Carrie Budoff Brown’s Politico post “Obama and blue-collar voters: Take 2” corroborates one of Ed Kilgore’s points in his “A Vote is a Vote” post that no serious political campaign is going to “abandon” any major political demographic. Indeed, far from “abandoning” blue collar workers, the Obama team is redoubling their efforts to reach them. As Brown notes:

Obama isn’t going to win the blue-collar crowd — he lost them in Pennsylvania by a wider margin, 15 percentage points, than John Kerry did in 2004. He lost the same vote nationwide by 18 points against Republican John McCain.
But he can’t risk bleeding much more of their support, even as his coalition of minorities, young people, educated whites and single women grows in population while the Republican base of older, whiter, more rural voters declines, said Ruy Teixera, the co-author of a new report from the liberal Center for American Progress on the demographics of the 2012 electorate.
“He knows he’s not starting out on the right foot with these voters,” Teixera said in an interview. “He is well aware that, given the structure of the electorate in the state, he doesn’t want that 15-point deficit to yawn into a widening gap.”
That means Obama will need to spend more time in Pennsylvania than recent presidential voting patterns, registration numbers and demographics would suggest. Every Democratic nominee since Bill Clinton in 1992 has won the state. Democrats enjoy a more than 1 million voter-registration edge. And Democratic operatives here and in the Obama campaign argue that weaknesses in the Republican field and the president’s latest push on jobs better position him to woo working-class voters.

Of course the Republicans are doing all they can to amp up the meme that the Obama Administration is somehow “abandoning” the white blue collar workers vote. But the notion is absurd, given the size of this constituency, and that even the most discouraging polls show him getting an ample bite of it. Moreover, the Republicans have very little to offer the white working class and there are some indications that the economy is beginning to improve.
The Obama campaign may end up investing more of its resources in turning out other constituencies, if their best research indicates that’s a more cost-effective way to go. But they well know that ‘abandonment” of any large demographic group would be political suicide.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
To what extent is demography destiny in politics? That’s the question that Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin’s much-discussed analysis of the 2012 presidential race puts front and center.
Teixeira and Halpin posit that the balance of two forces, “the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate, and the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states,” will likely determine the outcome of Obama’s reelection. At that level of generality, it’s hard to disagree. But I would argue that while demography matters, it is not as significant as Teixeira and Halpin believe. Yes, it makes a difference that Obama’s winning 2008 coalition relied on growing segments of the electorate while the traditional, mostly white Republican base is fated to shrink, election after election. But other things matter at least as much–especially the impact of the past three years on the orientation and enthusiasm of the Obama coalition, for reasons not all of which are rooted in the economy. Put simply: If Obama’s margins shrink among young people, Hispanics, and other key parts of his base while disappointment depresses their turnout, the falloff in Obama’s support will swamp the modest post-2008 demographic shifts in his favor.
While Teixeira and Halpin don’t disagree with my thesis (it’s a matter of simple arithmetic, after all), they systematically underplay the evidence suggesting that it may well come to pass. To redress the imbalance, let’s look at the most recent Gallup numbers from the week of November 21 to 27. Obama’s overall approval rating stood at 43 percent, as it has for more than a month–a level inconsistent with a successful reelection campaign unless there’s a significant third party candidate on the right.
For present purposes, it’s the details below the top line that matter. Specifically:

• Support for Obama among young voters ages 18 to 29 has plunged to only 48 percent.
• His approval among Hispanics stands at only 51 percent.
• With the exception of voters with post-graduate degrees, Obama is under water with every educational cohort: 42 percent among those with a high school diploma or less, 41 percent among those with some college, and 41 percent for voters with BAs.
• While his approval among Democrats and liberals remains robust (79 and 71 percent, respectively), he stands at only 39 percent among Independents and 51 percent among moderates–about 10 points below what Democrats need from these two categories to win national popular vote majorities.
• While the gulf between married voters and unmarried ones persists, Obama’s approval among unmarried voters stands at only 51 percent.

