In their article, “Unions Are Necessary to Rebuilding Our Middle Class,” at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, David Madland and Nick Bunker write,

Over the past several decades, the decline in the unionization rate tracks almost perfectly with the decline in the share of income going to the middle class…According to our previous research, a 10 percentage point increase in union membership would translate into an extra $1,479 per year for the average middle-class household, whether or not that household includes union members–about the same effect as boosting college graduation rates by the same margin.

The next time Democrats get a working congressional majority, restoring the American labor movement as a force for economic security should be considered an imperative priority, not only for the good of American workers, but also for the future of the Democratic party.

At The Washington Monthly, TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore flags and comments on Nate Cohn’s “must-read” New Republic article “Why Romney’s Money Advantage is No Game-Changer,” noting:
…You can expect Team Mitt’s closing ad barrage to be even more negative and mendacious than it’s already been. Other than maybe a loud ‘n’ proud defense of the Ryan Budget that would lock the slippery Mitt into a clear post-election agenda (which pretty clearly ain’t happening), the GOP base most wants a level of anti-Obama savagery that matches their own feelings. And it may be the only course of action with a chance of dislodging an unusually high number of undecided voters. Get ready for some Hateball.

A teaser from Cohn’s post:

There’s no way to be sure whether Obama will benefit from superior turnout, let alone whether it would overwhelm Romney’s advantage on the air. But there’s not much cause to presume that Romney’s air campaign will pulverize Obama into defeat, either. The historical effects of ad spending are relatively meager, views of the president are deeply entrenched, and voters have already been exposed to a full presidential campaign’s worth of advertisements. Even in the plausibly competitive states where Team Romney ran uncontested advertisements, millions of dollars do not appear to have put the states into play. Given that Team Obama maintains a lead after being outspent by a two-to-one margin for two months, there is no reason to assume that a deluge of advertisements will hand Romney the lead in the race’s final hours.

Read the rest of Kilgore’s post right here.

It’s unlikely that Romney’s ‘Meet the Press’ flip-floppage about Obamacare provisions and subsequent walkback surprised many observers. Indeed, the shocker would be if he took a strong position and held it for longer than a day or two. TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore sums up the GOP nominee’s latest flailing about in his aptly-titled post, “Mendacity is Romney’s Pre-Existing Condition” at The Washington Monthly:

To the surprise of no one who has been following Romney’s astonishingly twisted path on health care policy, staff were soon dispatched to “clarify” what Mitt meant, and it’s sure not what he implied on MTP: he’s confident the markets will offer policies covering young adults under their parents’ plans, and he’ll ensure some kind of coverage to people with pre-existing conditions who haven’t let their coverage lapse (a slice of the population largely covered under existing law); if his past statements are any indication, this will wind up meaning that such folk would be covered under the kind of crappy state risk pool plans that already provide poor coverage at crazy high prices.

As Kilgore concludes, “…this is one area of public policy where absolutely no one from Left to Right has any reason to believe a word he is saying.” You can read the rest of Kilgore’s post right here.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’ TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira shows the stark contrast between the conservative strategy for cutting the deficit and the views of the public:

It seems conservatives’ first approach to reducing the deficit is going after Social Security and Medicare. And their very last approach is getting rid of tax breaks for the rich. But it’s always worth pointing out how diametrically opposed this is to the public’s approach.
A recent Washington Post/Kaiser poll asked respondents their views on various ways of reducing the deficit. By an overwhelming 65-33 margin, they favored raising taxes on households earning $250,000 or more as a way of reducing the deficit.
But respondents’ views were quite different on reducing Social Security or Medicare benefits. They opposed these approaches to deficit reduction by an 82-17 margin and a 77-21 margin respectively.

As Teixeira concludes, “The public’s views could not be clearer: Tax cuts for the rich are on the table; cutting Social Security and Medicare are not. End of story.”

