Alright, Dems, don’t get too excited or overconfident. But state Sen. Dave Hansen’s victory in Wisconsin yesterday is a very good sign. Not only did Hansen get 66 percent of the vote to thwart a GOP-led effort to recall him in retaliation for Hansen’s fleeing the state to try and prevent Governor Walker’s union-bashing. But he did it in a fairly conservative district the GOP considered a prime target, and despite a healthy Republican turnout. A couple of graphs from Steve Contorno’s report in the Appleton Post-Crescent:

Hansen’s victory over a controversial candidate wasn’t a shocker. VanderLeest’s legal and financial troubles became the focus of his campaign, dragging down his bid even after he vowed not to discuss them anymore.
But the margin of victory and the turnout by voters were a first-round demonstration of the Democratic Party’s ground game going into August, when six Republicans and two more Democrats face recall elections with control of state government hanging in the balance….If Democrats can net three seats, they will win back the Senate and provide a check to Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s virtually unchallenged agenda….

Contorno cautions, however,

Hansen’s victory may not be indicative of the rest of Wisconsin, where the eight remaining recall races are the first opportunity for voters to take decisive action for or against the direction Walker and Republicans have taken the state since January. That test will come Aug. 9 when six GOP senators face Democratic challengers followed by the Aug. 16 recall elections of Sens. Jim Holperin, D-Conover, and Robert Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie.

The outcome of these recall elections could have a significant impact on the future of both the labor movement and the Democratic Party. Those who want to help are directed to ActBlue’s web pages for the Wisconsin recall.

If you had the feeling that there is way too much congressional energy and media coverage being lavished on the debt ceiling negotiations, you are not alone. As TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports in today’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’

For most Americans the most important issues are still the economy and jobs. In a late June CBS/New York Times poll, 53 percent said the economy/jobs was the most important problem facing the country today, compared to just 7 percent who said the deficit/debt was most important.
What’s more, 62 percent thought reducing unemployment was more important than reducing the deficit in a just-released Quinnipiac University poll, compared to just 32 percent who thought reducing the deficit was more important.

As Teixeira concludes, “Wake up, policymakers! We’ve got 9.2 percent unemployment, and the public isn’t interested in endless disputes about how much and how fast to cut the deficit. They’re interested in jobs.”

It’s beginning to look like GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor may be the congressional Democrats’ secret weapon in the battle for public support in the debt ceiling talks. In a CBS News Poll conducted July 15-17, 71 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the handling of the debt ceiling negotiations by Republicans in congress, with only 21 percent saying they approved of the Republicans role. Slightly more than half of Republicans, 51 percent, said they disapproved of how members of their party in congress are negotiating.
Not that the figures favoring Democratic members of congress were all that great, with 58 percent expressing their disapproval of Democrats in the debt ceiling negotiations, and 31 percent approving. But most Dems are no doubt OK with a 13 point edge over the GOP House members in the disapproval figures.
President Obama did significantly better in the poll, with 43 percent approving of his leadership in the debt ceiling negotiations, and 48 percent disapproving. It can be argued that there are no big winners here. But it’s clear enough which party is the biggest loser.

A new Quinnipiac University poll conducted July 5-11, affirms the findings of recent polls — that the public will blame Republicans if the debt ceiling not negotiated in time to prevent an economic catastrophe. As Jordan Howard explains the findings in his HuffPo report:

A plurality of registered voters said congressional Republicans are to blame in the event the debt ceiling is not raised in a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University from July 5-11.
When asked to whom they would assign responsibility should the limit not be raised, 48 percent of respondents chose the congressional Republicans; 34 percent said they would blame the Obama administration.
These results echo a Pew Research Center poll conducted from June 16-19 which asked the same question as the Quinnipiac poll. According to that survey, 42 percent of respondents said they would blame Republicans in Congress if the debt ceiling were not raised; 33 percent chose the Obama Administration.

Among the other findings of the Quinnipiac poll:

The country is in a recession, 71 percent of American voters say, but by 54 – 27 percent they blame former President George W. Bush more than President Obama.
The president gets a 47 – 46 percent job approval rating, unchanged from the June 9 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. That tops a 64 – 28 percent disapproval for Democrats in Congress and a 65 – 26 percent disapproval for Republicans.
…Voters say 67 – 25 percent that an agreement to raise the debt ceiling should include tax hikes for the wealthy and corporations, not just spending cuts.
…By a 62 – 32 percent margin, American voters say it’s more important to reduce unemployment than to reduce the federal budget deficit. But they say 49 – 43 percent it’s more important to reduce unemployment than to reduce government spending.

