In the New Republic, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has an important analysis of recent polling data as it relates to generational differences, illuminating a clear path to re-election of President Obama. As Teixeira sets the stage:

…President Obama has astoundingly consistent support from Americans less than 30 years old, the so-called Millennial generation. In a recent Pew survey, this cohort favored Obama over Romney by 24 points, 61-37. The generation least likely to support Obama, on the other hand, is the “Silent generation”–the generational group slighter older than Baby Boomers, and the group now dominant among the ranks of seniors. He trails Mitt Romney in this generation by 13 points, 41-54. This is the same generation that moved so sharply against Democrats in the 2010 election, contributing heavily to the GOP wave that swept the country.
Those polling numbers clearly dictate an electoral strategy: What Obama needs to do is perform a kind of generational pincer movement on the GOP, driving up support and turnout among the Millennial generation while breaking into GOP support among the Silent generation. There’s also a straightforward way for him to accomplish both goals.

Even better, President Obama’s campaign is on the right track for implementing this strategy, as Teixeira explains:

Fortunately, the White House already seems to be thinking along these lines. On the Millennial side, Obama’s recent Osawatomie speech may be read as an opening bid to establish a campaign narrative with special appeal to this generation. Millennials are exceptionally sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement and its goals. Obama’s attack on inequality and the way that an unfair economy thwarts economic mobility strikes a very responsive chord among these voters.

The millennials also want government to play a “strong role” in the economic recovery, explains Teixeira. “…Indeed, they believe spending should be a higher priority for the federal government than deficit reduction.” They want more government services and “a whopping two-thirds of this generation believes the Affordable Care Act should either be expanded or left as is, rather than repealed.”
To win a healthy share of high-turnout seniors, Teixeira argues also that President Obama should “draw a very strong contrast between his approach and that of the GOP, which proposes to replace the current Medicare system with underfunded vouchers.” He notes that 64 percent of “silent generation” voters prefer keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits “as they are,” while only 27 percent say reducing the budget deficit should be more of a priority. Crunching the latest poll number, Teixeira adds:

This pincer movement will be key to Obama’s chances, both nationally and in a wide variety of target states. Nationally, he could break-even or a bit worse among middling age groups (30-64) but still win if he carries 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly more than he loses seniors, as he did in 2008, since the two groups tend to be of roughly similar size in presidential elections. But if he carries 18 to 29-year-olds by significantly less than he loses seniors, as congressional Democrats did in 2010, he will lose. Hence the need for both parts of the pincer movement.

In bellwether Ohio, for example, Teixeira notes that “Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds with 61 percent against John McCain’s 26 percent in 2008, while losing seniors 44-55. Both groups were 17 percent of Ohio voters.” If Obama can split the 30-64 year-old age group and carry a strong majority of the youth vote, argues Teixeira, he should take Ohio’s electoral votes. As for Virginia, “Obama carried 18 to 29-year-olds by 60-39 while losing seniors 46-53 in Virginia. Keep that relative relationship, fight the GOP candidate to a draw among middling age groups, and the state is his.” As Teixeira concludes,

All over the country, in other words, from the Midwest to the New South to the new swing states of the Southwest, Obama’s generational pincer movement could be key to his electoral prospects. Motivate and inspire youth while giving seniors second and third thoughts about the GOP. It’s a good game plan and Obama’s already made an excellent start at implementing it.

With such a favorable intersection of demographics and polling in place, It’s critical that Obama’s messaging and turnout mobilization rise to the challenge. With that assured, Dems can hold the white house and do better than expected in the House and Senate.

There’s an insightful read at CenteredPolitics.com, “The Moderate Case Against Republicans In 2012” by Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin. Regarding the recent GOP cave on extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut, the authors point out:

…The political importance of the Republican faux-pas is tremendous, because it brings into crystal clear focus, an accurate picture of the positions of the two parties. The House Republicans over-reached and rejected a short term deal between President Obama and the Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate that passed the Senate with 89 votes including 39 Republicans, because being non-compromisers has become the definition of who they are.
…Ill timed during the season of good cheer, the House Republicans snatched discord from the jaws of harmony in the Senate, rejecting a compromise and issuing new ultimatums and threats that put them so far from the center of American opinion that they were getting public criticism from all quarters, including John McCain, the Wall Street Journal, and Carl Rove.
The whole mess serves to make something clear to casual observers of the goings on in Washington (that is, most voters) what close observers have known all year – Republicans have been blocking all attempts at compromise. If it was not clear that Republicans were causing the rise in conflict in Washington after two budget standoffs and a showdown over raising the debt ceiling, it should be painfully obvious now. Like the Year-in-Review wrap-ups, Republicans have taken a year’s worth of political brinksmanship and repeated the whole pattern in the span of just a few days.

