The following article is cross-posted from a DCorps e-blast:
Last month, we watched President Obama’s State of the Union Address with 44 swing voters in Denver, Colorado. We have condensed our findings to 10 critical economic lessons economists, reporters, and leaders should take from this research. READ IT HERE.
1. The economy is still very difficult for voters at the pocketbook level.
2. The President can now highlight economic progress without taking credit.
3. Voters are aware of, and concerned bout, the long-term decline of the middle class.
4. Voters support a growth agenda rather than an austerity agenda.
5. Voters are looking for a balanced approach to deficit reduction.
6. There is strong support for further and more progressive tax reform.
7. Raising the minimum wage is a good start.
8. Unmarried women are still engaged and are the most engaged on economic issues affecting them.
9. Republicans are on a different path on economic issues and budget choices.
10. Voters are receptive to smarter government that invests in broad-based growth.
Click here to read the full memo from Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and Erica Seifert.
Click here to see dial charts from President Obama’s State of the Union Address.
This analysis is based on dial testing focus and group research conducted on February 12, 2013, by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps, Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, the Voter Participation Center, and the Economic Media Project. Research was among 44 swing voters in Denver, Colorado, using Perception Analyzer by Dialsmith.

At Slate.com Matthew Yglesias alerts readers to the misleading frame that renders a new ABC News poll about the sequester worse than useless. Yglesias provides an excellent example of the importance of context in polling questions, data and conclusions. Here’s his take:

ABC is out with an extremely Republican-friendly sequestration poll noting that most voters say they back the idea of a 5-percent cut in federal spending, but cutting the military is unpopular. I have no doubt that’s an accurate reflection of public opinion, but it’s also an extremely misleading way to frame it.
The correct context for this is a Pew poll which asked about many categories of spending, and found majority support for cuts in exactly zero categories. Decrease spending is a plurality position on foreign aid and nothing else. For the State Department and aid to the unemployed, keeping spending constant is the plurality position, but spending hawks outnumber increasers. On every other category, more voters prefer an increase in spending to a decrease. In some categories (military, 32-24; aid to the domestic poor 27-24) the margin is relatively narrow, whereas in others (Social Security, 41-10; veterans, 53-6) the margin is enormous.
…if you constructed any ABC-style poll where you first ask about spending cuts and then ask about one particular program, you’d get the ABC result that people want big spending cuts but also want to exempt Program X from the cuts. But that’s just a kind of cheap trick…

In reality, concludes Yglesias, “cuts to military spending are among the least-unpopular cuts around.” Sounds like ABC’s polling team could benefit from developing a more rigorous checklist to insure bipartisan integrity in polling and poll analysis.

