For a fresh perspective on America’s unemployment problem, check out the Wall St. Journal’s post by Sara Murray, “Jobless Rate Lower or Flat in Most States” and accompanying rollover graphic widget. As Murray’s post explains,

Joblessness declined in nearly half of all U.S. states last month, the Labor Department said Friday.
Compared to a month earlier, unemployment fell in 24 states, rose in 13 and Washington, D.C. and was flat in another 13 states.
The unemployment rate has fallen significantly below the national average of 9.1% in May in 25 states. Rates were largely the same as the national average in 20 states and Washington, D.C. But five states — California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Rhode Island — continued to suffer from double-digit unemployment…For the year, 43 states and Washington, D.C. have seen a drop in their unemployment rates. Just four experienced an increase in joblessness and three states had no change.

The post’s color-coded map provides a visual sense of the geography of American joblessness, and mouse hovering reveals the numbers — which states are suffering the highest rates (NV, CA, FL, MS, SC, MI and RI) and the one state that is doing exceptionally well — ND with 3.2 percent unemployment. Don’t everyone pack for North Dakota just yet, however. Apparently there is a serious housing shortage in the midst of the job-creating oil drilling boom. The map widget also includes back and forward arrow widget that gives a nice visual sense of the monthly trend line, which does suggest a slow recovery in many states.
The map does make you wonder if maybe the recovery could benefit from targeting specific states for job creation.

There seems to be a disconnect between the deficit reduction views of conservative leaders and the more level-headed views of the public. In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains:

It really is quite remarkable, even by the standards of today’s conservatives, how far their plans for reducing the deficit are from the public’s. Conservatives don’t want to raise taxes in any way, especially on the rich and corporations. They don’t want to touch the military. And they think it’s a dandy idea to take a meat axe to domestic spending programs and Social Security. The public is exactly the opposite, as a recent Pew Center poll shows.
So what does the public approve of for reducing the deficit? They approve of reducing U.S. assistance to foreign countries (72 percent), raising the cap for Social Security contributions (67 percent), raising income taxes on the rich (66 percent), reducing military commitments overseas (65 percent), and limiting tax deductions for large corporations (62 percent)…

Conservative priorities for deficit-reduction seem tethered to some alternate reality, in stark contrast to the views of the public — “exactly backwards,” as Teixeira says. Democrats, on the other hand, are in the enviable position of being in synch with the views of the public regarding deficit-reduction and need only to stay grounded to benefit from the conservatives’ discrepancy.

GOP Rep. Paul Ryan has provided an instructive lesson in the folly of advocating the privatization of Medicare, the latest form of self-mutilation for his party. Now comes a new wave of Medicare critics, who hope to appease the knee-jerk Republican ideologues with more modest, but equally ill-considered “reforms.”
Fortunately, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman eviscerates the latest version of the raise-the-age-of-Medicare-entitlement proposal in his Sunday column, “Medicare Saves Money”:

Every once in a while a politician comes up with an idea that’s so bad, so wrongheaded, that you’re almost grateful. For really bad ideas can help illustrate the extent to which policy discourse has gone off the rails.
And so it was with Senator Joseph Lieberman’s proposal, released last week, to raise the age for Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67.
Like Republicans who want to end Medicare as we know it and replace it with (grossly inadequate) insurance vouchers, Mr. Lieberman describes his proposal as a way to save Medicare. It wouldn’t actually do that. But more to the point, our goal shouldn’t be to “save Medicare,” whatever that means. It should be to ensure that Americans get the health care they need, at a cost the nation can afford.