The authors roll out the appeal to political moderates in a succinct outline that should also help MSM reporters see through the false equivalency smokescreen:

A. Republicans have their strongly held views,
B. Democrats have their strongly held views,
C. Democrats have offered to split the difference, or go further toward their adversary’s position in order to get compromise and progress, while
D. Republicans have rejected all compromise
E. Therefore we have not principled gridlock but instead we have partisan road block caused by the intransigence of not both political parties, but rather just one, the Republicans.

President Obama has taken a lot of heat from progressives for “a pattern of appeasement with Republicans,” note the Rivlins. “Throughout a year filled with standoffs, showdowns, and threatened government shut downs, the President seems always to be offering more concessions while the Republicans seem to keep adding demands…”
Moderates, on the other hand, have expressed frustration with the President, who has “failed to exhibit a mastery of negotiation leverage” and “for negotiating badly and giving compromise a bad name.” The authors offer what may prove to be a breakthrough insight for Democratic leaders:

Republicans are good at bluffing but they would agree to almost anything if pressed to avoid a government shutdown because they know it would end in embarrassing defeat for Republicans as Newt Gingrich learned in 1995-1996.

If they are right, and the white house takes advantage of it, 2012 may yet shake out much better for Democrats than many now believe. As the Rivlins conclude:

Liberals and moderates can agree that Obama has paid a very high price, but he has purchased a strong argument against Republicans in the 2012 election. If you want to see the parties work through their differences, and come together in a spirit of compromise (and a strong majority of Americans do want this) then vote for President Obama and other Democrats because Republicans have rejected every Democratic offer of compromise…
…This newest episode, where Republicans and Democrats negotiated the compromise deal only to see other Republicans reject it again should remove any doubt for moderates who would like to see America’s political leaders getting along and getting their work done. If you are a moderate who wants to see Republicans and Democrats working together, vote out the Republicans this time around. The Democrats have been trying to work across party lines. The Republicans have been blocking progress.

The Republicans’ obstructionist posturing and mismanagement of the extension of payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, followed by the House GOP leadership’s cave, have made it embarrassing for thinking moderates to express support for them. With House GOP leaders still groveling at the feet of the tea party, it seems unlikely that they will learn the lesson and begin negotiating in good faith. For all but the most “low information” of political moderates, their game is now done.

