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 was a headline in the Washington Post on Sunday that completely summarizes the Republicans’ fondest dreams as well as the expectations of the D.C. establishment’s conventional wisdom: “Debt Crisis Expected to Define Obama’s Second Term.”
In the eyes of Republicans, the Washington Post, and all the other “Serious” people inside the Beltway, deficits, debt, and the control thereof are all that matters. Deficits are the biggest problem. Deficits are the only thing important. Deficits are the priority above all other things. Deficits are a crisis, an emergency, a disaster, a catastrophe. Deficits are at the center of every debate. We are broke, we are in desperate trouble. And on and on and on it goes. The fact that we are still close to 8 percent unemployment doesn’t matter — even though the main reason we got to a surplus in the Clinton years was because of full employment. The fact that schools, roads, bridges, highways, airports, our electrical grid need to be rebuilt doesn’t either. Our economy is still top-heavy with a few Too Big To Fail banks that could easily crash our economy again; there are still over 10,000,000 underwater homeowners keeping our housing sector and economy from coming back; the climate change disaster is bearing down on us like a giant tsunami wave; student loans, skyrocketing tuition rates, and youth unemployment are creating a toxic stew of debt for our young people. The backbone of our nation’s economy, our middle class, continues to be hollowed out by flat wages, rising prices for necessities, and not enough jobs. But none of this matters, according to the Republicans and their pundit friends, because the deficit is everything-everything-everything.
It’s a reminder of something I learned when I first came to D.C. a couple of decades ago: the conventional wisdom in D.C. is almost always wrong. I have to smile when I think back on all the times that practically the entire punditry have been dead wrong over the years, it really is comical. George H.W. Bush was a shoo-in for a second term after the first Gulf War; deficits were intractable and would dominate our policy landscape all through the ’90s; Bill Clinton was done as president after the Republicans took over Congress in 1994; the Democrats would lose 30 seats in the ’98 Lewinsky scandal-dominated cycle; Republicans would keep the House throughout the decade of the 2000s; Obama would never win reelection after the 2010 cycle. Every one of these big assumptions couldn’t have been proven to be more wrong. Indeed, it is hard to think of one big time over the last 20 years when the conventional wisdom turned out to be right. And it could easily be proven wrong over the next four years. This isn’t to say deficits won’t continue to be an issue — the House Republicans will make sure of that. And Democrats and progressives should certainly engage in the debate over how bring deficits down over the long run — there are certainly plenty of progressive ways to do that, including: cutting wasteful subsidies for agribusiness and oil companies, cutting wasteful military spending, imposing federal contracting reform, a tax on financial trading, a carbon tax, and many other ideas.
At the end of the day, though, it is Barack Obama who will determine whether, as the headline suggested, debt and deficits will define Obama’s second term. That will only be true if he lets it be.
Here’s the first important point: budget issues are not the only thing that matters when you control the executive branch. When you think about the things Presidents like Lincoln, TR, Truman, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and GW Bush did in spite of major opposition in Congress for significant parts of their term, you remember that between regulatory authority, the Department of Justice, executive orders, and the bully pulpit, Presidents have a great deal of running room to drive their own agenda and do big things. I have written about this before. Obama can use all the powers of the presidency and executive branch to get things done on behalf of the middle class, and to get the economy back on track, and if he was aggressive in using this power, no one at the end of his second term would be writing that debt or deficits defined his second term.
Another very big factor is whether Obama uses the political powers of his office to shape the debate in the country and help the Democrats win in 2014. How Clinton’s last two years, and therefore his second term, were viewed in retrospect had a lot to do with the fact that he emerged from the 1998 off-year elections triumphant rather than on the defensive and running scared. People close to the president tell me he is very excited and relieved to never have to run for office again, which is very understandable. But if he thinks he can now leave politics and partisanship aside, the Democrats will get swamped in 2014, and that will make his last two years really ugly. People have an aversion the word “political,” but I will go counter-intuitive here and say that Obama needs to embrace being political, to make the 2014 elections his last chance to make a statement on behalf of his agenda and on behalf of America’s middle class. If like Clinton, he comes out of that election triumphant, he will be able to keep the Republicans backpedaling his entire second term.
Obama needs to resist all the establishment cliches about being above politics, and he needs to resist his own feelings of relief that he never has to run again. In order to have a successful second term, a term where he aggressively sets the agenda and solves problems instead of just presiding over a tiny range of options hemmed in by an unhealthy obsession with the federal deficit, Obama needs to embrace politics and act as if he does have to stand for election again, because in a sense, in 2014 he does. He needs to think about what voters will care about; he needs to remember the political coalition that won him the election, the Democratic base and working class swing voters. If he fights for that coalition, and focuses on what they would want, he will be a lot stronger president and be able to define his second term the way he wants to define.
That “debt crisis expected to define Obama’s second term” headline will only come true if Obama passively lets it happen. He has the power of the executive branch, and the power of his majority coalition, to make things different if he is willing to use the power.

