In her WaPo op-ed “A make-or-break moment for democracy,” Katrina vanden Heuval takes a clear-eyed look at President Obama’s approval of Super PAC spending for his re-election, and comes up with a compromise most progressives should be able to endorse. As vanden Heuval explains the dilemma facing Democrats:

President Obama’s decision to endorse super-PAC money as part of his reelection effort exposed the enduring divisions within the progressive community between pragmatism and idealism. Robert Reich, for example, put his disappointment bluntly: “Good ends don’t justify corrupt means.” Jonathan Chait disagreed, writing that “if you want to change the system, unilateral disarmament seems like a pretty bad way to go about it.”
The ambivalence is palpable — and understandable. I’ve felt it myself. On the one hand, we are seeing our worst fears realized. When the Supreme Court handed down its Citizens United decision, the concern was not just that one party would take advantage of it, but that both parties would decide they had to adapt to it. The president has never held high moral ground on campaign finance (he withdrew from public financing in the 2008 campaign) but his willful, if reluctant, decision to submerge himself further in a system that actively stains our democracy is troubling.

Troubling yes, but unavoidable as a practical matter, vanden Heuval believes:

And yet, I understand his decision. I even reluctantly agree with it. I remember how massively George W. Bush outspent Al Gore in 2000, both during the campaign and the recount. I remember the price that John Kerry paid for staying within the campaign finance system in 2004, leaving him exposed to the Swift Boat attacks in August as he tried to stretch his public allotment over three months instead of just two.
There are times when you cannot win with one hand tied behind your back, when you cannot fight fire only with a philosophical opposition to fire. This is surely one of those times…

And the available remedies are limited:

…The Roberts’ court’s warped decree leaves us only two long-term exit routes from this growing disaster: pass a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United or shift the balance of the Supreme Court. The first will be difficult under any circumstance; the second will be impossible if Obama isn’t reelected.
After all, Obama’s loss will likely mean Mitt “Corporations are people” Romney will ascend to the Oval Office. Romney doesn’t believe in campaign finance laws of any kind, really; he has defended the Citizens United decision and supports unlimited contributions to candidates themselves. His Supreme Court picks would, at best, solidify the anti-reform regime on the court. At worst, they would tilt it further to the right, enshrining for generations the notion of the sale of democracy to the highest bidder….

“Should the Obama campaign really sit passively and allow Karl Rove to distort our election results again?,” asks vanden Heuval. The only sane answer is “no.” But she also urges corrective action from the President and progressives:

…If he is going to endorse the use of super PACs, then he should endorse, as a central plank of his campaign, the fight to end them forever…The president seems to understand this. It was heartening, for example, to see him come out in favor of a constitutional amendment to reverse the damage.

“President Obama has identified this election as a “make-or-break moment for the middle class,” notes vanden Heuval. “It surely is. But it is also a make-or-break moment for our democracy….It’s up to us now to push him…Pragmatism, after all, yields only temporary solutions; our long-term course must be guided by larger ideals.”

TDS Managing Editor Ed Kilgore takes a look at “The Crux of the Matter in Michigan” at The Washington Monthly, and offers an insightful take on the next moves in the GOP field’s chess game:

…Rick Santorum is harvesting momentum from a great Tuesday night and some mutually assured destruction between Romney and Gingrich to move well ahead in state thought to be a stronghold for Mitt. But Republican elites are certain to be privately beside themselves at the thought of a guy like Ricky–who sometimes seems as determined to repeal the Second Vatican Council as the New Deal–going up against Barack Obama.
In MI, as nationally, PPP finds Gingrich’s favorability ratios cratering (at 38/47) and Romney’s foundering (at 49/39, a vast deterioration in this state from earlier readings), even as Santorum’s stay all clean and starchy (at 67/23)…
You have to figure the prevailing sentiment in elite GOP circles is that they’d love to see Ricky succumb to foul play, but don’t want their own, or even Mitt’s, fingerprints on the weapon. But there’s not a lot of time for dithering or scruples or wishing and hoping Ricky does himself in: a double Santorum win in MI and AZ on February 28 would be a serious problem for Romney, and for the party. I’m not privy to the internal councils of Republicans, but it’s likely they are waking up to this reality, and will ultimately either unleash Mitt to go hog-wild-negative, or push enough money in his direction to saturate media in these two states with enough positive propaganda to nominate the Infernal Prince of Darkness himself (so long as he promised to cut taxes, bash unions and oppose legalized abortion).