A new Democracy Corps/Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF) survey shows incumbents in 60 Republican-held battleground districts badly out of touch with voters — especially with the Rising American Electorate (RAE). These voters–unmarried women, African Americans and Hispanics voters and youth–account for a majority of the nation’s voting eligible population (53 percent). They drove progressive victories in 2006 and 2008, delivering 69 percent of their vote to congressional Democrats in national surveys. Opportunities in 2012 for progressive candidates would be much broader if the RAE vote was consolidated and achieved those historic support levels.
Voters, including the RAE, believe Republicans are out-of-touch on taxes and the deficit and prefer a more cooperative approach to governance from the Republican majority, rather than a strategy of obstruction and delay.[1] As a result, this class of battleground Republican incumbents enters the election year from a position of profound weakness. Electorally, they are held under 50 percent in a named trial heat for Congress; less than 40 percent commit to reelecting their incumbent “because he/she is doing a good job and addressing issues that are important to us.”
Unlike the 2008 election where the RAE posted record turnout, the RAE in this survey seems unengaged and uninspired compared to other voters in this electorate. A serious push among these voters will further weaken the Republican hold on the battleground and call into question current conventional wisdom that the House majority is out of play in 2012.
Much of the challenge for Democrats is highlighting the contrast between the two parties. Voters in the RAE deliver higher support for President Obama and the Democrats than other voters; there is less differentiation in their support for Republicans. Notably, after voters hear balanced criticism of both sides, key segments of the RAE, most notably unmarried women, move to the Democrats.
The Out-of-Touch Majority
Republican incumbents in these battleground districts stand crosswise with voters on the core issues of this election, most notably, taxes, the deficit and, more broadly, their relationship with the Obama administration. This disconnect is amplified further among voters in the Rising American Electorate.
Real legislation has ground to a halt in Washington to the growing frustration of the country. A 60 percent majority of voters in these Republican-held districts want their incumbent “to try and work with President Obama to address the country’s problems,” this jumps to 66 percent among voters in the RAE. Just a third (34 percent; 27 percent in the RAE), want their Representative to block the President.
These House incumbents are woefully out-of-touch on the historic debate over taxes. A 57 percent majority wants “to vote for a Member of Congress who will ask the wealthiest to pay a greater share of taxes to address our problems and the deficit.” By nearly a 2:1 margin, RAE voters violate Republican orthodoxy and argue for higher taxes on the wealthy.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from Huffpo.
In recent American politics, every major shift in political momentum has resulted from an iconic battle.
In 1995 the tide of the 1994 “Republican Revolution” was reversed when Speaker Newt Gingrich and his new Republican House majority shut down the government in a battle over their attempts to cut Medicare to give tax breaks to the rich (sound familiar?). The shutdown ended with — what pundits universally scored — as a victory for President Clinton. That legislative victory began Clinton’s march to overwhelming re-election victory in 1996.
In 2010, Democrats passed President Obama’s landmark health care reform. But they lost the battle for public opinion — and base motivation. That turned the political tide that had propelled President Obama to victory in 2008 and ultimately led to the drubbing Democrats took in the 2010 midterms.
The Republican leadership’s collapse in the battle over extending the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits could also be a turning point moment that shifts the political momentum just as we enter the pivotal 2012 election year.
Here’s why:
1) Since the president launched his campaign for the American Jobs Act, he has driven Congressional Republicans into a political box canyon with very few avenues of escape. The jobs campaign has made it clearer and clearer to the voters that the “do nothing Republican Congress” bears responsibility for preventing the President from taking steps that would create jobs.
Until the payroll tax/unemployment victory, the president had failed to persuade the Republican dominated Congress to pass any provision of the bill — save one aimed at helping veterans. But the polling shows that the public has become more and more disgusted by Congressional intransigence. Since 64% of Americans believe that Congress is run entirely by the Republicans (and from the stand point of stopping legislation it is managed entirely by Republicans), the overall unhappiness with Congress has translated into distain for the “do nothing Republican Congress.”
Congress now has lower approval ratings (11% in the latest poll) than at any time in modern history. Senator Michael Bennett presented data on the Senate floor that showed that Congress is less popular than BP during the gulf oil spill. It is way less popular than Nixon during Watergate. About the same number of Americans have a positive view of Congress as support America becoming a Communist nation. That makes it the worst time imaginable for House Republicans to throw a political tantrum that threatened to increase the tax burden of everyday Americans by $40 per paycheck — $1,000 next year — right after Christmas.
Last weekend, the Senate Republican Leader thought he had blazed a path for Republicans that led out of that political box canyon — at least in so far as the extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment. The bipartisan agreement to temporarily extend the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance seemed to give Republicans a face saving option that — at least temporarily — took them off the political hook. But Tea Party stalwarts in the House threatened to mutiny if Boehner went along — and all week — there the House Republicans sat, at the bottom of that canyon with no escape.