Compare these numbers with the shares of the vote Obama received from these groups in November 2008:

It’s clear that Obama’s margins are down–way down–not just among swing voters, but in the core of his coalition as well. Compounding the problem, the base’s enthusiasm and intensity have declined as well. As Gerald Seib has noted, while Democrats won the intensity race hands-down in 2008, the reverse is the case today. In the most recent NBC/WSJ poll, 56 percent of Republicans said that they were more enthusiastic than usual, versus only 43 percent of Democrats, and 59 percent of conservatives profess to be more enthusiastic than usual, versus only 38 percent of liberals. Over the past year, every survey has found these same disparities.
The bottom line is that unless things turn around considerably in the next eleven months, key parts of Obama’s winning 2008 coalition are poised to deliver both lower margins and smaller shares of the electorate than they did in 2008. (In general elections, actual votes closely mirror pre-election approval ratings.) If the election were held tomorrow against the most credible Republican challenger, the president would probably lose.
Demography shapes political orientations, of course. But so do events. And this is especially true for voters who don’t enter the political arena with well-established views and habits. While there’s good reason to believe that today’s young adults will remain more comfortable with diversity–of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation–than are their parents and grandparents, there’s no guarantee that this will translate into a liberal or pro-government orientation across the board. A thought-experiment: Suppose a Republican were to win the presidency in 2012, implemented a broadly conservative economic agenda, and that after four years the job market for young adults had improved substantially. Is it plausible that this scenario would have no impact on their long-term political orientation?
Similarly, while Obama received fully two-thirds of the votes from the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S. population, the impact of his failure to enact–or even to push hard for–immigration reform is likely to be substantial. To be sure, few Republicans even espouse such an agenda. Still, it would not be unfair for Latinos to conclude that as things stand, neither party gives them much ground for hope.
Since the financial collapse began four years ago, events at home and abroad have disrupted Americans’ settled expectations. It would be prudent to assume that this will have a measurable impact on their political orientation as well. While it’s harder to predict the overall direction of these attitudinal changes, they may well tug against the influence of demography and reconfigure the political playing field.
Demography isn’t destiny. But neither is anything else. Americans’ political outlook will be shaped by the choices their leaders make, and even more by the consequences of those choices.