Mitt’s avalanche of money and hard-hitting attack ads worked well in FL. Santorum’s hope is that there may be a point at which the strategy produces diminishing returns — even among GOP voters.

It was predictable that Republicans, lead by Mitch Daniel’s gloomy official response, would line up to trash President Obama’s state of the union speech and the major progressive proposals he advanced in it. But a recent National Journal poll, conducted 1/26-29 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, shows that the public strongly approved of the President’s proposals, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘. Teixeira explains:

In that poll, 76 percent supported imposing a minimum tax on money American companies earn overseas to encourage U.S. job creation. Seventy percent supported imposing a fee on large banks to be used to help homeowners refinance mortgages at low interest rates. Sixty-five percent supported establishing a new rule that those who earn $1 million or more annually must pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. And 58 percent supported reducing federal aid to colleges that raise tuition too fast.

Teixeira sees “a theme here: the idea that even big institutions and the wealthy need to conduct themselves responsibly and make contributions to the common good. These data show the public gets it even if conservatives don’t.”

David Lauter has has an update on the presidential race in the battleground states in the L.A. Times. Here’s Lauter’s take on ‘done deal’ states:

President Obama still holds leads along the West Coast, in much of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions and in parts of the upper Midwest, giving him a likely base of 217 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win, according to the latest Real Clear Politics compilation of state-by-state polls. A Republican can count on virtually all of the South, the Plains states and conservative parts of the Interior West, giving the eventual GOP candidate a likely base of 181.

Here’s where Lauter sees the election being decided:

Fewer than a dozen states continue to appear to be clear battlegrounds….The states in between – the ones where the election almost certainly will be decided – include Colorado and Nevada in the West, where Obama will need a strong Latino turnout to win; Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a key issue will be his ability to appeal to blue-collar voters; North Carolina and Virginia, where Democrats hope a combination of a strong black turnout and support among college-educated whites will do the trick; and Florida, a perennial tossup…In two states where Obama was doing poorly last year, Missouri and New Hampshire, some recent polls have shown the race a tossup, potentially adding those to the list.

In sum, Lauter argues:

…Assuming the list of solid states remains as is, a Republican candidate will have to pick up 89 of the tossup electoral votes to win, while Obama would have to pick up 53. Most analysts assume Obama will need to hold Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which he carried in 2008, and which together have 30 electoral votes. He would then have several possible ways to put together the additional 23 needed for victory.

So, in this snapshot, Obama has a 36 electoral vote edge in the contest for 270 e.v.’s., according to the Real Clear Politics compilation. That’s not to say he has any edge in the polls in the purple states, just that the blue states have a lead at this particular political moment.
Perhaps the most worrisome calculation in the RCP analysis is the classification of PA as “toss-up” It’s disturbing because PA should be “leans Obama” by now. He probably will not get re-elected without it. If the ‘toss-up” designation is an outlier, or overstated, on the other hand, then Obama is even closer to 272.
As always with snapshots, this could change abruptly. But it’s not a bad snapshot for an incumbent president seeking a 2nd term in February of an election year. And if favorable economic trends continue, the e.v. edge could grow. The value of such snapshots to a campaign is that they show where a reallocation of resources might get good results. The safest bet is that the ad wars in these states will soon escalate dramatically.

Democrats are well aware of the fact that Bill Maher’s monologues are frequently more insightful than most MSM commentary. Maher outdid himself recently with a rant that actually captured the essence of the Republican strategy for 2012 in a way that none of the major commentators have equaled.

“You know, Republicans have created this completely fictional president. His name is Barack X. And he’s an Islamo-socialist revolutionary who is coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries, and taking his cues from Europe, or worse yet, Saul Alinsky!
[The fact is that]….The Republicans hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do, what he might be thinking, what he secretly wants to change.”
…And this is how politics has changed. You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But, now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate…

This isn’t satire; it’s an entirely serious analysis of a core Republican strategy.
And there’s really nothing funny about it.

Those who were wondering how low the conservative movement could go need look no farther than the CPAC 2012 confab, which yesterday hosted a panel on “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity.”
The big buzz panelist was Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE.com., “a White Nationalist website, run by Brimelow, which frequently publishes the works of anti-Semitic and racist writers and is named after Virginia Dare, who is believed to be the first child of English parents born in the Americas,” according to Brian Tashman of Right-Wing Watch, via Reader Supported News. Here’s how Tashman describes some lowlights of the work of Brimelow and VDARE:

Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, expresses his fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He also said that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.”
VDARE has published the work of people like Robert Weissberg, who says that black and Hispanic students are responsible for problems in the American education system, Marcus Epstein, the Youth for Western Civilization leader who karate-chopped a black woman after calling her a “n****r” (he later pled guilty to assault), and J. Philippe Rushton of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund.
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists VDARE as a White Nationalist hate group and notes that “VDARE.com’s archives contain articles like ‘Freedom vs. Diversity,’ ‘Abolishing America,’ ‘Anarcho-Tyranny — Where Multiculturalism Leads’ and ‘Why Immigrants Kill,'” compiled quotes from other VDARE writers that call the U.S. an exclusively white nation and denounce Jews for “weakening America’s historic White majority”:
“America was defined — almost explicitly, sometimes very explicitly — as a white nation, for white people, and what that means is that there is virtually no figure, no law, no policy, no event in the history of the old, white America that can survive the transition to the new and non-white version. Whether we will want to call the new updated version ‘America’ at all is another question entirely.” — Sam Francis, VDARE.com, July 21, 2003

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Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Third Way conducted focus groups in late 2011 with swing voters in Ohio and North Carolina to explore their views on clean energy and its link to innovation and economic growth. The results were telling. Despite the conventional, and incorrect, wisdom that the cap-and-trade debate, the politicization of climate change and the controversy over Solyndra have put a damper on support for clean energy, these swing voters continue to express a strong desire to get America running on clean energy. However, these focus groups show that supporters of clean energy may need a new approach to rallying the public to their cause and maximizing support for clean energy.
Key Findings

Swing voters in these traditional energy states express a VERY strong desire to see the US move to clean energy like wind and solar. Clean energy is very much seen as an engine of long-term economic and job growth.
However, voters are much more skeptical about its ability to “jump start” a recovery through an immediate boost in manufacturing jobs.Voters are extremely pessimistic about government’s ability to do anything right and don’t see it as a driver of innovation. That is part of the reason they are skeptical about direct government investment in energy infrastructure or R&D. However, these voters remain very supportive of the government acting as a “facilitator” for clean energy by providing incentives like tax credits and loan guarantees. That opinion holds up strongly even after attacks using Solyndra.
These voters are also generally supportive of a national renewable energy standard and compared it to fuel economy standards (in a positive way). Backers of clean energy can enhance support by tapping into concerns about pollution and a strong desire to move away from coal. But these voters don’t see climate change as a reason to move to clean energy. Instead of touting the benefits of action, the best frame may be to describe the negative consequences of inaction: That America’s economic competitors (especially China) will dominate the clean energy sector and reap the economic benefits, instead of uso While Americans are left behind with a dirty, expensive and outdated energy system.

Now that Rick Santorum has had his sort of day in the sun, it’s instructive to take a step back and reconsider what Tuesday’s elections in CO, MN and MO mean for Romney. John Nichols’ post, “Anybody But Romney Wins Everywhere” in The Nation puts it all into perspective:

…The sweater vest had a good night. But the big deal is that Republicans rejected the empty suit…Rick Santorum may have won beauty contests Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, but he won’t even be on the ballot for delegate-rich contests in states such as Indiana and Virginia. He’s still running for vice president, or maybe a cabinet post.
Santorum is a story. But he is not the story.
The story is the fact that Mitt Romney lost so very miserably in three battleground states.
Romney finished second in Colorado and Missouri and, remarkably, barely mustered a third-place finish (behind Santorum and Ron Paul, barely ahead of Newt Gingrich) in Minnesota.
But the place on the list is less telling than than overwhelming levels of opposition to Romney.
In Colorado, 65 percent of Republican caucus-goers voted against the man who started the week as the all-but-declared nominee of their party.
In Missouri, 75 percent of Republican primary voters backed someone other than Romney.
In Minnesota, 83 percent of Republican caucus-goers rejected Romney. That’s particularly striking, as Romney won Minnesota in 2008 with 41 percent of the vote.
In many Minnesota counties, Romney finished fourth, behind Santorum, Paul and Gingrich. Some of the former Massachusetts governor’s worst losses were in [blue] collar counties around the Twin Cities, an essential base for Republican presidential contenders in the fall.
Several Minnesota counties recorded less than 5 percent support for Romney. In western Minnesota’s Norman County (Red River Valley), no one caucused for him. Mitt got 0 percent.
His finishes in the Republican heartlands of rural Missouri and Colorado were almost as bad.
Even more unsettling for the Republicans has to be the fact that, despite intensive campaigning in the three states, turnout collapsed.
In Missouri, a classic bellweather state, there was a stunning drop in primary participation. In 2008, GOP primary turnout was 589,289. In 2012 ,GOP primary turnout was 251,496. That’s way less than half the turnout just four years ago.
In Minnesota, caucus turnout four years ago was 62,828. This year, it will be under 50,000. That’s an almost 20 percent dropoff.
In Colorado, 70,229 Republicans caucused in 2008. This year, turnout was 64,000. That’s close to a 10 percent dropoff.