The following article, which first appeared in the Cleveland plain Dealer, is by John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University and co-author with Sherry lee Linkon of “Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.“
People in Youngstown were excited when, in his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama cited the new $70 million National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII) hub as central to his emerging economic and manufacturing policy. An investment in new manufacturing in a city still struggling three decades after deindustrialization might seem both economically and politically savvy, but it’s not clear that NAMII will either strengthen the local economy or attract more votes for Democrats in the future.
Over the last decade, research-and-development manufacturing hubs have become a dominant paradigm for rebuilding a competitive manufacturing sector, and Obama plans to create 17 more of them around the United States. They bring together state and local governments, universities and businesses to confront technological challenges through innovative design and manufacturing methods. In Youngstown, the hub is devoted to the development and expansion of “3D printing,” which deposits thin layers of material to design and shape various components. This “3D” process enhances business competitiveness by reducing design, manufacturing and energy costs.
But local workers are rightly cautious about NAMII. They understand that 3D printing technology could cost some of them jobs. Like other technology, it will require more skills from some while rendering others’ skills obsolete. Just as computer-aided manufacturing has reduced many skilled machinists to machine tenders, and information technology has reduced some accountants to data processors, 3D printing will likely displace at least as many machinists and tool-and-die makers as it creates new positions, and it could make small-scale machine shops redundant. Supporters will tout the new jobs and improved business efficiency created by NAMII, but they’re not likely to even acknowledge the associated job losses.
As with previous high-tech efforts in the Mahoning Valley, workers may well be new arrivals who will rent or buy homes in the suburbs or commute from other cities in the region. As one resident told National Public Radio, most locals don’t even recognize Youngstown as the center of an emerging “tech belt,” with NAMII at its core. It is important to remember that high-tech industries aren’t enough to repair the economic dislocations caused by more than 30 years of disinvestment and deindustrialization.
As Richard Florida and Michele Maynard have suggested in The Atlantic’s Cities website, compared with manufacturing in the past, advanced manufacturing no longer generates many good-paying jobs with high wages and benefits. NAMII may well help local businesses to develop, but Youngstown and cities like it would be wrong to pin all of their hopes on investments in advanced manufacturing. High-tech operations may not be sufficient to offset a globalized economy, a disadvantageous trade policy, currency manipulation and tax policies that encourage offshoring, all of which play a critical role.
Nor will Democratic-led investment in advanced manufacturing necessarily attract new voters to the party. Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress has argued that while the Obama coalition has the potential to change future politics, the president’s promise to invest in more high-tech manufacturing jobs may not translate into Democratic votes. To make its new majority sustainable, Teixeira argues, the Democratic Party must expand white working-class support, especially in states where minority growth is slow. Such voters are looking for material improvements for themselves and their families, and without substantive improvements, the working class could swing Ohio’s votes back to Republicans, as happened in 2010.
In 2012, Obama won in Ohio because of a combination of minority turnout and above-average support from the white working class, most likely in response to the stimulus package and the auto bailout. To hold onto those voters, the Democrats will have to show that they have produced strategies that generate faster, stronger economic growth. That’s especially important in states like Ohio, where the minority share of eligible voters is not growing rapidly, so white working-class votes matter more than in many other states.
Youngstown residents appreciated the extra attention their struggling city received and hope that federal investment in high-tech, advanced manufacturing will yield real, good jobs. While local Democrats can take credit for establishing NAMII and the emerging Tech Belt, Ohio Democrats should remember that they could also share the blame if the investment doesn’t pay off and if exaggerated expectations are dashed, especially for the working class.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
A day doesn’t go by that a group of pundits doesn’t gather on a news show to hold forth about the automatic budget cuts contained in the so-called “sequester.” Many spend much of their time obsessing on some morsel of insider minutiae, or unthinkingly restate assumptions that are just plain wrong. Here are seven lessons that are key in thinking out the budget standoff.
Lesson #1: America is not trying figure out how to adjust its budget to a “time of scarcity” as one pundit suggested on one of the weekend’s Sunday shows.
America as a society — and an economy — is not in a “time of scarcity.” Defined in terms of Gross Domestic Product per person, we are still the richest nation in the world. Ask the gang on Wall Street — where stock prices just set a record — if they are living in a time of scarcity.
We are living in a time of enormous inequality. Ordinary people haven’t had a raise in 20 years, while the wealthiest among us have accumulated unthinkable riches. As a percentage of national income, corporate profits have risen to their highest levels since the 1950s — 14.2 percent in the third quarter of last year. At the same time, the percentage of national income going to wages dropped to 61.7 percent — almost to its low point in 1966.
We are also living in a time of scarcity for government budgets because Republicans in Congress slashed taxes on the wealthy, opened up new loopholes for big corporations, and obstruct policies that would put everyone back to work and generate new tax revenue.
Real Gross Domestic Product per capita — the best measure of the sum of the goods and services produced by our economy per person — increased more than 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 times since Social Security was passed in 1935 and 2.3 times since Medicare was passed in 1965.
The skills of our people and the natural resources of our country that are the basis for our economic well-being did not magically evaporate after the financial collapse in 2008. The system we use to organize production and distribution did collapse because of the recklessness of the big Wall Street Banks and the Republican policies that allowed the most massive expansion of economic inequality since the Great Depression.
Our problem over the last four years has not been the need to “tighten our belts” in order to accommodate a “time of scarcity.” It has been to restart the system of production and distribution – to put all of our many resources back to work at the same time we assure that the fruits of our economy are more equitably shared among our people.
The problem for the pundits is that if you begin with the assumption we are in a “time a scarcity” you get austerity and stagnation. If you begin with the assumption that our economic system collapsed because of the decisions of living, breathing human beings, you get policies aimed at fixing the problem and putting people and resources back to work.
Lesson #2: $85 billion is not “just 2 percent of federal spending so it won’t really matter.”
First, the $85 billion cut by the sequester must be absorbed over seven months — six for many of the cuts in personnel that require 30 day furlough notices. That means for this fiscal year — right now when the economy is just getting some momentum — the cuts will have double the impact.
But the most important point is that economic growth — and its effect on the job market — occur at the margins. As anyone who has ever run a business can tell you, there is a huge difference between making a little every month and losing a little every month. The same is true for the economy.
There is a massive difference for our long-term economic prospects — and ironically the size of the deficit — if the economy is growing at 2 percent or 3 percent or if it is shrinking by even 1 percent.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the sequester will cost America 750,000 new jobs and about half a percent of annual GDP growth this year. That will in fact make us poorer and reduce the quantity of good and services that would have been otherwise been available for our people — and the loss compounds over the next decade.
In fact, with compounding, if the sequester continues to be a .5 percent drag on economic growth each year, by the tenth year, it will cost the American economy about $750 billion in lost goods and services annually — and our standard of living will be about 5 percent lower than it otherwise would have been.