The following article by democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
As the Senate considers an extension of the payroll tax holiday, the big question is: why in the world would Republicans in Congress consider raising middle class taxes by $1,000 to $1,500 per household in the midst of an economic downturn and an election year?
This is a particularly vexing question when you recall the ardor with which the GOP has campaigned against raising the taxes paid by millionaires and billionaires by even one dime.
At the beginning of the week it appeared that virtually every Republican in the Senate was prepared to vote no on a Democratic proposal to extend and broaden the current payroll tax holiday.
Now some are beginning to get cold feet. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has now reportedly “opened the door” to considering the possibility of a payroll tax cut extension.
But the real question is why Republicans would contemplate voting against extension of the payroll tax holiday in the first place?
Voting no would be like leaping off a political cliff — taking an iconic vote that would no doubt become emblematic of the fact that they are willing to sacrifice the interests of the 99% to protect the fortunes of the wealthiest people in America. John Paulsen — the Wall Street hedge fund manager who made $5 billion last year (that’s $2,400,000 per hour!) — might consider this a courageous stand. But the everyday worker — who will take 48 years to make as much as Paulsen makes in one hour — might not be so charitable.
Perhaps, you might say, it’s because Republicans are taking a strong principled stand against raising the deficit. But that would not be the case, since the Democratic proposal is entirely paid for by a small increase in the taxes of millionaires.
What on earth could drive Senate Republicans to consider taking such a stupid vote? Four possibilities jump to mind.
1). Possible Reason Number 1: They claim the extension of the payroll tax holiday will undermine Social Security and Medicare.
Republican Senator Jon Kyl made this argument on the weekend talk shows. We can dismiss this talk as a complete smoke screen.
First, Senator Kyl and the Republicans have never given a rat’s rear about Social Security and Medicare in the first place.
Second, the payroll tax holiday that was passed last year does not remove one dime from the Social Security or Medicare trust funds. In fact, the lost payroll tax is replaced dollar for dollar from the Federal general revenue fund.
The payroll tax holiday itself is simply a means of putting money directly into the pockets of working people that is then replaced with money from the much more progressive overall Federal tax structure.
2). Possible Reason Number 2: Some Republicans really don’t believe that taking $1,500 out of the paychecks of everyday consumers will hurt the economy.
There are apparently some Republican lawmakers who have drunk the “Keynesian Economics Doesn’t Work” Kool-Aide. They actually believe that the only way to stimulate economic growth is to shovel more and more income into the hands of the top 1% — the “job creators” — and watch that money “trickle down” on the rest of us.
The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that “trickle down” economics works — or ever worked.
We had an actual experiment with “trickle down” economics during the Bush Administration. The Republicans cut tax rates for the wealthy. The rich got a lot richer, and the median income of everyday families actually dropped. In fact it was the first decade in modern history that the economy did not create one net private sector job.
But — the Republicans say — two and a half years ago Congress passed a huge stimulus bill, and we still don’t have enough jobs.
Of course, they forget to mention that at the time, the economy was shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs because the financial system had collapsed as a result of the very same policies they are now advocating once again. And there is the inconvenient fact that since the stimulus worked its way through the economy, we have had 20 straight months of private sector job growth — whereas during the last twelve months of the Bush Administration we lost massive numbers of private sector jobs.
Of course a good deal of that private sector growth has been offset by the Republican refusal to continue the stimulus bill’s aid to state and local governments. That resulted in layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers — and other public service workers who they must presume do not hold “real jobs.”
The problem with the stimulus bill was not that it didn’t work. The problem was that it wasn’t big enough. Republicans remind you of a guy who uses a hose to put out half of a house fire, turns off the water and then contends that water doesn’t put out fires because the entire fire hasn’t been extinguished. The obvious answer is to get more water. Not only do the Republicans want to stop pouring on the water of stimulus — they want to pour on the gasoline of austerity — just the opposite of what is needed to put out the bad economic flames.
When an economy is in recession the problem — by definition — is too little demand to absorb the goods and services that the economy can produce. The way to solve the problem is to generate more demand to jump-start the economy. This is not just a matter of opinion — it’s a matter of mathematics.
Republicans who run around claiming that economic stimulus — money in consumer pockets — isn’t what’s needed to stimulate economic growth are like people in the middle ages who refused to believe that the earth circles the sun. If the evidence doesn’t support their ideological frame, they throw out the evidence — not the ideological frame. They ignore the facts. It makes no more sense for them to vilify “Keynesians” than it did for an earlier generation to vilify “Copernicans.”
There is complete economic consensus that eliminating the payroll tax holiday today will be a disaster for the economy. In fact, economists like Mark Zandi — who advised John McCain’s campaign — argue that if the payroll tax holiday is not extended, it will shave 1.7% off the gross domestic product and throw the economy into a double dip recession.
3). Possible Reason Number 3: The Republicans oppose extending the payroll tax holiday, because President Obama is for it.
That’s certainly their knee-jerk response. They believe that anything that makes Obama look effective hurts Republican chances in 2012.
But they have some big problems here. First, many Republicans supported a payroll tax holiday in the past — and many voted for the original holiday last year. If they form a solid wall of opposition, they will look like hypocrites who changed their position simply to hurt their political opponents.
And, second, the entire issue puts them in political box canyon — with no escape. If they oppose extension they look like they are obstructing something that is good for the economy — and very palpable to everyday voters. If they support an extension, they give the President a victory.
4). Possible Reason Number 4: Republicans actually understand that ending the payroll tax holiday will hurt the economy — and that’s exactly what they want to do.
There are clearly some Republicans in Congress who actually believe that ending the payroll tax holiday won’t hurt the economy. But there are a lot of Republicans who know exactly what will happen and would be perfectly happy to hurt the economy.
In fact, the Republican leadership has laid a bet that if the economy continues to stagnate they are that much more likely to defeat Democrats next fall. They know that no President in a hundred years has been re-elected when the economy was not materially improving. And they are certainly right that a major issue in next year’s election will be who is responsible for the lousy economy.
Their problem is that by supporting an increase in the payroll tax that takes $1,500 out of the pockets of every middle class family, they create an iconic example of why the real problem is the “do-nothing Republican Congress.”
Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that Congress is completely controlled by Republicans. And even though the Senate leadership is Democratic, the Republican willingness to stop action using the filibuster means that they are, in fact, entirely responsible for preventing action to create jobs.
That’s good news for Democrats, since in some polls only 9% of Americans have a positive view of Congress and overwhelming numbers believe the country is on the wrong track.
That means that Democrats in Congress can run as outsiders who want to break the log jam in Congress and take action on jobs — take action to defend the middle class. It means that the President can lay the blame for the lousy economy directly at the doorstep of the Republican Party – and its nominee.
The battle over the extension of the payroll tax holiday plays right into that narrative. It is a huge problem for the Republicans in Congress. Bad enough that the “do-nothing Republican Congress” is doing everything it can to oppose President Obama’s agenda to create jobs. Taking $1,500 out of the pockets of everyday Americans gets downright personal.
That’s why, when the chips are down, the odds are good that the Republican leadership will fold its hand and support extension of the payroll tax holiday.