if you only feel like reading one article about the motivation for Jim DeMint’s sudden bail-out from his safe senate seat, Richard Eskow’s “Tea Party Quitter DeMint Cashes In, Exposing DC’s Dark Side” at HuffPo makes as much sense as any. From Eskow’s explanation:

DeMint’s leaving to run the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Reagan-era “think tank.” Is he a policy expert, a problem solver, a “thinker”? What was DeMint’s professional background before he entered politics?
Sales. DeMint ran a small marketing group (one to four employees, according to business databases) in Greenville, South Carolina.
That’s not as incongruous as it sounds. The Heritage Foundation is a marketing organization, founded by billionaires and corporations to provide cogent-sounding arguments — sales pitches, really — for policies which favor them at the public’s expense.
“Join Rush Limbaugh and nearly 700,000 other conservatives as a Member of The Heritage Foundation today,” chirps the “think tank’s” website — presumably because the first name that comes to mind when Americans hear the word “thinker” is Rush Limbaugh.
DeMint’s new job will undoubtedly consist of promoting far-right ideas, lobbying his fellow politicians, and raising money from millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.

And the kicker:

…DeMint should feel right at home at an organization co-founded by right-wing beer magnate Joseph Coors. According to Right Wing Watch other corporate donors include General Motors, Ford, Proctor and Gamble, Chase, Dow Chemical, Mobil Oil, and Smith Kline pharmaceuticals.
The job pays more than a million dollars a year.

Raw greed is never much of a shocker when assessing Republican motives, surprised though some tea party purists may be. Throw in the prospect of even stronger Democratic control in the senate, and you can understand why even a tea party ideologue would decide to grab some green while he can.

The three-dimensional map above by Princeton Professor Robert Vanderbei displays votes county by county, using purples, instead of just blues and reds. The creative display of his z-axis also provides a visual sense of how many voters turned out in the locations. As Kyle VanHemert’s article, “Infographic: A 3-D Map Of Where Votes Were Cast Most” at Fastcode design explains:

…In metropolitan areas, columns shoot up like neon skyscrapers; in flyover country, it’s typically more of a low-rise affair. But the effect is powerful: At a glance, Vanderbei’s map shows not just how the country voted, but where it voted, too.
And that means cities. The democratic lean of places like New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston shouldn’t be news to anyone, but seeing the results like this gives you a sense of just how overwhelming the number of voters really is in those densely populated urban centers.

…Vanderbei, a professor of operations research and financial engineering, made his first “Purple Area” visualization after the 2000 election. He had been reading USA Today when one of the typical “county-by-county, red-blue” graphics caught his eye. That map, he says, “made me wonder why anyone would paint a county-by-county map in such a way as to imply that a county has cast its vote for one candidate or the other. I live in a county that went about 52% republican and 48% democratic in that election. Painting the county red seemed highly misleading.”

Both GOTV and political ad strategists should find Vandebei’s map of considerable interest, since it does a good job of providing a visual sense of where you get the most bang per buck, at least in 2012. It would be even more interesting to see similar maps based on future demographic projections.
VanHemert notes the limitations of the map and continues:

…As long as we continue to operate under the Electoral College, state totals are really what matter in the end, and you’d be hard-pressed saying who won after a quick look at this map… But my biggest takeaway was that the Obama campaign’s ground game in Colorado must’ve really worked. Denver’s the country’s 23rd most populous city–smaller in population than Houston, Dallas, El Paso, and Fort Worth to the south in Texas–but its impressively tall (and solidly blue) stack represents a key source of votes in what was a hotly contested state.

Perhaps state and local Democratic party organizations can learn something useful from the Colorado and Denver Democratic organizations. The map also shows why Republicans have to invest their economic and human resources more widely to turn out their base. And if election by direct popular vote is ever enacted, you can see where most of the campaigning will take place.