House Republicans bet that the president and Democrats were desperate enough to extend the payroll tax and unemployment that they could hold those provisions hostage the way they had held hostage the debt ceiling in August. In an act of unfathomable political ineptitude, they failed to appreciate that this time, Democrats occupied vastly higher political ground.
Failure to continue the payroll tax holiday would have immediately decreased the take home pay of 160 million Americans. By refusing to agree to the compromise that had passed the Senate with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, House Republicans made it certain that they would have been held responsible.
They might as well have hung out a huge flashing sign in Times Square that said: “Republicans are responsible for cutting your take home pay and eliminating your unemployment benefits.”
Even the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal called on them to throw in the towel.
Democrats had every incentive to hang tough. In the end by refusing to take the escape hatch opened for them by McConnell, the nation watched House Republicans dragged kicking and screaming to support the president’s popular payroll and unemployment extensions.
The outcome of the battle was unambiguous. No one could doubt who stood up for the economic interests of the middle class and who did not. And no one could doubt who won and who lost.
National Journal reported that, “House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the two percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.”
In the end, Republican intransigence transformed a moment that would have been a modest win for President Obama into an iconic victory.
2) Strength and victory are enormous political assets. Going into the New Year, they now belong to the president and the Democrats.
One of the reasons why the debt ceiling battle inflicted political damage on President Obama is that it made him appear ineffectual — a powerful figure who had been ensnared and held hostage by the Lilliputian pettiness of hundreds of swarming Tea Party ideological zealots.
In the last few months — as he campaigned for the American Jobs Act — he has shaken free of those bonds. Now voters have just watched James Bond or Indiana Jones escape and turn the tables on his adversary.
Great stories are about a protagonist who meets and overcomes a challenge and is victorious. The capitulation of the House Tea Party Republicans is so important because it feels like the beginning of that kind of heroic narrative.
Even today most Americans believe that George Bush and the big Wall Street banks — not by President Obama — caused the economic crisis. Swing voters have never lost their fondness for the President and don’t doubt his sincerity. But they had begun to doubt his effectiveness. They have had increasing doubts that Obama was up to the challenge of leading them back to economic prosperity.
The narrative set in motion by the events of the last several weeks could be a turning point in voter perception. It could well begin to convince skeptical voters that Obama is precisely the kind of leader they thought he was back in 2008 — a guy with the ability to lead them out of adversity — a leader with the strength, patience, skill, will and resoluteness to lead them to victory.
That now contrasts with the sheer political incompetence of the House Republican leadership that allowed themselves to be cornered and now find themselves in political disarray. And it certainly contrasts with the political circus we have been watching in the Republican Presidential primary campaign.
3) This victory will inspire the dispirited Democratic base.
Inspiration is the feeling of empowerment — the feeling that you are part of something larger than yourself and can personally play a significant role in achieving that goal. It comes from feeling that together you can overcome challenges and win.
Nothing will do more to inspire committed Democrats than the sight of their leader — President Obama — out-maneuvering the House Republicans and forcing them into complete capitulation.
The events of the last several weeks will send a jolt of electricity through the progressive community.
The right is counting on progressives to be demoralized and dispirited in the coming election. The president’s victory on the payroll tax and unemployment will make it ever more likely that they will be wrong.
4) When you have them on the run, that’s the time to chase them.
The most important thing about the outcome of the battle over the payroll tax and unemployment is that it shifts the political momentum at a critical time. Momentum is an independent variable in any competitive activity — including politics.
In a football or basketball game you can feel the momentum shift. The tide of battle is all about momentum. The same is true in politics. And in politics it is even more important because the “spectators” are also the players — the voters.
People follow — and vote — for winners. The bandwagon effect is enormously important in political decision-making. Human beings like to travel in packs. They like to be at the center of the mainstream. Momentum shifts affect their perceptions of the mainstream.
For the last two years, the right wing has been on the offensive. Its Tea Party shock troops took the battle to Democratic members of Congress. In the mid-terms Democrats were routed in district after district.
Now the tide has turned. And when the tide turns — when you have them on the run — that’s the time to chase them.
We won’t know for sure until next November whether this moment will take on the same iconic importance as Clinton’s battle with Gingrich in 1995. But there is no doubt that the political wind has shifted. It’s up to progressives to make the most of it.