Fun to imagine GOP strategists mulling over these statistics id disbelief, mumbling WTF. Nichols concludes with a sweet kicker. “In Missouri’s Republican primary on Tuesday, where all the attention and campaigning was focused, Romney secured 63,826 votes…Running essentially unopposed in the extraordinarily low-profile Missouri Democratic primary, Obama won 64,405.”

It’s beginning to look like the naysayers predicting the demise of the coalition that elected President Obama in 2008 were wrong, reports Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal. Brownstein notes a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, which indicates that Obama now leads Romney 51-45 percent, with top-line data indicating that the electorate is “dividing along lines almost identical to the actual results in 2008.” Brownstein adds:

In 2008, Obama carried a combined 80 percent of minority voters; the ABC/Washington Post survey shows him drawing 81 percent of non-white voters against Romney (who attracts just 14 percent).
In 2008, Obama carried 43 percent of whites, while McCain won 55 percent of them. The new survey shows Romney leading Obama among whites 53 percent to 42 percent. The ABC/Post poll shows Obama holding his ground both among whites with and without a college education. In 2008, Obama won 40 percent of non-college whites, while 58 percent of them voted for McCain. In the new survey, those working-class whites-the toughest audience for Obama throughout his national career-break in virtually identical proportions: 56 percent for Romney, 39 percent for the president.”

Brownstein describes it as “a modest, but important, rebound for Obama’s job approval rating among those non-college whites,” and he quotes Greg Sargent: “Obama’s approval rating among these [blue-collar] voters is 43-54. While those numbers don’t appear too good at first glance…This is his best level among non-college whites since early last year (excluding the post-Bin Laden bump), and they are far better than they were at their lowest point in 2010, when Democrats suffered massive desertions among this constituency.” Obama also matches and slightly improves on his ’08 percentage of college-educated whites. Further, adds Brownstein:

Viewed through a partisan lens, the ABC/Post survey shows Obama winning 85 percent of Democrats (compared to 89 percent in 2008), 8 percent of Republicans (compared to 9 percent) and 48 percent of independents (up from 44 percent). One other convergence is worth noting. In the ABC/Post poll, Obama has essentially restored the advantage among moderates that he enjoyed against McCain. In 2008, Obama carried 60 percent of moderates; the new survey puts him at 59 percent against Romney. (In the new poll, Obama runs slightly ahead of his 2008 number among conservatives and slightly behind it among liberals, two trends that might not last in the heat of an ideologically-polarized campaign.)

Brownstein concedes that “The gains might be temporary, driven by the confluence of good economic news and a highly bruising period in the Republican presidential primary that has sent Romney’s unfavorable ratings soaring in recent weeks.” Yet Brownstein also argues that Obama “could win a national majority with as little as 40 percent of the white vote…he can give back some of the terrain he’s recaptured in this latest survey – and still hold the high ground in November.”

By now, most Democrats are well aware of the GOP’s unprecedented voter suppression campaign. But there is another very troubling aspect of the Republicans’ project to obstruct voters they identify as pro-Democratic, distilled in the title of Ari Berman’s Nation article, “How the GOP Is Resegregating the South.” Berman explains:

…The redistricting process has changed the political complexion of North Carolina, as Republicans attempt to turn this racially integrated swing state into a GOP bastion, with white Republicans in the majority and black Democrats in the minority for the next decade…Before this year, for example, there were no Senate districts with a BVAP [black voting age population] of 50 percent or higher. Now there are nine. A lawsuit filed by the NAACP and other advocacy groups calls the redistricting maps “an intentional and cynical use of race that exceeds what is required to ensure fairness to previously disenfranchised racial minority voters.”
…The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina–one of the most important swing states in the country–could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state’s thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three–the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year…”GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats,” found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation.
…And it’s not just happening in North Carolina. In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans–to protect and expand their gains in 2010–have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice…. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.
…Though public dissatisfaction with GOP members of Congress is at an all-time high, Republican dominance of the redistricting process could prove an insurmountable impediment to Democratic hopes of retaking the House, where the GOP now has a fifty-one-seat edge. Speaker of the House John Boehner predicts that the GOP’s redistricting advantage will allow the party to retain control of the House, perhaps for the next decade.

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