No one doubts that the outcome of the 2012 elections depends more on the economic trends in the final weeks and months of the campaign than anything else. But if you had to bet right now, the Dems’ have a better shot at winning back control of the House of Reps than holding the Senate, where they have to defend 23 seats compared to the Republicans’ 10.
But winning back a House majority is going to be a daunting challenge if current economic conditions hold, which is the most prudent conclusion that can be drawn from Kyle Kondik’s “Fortress Blue, Fortress Red: The partisan bedrock of the new House” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. As Kondik explains:

Based on the latest Crystal Ball ratings, less than one in four of the 435 House seats will be competitive next year, and if one only considers the seats we rate as “leaning” to one party or the other or as “toss-ups,” there are only 46 truly competitive contests, or about 10% of all House seats….Republicans have, based on the Crystal Ball’s ratings, 186 safe seats going into the 2012 election. While some of these seats could become competitive as the election gets closer, we feel confident that they will be part of the Republican column when the 113th Congress convenes in 2013….While Republicans control much of the South and the Heartland, the heart of the Democrats’ power in the House — 150 seats that the Crystal Ball believes are safe for Team Blue, at least for now — is on the East and West coasts….

Kondik presents a chart breaking down the full House delegation of every state into “Safe,” “Likely,” and “Lean” categories for both parties, as well as “Toss-up.” He also provides separate charts for “Competitive House Races” for Dems and the GOP, each divided into “Toss-up,” “Lean” and “Likely” sub-categories. Only 7 Dems seats are rated “Toss-Ups,” compared to 8 for Republicans. Kondik rates 13 Dem-held seats as leaning Democratic, with 18 GOP-held seats leaning Republican. For seats designated “Likely,” he sees Republicans having an 8-seat advantage.
These ratings are more useful to both parties in terms of allocating economic and manpower resources than for predicting outcomes. Kondik also provides regional and state analysis, which may be of use in budgeting for media ads.
All of the usual caveats for snapshot data analysis apply, and Kondik notes that the redistricting process is not yet complete across the nation, a significant factor. Barring a “throw all the bums out” sentiment sweeping the nation next fall, or a broad public souring on GOP obstructionism, one year out, it looks like Dems will have to work harder than ever win House control.