If the GOP wingnuts thought they were going to get any traction with their various proposals to gut Medicare and Social Security, they are living in political fantasyland. As TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

Start with this finding from a recent Pew poll: 58 percent thought it was more important to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are rather than take steps to reduce the budget deficit (35 percent).
In the same poll, 59 percent thought it was more important to avoid any future cuts in Social Security benefits, compared to 32 percent who thought it was more important to avoid any future Social Security tax increases for workers and employers.

The public also has a very low tolerance for wingnut schemes to screw around with eligibility requirements for the two programs, particularly the age of recipients:

Nor does the public like the idea of raising the age you can receive benefits for either Social Security or Medicare. By 59-39, the public opposes raising the age you can receive Social Security benefits and, by an almost identical 58-38, they oppose raising the age at which you can receive Medicare benefits.

Teixeira concludes that conservatives who “confuse the views of their base with the views of the broader public…could pay a significant price come next election.”

Democrats are recruiting an impressive number of strong candidates to run for office across the country. But at this historical moment, grass roots progressives — the OWS-friendly “99 percenters” — have a particulalry favorable political climate in which to run for office and do very well, argues The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuval in her column, “99%er Champions.”

As we head into a presidential election year, I’d wager a lot the mainstream media will focus their attention on the horse race for the White House and other prime time campaigns. But this is a moment–when we are seeing a real shift in our politics, from Wisconsin to Ohio to Occupy–to be recruiting and supporting what I’d call 99 percenter candidates: those who share the core convictions of Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent movement.
This space that’s been opened by movements provides a real opportunity now for a progressive politics that is strong at the grassroots and strong in principle, and that finds champions inside an electoral system badly in need of reform–reform that will only come if we can elect enough “inside” progressives to help our “outside” movements make it happen.
So it’s great to see candidates like Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono on the campaign trail talking about issues like democracy and equality. It’s also good to know Progressive Majority, along with allies like the New Organizing Institute, Rebuild the Dream and Democracy for America, has pledges from over 1,500 candidates to run in 2012.

Vanden Heuval spotlights Norman Soloman, a Democratic candidate for congress (CA-6) and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, who has been endorsed by CA-based progressive leaders and activists, as an excellent example of the kind of candidate who meets “the need to fuse movement energy and electoral politics”:

The vision of Solomon…is aligned with what is now so central to our political discussion and must remain so: action on jobs and income inequality; ending the wars and investing those resources at home; sane and fair taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street; protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; ending our dependence on fossil fuels and preventing catastrophic climate change.
…”I used to say that having a strong progressive movement was much more important than who was in office, but now I’d say that what we really need is a strong progressive movement and much better people in office,” he said. “Having John Conyers, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McGovern, Raúl Grijalva, Lynn Woolsey in Congress is important. We need more of those sorts of legislators as part of the political landscape.”

“It’s just common sense that progressives who come out of movements have a far better chance of staying connected to the Occupy movement energy and principles than Democrats who don’t,” says vanden Heuval, noting that “Solomon is such a candidate, and there are others.”
Vanden Heuval amplifies the call in her conclusion: “I’ve always believed lasting progressive transformation will come from people’s movements, the kind now taking root in towns and cities across the nation. But it will also require people on the inside who share those principles and are fully dedicated to fighting for them. In 2012, we have the opportunity to elect those champions.”

