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

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

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

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

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

Further, as Borosage concludes:

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

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

The Third way has a provocative memo addressed to “interested parties” making a poll-driven case that the tea party has become like kryptonite to the GOP’s superman pretensions. The memo opens with a Karl Rove quote that puts things in perspective: “The GOP is better off if it forgoes any attempt to merge with the Tea Party movement…[it] will hurt Republicans if the party is formally associated with Tea Party groups.” The memo continues:

A September Gallup poll gave the Republican Party a 43-53% favorability rating, or minus ten percent. Not terrific, but not awful. But an August AP poll gave the Tea Party a minus18% rating, and a New York Times poll of the same month pegged Tea Party favorability slightly worse at 20-40%. And in a recent Third Way survey of swing voters, we found the Tea Party to be strikingly unpopular with this key demographic…We agree with Karl Rove and argue that the most effective Democratic message against Republicans is to tie the GOP to the Tea Party.

The memo uses a continuum analysis to explain the Lincoln Park Strategies/Third Way survey to show how swing voters relate to the two parties, and the numbers indicate they are closer to Republicans. However, the survey also indicated that the same poll, swing voters by 56% to19% said that the Tea Party “is going too far in jeopardizing important safety net programs.” Further,

In the space of four months, the Tea Party’s popularity dropped 17 points, plunging from a net minus 3 points to a net minus 20 points, according to the New York Times. In April 2011, a poll by the outlet placed Tea Party favorability at 26%. By August, the same poll had Tea Party favorability down to 20%, with its unfavorables up to 40%.
The Associated Press found the same trend in their polling: Tea Party favorability
declined from 33% in June 2010 to 28% in August 2011; unfavorability spiked from
30% in June 2010 to 46% in August 2011. One-third of voters had “very unfavorable”
views of the Tea Party in the August AP poll.

Noting that “the Republicans are now taking direction in almost every meaningful way from the Tea Party, the memo explains:

The public is beginning to catch on to this connection, and there is a growing concern that Republicans and the Tea Party are becoming one and the same. In February 2010, only 14% of voters felt that the Tea Party had too much influence on the Republican Party.
By August, 43% of voters felt that the Tea Party had too much influence. This trend is helpful, but it is not sufficient. The full magnitude of Tea Party control over the GOP has not yet penetrated voter consciousness. Democrats must ensure that the public knows that Speaker Boehner, candidate Romney and others embrace these positions in obeisance to the Tea Party.

Then the memo makes a bold recommendation:

Voters see the Tea Party as something to fear. That should signal to Democrats that Republicans should not be characterized as “Wall Street Republicans,” “Corporatist Republicans,” “Extremist Republicans,” or “in-the-pocket of millionaires and billionaires Republicans.” They are “Tea Party Republicans.”
Democrats must show that the Tea Party and the Republican Party are joined at the hip and that Republicans are both in league with the Tea Party and beholden to them. Democrats must use every opportunity to define radical Republican ideas and the legion of Republican candidate flip-flops as the consequences of strict adherence to Tea Party dogma.

The memo concludes, “Next November, as voters head into the voting booth, the question that must go through their minds is this: Do I really want to put the Tea Party in charge of everything–Congress and the White House? If that is the question they ask, it could be a long night for Republicans.”

On the roller-coaster ride to next year’s elections, Carl Hulse’s “House Democrats Bullish on 2012 Prospects” at the New York Times Caucus should lift a few spirits. According to Hulse, Dems have done better than expected in terms of redistricting, retiring the Party’s debt and how Dems are viewed in comparison to the opposition — adding up to a “real shot’ at winning the 25 seats needed to retake the House. Says Steve Israel, head of the DCCC:

“I cannot guarantee anybody that we are going to win 25 or more seats at this point,” Mr. Israel said in an interview with New York Times reporters and editors. “I will sign an affidavit that it is going to be razor close – razor close. And the razor is going to be sharpened or dulled based on the resources, the recruits and the message we have. The House is absolutely, clearly, unequivocally in play, which is a quantum leap from where we were a year ago.”
Mr. Israel and other Democrats say they have benefitted less from anything Democrats have done and more from Republican stewardship of the House in the ongoing conflict with the Democratic Senate and President Obama. He believes that the fight that almost led to a government shutdown in the spring, the extended debt limit standoff and now the payroll tax dispute have produced buyer’s remorse among independent voters and caused Republican poll numbers to plummet.