Interestingly, Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling institute, notes that “The key voting bloc, independents, say 49 – 24 percent that Bush is more responsible for the economy than Obama.” Independents are not much of a “voting bloc,” as Alan Abramowitz recently explained. But the 2-1 gap certainly suggests that even Republican ‘leaners’ are clear about who created the current economic decline.
Howard quotes GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “If we go into default he [Obama] will say Republicans are making the economy worse…and all of a sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy.”
They way things are going for Republicans, “co-ownership” sounds like wishful thinking.

Yes, it’s too early to make informed predictions about which party will have control of the House of Representatives after the 2012 elections. And much depends of the quality of individual candidates, many of whom are not yet selected. But knowing where Dems stand in polls and redistricting can be useful in formulating strategy.
Toward that end, Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the U.Va. Center for Politics, has an interesting post, “Channeling Truman? The Race for the House” up at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Kondik weighs current redistricting snapshots and polls, and has this to say about Dem House prospects:

Democrats are focusing on the 61 districts that Obama carried in 2008 that are now represented by Republicans in the House (again, this is under old maps); other than two in Texas and one each in Nebraska and Kansas, all of these Obama/Republican districts are in states Obama carried. Generally, these seats are clustered around Chicago and across the Upper Midwest; between Philadelphia and Rochester; and across Florida and Southern California. Geographically, these are the places where Democrats need to make their move.

But he warns that “History is not in the Democrats’ favor: In 16 post-World War II presidential elections, the party of the winning presidential party has picked up an average of only about 13 House seats,” the grand exception being 1948, when Dems picked up “an eye-popping 76 House seats, thus reclaiming the House”.
Can it happen again? Kondik says

Democrats need less than a third — 24 — of the seats Truman’s Democrats won in 1948 to recapture the House, but it is still a very tall task.
…Can they do it? Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which would effectively change Medicare into a voucher system, gives Democrats a potentially potent weapon, especially among seniors, who are the most committed voters. And an economic recovery, combined with a weak GOP presidential candidate, could sweep Obama back into office with, if not Truman-like coattails, enough strength to move the House back into the Democratic column. Such a combination of sunny factors for the Democrats is an unlikely forecast, but in this era of wild weather, it is at least possible.

Kondik believes that Republicans are on track for a very small net gain in House seats as a result of redistricting, but warns that could be offset by Democratic redistricting success in Illinois and California. Another wild card that may help Dems, says Kondik, is Democratic control of the DOJ, which will hopefully challenge the GOP’s dilution of Black voting strength in redistricting. Kondik concludes,

So at this very early stage, the Crystal Ball would place a decent-sized bet on the Republicans to retain the lower chamber of Congress. Yet out of an abundance of caution — instilled by history’s sometimes erratic, fickle gyrations — we are not yet ready to write off Democratic chances in the House completely. There are too many land mines on the long and winding road to November 2012 for both parties to be absolutely sure of anything 481 days before America votes.

It remains unclear whether the theatrics of Republican House members in recent weeks will hurt their party in the 2012 House elections. Of course, economic recovery over the next 15 months remains the pivotal factor for Democrats. But it’s clear Dems can also benefit by vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act with respect to redistricting, calling the GOP out on their proposals to weaken Medicare and Social Security and highlighting the Republicans’ failure to come up with any job-creating proposals other than tax cuts.

According to a just-released Gallup Poll conducted 7/7-10, an overwhelming majority of Americans favor a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to address the deficit, contrary to the Republicans refusal to consider any tax hikes whatsoever.
As Nate Silver explains it in his Five Thirty Eight blog:

Few Americans, however, take the view that spending cuts alone should be made in a deal, with no tax increases at all. In fact, only 26 percent of the Republican voters surveyed in Gallup’s poll took that position, along with 20 percent of voters overall.
We can also use the Gallup poll to tease out what mix of tax increases and spending cuts the public would like to see in a deal. Assume that the people who told Gallup that they wanted “mostly” cuts would prefer a 3-to-1 ratio of spending reductions to tax increases, and that those who said they wanted mostly tax increases would prefer a 3-to-1 ratio in the opposite direction. (The other choices that Gallup provided in the poll — an equal mix of tax increases and spending cuts or a deal that consisted entirely of one or the other — are straightforward to interpret.)
The average Republican voter, based on this data, wants a mix of 26 percent tax increases to 74 percent spending cuts. The average independent voter prefers a 34-to-66 mix, while the average Democratic voter wants a 46-to-54 mix…

But the no-tax position of the House Republicans is absurdly out of step, not only with the public, but with Republican voters in particular. As Silver notes,

Consider that, according to the Gallup poll, Republican voters want the deal to consist of 26 percent tax increases, and Democratic voters 46 percent — a gap of 20 percentage points. If Republicans in the House insist upon zero tax increases, there is a larger ideological gap between House Republicans and Republican voters than there is between Republican voters and Democratic ones.