Give thanks for the “We Are Wisconsin” protest movement for starting a political earthquake that woke America up to the Republican campaign to crush the labor movement. Same goes for “We Are Ohio,” for their inspiring victory in smashing SB5.
Do read Dana Milbank’s WaPo column on wingnut Sen. Jon Kyl, poster-boy for GOP obstructionism, and thank God he’s retiring.
Also at the Post, Fareed Zakaria’s column “Be thankful — sensible solutions do exist for U.S. problems” cites “a groundswell for deeper political reform” as cause for optimism about America’s future.
A little gratitude is in order for the San Antonio federal court, which proposed a new redistricting map in which three additional Texas state legislative districts would have people of color as majorities. If the ruling holds up in a Supreme Court review, Dems will have an edge in winning back control of the state legislature.
Give thanks, Dems, for still-growing polarization and disunity within the GOP. As Hunter puts it at Daily Kos, “A secret Republican group bent on defeating a Republican because that Republican isn’t seen as ideologically insane enough to truly represent their crazy-ass party?…The ideological hoops you have to jump through these days in order to be considered a true conservative have become too numerous to count…Now you’re not a “true” conservative unless you want to roll back eighty years of government, replace the Constitution with the Ten Commandments and fire illegal immigrants out of a cannon into an electrified alligator-filled lake of molten sulfur.”
Be thankful, very thankful, for YouTube, the peoples’ video forum, which empowers everyone to make political ads like this one, or this one.
Progressive Dems can give thanks for Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, for keeping the populist torch blue-hot, as Scott Thill explains in his Alternet post, “10 Great Things To Be Thankful For in 2011.”
Give it up also for Occupy Wall St., for putting economic inequality on the front burner, with a special nod to the brave younguns of UC-Davis for showing America what courageous, disciplined nonviolence looks like.
And please don’t forget to express a little appreciation for MSNBC for providing significant week-night air-time for strong progressive voices like Maddow, Schultz, O’Donnell, Sharpton and Matthews, something I didn’t expect to see in my lifetime on any major network.