Further, according to Hulse,

Like the Democrats in 2010 after knocking off so many Republicans in the previous election, Mr. Israel said, Republicans are too deep in Democratic territory and are going to give back many of those seats in a presidential year, when the electorate is much different from the midterm voters who handed Republicans the majority.
He counts nearly 20 districts held by Republicans that were won by John Kerry in the 2004 elections and slightly more than 40 that were won by President Obama in 2008. Mr. Israel said he doesn’t expect to take all of those back. But even winning a substantial number of them would put Democrats within reach of the majority given the likelihood that some current Democratic incumbents will fall.

The clincher for Dems, writes Hulse, may be the Republicans’ support of Rep. Paul Ryan’s highly unpopular plans to “reform” Medicare. The “buyer’s remorse” Republicans rode to victory in 2010 now defines their biggest problem — apart from the likelihood of a “tough sell” presidential nominee.

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has an interesting post on the politics of the payroll tax cut up at the Center for American Progress web pages. In “Earth to Conservatives: Don’t Raise Taxes on the Poor and Middle Class,” Teixeira notes the “blase attitude” of conservatives toward the approaching tax hike for workers, absent an extension of the payroll tax cut in stark contrast with conservatives’ “fanatic concern that taxes for the rich must never, ever go up in any circumstances.” Teixeira adds:

The public is unlikely to be pleased by conservatives’ lack of interest in their economic welfare. A just-released United Technologies/National Journal poll finds that 58 percent of the public thinks Congress should act now to extend the payroll tax cut, compared to just 32 percent who think Congress should not.
But the public does believe taxes should be raised on the rich. The latest example of this sentiment comes from a CNN/ORC poll on the super committee’s plans for reducing the deficit. The survey found by 2-to-1 (67-32) that the public approved of increases in taxes on “businesses and higher-income Americans” to help bring down the deficit.

As Teixeira concludes: “…Conservatives cannot–or just don’t want to–understand the public’s crystal-clear views in this area…Hard-pressed voters do not think their taxes should be raised but do think the affluent can afford to lend their country a helping hand.”

The latest Democracy Corps survey of the Republican House battleground shows the incumbents out of touch with their districts, a climate less favorable to Republicans, weakening support and vulnerability to attack. With numbers virtually identical to those of Democratic incumbents leading into the 2010 disaster, the House is surely in play in 2012.[1] The president is now dead even in these districts, while the image of everything Republican has fallen, above all, ‘the Republican Congress.’ These ‘no-tax’ Republicans are out of touch with their districts, polling below 50 percent, and losing ground, particularly with independents where Democrats trail by only 6 points.
This is a unique survey conducted in the battleground of the most competitive House seats for 2012: 48 of the 60 were carried by Obama in 2008. These are swing districts and are where control of Congress will likely be decided in 2012.
Key Findings:
These Republicans are weakening. They have lost half of their vote margin since September, falling to 47 percent, well below their vote in 2010 election. Just 37 percent believe they deserve re-election and their approval hovers around 40 percent. Their lead evaporates after hearing balanced attacks, falling to 44 percent.
These incumbents are crashing with independents. Since September, incumbents have lost 13 points from their margin here, and Democrats trail among independents by only 6 points.
These incumbents are weakened by a Republican Party and Republican Congress that are intensely unpopular. Only 31 percent now give the Republican Party a warm rating; more than half (52 percent) give the Republican Congress a cool rating – leading the brand crash for the party. And very important, President Obama is now running even with both potential challengers – a marked improvement since September. As he improves, the Democratic challengers in these districts have an opportunity to gain among the new progressive base that elected Obama in 2008.
These incumbents are profoundly out of touch with voters’ budget priorities, particularly on taxes and entitlements.
A press briefing will be held on Monday, December 12th at 11am EST. Join Stanley Greenberg, co-founder, along with James Carville, of Democracy Corps and CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Page Gardner, Founder and President of the Voter Participation Center and Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund to discuss the results of this poll. Please call 800.672.3665 and visit our WebEx presentation. Due to anticipated high call volume, please call in 10-15 minutes before the start time to ensure you are placed on the call promptly.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’ TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira takes a look at the monthly Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, and finds that, “despite Americans’ contradictory feelings about the Affordable Care Act, conservative attempts to repeal it are likely to be met with resistance from the public.” Teixeira adds:

On the one hand, more Americans are not in favor (44 percent) than in favor (37 percent) of the new law. But on the other, by majorities ranging from 57 percent to 84 percent, they are approve of almost all provisions included in the law. The sole exception is the individual mandate to purchase insurance, where just 35 percent are in favor.

As far as the GOP campaign to repeal the legislation, Teixeira explains:

….50 percent of respondents in the same poll say they would like Congress to either expand the Affordable Care Act or keep it as-is rather than repeal or replace it with a Republican-sponsored alternative (39 percent). It is also worth noting that since February, the number wanting to keep or expand the law has never dropped below 50 percent, while the number wanting to repeal or replace has never exceeded 39 percent.