Read more…

Gallup Politics’ Andrew Dugan reports that “Asian-Americans Solidly Prefer Democrats: Sixty-one percent of young adult Asian-Americans identify as/lean Democratic.” The polling numbers are “based on aggregated data from Gallup Daily tracking surveys conducted throughout 2012, including interviews with 6,465 Asian-Americans.”
Dugan’s report includes the usual breakdown, which shows 36 percent of Asian Americans self-i.d. as Democratic, 17 percent Republican and 46 percent Independent. But, “after probing independents for party leaning,” the numbers get even more favorable, with Dems at 57 percent, 28 percent for Republicans and 13 percent Independents. Adult Americans of all races were 45 percent Dems, 41 percent Republicans and 12 percent Independents, after factoring in “leaners.” Dugan adds:

Republicans did not perform well among Asian-Americans in the 2012 election, losing this group by an estimated 72% to 26% margin. Asian-Americans make up a small but growing portion of the total electorate, probably 3% in 2012. While both parties and the media have focused highly after the election on the similarly Democratically skewed Hispanic vote, these data are a reminder that the Republican Party suffers from a competitive problem with this minority bloc as well.
…Young Asians break more strongly Democratic, giving President Obama’s party a 61% to 24% advantage over the GOP…This advantage is not to be understated: a commanding 56% of adult Asian-Americans are between the ages of 18 and 34, making Asian-Americans as a whole the youngest of any U.S. racial or ethnic group Gallup analyzes. By comparison, 23% of adult non-Hispanic whites — the racial category most receptive to the Republican Party — are between those ages, versus 37% of non-Hispanic blacks and 47% of Hispanics.

The poll also has some intriguing numbers showing some strong support for Dems among the high-turnout seniors cohort, when leaners are factored in: Dems get 55 percent of Asian Americans over age 55, 40 percent of non-Hispanic white seniors, 84 percent of non-Hispanic Blacks over 55 and 59 percent of Latino seniors. The poll indicates that the age 35-54 cohort is the bigger problem for Dems.

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:
For the three decades plus that I have been in politics, I have been a passionate advocate of the clean money agenda, especially public financing of campaigns and the overturning of one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history, Citizens United. Multiple times over the years I have been a consultant on money in politics campaigns, and have always considered it a very high priority. As someone who has done high-level fundraising for many different presidential, Senate, and House campaigns, and has been involved in a great many policy battles where I was fighting the power of big money special interests, I know well the large and pernicious power of big money in politics. No cause should do more to unite the progressive movement than doing something serious about money in politics. There’s a new money in politics issue, though, that is splitting progressives right down the middle.
The new organization that people close to President Obama set up — OFA, Organizing for Action — is causing some consternation among some people in the movement to reform money in politics. My old friend and comrade in arms on the money in politics issue, Bob Edgar, President of Common Cause, said:
If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors. With its reported promise of quarterly presidential meetings for donors and ‘bundlers’ who raise $500,000, Organizing For Action apparently intends to extend and deepen the pay-to-play Washington culture that Barack Obama came to prominence pledging to end.
As much as I agree with Bob on his ideals and long-term goals, I think he is profoundly wrong this time around.