In his post at The Atlantic, “A Blueprint for Winning the White House in 2012,” Ronald Browstein discusses the Teixeira/Halpin study we cited in Tomasky’s analysis. Brownstein flags the study as “a comprehensive demographic and geographic roadmap to the 2012 presidential campaign that political junkies of all ideological stripes will want to keep close at hand.” Here’s some of Brownstein’s take:

In their new paper, The Path to 270, the two correctly lay out, I believe, the critical dynamics that will likely tip the balance in both the Electoral College and popular vote next year….Some Democrats fear (and Republicans hope) that even if more minorities and college-plus whites turn out to vote in 2012, they won’t increase as a share of the overall electorate because so many older and blue-collar whites will turn out to vote against Obama in 2012, just as they did in 2010. That will be a critical variable.
…Obama could more easily survive reduced margins among his most favorable groups if those same groups cast a larger proportion of all the votes….Assuming the minority vote unfolds as they project, Teixeira and Halpin calculate that Obama could still win a popular vote majority if he maintains his 47 percent share among college educated whites, even if non-college whites stampede toward the GOP as overwhelmingly as they did in 2010 (when Republicans captured 63 percent of them, up from 58 percent in 2008). Alternately, they argue, Obama could still maintain a narrow popular vote majority if he attracts three-fourths of minorities and loses college whites and non-college whites by the same margins John Kerry did against George W. Bush in 2004. (Kerry’s deficit with each group was about five percentage points larger than Obama’s against John McCain in 2008.)
“In summary,” they write, “given solid, but not exceptional, performance among minority voters, Obama’s re-election depends on either holding his 2008 white college-graduate support, in which case he can survive a landslide defeat of 2010 proportions among white working-class voters, or holding his slippage among both groups to around 2004 levels, in which case he can still squeak out a victory.”

Brownstein cautions that “recent polls suggest that at least on first impression, Mitt Romney has a much stronger chance than his GOP rivals of peeling off significant numbers of those upscale whites, who probably represent Obama’s last line of defense in 2012.” He quotes Teixeira and Halpin’s conclusion that the election is likely to be about demographics vs. economics.
Demographics may indeed be destiny in 2012, and if Obama gets a bit of a break on the economy, it could be very good news for Democrats.

Writing in the Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky has a post up which deserves attention from the Obama campaign. His first sentence alone stands as a ringing reality-check:

Well, now that it’s official that bipartisan compromise has no future in Washington, it’s time for President Obama to put aside once and for all the idea of playing patty-cake with these people and instead focus ruthlessly on getting to 270 electoral votes…

From there, Tomasky dismisses the either/or argument for NC+VA+CO vs. rust belt electoral vote strategies as “silly,” and urges Obama to go for both. He then plugs an important new strategy paper by TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, “The Path to 270: Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Election,” summarizing the gist of the paper: “Obama isn’t going to get his 2008 levels of the white vote. But he can’t quite absorb white-vote totals that look like 2010. And he is going to have to fight hard, and smart, to keep them closer to the former than the latter.” Tomasky continues,

Demographically, everything is moving Obama’s way. The study largely splits the electorate into three groups: minorities; white college-educated voters (WCEs); and the white-working class (WWC), which is defined here and usually as whites without a college degree, which for a range of reasons is the best way to identify that group for voting purposes…
The minority share of the electorate was 26 percent in 2008. It’s likely to be 28 percent in 2012. The white working class will continue to shrink. It will make up 3 percent less of the electorate than it did in 2008, dropping from 39 percent to 36 percent. White college graduates will gain 1 percent, from 35 to 36.
…Obama took 80 percent of the minority population (26 percent of the country) in 2008. Teixeira and Halpin “conservatively” estimate that his share of the minority vote will go down to 75–basically from less enthusiasm, especially from nonblack minority-group voters. But that decline still translates into an ever-so-slightly-higher percentage of the overall vote (21 percent to 20.8 percent), because the voting pool has expanded. So Obama can suffer some decline in margins among minority groups without it being remotely fatal.
More strikingly, he can absorb significant WWC losses and still win the popular vote. …The authors write that he could replicate John Kerry’s 2004 numbers–losing WCEs by 11 points and the WWC by 23, both more or less smack-dab between the 2008 and 2010 results–and still win the popular vote by 50 to 48.