The Supreme Court will have its say about the ACA, but the majority’s preference is clear.

This item, written by Ed Kilgore, is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In the lead up to voting in the presidential nominating contest, the only thing that reliably rivals the scrutiny received by Iowa is the disparagement expressed against the tyranny of the Great Corn Idol. With its unrepresentative electorate, its peculiar demands on candidates, and its odd procedures for making its preferences manifest, the Iowa caucuses have been singled out by many as an ill-conceived ritual whose time is long past. Back in June, Daily Beast columnist Peter Beinart celebrated Mitt Romney’s apparent decision (apparently now reversed) to shirk the state, arguing “the Iowa caucuses bear only a faint resemblance to democracy.”
And beyond Romney’s initial strategy of making only minimal effort in the state, there have been other cheerful signs for Iowa-haters that the first-in-the-nation caucus was losing its storied influence. The candidates most married to a slavish Iowa-first approach–Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum–have not fared well, even in Iowa itself, with local polls instead closely mirroring the rapid attention swings in the national media. The quadrennial ritual of candidates violating their principles to embrace ethanol subsidies has all but expired. And the wacky band of Christian Right activists who draw their oxygen from an outsized role in the caucuses is now in danger of irrelevance due to an inability to agree on a presidential vehicle.
But ironically, the very volatility of the GOP race that has threatened Iowa’s power could revive it in a big way once the caucuses actually happen. In an election cycle where Republican voters everywhere seem to shift their shallow allegiances every time a candidate shines or stumbles in any of an endless parade of debates, the massive hype and media attention that will shower the eventual Iowa winner could prove decisive in the other early states.
Lost in the confusion of wildly oscillating polling numbers among Republicans during 2011 has been the fact that, with the arguable exception of New Hampshire, all the states have been oscillating in synch. When Michelle Bachmann narrowly won the arcane Iowa GOP Straw Poll in August (helped by a good debate performance in New Hampshire), she got a strong bounce everywhere and moved into double-digits nationally. Rick Perry’s big surge after entering the race happened everywhere, as have the Cain and Gingrich surges since then. And while southern states have shown something of a bias for the more conservative candidates, a comparison of polling trends for all the candidates in Iowa and South Carolina (two states with a lot of available polls) shows extraordinary similarity over time.
Perhaps the apparent lack of significant regional variations signifies the conquest of the GOP everywhere by the conservative movement. But the alternative explanation is that Republican voters this year are so irresolute about their presidential field–aside from the negative judgments they’ve made about Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, and, most recently, Herman Cain–that the last impression they take into the voting booth could be decisive. If that’s the case, the prospect of a candidate getting on a roll after Iowa is especially strong.
Moreover, the idea that Iowa will provide one lucky candidate with a big boost is all the more probable now that nearly all of them are staking just about everything on a good performance in the caucuses. Bachmann and Santorum have been in that position all along, focusing almost entirely on Iowa. Perry will inevitably be depicted as the successor to Texas’ long line of lavishly funded but feckless presidential candidates (John Connolly, Lloyd Bentsen, and Phil Gramm) if he can’t do well in the caucuses. And if Romney is indeed “all in” for Iowa, a loss could have the very 2008-style deflationary impact his campaign has long feared. Indeed, the only outcome that might vindicate the hopes of Iowa-haters would be a Ron Paul win. But now that Paul has done the other candidates the supreme favor of throwing the first boulder at Newt Gingrich, he is in serious danger of suffering from Iowans’ famous antipathy to negative campaigning.
Of course, thanks to changes in the nominating calendar, there will be a significant lull in contests after Florida votes on January 31, so a candidacy like Romney’s with strong financial and organizational advantages could well survive early setbacks in Iowa and elsewhere and still go on to ultimate victory, particularly since all his rivals have weaknesses in their backgrounds or a tendency to commit gaffes that could produce yet another self-destruction in a cycle littered with them. But make no mistake: When Iowans trudge through the frigid night to their caucus sites on January 3, the odds are high their decision will have the kind of powerful impact on the race that Peter Beinart fears.

Rave reviews of President Obama’s Osawatomie speech are still rolling in. Writing at The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky had this to say:

…This was Obama’s best speech in a very, very long time, and it showed that he and his political people have finally figured out how to express the new, quasi-populist mood in this country in a way that sounds utterly majoritarian and unthreatening–and that backs the GOP into the corner of defending things that most Americans find indefensible. The tide is turning, and while it wasn’t the president who turned it, at least it’s clear that he understands the moment and seizing it.