The following article by political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross- posted from HuffPo.
It wasn’t long ago that conventional wisdom among Democratic strategists handicapped Mitt Romney as President Obama’s toughest potential Republican challenger. But lately there has been a big shift.
In fact, it is becoming clearer and clearer that Mitt Romney is the very embodiment of the political narrative that will likely define the 2012 Presidential race. Unless there is a miracle, the outcome of next year’s election will likely be determined by whom the public blames for the lousy economy.
Of course the Republicans will argue that the culprit is the “overreaching,” “innovation-stifling” big government and its leader, President Obama. Their prescription to solve the country’s economic woes: eliminate every regulation in sight, cut taxes for the wealthy and free Wall Street bankers that lead us into the promised land.
Democrats, on the other hand, will pin the blame exactly where it belongs — on the reckless speculation of the big Wall Street banks, their Republican enablers — and the stagnant middle class incomes that have resulted from the top one percent of Americans siphoning off virtually all of the country’s economic growth since 1980. They will fault the “do-nothing Republican Congress” for their insistence on defending the status quo, and their refusal to create jobs.
Earlier this summer — when Republicans had succeeded in making “fiscal responsibility” and “deficit reduction” the touchstone of American political discourse — a businessman like Romney appeared to many to be just the ticket. But the tide has turned.
Once they got the debt ceiling “hostage taking” episode behind them, the administration has used its jobs package — and its own budget proposals — to draw a sharp line in the sand. The President has demanded that Congress take action on jobs and pay for it by raising taxes on millionaires.
Then came the Occupy Wall Street Movement — and the worldwide response — that has tapped into the public’s fundamental understanding, and anger, at the real nature of the economic crisis. The fact is that one of the only people around more unpopular than politicians are Wall Street bankers.
Finally, of course, the economic facts on the ground have made it clearer and clearer that right wing economic theories that blame “bloated entitlements” to seniors who make an average of $14,000 a year — and demand “fiscal austerity” — are just plain stupid. According to the Washington Post, even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — long the world’s leading advocate of deficit reduction and “austerity” — has now warned that “austerity may trigger a new recession and is urging countries to look for ways to boost growth.”
As the national economic dialogue has shifted, the public’s view of Mitt Romney has also come into focus. His out-of-touch “1% moments” proliferated.
On August 11, the blog Think Progress captured the now-famous video of Romney opining, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Of course, given his record of dismembering and bankrupting companies at his old firm, Bain Capital, if “corporations are people,” then Romney is guilty of murder.
On August 29th Romney disputed an account about the expansion of his beach front home. “Romney: Beachfront home is being doubled in size, not quadrupled,” The Hill reported.
Then, just a few days ago, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Wall Street donors had abandoned President Obama in droves and flocked to Romney.
Finally, an extraordinary photo surfaced from Romney’s days as CEO of Bain Capital, where he made massive profits while five of the companies under his firm’s direction went bankrupt and thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Apparently their difficulties in finding places to stash their profits became a joke among the young hotshots at Bain. They posed for a photograph with money stuffed in their pockets — even their mouths. There at the center of the picture was the grinning CEO, Mitt Romney, with money overflowing from his pockets and his suit jacket.
There he is — posing as the poster child for the 1%.
The picture could be the iconic image of the iconic line from the film Wall Street: “Greed is Good.”
Increasingly, many Democratic strategists have begun to feel that Romney could be the best possible opponent for President Obama next year.
Think about the way swing voters make political decisions. They don’t make their judgments about how to vote based on “policies or programs.” They evaluate the personal qualities of the candidates.
In determining who is on their side and shares their values — do swing voters choose Romney — the poster child for the 1% — or President Obama?
In the coming campaign, who is more likely to appear as an insider defending the status quo that people don’t like — and who will appear to be an outsider trying to bring change? Normally you’d have to say that the consummate “insider” is the guy who is President of the United States. Not necessarily so if his opponent is Wall Street’s own Mitt Romney.
And several factors unique to Romney make his situation even worse:
•Voters want leaders with strong core values. That’s not a description of Mitt Romney who has flip-flopped on just about every position he’s ever taken in public life. When Karl Rove ran George Bush’s campaign against John Kerry he said that Kerry’s statement that he voted for the War in Iraq before he voted against it was the gift that kept on giving. Rove took a Senator with strong convictions and convinced swing voters that he had none. If Rove could do that to Kerry, think about the easy time Democrats will have in convincing America that Romney’s values shift with the wind.
•Voters want to connect emotionally with their leaders. Ask Al Gore how important it is for candidates to “connect” with the voters. Romney has the personality of a statue. He just doesn’t make emotional contact.
Much of the Republican smart money is going to Romney because it thinks he is increasingly likely to be the nominee. I can understand why the Wall Street money is going to Romney — they want their guy to be President.
But I’m guessing that if he gets the nomination, by this time next year, Wall Street’s investment in Romney will look about as “smart” as all that money they put into sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps four years ago.

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira sheds light on public attitudes toward the Occupy Wall St. protests in his current ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages: “To conservatives such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), they’re a “growing mob.” But the public feels quite differently about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the issues they’re raising.” Teixeira explains:

In a new Time/Abt SRBI poll, 54 percent say they’re favorable to the movement that has been protesting policies that “favor the rich, the government’s bank bailout, and the influence of money in our political system.” Just 23 percent are unfavorable, and 23 percent say they don’t know enough to have an opinion. The movement’s favorability rating is actually twice as high as that of the conservative Tea Party movement: Just 27 percent are favorable to the Tea Party, compared to 33 percent who are unfavorable and 39 percent without an opinion.

Regarding the issue concerns of the protesters:

The poll also gauged the public’s level of agreement with a number of positions associated with Occupy Wall Street. In each case, the poll found overwhelming agreement among those familiar with the protests: 86 percent agreed that Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington; 79 percent agreed that the gap between rich and poor in the United States has grown too large; 71 percent agreed that executives of financial institutions responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008 should be prosecuted; and 68 percent agreed that the rich should pay more taxes.

Teixeira concludes:

Obviously, “mob” is in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives never seemed too worried when Tea Party activists were raising a ruckus, but now that protesters are daring to call out conservatives’ rich and powerful friends, it suddenly becomes a different story. If Occupy Wall Street is a mob, what does that make the public–mob sympathizers? It will be interesting to see conservatives try to wiggle out of that one.

