch for Clear Channel–who stood by their man.
Clear Channel’s radio revenue has been decimated by the StopRush movement through the efforts of activist groups like Flush Rush Facebook. These activists have worked every day to monitor Limbaugh’s broadcasts across the nation, enter ad information in The StopRush sponsor database, and contact advertisers to convince them to withdraw ads from the offensive program.
Last month, Clear Channel reported losses of $424 million for 2012. The media company has been firing employees throughout the past year in an effort to stop the hemorrhaging, to no avail. And Chairman of the Board Mark Mays announced his impending resignation.

Proglegs has more details about the Clear Channel’s troubles, and concludes:

Decent folks who believe in tolerance and equality are no longer powerless against Limbaugh’s efforts to spread intolerance on the radio. StopRush is making a major impact–and with your help we can do even more. Just a few emails, tweets, or Facebook messages a week to Limbaugh’s advertisers can go a long way toward making hatred less profitable. It is our collective voice that makes us strong.

Yet another reminder that political activism has forms for involvement other than campaigns and elections, especially in times when our political institutions seem mired in gridlock. There was a time when Clear Channel seemed indomitable, so vast was it’s reach. But a few hearty groups of progressive activists are bringing an end to their reign, and it’s just possible that a new era of progressive radio can now begin to take root across the nation.

At Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik has the skinny on “Hard targets” — races for the 25 most vulnerable seats ion the U.S. House of Representatives for 2014:

One needs little more than just fingers and toes to count the number of House members who represent districts won by the other party’s presidential candidate in 2012. As mentioned here previously, just 25 House members — nine Democrats and 16 Republicans — hold such “crossover” districts. Compare that to 2004, when there were 59 such seats, or 2008, when there were 83.
Both Democratic and Republican strategists are going to start with these seats as they try to identify targets for the upcoming campaign, but as is clear from a district-by-district analysis, many of them are not particularly vulnerable.
Although the historical data are incomplete, the 25 crossover seats are probably the fewest number after a presidential election in nearly a century. The group includes some of the longest-serving members of the House, who have established deep roots that have allowed them to fend off challengers and build strong identities in their districts. In many of these districts, the challenging party simply must play a waiting game, hoping for a retirement that creates an open seat contest.

If that landscape isn’t daunting enough, Kondik adds that “the Republicans could lose all their crossover seats and still hold a 218-217 House majority. Democrats need to net a gain of 17 seats to win control of the House next year.” Kondik provides district by district capsule summaries of the current political situation in the 25 House districts. Clearly, Dems are going to need to leverage all of their fund-raising and digital assets to beat the historical patterns and pick up 17 house seats. To check out Crystal Ball’s other excellent resources for monitoring U.S. House races, click here.

Greg Sargent has provided a very insightful look at the administration’s basic political strategy that underies the current maneuverings over the budget. As he says, “I’m not defending this thinking; I’m simply detailing it.”

…here is my understanding of White House thinking on why a Grand Bargain is a good outcome.
Obama and his advisers don’t necessarily view Chained CPI [which is included in Obama’s budget] as good policy. But they think a Grand Bargain is ultimately a better outcome than continued sequestration, and the only way to the former is to peel off individual Republicans who are open to new revenues. They believe a Grand Bargain is good for Democrats in general, because it essentially would lock in a medium-term agreement over core disputes — about the safety net and about the size of government, and who should pay for it — that have produced a debilitating stalemate in Washington.
Yes, Republicans would continue railing about government spending, the thinking goes, but no one would listen, since they would have already endorsed a deal stabilizing the deficit. This would deprive Republicans of the ability to focus attention on one of their core targets — Big Government — as a way to avoid grappling with other issues, such as jobs and long-term middle class economic security, immigration, guns, and perhaps even climate change. Reaching a deal on the deficit will force Republicans to confront those problems more directly and to choose between real cooperation on them or continue to calcify as a hidebound, reactionary party incapable of addressing major challenges facing the country.
Liberals will point out that it’s folly to offer Republicans so much up front, because they’ll only denounce the offer as “unserious” and demand more, shifting the debate further in their direction. But officials insist the White House has no intention of budging on its demand for new revenues or allowing Republicans to pull Obama further towards them. (This doesn’t mean liberals shouldn’t make it clear that any further concessions on revenues are unacceptable.) The offer in the budget, the thinking goes, will drive home that Obama is the one who occupies the compromise middle ground, and if Republicans refuse to deal, it will be crystal clear in the public mind who is to blame for continued austerity. The White House doesn’t worry about putting its fingerprints on entitlements cuts, because Obama has long proposed them himself.
I’m not defending this thinking; I’m simply detailing it. In my view, it’s not clear yet that the sequester will shape up as enough of a political liability to force Republicans back to the table.
Liberals…need to start thinking right now about how to answer this question: Which is worse, a Grand Bargain, or continued sequestration? It’s unclear to me that there is any other likely outcome. Either Republicans will decide to weather sequestration or they will agree to some kind of a deal to replace it. So liberals need a good policy answer to that question.