Read more…

As the country approaches the next self-imposed crisis deadline of the prolonged budget battle, politicians in Washington and state capitals across the country would do well to take note: swing voters have no appetite for the severe cuts that will result from the sequester, and they have little patience for the crisis-to-crisis approach to fiscal governance that has defined the last two years. And now, as they are poised to experience painful austerity measures induced by Washington, these voters give clear signals about what the policy priorities should be moving forward. They are also very clear about who should be the priority in any budget deal–the middle class, seniors, and working families, rather than the wealthiest and elites with access to the halls of power.
Many voters are on the edge financially and face immense economic pressure on a daily basis and they can ill-afford to experience these cuts of essential support. And as the country hurtles toward sequestration, all voters, certainly Democrats and independents, prioritize a balanced approach that does not put the burden on the backs of the most vulnerable, and instead invests in education, research, and infrastructure in a long-term and meaningful way.
To find out how these voters are thinking about the big fiscal choices ahead and the President’s second term policy agenda, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, along with Democracy Corps, the Roosevelt Institute, and Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, conducted dial meter and follow-up focus groups with 44 swing voters (including 11 unmarried women) in Denver, Colorado during the 2013 State of the Union address. These voters in Denver watched closely and responded positively to President Obama’s speech. The President’s supporters cheered his bolder approach and stronger tone. Even those who began the night more skeptical of the President left the speech hopeful that he will take action on some of his key policy proposals.
Methodology
Research was conducted on February 12, 2013 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps, Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund and the Economic Media Project. Participants were 44 swing voters from the Denver, Colorado metro area who split their votes evenly between Democratic and Republican candidates over the past several Presidential and Congressional elections. 25 women and 19 men split their 2012 votes for President based on Colorado statewide results, and split the 2010 votes evenly between U.S. Senate candidates (Bennett/Buck).
Dial testing focus group research was conducted using the Perception Analyzer powered by Dialsmith. Perception Analyzer measures participant opinions in a real-time, second-by-second methodology that provides instant and precise measurements of quantitative research within a qualitative audience. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research measured and examined several participant subsets including political identification, candidate preference and many demographic variables to aid analysis.

Alec Macgillis has a post up at The New Republic “Until this generation of people dies out,” subtitled “Think the Voting Rights Act is outdated? Come to South Carolina,” which the Supreme Court conservatives ought to read. Macgillis shares some observations by Dr. Brenda Williams, a family-practice internist in Sumter, South Carolina, who is helping disadvantaged people get their i.d. cards and whatever else is necessary for them to vote. Williams relates incidents of discrimination, including these examples:

…Amanda Wolfe, 28, not only did not have a birth certificate but did not know who her birth parents were. Naomi Gordon, 57, had a birth certificate but it misspelled her first name as “Lmnoie,” the apparent result of having been birthed by a midwife with sloppy or poor writing skills. Her brother Raymond Rutherford, who works at Wal-Mart, had his name misspelled as Rayman; his only photo ID was one he’d bought from the local liquor store in 1976 for $10. Junior Glover, 78, didn’t have a birth certificate; his name was recorded in a family Bible that was destroyed in a fire in 1989. Clyde Daniels had a birth certificate but no proof of his current address, as all his household records were in his wife’s name. He told Williams, “There’s nothing wrong with my mind, Dr. Williams, my wife is just a better businessperson.”

Multiply these accounts by tens of thousands, and you will get some idea of why Section 5 preclearance provision is still very much needed. As Macgillis explains:

Williams says that she helped well over 100 people get photo IDs (South Carolina officials estimate there are about 180,000 eligible voters in the state who lack a valid driver’s license). Rutherford, Gordon, Glover and one other person are still waiting for their corrected birth certificates. But with Williams’s help they have been able to get a qualifying voter registration card under language in the South Carolina law that exempts people facing a “reasonable impediment.” A federal court in Washington approved the South Carolina law in October only after state officials pledged to give an “extremely broad interpretation” to that exception.
That guarantee would not have come about, Williams notes, but for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which is why it would be a “terrific mistake” for the Supreme Court to do away with preclearance. She acknowledges that South Carolina and other southern states are hardly alone in pressing stringent voter ID laws–Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other northern states have done so as well. But her experience has shown, she says, that the Deep South remains in a league of its own in seeking to disenfranchise racial minorities. “South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union, for goodness’ sake, and now it’s talking about seceding again,” she said. “Without question, there is still a staunch racist atmosphere in the South. It gives me a bad feeling in my gut to say that but it’s true. We have a Confederate flag flying on the State House grounds, for God’s sake!”