The Nation’s Brentin Mock reports on a new study, “Bullies at the Ballot Box” by Common Cause and Demos, which merits the attention of everyone concerned about the abuse of voting rights. As Mock reports,

…Common Cause and Demos released a report called “Bullies at the Ballot Box” that raises awareness about groups determined to challenge voters at the polls, even at risk of intimidating voters…The “Ballot Bullies” report examines laws around challenging voters in ten states, looking at how well or bad voters are protected from pre-Election Day voter registration challenges that can lead to reckless purging, voter caging, voters’ being challenged at the polls on Election Day and obnoxious behavior by poll watchers. According to the report, Florida and Pennsylvania have some of the worst voter protection laws, yet these are pivotal states that hold tremendous sway in the upcoming presidential elections. True the Vote has a substantial presence in Florida and has pressed hard for Governor Rick Scott’s reckless purging program there.

Warning about the bullying tactics targeting people of color of a group called ‘True the Vote,’ and “their voter-stalking Tea Party co-signers across the nation,” Mock quotes from the Report:

As we approach the 2012 elections, every indication is that we will see an unprecedented use of voter challenges. Organizers of True the Vote claim their goal is to train one million poll watchers to challenge and confront other Americans as they go to the polls in November. They say they want to make the experience of voting “like driving and seeing the police following you.” There is a real danger that voters will face overzealous volunteers who take the law into their own hands to target voters they deem suspect. But there is no place for bullies at the ballot box…With comments about the “illegal alien vote” and “the food stamp army,” King Street Patriots and their allies have created a climate of fear that voter fraud is rampant in minority precincts and used that fear to justify their discriminatory targeting of poll-watching efforts–again, without evidence to support the targeting.

Mock adds that “The King Street Patriots is the Houston-based Tea Party group that gave birth to True the Vote and its spawn of poll harassers around the United States.”
it’s good that voter suppression tactics like restrictive identification laws and reducing early voting opportunities have been getting more media coverage than ever. But all signs point toward an unprecedented level of voter intimidation and harassment on election day, as well as an escalation of Republican-inspired “caging” scams. Democrats and progressives need to be prepared to deal with it. Toward that end, we strongly urge everyone who cares about the integrity of American democracy to read the excellent, exhaustive report on “Bullies at the Ballot Box,” by Liz Kennedy, Tova Wang, Anthony Kammer, Stephen Spaulding and Jenny Flanagan.

Sometimes two blog items are so amusing when placed together that any additional commentary is unnecessary.
Here’s item one, a memorandum to interested parties from Neil Newhouse, Romney for President Pollster

Targeted Campaign: The Romney-Ryan campaign is running deeply local and targeted efforts in each of the states focusing on the voter groups that will make the difference on Election Day. Anyone asserting a “one-size-fits-all-campaign” effort is being put forward is simply misinformed, as evidenced by the 15 different ads released by the Romney Ryan campaign this past Friday and now running in nine states, including Wisconsin.

And here’s item Two: Andrew Sullivan commenting at the Daily Beast

…Above is a screenshot of the 15 new ads the Romney campaign is now airing in the eight core battleground states, each following an almost identical formula that hits Obama on economic issues tailored to each state. Every ad begins with the same cut from Romney’s convention speech:

This president can ask us to be patient. This president can tell us it was someone else’s fault. But this president cannot tell us that you’re better off today than when he took office

Then the ads pivot into state-specific claims:

Here in [state], we’re not better off under President Obama. [list of problems Obama is implied to be responsible for].
Romney’s plan? [list of generic GOP solutions], create [number] new jobs for [state].

The issues vary by state but include defense spending/national security, low home values, energy policy, the deficit, unemployment rates, government regulation, and trade/China. Some examples: In ads for CO, FL, NC, OH and VA, the Romney campaign says Obama’s “defense cuts will weaken national security and threaten [large #] of [state] jobs.”