On the heels of the new “Bible” series sporting an Obama look-alike as ole Beezelbub, we have a new PPP survey indicating that “13% of voters think Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, including 22% of Romney voters.” (for more on the demonic Obama meme in ‘The Bible’, see our staff post here) In his Washington Monthly post “666 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Ed Kilgore highlights the lunacy:

This is a national poll, mind you, not a straw poll at some conservative evangelical clambake. Its margin-of-error is 2.8%. Extrapolated to the national electorate, it suggests that over 13 million Americans believe the President of the United States is a demonic supernatural being sent into the world to set up an infernal kingdom until it’s all washed away by the End of Days.
Now I understand all the limitations of this kind of polling. The Anti-Christ question is sprinkled in with all sorts of crazy questions about this or that odd theory (my favorite is: Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not? 4% of respondents are down with the “V hypothesis,” though the number rises to 11% among those self-identifying as “very conservative.”). Many Romney voters would be inclined to agree with anything negative said about Obama.
Still, the Anti-Christ?

In an update note, Kilgore notes that another 19 percent of Romney voters are unsure about the anti-Christ meme, which should dispel any hopes that the GOP’s right flank is at last ready to pivot towards sanity. As Kilgore concludes, “Any way you slice it, when progressives suggest on occasion that conservatives talk about Obama as though he were the Anti-Christ, it’s not all hyperbole.”

A new Marist poll conducted for ‘Morning Joe’ March 25-27 says that 87 percent of Americans want background checks for private gun sales and gun shows, with 59 percent supporting a ban on the sale of assault weapons.
The U.S. Senate is expected to deliberate gun legislation that will require universal background checks. But a Republican filibuster makes enactment uncertain. Democrats will try to add an assault-weapons amendment to the legislation, but it has little chance to win in the Senate, according to Mark Murray at MSNBC’s First Read.
In addition to the good news about public attitudes on reducing gun violence, the poll also indicated solid support for Democratic economic priorities, as Murray reports:

…The Morning Joe/Marist survey shows that Americans – by nearly a 2-to-1 margin – want President Barack Obama and Congress to make job creation their top priority (64 percent) instead of deficit reduction (33 percent),
Those who prefer Washington’s political leaders to emphasize job creation include 76 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans; a narrow majority of Republican respondents (51 percent) want the focus to be on deficit reduction.
…Obama edges congressional Republicans by four percentage points, 44 percent to 40 percent, on the question of who has a better approach to deal with the federal budget deficit.
…Forty-two percent of respondents prefer a mixture of spending cuts (including to entitlement programs) and revenue increases; 35 percent pick increasing mostly revenue; and just 17 percent choose mostly cutting government spending (including to programs like Medicare and Medicaid).

Democratic policies on the economy and gun control are clearly on solid footing, while Republicans are defending the views of a shrinking minority on shaky ground.