The following item, by TDS Co-Editor William Galston, is cross-posted from The New Republic:
Over the next three weeks, the heat-to-light ratio in the press coverage of the Iowa caucuses will rise steadily. Here are a few basics to keep in mind.
1. Iowa is a flawed leading indicator, especially for Republicans. Of the past five contests without an incumbent Republican president, the Iowa winner has gone on to receive the nomination only twice–in 1996 (Dole) and 2000 (George W. Bush). On the other hand, Iowa typically winnows the field and seems likely to do so again. If Bachmann and Santorum don’t do significantly better than expected in Iowa, their campaigns for all practical purposes will end. If Perry doesn’t do well despite spending millions on advertising, he’ll probably have enough left in the bank to continue, but with poor prospects of success.
2. A Gingrich victory in Iowa would put him in a strong position to go the distance–by narrowing or even overcoming Mitt Romney’s margin in New Hampshire and by putting him in an excellent position to sweep the Southern primaries, where he now leads Romney by a combined 41 to 16 percent.
3. Ron Paul is Romney’s new best friend. Not only is Paul attacking Gingrich relentlessly, but also a strong Paul showing in Iowa would almost certainly come at Gingrich’s expense. Because Romney is unlikely to prevail in Iowa, the best outcome for him would be a victory by a candidate with no chance of going on to win the nomination. More than a few veteran observers of the Iowa scene believe that Paul’s combination of strong organization and fervent support could produce just such a result.
4. Paul is not the Tea Party candidate. In fact, 56 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers who sympathize with the Tea Party have ruled out voting for Paul–more than for any other candidate. By contrast, only 17 percent have ruled out Gingrich, while only 31 percent have done so for Romney. The reason is simple–Tea Partiers are fervent across-the-board conservatives, not libertarians, and disagree with Paul on many social and foreign policy issues. Indeed, Paul’s profile disrupts standard ideological categories. 13 percent of Republicans see him as liberal, 20 percent as moderate, another 20 percent as somewhat conservative, and 28 percent as very conservative, while the remainder just don’t know what to make of him.
5. Romney and Gingrich’s ideological profiles are much clearer to voters. Likely Republican primary and caucus participants have found it much easier to locate Romney and Gingrich along the left-right continuum. 57 percent see Gingrich as somewhat or very conservative, versus 28 percent who regard him as moderate. Romney profile is almost the mirror-image: 53 percent see him as moderate, versus only 29 percent as somewhat or very conservative. In a party whose grassroots supporters are mainly conservative, Gingrich’s ideological position gives him an advantage–if he can maintain it. That’s why Romney and others have begun attacking him for past positions that defied conservative orthodoxy.
6. Romney has lost his “electability” edge: What was once his greatest asset among Republicans–the belief that he was far more likely to defeat Barack Obama than was any other contender–now seems to be slipping away. As recently as mid-November, fully 30 percent of primary and caucus participants espoused that view, versus only 13 percent for Gingrich. Now, 35 percent give the electability award to Gingrich, versus 28 percent for Romney.
Are these Republicans right? Based on the evidence, anyway, it’s hard to say. On the one hand, a synthesis of recent surveys suggests that Obama would beat Gingrich handily but is in a dead heat with Romney. On the other hand, a recent Gallup/USA Today poll showed that both Romney and Gingrich lead Obama in the twelve crucial swing states by almost identical margins. And one could make a case that Gingrich’s more welcoming stance on immigration would serve him well with Hispanics in a general election–assuming that it doesn’t become his Achilles heel during the nominating contest.
7. The Republican race remains fluid and unsettled. Only a third of Romney’s supporters back him strongly; only 29 percent of Gingrich’s do so. And there are indications–from the Gallup tracking poll, for example–that the Gingrich tide is receding a bit. A poorer than expected showing in Iowa could disrupt the momentum of his entire campaign.
William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor at The New Republic.

Greg Sargent has a short, smart post “Why Republicans are better at negotiating than Dems,” which says a lot about why bipartisanship is a fading ideal, as well as the futility of offering up-front concessions to an adversary with an increasingly infantile attitude toward conflict-resolution. Noting the speculation that Dems are seriously considering dropping the millionaire’s surtax in exchange for the GOP dumping the Keystone XL pipeline poison pill, Sargent quotes Boehner’s ‘rationale’:

They never had the votes for their so-called millionaires’ surtax,” Boehner said at his weekly briefing with reporters. “They didn’t even have the votes in 2009 and 2010, when they controlled everything. So, I appreciate the fact that they gave up on their millionaires’ surtax, but they didn’t give anything up because they never had it.

“Dems view these talks as follows: We give something up, and you give something up in return,” says Sargent. That is the way sincere, problem-solving grown-ups negotiate, only you don’t cave on your most important goal up front. The GOP “leadership,” on the other hand, offers the following warped “logic,” Sargent explains:

…Republicans view them as: Your concessions don’t even count as concessions, because we were never going to agree to your demands in the first place, so you’ll have to come up with some real concessions, i.e., you’ll have to give up more.

As Sargent concludes about the GOP position, “This pretty clearly illustrates the folly of signaling a willingness to compromise in advance, doesn’t it?”