The following article is excerpted from Laura Pereyra’s press release on the Center for American Progress report, “The Obama Coalition in the 2012 Election and Beyond” by TDS co-founding editor Ruy Teixeira and CAP Senior Fellow John Halpin
Today [December 4] the Center for American Progress released a report titled, “The Obama Coalition in the 2012 Election and Beyond” at an event with CAP’s Ruy Teixeira, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research’s Anna Greenberg, Organizing for America’s Jeremy Bird, the National Urban League’s Chanelle Hardy, the Asian American Justice Center’s Mee Moua, and National Council of La Raza’s Clarisa Martinez De Castro.
In 2011 and 2012, the Center for American Progress’ Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin correctly predicted that two large forces would determine the outcome of the election: the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states and the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate. In the end, with growing concern about the economy, the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women and secular voters once again came together to push President Obama to get to the 270 electoral votes needed for his reelection. Their final report of this election cycle examines exit poll data and county-level election results in the 12 most important battleground states to provide a detailed examination of the Obama coalition and its potential for future growth.
Additionally, Teixeira and Halpin’s new report also highlights what happens next and gives strategies that will harness the Obama coalition to sustain and achieve progressive policy change. The shifting demographic composition of the electorate has clearly favored Democrats and increased the relative strength of the party in national elections.
Moreover, this transition toward a new progressive coalition was possible because of the ideological shift of the American electorate, one in which voters are moving away from the Reagan-Bush era of trickled-down economics and social conservatism and toward the more pragmatic approach of the Clinton-Obama vision that includes strong governmental support for the middle class, public investments in education, infrastructure, a fairer tax system that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share, and more inclusive social policies.
Despite all that, politics is never pre-determined, and demographics alone will not deliver more progressive gains and achievements. The fragmented American constitutional system–coupled with the ideological unity of congressional Republicans–gives conservatives multiple veto points over progressive legislation as they control many state houses and governor’s mansions, increasing their ability to block federal action on matters such as health care and encouraging further attacks on public employees and benefits for the poor, and punitive social policies aimed at communities of color and gays and lesbians.
Teixeira and Halpin give the following suggestions based on what they know about the electorate and the ideological orientation of the country:

A coherent way must be found to harness the rising electorate of communities of color, young people, women, and professionals, along with economically populist white working class voters, to give strong and consistent support to a progressive policy vision to benefit all Americans.
It must be made clear to all Americans that in the progressive coalition, all voices are valued, all opinions are respected, and all ideas are taken seriously. Unlike the conservative coalition, progressives should seek to invite people in rather than push them out.
Progressives must find ways to become a more permanent social movement that organizes and engages a diverse group of Americans to advocate for government reforms and progressive and social and economic policies. Gearing up for highly expensive campaigns every four years will be insufficient for achieving progressive change.

President Obama and progressives have proven they can build a powerful and growing coalition to win elections. Now they must find ways to permanently engage a diverse cross-section of Americans in support of government policies and investments that will produce a stronger middle class with rising opportunities and personal freedoms for everyone.
To read the full report, click here.

Republicans are not citing public opinion data in support of their positions on tax hikes for the rich and raising Medicare’s age of eligibility, primarily because there isn’t any. In fact, the public strongly opposes their views on these two central issues at the heart of the fiscal showdown, as TDS Co-founding Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘:

…In the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, the public supported the idea of raising taxes on those with annual incomes of more than $250,000 by a thumping 60 percent to 37 percent majority.
The second: Raising the Medicare eligibility age is a no-no. In the same poll, the public rejected the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 by an overwhelming 67 percent to 30 percent margin.

As Teixeira concludes, “The public’s sentiments couldn’t be clearer. Let’s hope that despite the haste to cut a deal, policymakers give these sentiments the careful consideration they deserve.”

The following video clip by TDS Co-founding editor Ruy Teixeira is cross-posted from the Center for American Progress web page:

The following article is cross-posted from a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner e-blast:
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, has released the results and analysis of a poll conducted by GQR that shows a new, pro-marriage equality voting bloc is having a significant impact on elections and ballot initiatives across America.
Leading into the 2012 election cycle, marriage equality advocates lost 29 straight marriage equality referenda in a row, discounting the temporary win in Arizona. And yet, we went four for four on November 6th, bringing the total number of states that enjoy marriage equality to nine plus the District of Columbia. An analysis of HRC’s national post-election survey as well as state-level exit polling suggests several dynamics contributed to what is definitively a cultural sea change in this country.
To be sure, there was an energized progressive base in 2012. Barack Obama won in large measure because he garnered large margins among younger voters, people of color, unmarried women and, as we shall see, LGBT voters, enough to compensate for losing Independent voters by 6 points. Marriage equality prevailed in Minnesota, Maryland, Washington and Maine, in part, by rolling up huge margins among these same voters. Moreover, nationally, progressives attached much greater importance to the broader issue of gay rights than conservatives, a huge shift from prior election cycles.
This election also signals broader, cultural change in our country that foreshadow future success. HRC’s national post-election survey, like so many other recent public surveys, shows majority support for marriage equality (50 percent favor, 39 percent oppose) and a higher margin (+11) for marriage than for the President (+2). At the state level, support for equality in Maine grew among conservative leaning groups, in Maryland, support was solid among African Americans, and in Washington, a near majority of Independents favored marriage equality up from 33 percent in 2009.
In short, the tide has turned. What was considered extreme is now mainstream. Conservatives no longer have incentive to put marriage referenda on the ballot to goose right-wing turnout or make “the protection of marriage” a core theme in their campaign. It is no accident that Romney remained quiet on this issue after securing the nomination. Moreover, American voters reelected Obama knowing full well his stance on marriage, without any negative blowback. This is not to say, of course, that future challenges do not remain, but the time for playing defense is over.
Read the full memo with graphs here
Read HRC’s Press Release, “Marriage Voters” Take Center Stage in 2012 Votes.”