Lee Fang, a reporting fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, has an article up at The Nation, revealing how the State Policy Network “nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states,” supported by other right-wing groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Fang explains:

Grover Norquist proclaimed that with SPN’s support, Republican governors might “turn their states into Texas or Hong Kong”–laboratories of the free market. “It’s a wonderful opportunity,” he added. …Though Democrats largely outperformed electoral expectations at the federal level last year, Republicans made significant gains in several states. The GOP is using this shift to redistribute wealth by cutting taxes on the rich while raising them on working-class citizens, largely through sales tax increases. What makes this year different from past Republican realignments, however, is the massive increase in funds available to conservative think tanks operating on the state level, as well as how these groups have made the goal of consolidating power through attacking unions and similar tactics central to their agenda.
These media-savvy organizations–which frequently employ former journalists to churn out position papers, news articles, investigations and social media content with a hard-right slant–bolster the pro-corporate lobbying efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Like ALEC, State Policy Network groups provide an ideological veil for big businesses seeking to advance radical deregulatory policy goals. Interviewed at the San Francisco event this past January, SPN’s Sharp maintained that her organization is loosely connected and has no coordinated agenda. But if the last four years are any guide, conservative think tanks are on the march, working from a similar script to tear down organized labor and promote extreme right-wing policies in state capitols from Alaska to Florida.
Financial support for SPN-affiliated think tanks has increased by tens of millions of dollars over the last four years, disclosures show. In areas with the most concentrated investments, particularly the Midwestern states referred to in DeMint’s speech, budgets for state-level political groups have doubled, outpacing their counterparts on the left. Without control of the White House, corporations anxious to push back against taxes and regulations, along with a cadre of wealthy right-wing donors, have invested in these state-level think tanks, partisan media outlets, training institutes and online advocacy efforts. Some existing organizations have been expanded, and others founded to fill what conservative planners viewed as a tactical void.

Fang adds that Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers affiliate which has supported Tea Party rallies, is in on “this state-focused spending spree,” and has recently “more than tripled the funding for existing chapters in key states.” In addition, The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity has partnered with SPN and Americans for Prosperity “to hire and train conservative reporters in nearly every state capital” and “to take advantage of cutbacks at local papers, generating outright propaganda in some cases, including “multiple stories questioning Obama’s birth certificate.”
Fang explains how these groups and their related affiliates helped protect Wisconsin’s union-bashing Governor Scott Walker from the populist uprising against him in that state. Fang shows how these groups have played similar roles in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and in campaigns to discredit public schools, cut tobacco taxes and undermine net neutrality and environmental protection laws in other states.
It’s all part of a conscious grand strategy, writes Fang, said to have “been inspired in part by a Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker called “How David Beats Goliath.” As Fang explains:

The piece, which details the ways that underdogs can win playing by their own rules, offers anecdotes on how insurgents have defeated well-equipped armies by harassing and weakening their opponents. It also describes how a computer scientist won a naval warfare simulation by spending his fictional trillion-dollar budget almost entirely on PT boats….Referring to the Gladwell article, Sharp said PT boats are “an apt metaphor” for her network of groups because “they’re fast and maneuverable. A team of PT boats working strategically can defeat much larger and less maneuverable vessels–such as huge chunks of unions.”

Fair enough, although it looks like they have their biblical protagonist and antagonist backwards. Let’s hope Democratic organizers understand that it’s a strategy that can work both ways — and also defeat large chunks of Republican money.

Susan Ferrechio’s report, “Lady Gaga turned down $1 million to perform during RNC” at The Examiner is encouraging:

Not even a million dollars could convince Lady Gaga to perform during last summer’s Republican National Convention.
The snub by the pop star is included in a lawsuit filed by a powerful Republican nonprofit fundraising organization, American Action Network, against a vendor whose job was to stage entertainment just outside the doors to the GOP’s convention in August.
Documents filed with the lawsuit show that other entertainers also said “no thanks” to appearing at the GOP convention including Dolly Parton and the rapper Pitbull, who Republicans hoped to feature at an event for the Hispanic Leadership Network.

Ferrechio adds that other performers, including Journey (without Steve Perry) and Lynyrd Skynyrd agreed to perform or appear for the GOP, as have The Nuge and Kid Rock. It’s doubtful that those over-the-hill acts were offered seven figures.
But GaGa apparentlly wasn’t hustled by the “honoring women who run for public office” pitch, not even for a cool mill. She probably figured that they were really trying to neutralize some of her LGBT supporters. No sale. Kudos also to Parton and Pitbull.
Republicans have a long history of using pop music, sometimes without permission, to win the hearts and minds of the younger generation. On several occasions, they have been forced to cease and desist by performers who dislike their policies and candidates.