Turning to the electoral college, Tomasky notes that “The authors say that Obama’s core states add up to 186 EVs, and the GOP’s, 191. They identify 12 states that are going to decide the winner…” Tomasky adds,

…He did better among white working-class voters than among white college-educated voters–that’s right, better!–in Michigan and Iowa. And he won them in Wisconsin. Yet he lost WWCs horribly in Pennsylvania (but in 2012, WWCs will make up 5 percent less of the electorate). In the new South states, meanwhile, he did nearly as badly among WCEs as among WWCs–for example, in North Carolina he got 33 percent of the WWCs and 38 percent of the WCEs. Only a huge minority vote won him those states.
…He is going to have to assemble different coalitions from battleground state to battleground state around a message that can rally segments of all three groups. For all their differences, there is one thing almost all members of those three groups have in common. They’re part of the 99 percent. The authors want to see “a sustained posture of defending the middle class, supporting popular government programs, and calling for a more equitable tax distribution.” Sounds good to me.

And with the Republican presidential candidates doubling down on their image as rigid enemies of all three of those priorities, the President’s strategy for re-election now clear.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Inside-the-beltway pundits have already begun to decry the so-called “failure” of the super committee to hammer out an agreement that would have almost certainly resulted in huge cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits for ordinary Americans.
Those ordinary Americans should applaud the Democrats’ refusal to buckle to Republican demands for Draconian cuts in these critical middle class programs.
In addition, Democrats insisted that Congress’ top priority at this moment should be creating jobs, and that the only fair way to bring down future deficits is to end tax breaks for the wealthy and, once again, require that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.
Of course it should come as no surprise that Republican negotiators were completely unwilling to allow meaningful increases in the share of taxes paid by millionaires and billionaires — whose slice of the overall economic pie has exploded over the last three decades. They were unwilling to increase top tax rates to the Clinton-era levels of 39.6% — much less the 50% marginal tax rate millionaires paid during first administration of that well-known “socialist” Ronald Regan.
After all, the Republicans have one central mission — to act as guard dogs for incomes of the one percent. Enhancing the wealth of the wealthiest Americans is in fact the core goal of current leadership of the Republican Party. They are willing to battle through hell and back to defend the riches of the Koch brothers of the world.
Never mind that two-thirds of Americans believe that taxing millionaires is the best way to reduce the federal deficit. Never mind that 70% say they oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to cut the deficit.
In fact, most Americans are down right militant about not cutting Social Security, Medicare to reduce the deficit.
In a recent poll by the Republican polling firm, American Viewpoint, and the Democratic firm, Lake Research Partners, 49% — including 42% of Republicans — said they would be more likely to vote Members of Congress who voted against cutting Social Security and Medicare as part of a Super Committee proposal (18% were less likely).
And 54% said they would be less likely to vote for a Member of Congress who supported cutting Social Security and Medicare as part of a budget deal (14% more likely) — including 65% of independents and 42% of Republicans.
According to a recent memo by Anzalone Research, a poll by Pulse Opinion Research, on behalf of The Hill newspaper, finds:

… a greater than 4:1 margin who believes the middle class is shrinking (67%) as opposed to growing (14%). They also find a majority of Americans (55%) identify “income inequality in the U.S.” as a “major problem”, with another 19% declaring it “somewhat of a problem.” … an ABC/Washington Post Poll shows 60% of Americans want the “federal government to pursue policies to reduce the gap between the wealthy and less well-off Americans”, compared to 35% who believe the government should not pursue such policies.