It’s hard to see how the Supreme Court conservatives can credibly deny the unending struggle people of color face at the polls in the south. For the high court conservatives to invalidate this historic reform, which has done so much to democratize the states in question, would bring great shame on the legacy of the Roberts court.

Ed Kilgore’s “Ghosts at the CPAC” at The Washington Monthly is just the tonic for those who may be still suffering the delusion that “wonderful problem-solving, bipartisan-oriented Republican governors” will have their say at the CPAC conference. As Kilgore explains:

…Such stories never seem to mention the large number of Republican governors who don’t fit that description by any stretch of the imagination: e.g., Kansas’ Sam Brownback, Texas’ Rick Perry, Maine’s Paul LePage, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, Mississippi’s Phil Bryant, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Georgia’s Nathan Deal, and probably several others with whom I’m less familiar. A couple of others (John Kasich and Rick Scott) seem to have been elevated to Good Republican status because of the single act of accepting the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which is to say they finally decided they couldn’t continue to look a gigantic gift horse in the mouth…
…Among the 41 speakers currently being confirmed for the 2013 CPAC conference next month, you do not find the health-care heretics Kasich and Scott, or the serial heretics Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie. It is interesting that McDonnell’s successor as Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli (who has been at odds with McDonnell on a host of issues lately), will be there with bells on.
… If you are looking for a problem-solving “pragmatic conservative” who is willing to work with Democrats, CPAC offers pretty slim pickins. There’s Jeb Bush, Kelly Ayotte, Artur Davis, Carly Fiorina and Mitch McConnell, if you think any of them qualify, cheek by jowl with Alan West, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Wayne Lapierre, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, among others…

As Kilgore concludes, “There will be much howling at the moon, and maybe some “reform” talk–you know, of the sort Cruz and Jindal inspire, based on ethnically diverse howling at the moon, done more clearly and with better technology. That’s the ticket!”

Ed Kilgore and George Lakoff have a couple of well-stated insights on why the now dominant right flank of the GOP is making positive noises about bringing the crazy with respect to the sequester. First Lakoff from HuffPo:

…Ultra-conservatives…believe that Democracy gives them the liberty to seek their own self-interests by exercising personal responsibility, without having responsibility for anyone else or anyone else having responsibility for them. They take this as a matter of morality. They see the social responsibility to provide for the common good as an immoral imposition on their liberty.
Their moral sense requires that they do all they can to make the government fail in providing for the common good. Their idea of liberty is maximal personal responsibility, which they see as maximal privatization — and profitization — of all that we do for each other together, jointly as a unified nation.
They also believe that if people are hurt by government failure, it is their own fault for being “on the take” instead of providing for themselves. People who depend on public provisions should suffer. They should have rely on themselves alone — learn personal responsibility, just as Romney said in his 47 percent speech. In the long run, they believe, the country will be better off if everyone has to depend on personal responsibility alone…Moreover, ultra-conservatives do not see all the ways in which they, and other ultra-conservatives, rely all day every day on what other Americans have supplied for them. They actually believe that they built it all by themselves.

At The Washington Monthly Kilgore observes,

…I’m not among those who think the moans emanating from various trees struck by sequester lightning will necessarily convince congressional Republicans to back off and cooperate with Democrats in fixing selected appropriations levels when the continuing resolution runs out next month.
But there’s a long-term effect this rolling fiasco could produce that is worth keeping in mind. The central chimera of American politics at present is that a stable (if slim) majority of voters dislike government spending in the abstract, but resist reductions in almost every identifiable category of government spending one they become concrete. This is why so many Democrats talk tough on the budget deficit even as they contend that austerity policies hurt the economy and that domestic safety-net programs and discretionary investments are essential to the long-term strength of the country. And this is why Republicans are willing repeatedly to bring the country to a standstill to press their repeated demands that Democrats propose “entitlement reforms” even as Republicans pose as the heroes who will ensure there is never a provider claim on Medicare that’s not paid in full.
… The only people who will be pleased by the sequester are ideologues who view the beneficiaries of public-sector programs as “takers,” and who actively enjoy their pain. That these people happen to form the conservative base of the GOP is not going to enhance their reputation one single bit.

There is not a lot of room for sanity to prevail in the GOP, either in terms of time or in current Republican inclinations. While neither party will look very good if the sequester kicks in, one may be betting the ranch on pullling an inside straight.