The following, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
I really enjoyed the last two weeks of party conventioneering, and not just because I’m a political junkie. I mostly enjoyed them because I am a Democrat, and I thought we thoroughly won the convention wars. Christie was too much of a blowhard, Ryan got caught in too many lies, Romney was too robotic, and Clint was too distracting for the Republican message to sink in. Democrats had better speakers, a more credible message, and I think we won the values debate.
However, I think we also missed an opportunity to widen the gap and seal the deal, and I think this race will be close as nails right down to the end as a result. When the economy is as tough as this one is, the anti-incumbent party always has an edge, and when you add in a big money gap, it worsens the odds even more. I still believe in the end we will win this thing due to a better message and a great field operation, but it is going to be tough as nails all the way.
The opportunity we missed was to give voters a better education and more context on why the economy went bad and has stayed as bad as it is, and to lay out a big ideas plan for how to fix things for the long haul. We did a great job on many things- reminding voters that the Republicans got us into this mess in the first place, framing the values debate as lifting everyone up vs. you are all on your own, making great arguments as why our policies are so much better than theirs (and why theirs are terrible), and telling the story of President Obama’s character. But without more context of how things got messed up and why they have been slow to come back, the question in many voters’ minds is still there: yeah, things were bad when Obama got here but why are they still so bad? What Democrats should have done is to go beyond blaming the Republicans for the great recession, and tell the story of the villain behind it all, the Wall Street guys (including, yes, Bain Capital) who manipulated markets, got us all into trouble, and then blocked bigger reforms. Elizabeth Warren in her remarkable speech did a great job of beginning to tell that story, but one speech wasn’t enough.
With that context told, Obama could have gone on with greater credibility to then lay out some substance, Clinton-style, on how we were going to build an economy for the long term based on the middle class instead of wealthy special interests. He had pieces of a plan, some good nuggets, in his speech, but it didn’t feel like a deep, comprehensive plan that would bring the middle class out of its misery.
But no use crying over spilt milk. The Obama team made a different decision than I would have, and who knows, they may be right- a lot of what they did in that convention clearly worked. The question moving forward is what to do now.

Read more…

Lots of great speeches last night. But just in case you missed this unique stem-winder from Governor Jennifer Granholm, enjoy this clip from her address to the convention:

The following, by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The obvious, out-front effects of the post-Citizens United world of political spending are obvious for everyone to see: the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of extra advertising by secretive unaccountable organizations. But as irritating and nefarious as all that is, the hidden effects may be even worse.
Big money has always been a huge factor in politics, of course, with the people who could write the checks and raise the cash exerting a great deal of power in the system. But in the two election cycles since the Citizens United ruling, the power dynamic has shifted dramatically in three different ways, all of which are terrible for the future of our democratic system.
The first is the fear factor. Since Citizens United, I have begun having conversations with members of Congress on a regular basis who are factoring into their voting decisions the awareness that if they piss off a big money special interest, they will have to contend with a huge amount of cash — hundreds of thousands, even millions — being dumped into their race. Because so much of the money is not reported, they don’t know for sure when it might come or if it will come, but the fear of making someone with a bunch of money mad is so much bigger than it used to be. Because the amounts being thrown into these races are so much bigger than they used to be, and because so much more of the money is secretive, the fear factor has grown exponentially.
The second factor that is new is that the sheer amount in some of these super PACs and 501(c)(4) non-profits is making the small number of people who give the big money to them far, far more powerful than they have ever been before. There is no rule against politicians and campaigns having conversations with the people giving these huge amounts of money to these big outside super PACs, and it is documented that people like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have been in close touch with the Romney campaign. When they are writing the kinds of eight and even nine figure checks they are, I can guarantee that Romney is listening very closely to them, and not just on policy either. Longtime Republican insider Roger Stone has said, for example, that a source has told him that the Koch brothers told Romney they would give an extra $100 million to Republican super PACs and 501(c)(4)s if he would name Ryan to the ticket, and given how much money the Koch brothers would make off the Ryan budget, that is a completely believable story. The people giving these kinds of sums are having a massive influence on the politicians running for office.
The third factor is the Unaccountability factor. Back in the day when Karl Rove was working directly for candidate and President George W. Bush, he did plenty of dirty tricks and ran lots of sleazy ads, but he was at least held partly in check by Bush having to answer for what Rove did. Now Rove is a free agent. His ads don’t need to have even a semblance of truth, and his dirty tricks directly harm no candidate. Having all this completely unaccountable money flooding the system is rapidly eroding any sense of fairness and honesty in our politics.
I have been involved in presidential and congressional campaigns for almost 30 years, and I can tell you definitively that the changes in the system due to big money since the Citizens United decision are profound. The system is being corrupted to its core, and we had better wake up before our entire democratic way of life gets washed away by this flood of unaccountable money.