The following item, by TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore, is cross posted from The New Republic:
As the 2012 invisible primary lurches to a close, the Republican Party looks more likely than ever to be in the process of presenting its caucus and primary voters with the choice between one candidate they don’t want to nominate and another their fellow-Americans don’t want to elect. Mitt Romney simply hasn’t grown on primary voters; if anything, in recent weeks, he’s soured. And Newt Gingrich, for his part, would enter the general election as the weakest GOP nominee since Barry Goldwater. But owing to the present weakness of the GOP establishment, the bullishness of the base, and the fact that someone must win, my money is currently on Gingrich pulling off a repeat of 1964.
It would normally go without saying that the Republican Party establishment would find a way to ensure that Romney receives the nomination. But even the most robust assessment of establishment power within the GOP must take into account the simple fact that the rank-and-file will have the final say; the establishment, for all its money and access to the airwaves, can only succeed via its influence with actual voters who elect actual delegates to the actual convention. And such voters simply aren’t taking to him. Romney has now failed to benefit in any tangible way from the crashing and burning of no less than three candidates who have serially led him in national polls. His favorability/unfavorability ratio among Republican voters has been eroding notably, and he’s finally looking vulnerable even in New Hampshire, supposedly his Maginot Line against a poor showing in Iowa. Even his reputation as untouchable in candidate debates has come into question after a shaky performance in the recent ABC/Des Moines Register forum this last weekend. And time for yet another front-runner crash-and-burn is rapidly running out, with the blitzkrieg of January nominating events, beginning with the Iowa caucuses, exactly three weeks away.
But even more importantly, Romney’s shocking weakness against Gingrich suggests that his supposed trump card, “electability,” doesn’t really matter all that much to Republican voters. Given present trends, that’s not as surprising as it might seem. Ever-increasing majorities of likely Republican primary voters are expressing the opinion that they’d prefer a nominee who reflects their values and views to one with a better chance of winning next November. And even among the minority who say they care most about electability, it should by no means be assumed that that concern translates into support for Romney, given the recent ascendancy of the conservative dogma that run-to-the-center moderates are guaranteed losers and the parallel belief–born of the party’s exceptional contempt for Barack Obama–that any true conservative is destined to win in 2012. To put it bluntly, the conservative activists who dominate the Republican presidential nominating contest are split between those who simply don’t believe adverse polls about Gingrich, and those who would rather control the GOP than the White House, if forced to choose.
Revealingly enough, even believers in the ultimate power of the GOP establishment are beginning to lose faith in Mitt and look to previously far-fetched possibilities for resolving the GOP nomination process. Nate Silver’s take on the situation sums it up nicely:
Republicans are dangerously close to having none of their candidates be acceptable to rank-and-file voters and the party establishment. It’s not clear what happens when this is the case; there is no good precedent for it. But since finding a nominee who is broadly acceptable to different party constituencies is the foremost goal of any party during its nomination process, it seems possible that Republicans might begin to look elsewhere.
And so some pundits, including Rhodes Cook and Ezra Klein, have suggested that the establishment could go to astonishing lengths, up to and including a very late candidacy or even a “brokered convention,” to keep Newt off the top of the ticket. Cook goes all the way back to 1976 to the Democratic candidacies of Frank Church and Jerry Brown for any sort of precedent for his late-entry scenario, but both candidates came up far short, of course. And he concedes that any such 2012 candidate would have to win virtually everything still on the table after missing most of the filing deadlines for primaries prior to April. And Klein doesn’t offer any specific game-plan for the exceedingly unlikely event of a brokered convention.
But those pundits willing to entertain “anything’s possible” scenarios to thwart a Gingrich nomination might want to be more open to the possibility of the establishment simply losing, which is not unprecedented. Indeed, it happened in 1964, when the power of the rank-and-file to elect delegates in primaries was extremely limited, and very nearly happened again in 1976, when Ronald Reagan came within an eyelash of denying renomination to a sitting president. In both cases, a very large number of Republican voters showed themselves to be more interested in defeating the Republican establishment than in defeating Democrats.
Of course, I am not, repeat not, by any means arguing that Gingrich is anything like a shoo-in for the nomination at this point. The exposure of his many heresies against conservative orthodoxy, stressed so avidly by his opponents in the first Iowa debate, may still sink in among voters. Late and highly coordinated endorsements from right-wing opinion-leaders like Iowa’s Bob Vander Plaats and Steve King could lift another candidate like Perry, Bachmann, or Santorum just enough to wreck Gingrich’s momentum in Iowa. Or Ron Paul could win the caucuses, making New Hampshire the real starting point.
But if Newt loses, it won’t be because of some mystical power of the GOP establishment to deny the nomination to a weak general-election candidate. Conservative activists have a different view of the risks and opportunities of 2012 than either establishment pooh-bahs or the pundits. What looks to some like a winnable-or-losable general election looks to ideologues like the best chance in decades to replay 1964 and repeal the Great Society and the New Deal. In this context, it’s no surprise that the old revolutionary Gingrich looks like a better prospect than Romney to take on that challenge–and if it fails, well, it’s just a small step backwards on the conservative movement’s long march to ultimate victory.