Indeed, the squirming has already begun.

Most fair-minded observers would agree that Democrats are seriously screwed by the present system of financing political campaigns, all the more so after the Citizens United decision. Reform proposals, post McCain-Feingold, go nowhere in congress, thanks to GOP intransigence.
Writing in The American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias, has an interesting critique of Lawrence Lessig’s new book about campaign finance reform, “Republic, Lost.” Yglesias, author of “Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats,” calls Lessig’s book “must-reading for anyone who’s tuned out the campaign-finance debate,” but adds:

Lessig moves beyond quid pro quo corruption of the sort that typified the Gilded Age and recently ensnared such congressmen as Duke Cunningham of California and William Jefferson of Louisiana. Taking a broader view of the problem, Lessig develops a concept of dependence and independence that draws on the Founding generation’s obsession with the alleged corruption of Parliament at the hands of a monarchy that dispensed pensions and offices to compliant representatives. As part of this analysis, Lessig cites the anthropological concept of a “gift economy” to argue that a person can become indebted to another without any explicit agreement of a quid pro quo.
…Without anyone necessarily being bribed, Lessig argues, a dangerous and unseemly economy of influence has arisen in Washington that renders legislators dependent on lobbyists and all too independent from their constituents or the national interest.
Lessig takes on the model of lobbying as “legislative subsidy” developed by political scientist Richard Hall and economist Alan Deardorff as an alternative to the naive lobbying-as-bribe model. Legislators come to Washington passionate about several issues. Quickly, though, they come to depend on the economy of influence for help in advancing an agenda. They need the policy expertise, connections, public-relations machine, and all the rest that lobbyists can offer. Since this legislative subsidy is not uniformly available, the people’s representatives find themselves devoting more of their time to those aspects of their agenda that moneyed interests also support. No one is bribed, but the political process is corrupted.

Yglesias notes how members of congress live high on the hog as a collateral benefit of the myriad fund-raising activities conducted for their campaigns. He discusses another problem with Lessig’s proposal:

But for all that Lessig impresses with his wide-ranging and theoretically ambitious critique of the status quo, the solution he puts on the table is much less compelling. He argues for the creation of a publicly funded, clean elections system. Every voter would get a $50 “democracy voucher” and would be “free to allocate his or her democracy voucher as he or she wishes.” In addition, “voters are free under this system to supplement the voucher contribution with their own contribution–up to $100 per candidate.” To be eligible for the voucher money, a congressional candidate would have to agree not to accept any money beyond the $50-and-$100 system, meaning “no PAC money and no direct contributions from political parties.”
…It’s extraordinarily difficult to get money out of politics in a manner consistent with freedom of association and expression. Nothing in this proposal would prevent vast sums from being raised and spent by nominally independent groups with an interest in campaigns…Such spending would have a dependency–inducing influence regardless of the technical independence of the spending from the candidate.
The virtue of the voucher scheme is different. If enacted, it would flush more money into campaigns and make it easier for challengers to get off the ground in both primaries and general elections. Making electoral politics more competitive is a desirable outcome, though it might also make members of Congress more attuned than ever to opportunities for post–congressional employment.

Yglesias notes that interest group support of the Affordable Care Act produced no Republican votes, and suggests a broader set of remedies:

A sounder approach would acknowledge that the American political system suffers from multiple ills. Arizona, a state that’s adopted an admirable clean-elections campaign-finance law, is hardly free from special-interest influence. Instead, the combination of low-paid, part-time legislators with term limits and meager staff resources (in the Arizona House, some members get a half-time secretary) makes members dangerously dependent on the “legislative subsidy” that savvy lobbyists can provide. Problems of this kind are endemic to American state government, and Congress isn’t immune to them. Better ethics rules at all levels should be paired with efforts to professionalize legislative and staff work and provide better pay. Stronger leadership and tighter party discipline, though often bemoaned, also tend to reduce interest–group power relative to ideological agendas…Under conditions of strong discipline, partisan and ideological considerations trump the economy of influence on high-profile bills.
…Some of Lessig’s strongest passages remind us of the early candidacy of Barack Obama, who impressed some and frightened others with his emphasis on good government and procedural reform. That figure disappeared after Inauguration Day, replaced by a cynical dealmaker ready to do what it took to get a few key pieces of legislation over the finish line. Under the circumstances, it’s striking that he’s gone on to spend so much of his administration hamstrung by an increasingly broken Congress. Republic, Lost is a powerful reminder that this problem goes deeper than poor legislative tactics or bad character…

Yglesias concludes, “As progressives contemplate how best to pick up the pieces after recent setbacks, a robust agenda to change how business gets done in the capital needs to be part of the picture. This time, we’d better mean it.”