Krugman’s lazer-like analysis will leave Medicare-slashers sputtering predictable government-bashing drivel, which convinces almost no one outside the wingnut choir. As Krugman explains further:

…Medicare actually saves money — a lot of money — compared with relying on private insurance companies. And this in turn means that pushing people out of Medicare, in addition to depriving many Americans of needed care, would almost surely end up increasing total health care costs.
The idea of Medicare as a money-saving program may seem hard to grasp. After all, hasn’t Medicare spending risen dramatically over time? Yes, it has: adjusting for overall inflation, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose more than 400 percent from 1969 to 2009.
But inflation-adjusted premiums on private health insurance rose more than 700 percent over the same period. So while it’s true that Medicare has done an inadequate job of controlling costs, the private sector has done much worse. And if we deny Medicare to 65- and 66-year-olds, we’ll be forcing them to get private insurance — if they can — that will cost much more than it would have cost to provide the same coverage through Medicare.
By the way, we have direct evidence about the higher costs of private insurance via the Medicare Advantage program, which allows Medicare beneficiaries to get their coverage through the private sector. This was supposed to save money; in fact, the program costs taxpayers substantially more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.

We pause here to allow privatization ideologues a few moments to squirm. Krugman then notes the global evidence, which clearly shows the U.S. performing poorly in terms of cost and quality, compared with other industrial nations, and explains, “…High U.S. private spending on health care, compared with spending in other advanced countries, just about wipes out any benefit we might receive from our relatively low tax burden.”
Then there is the thorny problem of many 65-67 cohorts being unable to qualify for or afford private insurance coverage, delaying needed and preventative health care and becoming more expensive Medicare recipients later, when they do qualify.
Krugman acknowledges that “major cost-control” measures are needed, exactly “the kinds of efforts that are actually in the Affordable Care Act.” He concludes, however, that “…If we really want to hold down costs, we should be seeking to offer Medicare-type programs to as many Americans as possible.”
The partial privatization proposals of Sen. Lieberman and others are as economically untenable as they are morally regressive. Krugman’s simple, but compelling analysis of the true costs of even partial privatization should be noted and mastered by Democrats, who want to hold the white house and take back congress next year.

Has any political party in history been as hypocritical as the modern GOP in terms of paying lip service to principles they undercut with policies?
Republicans say they are all about supporting our troops, and then they slash veterans benefits. They loudly proclaim their religious devotion to gatherings of evangelicals, but their philosopher queen is the faith-hating atheist Ayn Rand (see video in Noteworthy box above). Turns out they have two faces even for matters of critical national security, as yesterday’s editorial in the New York Times, “Budgeting for Insecurity,” makes disturbingly clear. An excerpt:

House Republicans talk tough on terrorism. So we can find no explanation — other than irresponsibility — for their vote to slash financing for eight antiterrorist programs. Unless the Senate repairs the damage, New York City and other high-risk localities will find it far harder to protect mass transit, ports and other potential targets.
The programs received $2.5 billion last year in separate allocations. The House has cut that back to a single block grant of $752 million, an extraordinary two-thirds reduction. The results for high-risk areas would be so damaging — with port and mass transit security financing likely cut by more than half — that the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King of New York, voted against the bill as “an invitation to an attack.”

The Times editorial goes on to explain that the “Republicans made clear that budget-cutting trumped all other concerns…One $270 million cut, voted separately, would eliminate 5,000 airport-screening jobs across the country, according to the Transportation Security Administration.” They also fought to cut more than half of funding for first responder training, but the Democrats were able to restore most of it.
As the Times editorial asks, “Are these really the programs to be cutting?” Not if we put national security before politics.

When a bad idea tanks in politics, it’s smarter proponents usually move on to something else. But sometimes denial and delusion prolong the agony, as appears to be the case with Republican ‘Vouchercare.’ As TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira’s reports in his most recent ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages:

Amazingly, despite the strongly negative reaction so far to the Ryan budget’s plan to end Medicare as we know it, conservatives are continuing to back it, arguing that all they need is better messaging about the plan. This is clearly delusional. No message is going to change the simple fact that the public doesn’t like the plan and wishes it would go away…

Teixeira cites recent CNN polling data which “make this fact about as clear as polling can make it.”:

…58 percent say they oppose the plan to change Medicare with just 35 percent in favor. Moreover, strong opposition is present across the age spectrum. Those 50 and over oppose the plan 60-33 but those under 50 are nearly as strong in opposition (57-36). And independents, whom conservatives have so assiduously courted, oppose the plan 57-34.