Robert L. Borosage, president of the Institute for America’s Future, has an important post up at HuffPo, “The American Dream: The Forgotten Leading Actor.” It’s about the pivotal role unions play in creating a decent society.
No, it’s not a new idea to progressives. But, as Borosage notes, the bomb Newt chucked into the fray about relaxing child labor laws should serve as a potent reminder about the threat unions — and all American workers — face if the 2012 elections go the wrong way.
No one is surprised by the Republicans’ assault on unions. It’s more vicious than ever, but it’s been going on since Reagan busted PATCO, notes Borosage. But he also argues that the progressive narrative has largely neglected the labor movement, despite the recent uprisings in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Borosage cites recent speeches by Elizabeth Warren and President Obama, giving them due credit for their well-stated insights about corporate power and abuses, but faulting them for failing to cite the critical role of unions. He then reviews the contributions of labor:

We emerged from World War II with unions headed towards representing about 30% of the workforce. Fierce struggles with companies were needed to ensure that workers got a fair share of the rewards of their work. Unions were strong enough that non-union employers had to compete for good workers by offering comparable wages. Unions enforced the forty-hour week, and overtime pay, paid vacations, health care and pensions, family wages. Strong unions limited excess in corporate boardrooms, a countervailing power beyond the letter of the contract. As profits and productivity rose, wages rose as well.
When unions were weakened and reduced, all that changed. Productivity and profits continued to rise, but wages did not. The ratio of CEO pay to the average worker pay went from 40 to 1 to over 350 to 1. CEOs were given multimillion-dollar pay incentives to cook their books and merge and purge their companies. Unions were not strong enough to police the excess. America let multinationals define its trade and manufacturing strategy, hemorrhaging good jobs to mercantilist nations like China…The result was the wealthiest few captured literally all the rewards of growth. And 90% of America struggled to stay afloat with stagnant wages, rising prices, growing debt.
Unions were not the only factor in the rise of the middle class or in its decline. But they surely were central to the story of how the middle class was built and where America went wrong.

And, looking to the future, Borosage sees a still vital role for unions:

…Unions give workers practice in exercising their democratic rights. They elect their own leaders; they voice their concerns; they must learn to compromise and prioritize. They are true laboratories of democracy. They provide a democratic forum, and the organizing skills vital to challenging democracy’s opponents.
Unions are also essential to building a free market economy with shared prosperity. Unions help ensure that the rewards of rising productivity are widely shared. They help curb greed and lawlessness in executive suites. They help sustain legitimate order in the workplace, giving workers a way to express grievances, adjudicate wrongs. Their workplace success is vital to insuring that workers earn enough to generate consumer demand vital to economic growth.
In our current economic distress unions should be more important than ever. The net jobs being created in America are almost entirely in the non-tradeable sectors of the society — retail services, public employees, health care, education etc. These tend to feature low wage jobs — from the shop clerk to the hotel maid. But there is no intrinsic reason they are low paid. With strong unions, hotel maids in New York City make a middle class wage, with health care benefits. At least a part of countering the increasing income disparity in America is to empower workers to organize once more.

Further, as Borosage concludes:

…No major social reforms succeed in Washington without strong union support and mobilization…The spark was lit in Madison, Wisconsin, when students and farmers joined public workers demonstrating to protect their basic right to organize and bargain collectively. Occupy Wall Street turned that into a conflagration. As this fight intensifies, labor unions and the workers that they represent — reduced in membership, short of funds, savaged by their enemies and too often ignored by their friends — will by what they do or what they fail to do make a fundamental difference in what kind of society we build out of the ruins.

Regardless of what happens in the 2012 elections, progressives should commit to spreading the popular uprisings that took hold in Wisconsin, Ohio and OWS to restore the trade union movement as the engine of change and the Democratic Party.