Sam Stein reports at HuffPo on evidence of new sleazoid right-wing sting operations cropping up. Stein explains a recent scam to entrap the Economic Policy Institute:

…When EPI’s President Lawrence Mishel was targeted last week in what appeared to be a conservative media sting operation, led by infamous saboteur James O’Keefe, it was a point of pride. The 25-year-old non-profit think tank officially has enough gravitas to be vilified.
“I’m honored to be the subject of their attention,” Mishel told The Huffington Post. “When we get attacked by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I tell my people, ‘Be proud.’ I never got listed by Glenn Beck. I felt left out because I feel like I’m an important person on the left.”
While it remains uncertain whether or not EPI has become the subject of one of O’Keefe’s undercover investigations — the list of past subjects includes ACORN, CNN, National Public Radio, Occupy Wall Street, and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) — several signs suggest that he targeted the think tank.

In another recent incident, Stein reports that Policy Matters Ohio was targeted for a phony bribe to see if they would twist data in a study for payment by a hedge-fund manager, who was supposedly affiliated with the Ohio Education Association. They gave a phony email address with the domain name “ohioedassoc.org,” which has nothing to do with the Ohio Education Association. Stein adds:

So who runs ohioedassoc.org? The website, according to online records, is registered to Shane Cory, the Acting Executive Director of Project Veritas. Reached by phone, Cory noted that he owns “hundreds” of domain names. Later he confirmed that this particular one was indeed owned by Project Veritas. “From there,” he added, “I really don’t know what’s going on.”

Project Veritas was started by James O’Keefe, according to Stein. Wonder where they get the money for all those domain names.
The moral blind spot of the right-wing scamsters who earn their keep on trickery and deceit is kind of pathetic. Even more regrettable, however, is the reluctance of mainstream conservatives to denounce their actions.

By now most Dems have surely read articles belaboring the point that what Democrats are struggling with now is not the Republican Party of Lincoln, Ike, Nixon, or hell, even Reagan or Goldwater. In his HuffPo post “The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America,” former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and adds some clarity to the argument and finds some hope for progressives in historic trendlines:

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards.
They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act…In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.
Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).
In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.
Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

Reich is quite right. The term “conservatives” is a misnomer for this crowd. They are more accurately “regressives,” and maybe that’s what they should be called. Reich presents a capsule description of their consolidation of wealth and how it has brutalized the political system:

In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.
This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

As discouraging as is Reich’s description of the underlaying economic and political dynamics associated with the rise of the “Regressives,” he concludes on a hopeful note:

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.
Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.
In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform….Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.

It is important to be optimistic, and, yes, there are grounds for hope for progressives in the lessons of history. But everything depends on progressives not entertaining a passive hope for the best, but redoubling our activist commitment to fight the regressive narrative and project a more credible vision of the future.

Greg Sargent’s Plum Line flags a new National Journal poll addressing “an epic argument over the core question of whether the Federal government can act at a time of severe national crisis to bring Americans relief from serious economic suffering.”
The poll indicates that “public attitudes on this question are in serious flux — which only raises the stakes for this showdown.” Sargent continues:

…The poll finds that the percentage of those who say that “government is not the solution to our economic problems; government is the problem” has edged up to 40 percent. That bolsters the widely made claim that skepticism about government’s ability to act to create jobs is perilously high for Democrats.
At the same time, though, a total of 56 percent wants government to play an active role in the economy. The rub is that 29 percent of those are not sure whether government can be effective in this regard, even if they want to see it try, anyway. Meanwhile, 27 percent do have confidence in government’s ability to regulate the marketplace. That’s unquestionably low — but there’s a sizable bloc out there (the 29 percent) that wants to be persuaded of government’s efficacy.