Noting the the House Republicans seem wedded to their no-tax pledge, regardless of public opinion, Silver concludes of the debt ceiling negotiations, “…Democrats have little reason to capitulate either: they are on the right side of public opinion.”

Alan I. Abramowitz takes the punditry to task once again, for their refusal to acknowledge the truth about the category termed “independent voters.” From Abramowitz’s latest post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

There they go again. The presidential campaign season is barely under way but already pundits and pollsters are making misleading claims about independent voters and the role they play in presidential elections. Here are some of the things you’ve probably read or heard in recent weeks:
Independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate.
Independent voters are up for grabs in 2012.
Whichever party wins a majority of the independent vote will almost certainly win the presidency.
These beliefs about the crucial role of independent voters in presidential elections have become the conventional wisdom among the Washington commentariat, reinforced by groups like “No Labels” and “Third Way” that try to promote centrist solutions to the nation’s problems. Recently, the Pew Research Center provided additional support for this theory with a report claiming that independents constitute a rapidly growing and diverse group of voters who swing dramatically back and forth from election to election.

It’s mostly baloney, Abramowitz argues:

…The large majority of independents are independents in name only…the large majority of self-identified independents are “closet partisans” who think and vote much like other partisans. Independent Democrats and independent Republicans have little in common. Moreover, independents with no party preference have a lower rate of turnout than those who lean toward a party and typically make up less than 10% of the electorate.

As for the myth that Independents are the big, bad pivotal constituency of the American electorate, Abramowitz adds, that “…In all three closely contested presidential elections since 1972, the candidate backed by most independent voters lost.”:

In 1976, most independents voted for Gerald Ford but Jimmy Carter won the overall popular vote. In 2000, most independents voted for George W. Bush but Al Gore won the overall popular vote (despite losing the Electoral College). And in 2004 most independents voted for John Kerry but George W. Bush won the overall popular vote.

Abramowitz explains how the ‘Independents’ category is grossly inflated by the inclusion of ‘leaners’:

Let’s start with the claim that independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate. That’s true only if you lump all independents together including those who don’t vote and those who lean toward a party. In 2008, according to the American National Election Study, independents made up 40% of eligible voters but only 33% of those who actually voted. Moreover, of that 33%, only 7% were true independents with no party preference. The other 26% were leaners.
And what about those independent leaners? Fully 87% of them voted for the candidate of the party they leaned toward: 91% of independent Democrats voted for Barack Obama while 82% of independent Republicans voted for John McCain. That 87% rate of loyalty was identical to the 87% loyalty rate of weak party identifiers and exceeded only by the 96% loyalty rate of strong party identifiers.
It’s hardly surprising that the vast majority of independent leaners voted for their party’s presidential candidate in 2008. The evidence from the 2008 ANES…shows that independent Democrats and Republicans held very different views on major issues — views that were very similar to those of their fellow partisans. Independent Democrats were more liberal than weak Democrats and about as liberal as strong Democrats while independent Republicans were less conservative than strong Republicans but just as conservative as weak Republicans.
These results suggest that the high level of support given by independent leaners to their own party’s presidential candidate was not due simply to a short-term preference for that candidate over his opponent but instead reflected longer-term ideological and policy preferences. Based on this evidence, independent leaners are unlikely to be “up for grabs” in 2012. Regardless of who wins the Republican presidential nomination, we can expect the overwhelming majority of independent leaners, like the overwhelming majority of strong and weak identifiers, to remain loyal to their party because they strongly prefer their party’s policies to the opposing party’s policies.

Abramowitz concludes: “In a close election, a candidate with an energized and unified party base can sometimes overcome a deficit among independent voters. That doesn’t mean the candidates should ignore independents, but it does mean that unifying and energizing their own party’s base is just as important as appealing to the independents.”