And it’s no wonder.
Four hundred families control as much wealth today as 150 million of their fellow Americans — roughly half of the population.
In fact, the top one percent, control as much wealth as the bottom 90%. That’s not democracy.
And when it comes to income, Anzalone’s memo notes that:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans reached a record high last year. The Gini measure is a statistical measure of income inequality and the Census Bureau also finds it reaching record levels…

By rejecting the Republican proposals in the Super Committee, Democrats were simply expressing the views — and standing up for the interests — of the vast majority of Americans.
What’s more, they were standing up for the future of the American middle class.
Long-term, widely shared prosperity requires that the incomes of everyday people increase in proportion to their increasing productivity. If it doesn’t, they simply won’t have the money to buy the increased number of goods and services that they themselves have the ability to produce. That is the formula for economic stagnation and the end of the American dream.
The inability of the super committee to reach an agreement is not a reflection on the “intransigence” of both sides and “unwillingness” to compromise. The far right that now dominates the Republican Party insists on positions that fall far outside of mainstream views of everyday American voters. They want changes in the American social contract that will destroy the middle class.
They are intent on continuing the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the top 1%. They demand the elimination of Medicare and want to substitute a publicly funded private insurance program in its place that will raise average out of pocket costs for retirees by $6,000 a year. They want major cuts in Social Security benefits. They want to “reform” the tax code so it would permanently lock in the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and go even further to lower tax rates for the 1%.
These are not issues that should be subject to “compromise” — in a democracy they should be the subject of elections.
What’s next for the battle over the role of government?
The Republicans will no doubt rush to eliminate the provision of their own deal to raise the debt ceiling, that required the Defense Department to absorb 50% of the $1.2 trillion automatic “sequestration” of spending that begins in January 2013. That provision was supposed to force them to compromise on their inflexible opposition against more government revenue — but it didn’t work. Now they want to change the rules.
But that isn’t going to happen. The president has indicated, in no uncertain terms, that he will veto any attempt to eliminate the Defense Department from the sequestration trigger.
That doesn’t mean that sometime during the next 13 months there won’t be a deal that modifies the sequestration requirement. But to be viable any deal will have to be balanced, and pass through the regular order of the Congress — not on some Congressional “fast track” procedure that gives the upper hand to Republicans.
The right wing chose to use the debt ceiling as the leverage to force the round of deficit wars that will conclude when the mandate of the Super Committee expires. That battleground gave them a huge tactical advantage.
Progressives’ best hope for a long-term budget deal that reflects our values is to insist that the next battle take place as the Bush Tax Cuts are scheduled to expire in the lame duck session following the November elections. That will be the moment when we have the greatest leverage to drive the best bargain for ordinary Americans.
In addition, I believe that the outcome of the elections themselves will completely change the political dialogue in America. The relative importance of jobs programs, the importance of assuring that millionaires pay their fair share, and the importance of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — will all be litigated in the next election. Progressives have the high political ground on every one.
In the meantime, Congress must refocus its full attention on the real crisis facing our country — the need to create jobs, put Americans back to work and defend the middle class.

In his most recent ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira presents data indicating that conservatives have a lot to be worried about, regarding the political attitudes of the rising Millennial generation, “the most progressive generation in the electorate, and its political influence rises every year as more of that generation becomes eligible to vote.” As Teixeira explains:

Conservatives hoped that the severe economic problems of the last few years would solve their generational problem. These problems, they thought, would lead Millennials to blame President Barack Obama and progressives for our current difficulties and desert the progressive camp.
Well, think again. A massive new Pew study on “The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election” indicates that the Millennial generation adults (defined by Pew as those adults born 1981 or after) remain resolutely progressive.