The following article by Democratic Strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The odds are increasing that President Obama and the Democrats will rout the Republicans in the current battle over the “fiscal cliff.”
I realize that all of the “wise men” of Washington are clamoring for a bi-partisan solution to fix the nation’s deficit — a “solution” that involves “shared sacrifice.” But the plain fact is that the deficit is not a bi-partisan problem. Democrat Bill Clinton left Republican George Bush surpluses as far as the eye could see.
Today’s deficit was caused when the Republicans cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and started two wars for which they refused to pay. The deficit got worse when Republican policies caused the financial markets and the economy to collapse in the Great Recession.
That was the Republican legacy inherited by incoming President Barack Obama. Now, after having saved the economy from falling into a depression, laid the groundwork for economic recovery and soundly won reelection, President Obama is poised to force Republicans to do what is critically necessary to right the nation’s fiscal situation: raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
And he is likely to be successful without yielding to Republican demands that much of the bill to close the federal deficit be paid by the still-struggling middle class.
The fact is that Obama and the Democrats are holding all the cards.
There are five reasons why Obama is likely to succeed:
1). The “fiscal cliff” is very different than the “debt ceiling.” In 2011, the Obama administration believed it was critically important to the economy to avoid a default on the nation’s debt.
In that standoff, the GOP held so many cards because many of its members were willing to allow the nation to go into default. They were like terrorists who are willing to blow up themselves — and everyone else — to make a political point.
As a result, the Obama administration had to use every tool it could to avoid yet another GOP-induced economic disaster. It was bargaining with a gun to its head. In the circumstances, the outcome was not bad for Democrats. Though the deal did not include increased revenue from the wealthy — and many key programs that benefit the poor and middle class took a hit — Democrats avoided disastrous permanent structural changes in Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. And they took the debt ceiling timebomb out of the GOP’s hands until after the fall elections.
Most importantly, they struck a deal that changed the battlefield for the next engagement to a much more advantageous time and place — after the elections when the Bush Tax cuts were about to expire by law.
It would not be an economic disaster for the country to go over the “fiscal cliff.” In fact, going over the cliff will only increase Democratic leverage to reach a deal which eliminates the dreaded “sequester,” avoids massive cuts, and most importantly raises taxes on the wealthy.
2). Expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts. If Congress takes no action at all — something the Republican Congress is very good at doing — all tax rates in America will go up to their Clinton-era levels at year’s end. The pressure on Republicans will then be enormous to vote yes on the Democratic bill to restore the Bush tax cuts for the 98% of the population that makes less than $250,000 per year — leaving wealthy Americans paying Clinton-era rates.
After the first of the year, Americans will start seeing an average of over $2,000 per year coming out of their paychecks in withholding. If the Republican leadership refuses to take up the Democratic tax measure, the GOP will be blamed by the voters for the tax increase; it’s that simple.
Once the Republican leadership in the House is forced to face reality and bring the bill to a vote, most Republicans will join Democrats in supporting the measure — whether or not it is coupled with any further “spending cuts.” Otherwise they will risk being attacked in the 2014 elections for voting against tax cuts for the middle class simply to protect tax breaks for people like Donald Trump.
The president has been clear he will veto any bill that extends the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy. In the end GOP lawmakers will have no choice but to fold.
3). Republicans are afraid to propose specific cuts to Medicare. Don’t get me wrong, Republicans want to destroy Medicare. But their proposal to do that — the Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare and convert it to a voucher program — was soundly discredited in the election.
The GOP understands the power and popularity of Medicare. Without any shame, it ran ad after ad in 2010 and 2012 accusing Obama and Democrats in Congress of “cutting” Medicare by $716 billion as part of ObamaCare. They were, of course, perfectly willing to ignore that benefits actually improved and that these “cuts” were really reductions of insurance company subsidies for the so-called “Medicare-Advantage” program and other forms of inefficiency and waste.
But the point is that the GOP understands that Medicare is very popular and the everyday voters don’t want to see it cut to fix the deficit. They understand its electoral power.
That’s why yesterday, when Obama administration representatives met with Republicans to present Obama’s bargaining position, the Republicans refused to say what additional cuts they wanted in Medicare as the price for tax increases. They demanded that the administration itself detail cuts they might be willing to accept. They want to be able to claim that they supported cuts in Medicare proposed by the Democrats.
Well that isn’t going to happen. Democrats have no interest in falling into that trap — or negotiating with themselves — even if they were willing to inflict economic pain on ordinary Americans to fix a deficit problem that ordinary people didn’t cause in the first place.
The Republican’s best hope for political cover when it comes to Medicare was some kind of bi-partisan panel or “grand bargain” negotiation. But by forcing the GOP to name its own price — to put its cards on the table in public — Obama has forced them to accept full political responsibility for cutting Medicare. That is a big problem for them.
And let’s be clear, the GOP understands that it is impossible for them to run a national mobilization to demand cuts in Medicare.
4). Obama has political momentum and public support. Obama and the Democrats just won major victories at the polls. Most Americans favor closing the deficit by raising taxes on the rich. Most Americans opposed closing the deficit by cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
And Obama plans to press this advantage by mobilizing the massive organization he created during the campaign. His allies have organized events all over America starting this weekend to demand action from GOP Members of Congress — rallying its forces around TheAction.org.
The Labor movement has joined the fight with issue ads, press events and thousands of phone calls to Congress.
Progressive organizations like MoveOn and Americans United for Change have swung into action.
Capitalizing on the momentum from his campaign victory, the President is poised to barnstorm around the country to mobilize support his demand that the taxes of ordinary Americans should not be held hostage to tax breaks for the rich.
5) The GOP base, on the other hand, is divided and dispirited. The Romney campaign and Republican operatives had — against all evidence — convinced them that they could and would win the fall elections. They were wrong. The long knives are out in the Republican Party.
Worse, the organizing principle uniting the Tea Party — ousting Obama — is gone. Many of the Tea Party faithful are unlikely to get too worked up about defending tax breaks for Donald Trump and Paris Hilton.
Even in the election campaign, it’s hard to argue that Republicans had a real unifying leader they could believe in and follow. Romney will not be remembered as in inspiring figure. But now they have no one. Does anyone expect to see John Boehner barnstorming the country?
A fundamental principle of warfare is that when you have them on the run, that’s the time to chase them.
Both the timing of the Lame Duck battle, and Obama’s willingness to press his advantage, have denied the Republicans the opportunity to regroup after their devastating election defeat. They are leaderless and disorganized. It’s hard to press a counter attack when you are in full retreat.
If the president and Democrats continue to press their advantage, history will remember the battle of the “Lame Duck Fiscal Cliff” as a rout.

The following post and video by Stan Greenberg are cross-posted from the Carville-Greenberg Memo:
Now that Minority Leader McConnell has admitted what Republicans want in order to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” James and I propose a deal: Democrats will no longer talk about “revenue enhancements” and will instead call them tax increases. In exchange, Republicans can no longer talk about “entitlement reforms” but must admit that they want to cut Medicare and Social Security. If we all start speaking honestly, the 2012 elections sent a very clear message about which side the American people prefer.

Victor Davis Hanson explaining Romney’s defeat:

Mitt Romney was a glittering Sir Galahad who, given his impressive horse, armor, and lance, along with his decency and piety, assumed that he could win a joust in a fair charge against the other team’s knight. Instead he waded into a sudden fray where he was swarmed, mobbed, cut off, pulled off his magnificent steed, had his matchless armor yanked away by a mob of foot soldiers, and then, once stripped clean, was clubbed and maced beyond recognition.