Tomasky was impressed with the President’s grasp of the reality of class conflict in this political moment — and the way the middle class majority perceives it going into 2012:

…I counted 25 mentions of “middle class” in the speech. Finally–maybe, if he keeps it up–the Democrats have a broad and coherent response to trickle-down economics: middle-class economics. It’s ridiculously simple. It’s like a melody in a new pop song that you hear, and it’s so catchy and instantly memorable that you can’t believe that no one has written it until now….A strong majority of Americans is fed up with stagnation, with inequality, with the unfairness of the economic system.

Tomasky credits the President with a breakthrough realization, one that should serve him well in the campaign ahead:

…what was important here was the big picture. This is the first speech of Obama’s career, at least his career as a presidential candidate or president, where I felt he achieved a comfortable marriage of his own civic-republican beliefs about national community and principles of political economy that are plainly but not off-puttingly progressive. That he invoked the ghost of a Republican president to do it is so much the better. TR wouldn’t want much to do with Paul Ryan, and most Americans don’t either.

The President is on the right track, Tomasky feels. And if he can keep it rolling, the tide will turn in Democrats’ favor. “…If, 11 months from now, people are talking with their neighbors about how, for all his faults, Obama is the guy who’s on the side of the middle class and who has made it patriotic to say so, then the Republican candidate will be in a heap of trouble.”

WaPo columnist Greg Sargent takes a look at President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie Kansas, and finds it to be a critical point of departure, “a moral and philosophical framework within which literally all of the political and policy battles of the next year will unfold, including the biggest one of all: The presidential campaign itself.” Citing Obama’s emphasis on “inequality itself as a moral scourge and as a threat to the country’s future,” Sargent continues:

Obama’s speech in Kansas, which just concluded, was the most direct condemnation of wealth and income inequality, and the most expansive moral defense of the need for government activism to combat it, that Obama has delivered in his career…
The clash of visions Obama tried to set the stage for today — a philosophical and moral argument over government’s proper role in regulating the economy and restoring our future — is seen by Dems as more favorable to them than the GOP’s preferred frame for Campaign 2012, i.e., a referendum on the current state of the economy and on Obama’s efforts to fix it. Hence his constant references to the morality of “fairness.”
“We simply cannot return to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country,” Obama said, in what will probably be the most enduring line of the speech. A number of people on Twitter immediately suggested a new shorthand: “YoYo Economics.”
That line is key in another way. Dems believe inequality will be central in 2012 because they think there’s been a fundamental shift in how Americans view the economy, one rooted in the plight of the middle class and in the trauma created by the financial crisis.

A New York Times editorial affirms Sargent’s evaluation of the President’s speech:

The speech felt an awfully long time in coming, but it was the most potent blow the president has struck against the economic theory at the core of every Republican presidential candidacy and dear to the party’s leaders in Congress. The notion that the market will take care of all problems if taxes are kept low and regulations are minimized may look great on a bumper sticker, but, he said: “It doesn’t work. It has never worked.” Not before the Great Depression, not in the ’80s, and not in the last decade.
The president repeated his calls for the rich to pay higher taxes, for financial institutions to be more closely regulated and for education to become a national mission. What set this speech apart was the newly forceful explanation of why those policies are necessary. Incomes of the top 1 percent, he noted, have more than doubled in the last decade while the average income has fallen by 6 percent.
Mr. Obama was late to Roosevelt’s level of passion and action on behalf of the middle class and the poor, having missed several opportunities to make the tax burden more fair and demand real action on the housing crisis from the big banks that he excoriated so effectively in his speech.
But he has fought energetically for a realistic plan to put Americans back to work and has been stymied at every step by Republicans. That seems to have burned away his old urge to conciliate and compromise, and he is now fully engaged against the philosophy of his opponents.
Tuesday’s speech, in fact, seemed expressly designed to counter Mitt Romney’s argument that business, unfettered, will easily restore American jobs and prosperity. Teddy Roosevelt knew better 101 years ago, and it was gratifying to hear his fire reflected by President Obama.

Perhaps it’s not just Teddy Roosevelt the white house is channeling. The growing popularity of Elizabeth Warren in the MA Senate race, along with the Occupy demonstrations serve as potent indicators that a focused populist message may well be the Democrats’ best hope for exciting the base, winning swing voters and holding the white house and Senate in 2012.
From here on in, Dems will have no quarter for economic injustice in the 2012 campaign. As Sargent concludes, “…We’ll be hearing these themes countless times between now and election day. And those who had hoped that Obama and Dems would make an unapologetically populist and moral case against inequality and economic injustice central to Campaign 2012 should be pretty pleased with what they heard today.”