Teixeira offers a few examples:

On current economic policy, 55 percent of Millennials think the higher priority for the federal government should be spending to help the economy recover rather than reducing the budget deficit (41 percent).
On health care, 67 percent of Millennials either want to expand the 2010 health care legislation (44 percent) or leave it as it is (23 percent). Just 27 percent want to repeal it.
On social issues, 59 percent of Millennials support allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, compared to only 35 percent who oppose this.
On foreign policy, 66 percent of Millennials believe the best way to achieve peace is through good diplomacy, compared to 27 percent who believe the best way to peace is through military strength.

On the major issues of the day, the latest opinion data indicate that a healthy majority of Millennial Generation embraces progressive values — and it’s increasingly clear which party is in the best position to benefit from their preferences.

Writing in The Nation, John Nichols reports that, less than a week out, the movement to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is broad, deep and growing. According to Nichols, the recall drive has collected over 105K signatures of the needed 540 thousand signatures in its first four days, with about 2 months left to gather the remaining signatures.

It was not just that thousands were signing recall petitions on the Capitol Square in Madison…They were doing it in all seventy-two Wisconsin counties…The movement to recall Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch is just that: a movement. It extends across the state, to every county, to every city, village and town.
As the November 15 starting date when the movement would begin gathering petitions to recall Walker and Kleefisch approached, training sessions for petition circulators were being held in the most Republican counties of the state. More than thirty offices opened and were staffed by volunteers in communities such as Elkhorn in traditionally conservative Walworth County, where a “midnight madness” party was held last Tuesday so that petitions could be signed the minute it was possible to do so…
The political process is sick with spin and deception. But the biggest lie of the past year has been the suggestion, peddled primarily by Walker but also by the most disingenuous of his supporters, that anger with the governor has been confined to the liberal precincts of Madison or the Democratic neighborhoods of Milwaukee.
The truth is that with his assault on collective bargaining rights, the civil service system, local democracy, school funding and public services, Walker battered every town, village, city and county in Wisconsin. And with ethical scandals that are now swirling around him–following the September FBI raid on the home of his top political appointee and the revelation that his press secretary and one of his top fund raisers had requested immunity in a “John Doe” probe of political corruption–Walker has earned the scorn even of those Wisconsinites who will never think of themselves as liberals or Democrats.
The movement to displace Walker and Kleefisch, who had served as a willing rubber-stamp for the governor, is big. The grassroots energy across the state, the size of the crowd at Saturday’s rally, the number of signatures already collected: all of these confirm the historic scope and reach of the recall drive.
The movement to displace Walker and Kleefisch is broad-based. Trainings have taken place in every corner of the state. There are local committees, groups and activist circles in all of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties. The recall movement takes in Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, independents and, yes, Republicans. That’s because Wisconsin’s instinct for fairness is stronger than the penchant for partisanship, as state Senator Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, confirmed when he refused to go along with efforts by Walker’s legislative stooges to rig the recall process.
…From Kenosha in the southeast to Superior in the northwest, from the inner-city wards of Milwaukee to the crossroads towns of Marathon County, Wisconsinites are rising to the call of democracy and honest governance. They are signing petitions, circulating petitions, filing petitions and defending petitions against bogus challenges from lawyers who are paid for by the out-of-state billionaires who are funding the Walker-Kleefisch campaign. And when the petitioning is done, when the recall election is scheduled, they will mount the greatest grassroots campaign Wisconsin has seen in a century–not just to remove Walker and Kleefisch but to renew the democratic ideals of a great state that has been temporarily misled.

According to Nichols, “a multimillion-dollar effort paid for by the billionaire Koch brothers and other anti-labor zealots from across the country who have financed Walker’s campaigns” is trying to defeat the recall. He cites reports of incidents of intimidation, and one estimate that pro-Walker forces may spend at least $50 million.
But don’t expect the recall movement to be intimidated. As Nichols says, “Rooted as it is in the values and ideals of Wisconsin, the recall movement is genuine and determined. It has put pettiness aside and focused on the work at hand: removing a governor who has harmed the state economically, ethically and morally–and a lieutenant governor who has rejected her oath to defend the constitution and the best interests of Wisconsin.