Sargent also makes it clear that, although President Obama gets blamed by nearly half of respondents for a “record deficit while failing to slow job loss,” there isn’t much for the GOP to cheer about in the poll, which was conducted 9/28-10/2.

…While the 40 percent who trust Obama to solve our economic problems is low, an even more abysmal 33 percent trust Congressional Republicans….42 percent say his policies are starting to move things in the right direction, and 11 percent say we’re significantly better off because of them, for a total of 53 percent — versus only 41 percent who buy the conservative argument that he’s made things worse….Also: Very solid majorities believe the Dem argument that a combination of Bush’s economic policies, and risky loans and investments by banks and investment firms, caused the crisis.

As Sargent concludes, “Public attitudes are very much up for grabs, adding to the urgency of winning this argument.”

The following article by political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The Occupy Wall Street movement really frightens the Right Wing. It is not frightening to the Right because of Congressman Eric Cantor’s feigned fear of “the mob” that is “occupying our cities.” It is not frightening because anyone is really worried that Glenn Beck is correct when he predicts that the protesters will “come for you, drag you into the street, and kill you.”
That’s not why they are really frightened — that’s the Right trying to frighten everyday Americans.
There are five reasons why the Right is in fact frightened by the Occupy Wall Street movement. None of them have to do with physical violence — they have to do with politics. They’re not really worried about ending up like Marie Antoinette. But they are very worried that their electoral heads may roll.
•All elections are decided by two groups of people:
•Persuadable voters who always vote, but are undecided switch hitters. This group includes lots of political independents.
•Mobilizable voters who would vote for one Party or the other, but have to be motivated to vote.
The Occupy Wall Street Movement is so frightening to the Right because it may directly affect the behavior of those two groups of voters in the upcoming election.

Read more…

From Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line, before yesterday’s vote on the American Jobs Act: “In an interview with me this morning, Greenberg made a strong case that moderate Senate Democrats in red states would be foolish and shortsighted if they vote against the American Jobs Act today…He argued that moderate Democrats who vote against it are actually imperiling their own reelection chances.”

“They reduce their risks for reelection by showing support for a jobs bill that’s going to be increasingly popular as voters learn more about it,” Greenberg said. “They have to be for something on the economy, and this the kind of proposal they should support. If I were advising them, I’d say you want to be backing a jobs bill with middle class tax cuts paid for by tax hikes on millionaires. Moderate voters in these states very much want to raise taxes on the wealthy to meet our obligations.”
…”Voting No would increase their risk of losing,” Greenberg said bluntly. “Democrats would look divided on their central agenda. In the end you all go down with the ship here. Why would you send Democrats back to the Senate if they are divided on the most important issue facing people? Here you can show unity and purpose, which Democrats have not had an opportunity to do during budget negotiations.”

Asked by Sargent about the President’s popularity numbers as a possible reason for Democratic defections, Greenberg responded,

“It’s a long time until the election, and the President’s standing can go up,” he said. “If the Democrats are divided and have a weak vote on the jobs bill, then moderates will only hurt themselves.”

In the first Senate vote on whether to allow “full consideration” of the $447 billion jobs bill, just two Democratic Senators, Ben Nelson (NB) and Jon Tester (MT), “who each face tough reelection bids,” voted with Republican Senators, all of whom opposed allowing a floor vote. Although they succeeded in preventing full consideration of the act, more votes on specific measures of the act are expected soon.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web page, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports strong support for President Obama’s jobs bill and takes hikes on the rich to pay for it. On the jobs bill, Teixeira explains:

In the most recent Washington Post/ABC poll, 52 percent say they support his plan, even though the $450 billion price tag is prominently mentioned, and just 36 percent are opposed.
And in the same poll, respondents were asked whether President Obama’s jobs package, if it passed Congress, would improve the jobs situation. By a 58-40 margin, the public said it would.

President Obama also has strong support for his proposals for financing the jobs bill, as the WaPo/ABC poll indicates:

As for taxing the rich, that idea is wildly popular. By an astounding 52-point margin (75-23) the public supports the idea of raising taxes on those making over $1 million a year.

As Teixeira concludes: “Conservatives said the American people would reject President Obama’s proposals because they were “big government, tax and spend.” And many pundits predicted President Obama’s aggressive approach would alienate centrist voters who wanted a continued focus on deficit reduction and bipartisanship at all costs. Wrong on both counts.”