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:
There is a new report out this morning once again reminding us of the greatest disappointment progressives have in the Obama administration: the lack of toughness in regards to Wall Street. The report, issued by the Campaign for a Fair Settlement (full disclosure: this is a coalition I have helped in various ways since their founding), is probably the most harshly critical analysis yet by a coalition aligned with traditional progressive Democratic groups. The report opens with this damning list of hard-to-dispute facts, and then just goes on from there:

The Administration has yet to prosecute a single major bank or top level executive for the widespread fraud leading to the system’s collapse.
Civil penalties have similarly failed to be imposed on top executives, and fines levied against the banks have been so small as to amount to a minor cost of doing business.
Settlements have left the banks themselves in control of providing relief and restitution to homeowners, giving them credit for cleaning up their balance sheets more than preventing foreclosures.
Far from showing any signs of having been chastened, the biggest banks are now even bigger, and have successfully slowed down or weakened key elements of the financial reform bills passed in the wake of the collapse.
And signs even early on in the second Obama administration are not encouraging:
With no mention of Wall Street and the banks anywhere in either his second inaugural speech or his 2013 State of the Union address, the President appears to be wishing the crisis behind him more than addressing its still festering wounds.
Statements by new appointees like Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew have suggested that they view the “too big to fail” problem as having been largely solved, even as new studies confirm how much the systematically risky banks still benefit from market assumptions that they retain that status.
Despite having faced withering rebukes for their handling of key cases and settlements, agencies like the Office of the Comptroller of the currency have reignited that criticism in their attempts to amend the disastrous Independent Foreclosure Review settlement, yet again constructing terms far more favorable to the banks than to homeowners and borrowers.

The report barely mentions the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the one agency where progressives have generally given the administration better marks, it is mostly dismissive of the good things that passed in Dodd-Frank given how slow regulatory agencies have been in writing rules, and it seems to have little faith in the Residential Mortgage Backed Securities Task Force co-chaired by NY AG Eric Schneiderman — which is notable given that the coalition has historically been relatively close to Schneiderman politically.
So there are two questions that Obama loyalists might ask about this report. The first is whether all this negativity is truly deserved. The second is why Wall Street accountability activists are so obsessed with this issue.
On the first question, I am sad to say the answer is mostly yes. If I had been writing the report, I would have been more positive about the accomplishments of CFPB, would have given the administration more credit on a few things in terms of Dodd-Frank and a few of the appointments they have made, would have pointed out that Republicans are doing everything they can to starve regulatory agencies of resources, and being the loyal Democrat I am I would have written the report more diplomatically. But when you add up all the results of the Obama administration’s dealings with Wall Street, it is hard to avoid the fact that life hasn’t changed much at all for the big banks, and that they continue to make money hand over fist while the rest of the economy is stuck in the mood. It is hard to think of any one of the report’s bullets listed above that aren’t accurate. Most damning of all are these absolutely true words in the report’s conclusion:

The irony in all this is that the areas in which the Obama Administration has been found most wanting by critics for its handling of Wall Street Accountability are not the result of intractable differences with a Congress hamstrung in inaction. Instead, they are areas almost wholly under the sole control of the Administration through its executive powers, and carried out largely through cabinet agencies.

On the second question, the reason Wall Street activists are so obsessed with the lack of toughness toward Wall Street is that Wall Street is ground zero for the rest of the problems in our economy. These monstrously huge mega-banks completely dominate our economy, siphoning off money that might otherwise go into productive uses in the mainstreet economy so that the big bankers can keep speculating away. And when they screw up in ways that hurt the rest of us, even when they blatantly violate the law, the fact that they are never seriously punished means they have no incentive to stop. Until the Obama administration fixes this problem, the rest of the economy is going to keep suffering, and the risk of future financial meltdowns will keep growing.