Republicans still want to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits to reduce the debt, but the latest public opinion data indicates they will be facing overwhelming public opposition in doing so. TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in this week’s ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

…A just-released Pew poll documents the extent of public opposition. The poll asked respondents what is more important, reducing the budget deficit or keeping Medicare and Social Security benefits as they are. By an overwhelming 60-32 margin the public prefers to keep Medicare and Social Security as they are.

The same opposition applies to GOP proposals to make people pay more for their Medicare benefits:

The public is also opposed to increasing the health care costs Medicare recipients are responsible for. By 61-31, the public believes people on Medicare are already paying enough of their health care costs.

Nor is there much public support for reducing medical benefits for low-income Americans:

…By 58-37, they say that low-income people should not have their benefits taken away, rather than agreeing that states should be able to cut back on Medicaid eligibility to deal with budget problems.

All of the media hype about debt reduction notwithstanding, the public remains unconvinced that “slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security has to be part of any such deal,” says Teixeira. “Conservatives, if they have any sense, will back off on this one.”

Princeton historian Julian E. Zelizer has an insightful post up at CNN Opinion, “President’s Bully Pulpit Is Not What It Used to Be,” which should be of interest to political junkies across the left-right spectrum. As President Obama takes to the bully pulpit today to win public support for his debt ceiling and budget plans, Zelizer provides an excellent mini-history of the use of the bully pulpit and then explains its limitations in 2011:

…The current structure of the media has emasculated the bully pulpit. Regardless of how good a president is on the stump, it is almost impossible for him to command public attention, because there is no singular “media” to speak of. Instead, Americans receive their media through countless television stations and websites.
During the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy, Johnson or Nixon spoke, the choice was to hear them or turn off the television and radio. Today, if President Obama wanted to conduct a fireside chat, it is doubtful that many people would be listening.
With the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the media were also able to shed the appearance of neutrality and objectivity. Every perspective did not have to receive equal time. On many television and radio stations, objective reporters have been replaced with openly partisan commentators. Any presidential message is quickly surrounded by polemical instant commentary that diminishes the power of what he says.
Making matters worse, on the Internet, presidents can’t even fully control the time they have as they must compete with live blogs and video commentary as they try to share their message. Even within most households, the era of the single family television is gone. Now in many middle-class families everyone has their own media and is watching their own thing.

Zelizer may be overstating his case a bit — free live television time is nothing to be sniffed at, since most people still get their political information from TV. But there is no question that Zelizer is right about the multiplicity of options diluting the bully pulpit in recent decades. Nonetheless, a president who learns how to leverage multimedia tools to project a single message will gain an edge unavailable to his predecessors.

From Daily Kos, Chris Bowers reports that labor unions and small donors have given Democratic challengers a significant edge in fundraising in six campaigns to recall Republican state senators who supported eviscerating collective bargaining rights for public workers:

…Democrats have an edge in cash on hand in four of the six campaigns. It’s pretty unusual for challengers to lead incumbents in cash on hand, much less for the majority of challengers to lead, so this is a very strong showing for the Democratic candidates.
What’s particularly impressive is how the Democratic candidates built this advantage. According to a press release from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, the average donation to the six candidates ranged from a low of $19.27 for Nancy Nusbaum (who faces Republican Robert Cowles), to a high of $37.14 for Sandy Pasch (who is up against Republican Alberta Darling). Without Pasch, the highest average donation to a Democratic candidate was $23.99 to Jennifer Shilling. Overall, the six Democrats raised $1,556,000 from about 70,000 donors who gave an average of roughly $22.

Bowers quotes from Tom Tolan’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article on the unions contribution to recall fund-raising:

political action committee formed by a coalition of unions active in state recall races says it has raised more than $4 million in the past six weeks, and has $2 million on hand to help Democrats.
…In a filing prepared for the state Government Accountability Board, We Are Wisconsin listed more than $3 million in donations from the national AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education. The group also received contributions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars – both cash and in-kind – from units of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s biggest teachers union; and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Bowers reports that “We Are Wisconsin volunteers have knocked on over 100,000 doors across the state” and more than 100,000 donors “have given to the recall effort in some fashion” and adds,

…It is particularly heartwarming that in the Wisconsin recall elections, the Democratic spearhead is being forged almost entirely by small donors, volunteers on the ground, and unions. Given that this remains, by far, the fight in 2011 with the most potential to build progressive power, perhaps it had to unfold this way or else the fight would not have happened at all.

As Bowers concludes, “We do not fight an infinitely powerful opponent. We really can win if we stick together and push back hard. So far, in Wisconsin we’re doing just that.”