If that’s not clue enough,

…Just 25 percent of those under 65 believe they will be better off under the plan when they are eligible to receive Medicare, compared to 43 percent who think they will be worse off. And among seniors–who of course are already receiving Medicare–a scant 13 percent think they will be better off, compared to 58 percent who believe their situation will be worse.

You would think the recent Dem pick-up in NY-26, in which GOP Vouchercare was a pivotal factor, would give the Republicans yet another clue. Not so, as Teixeira explains: “…Alas, common sense of any kind seems in short supply among today’s conservatives.”

Whatever else you read today, don’t miss the New York Times editorial “They Want to Make Voting Harder?” which provides an excellent update on the GOP’s voter suppression campaign, which certainly appears to be targeting African American voters. It’s hard to select an excerpt, since every sentence of the editorial is substantive, but here goes:

…Early voting, which enables people to skip long lines and vote at more convenient times, has been increasingly popular over the last 15 years. It skyrocketed to a third of the vote in 2008, rising particularly in the South and among black voters supporting Barack Obama.
And that, of course, is why Republican lawmakers in the South are trying desperately to cut it back. Two states in the region have already reduced early-voting periods, and lawmakers in others are considering doing so. It is the latest element of a well-coordinated effort by Republican state legislators across the country to disenfranchise voters who tend to support Democrats, particularly minorities and young people.
Mr. Obama won North Carolina, for example, by less than 15,000 votes. That state has had early voting since 2000, and in 2008, more ballots were cast before Election Day than on it. Mr. Obama won those early votes by a comfortable margin. So it is no coincidence that the North Carolina House passed a measure — along party lines — that would cut the early voting period by a week, reducing it to a week and a half before the election. The Senate is preparing a similar bill, which we hope Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, will veto if it reaches her.

Racially-motivated? Sure looks like it:

…More than half of the state’s black votes were cast before Election Day, compared with 40 percent of the white votes. A similar trend was evident elsewhere in the South, according to studies by the Early Voting Information Center, a nonpartisan academic center at Reed College in Oregon. Blacks voting early in the South jumped from about 13 percent in 2004 to 33 percent in 2008, according to the studies, significantly outpacing the percentage of whites.
One of the biggest jumps was in Georgia, where, over the objections of several black lawmakers, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill in April that would cut back in-person early voting to 21 days, from 45 days. Florida just cut its early voting period to eight days, from 14. Florida also eliminated the Sunday before Election Day as an early-voting day; election experts note that will eliminate the practice of many African-Americans of voting directly after going to church.

It’s not only the south, however. The editorial notes that a similar effort is underway in Ohio. No doubt other of the 33 states that allow early voting and have GOP-controlled legislatures will follow suit. Shameless.
For Dems, the challenge is clear — develop programs to mobilize the constituency for early voting to turn out in the shorter time frames.

By now, almost everyone is aware that Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare is a disaster in terms of public opinion. But, as TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

…The Ryan budget’s commitment to dismantle Medicare is by no means the only unpopular part. Consider a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll that asked about ending Medicaid as we know it, which is also part of the Ryan budget.
First, the poll asked whether respondents supported major reductions in Medicaid spending (as the Ryan budget does), minor reductions, or no reductions. Only 13 percent supported major reductions. Thirty percent supported minor reductions, and a majority (53 percent) supported no reductions.

As unpopular as Medicaid reductions are with the public, delegating administration of the program to the states is even more of a loser with the public, as Teixeira explains:

Then the poll directly asked about Rep. Ryan’s proposal to change Medicaid fundamentally by “giving each state a fixed amount of money and eliminating federal minimum standards for Medicaid.” This would replace the current arrangement where “the federal government guarantees health care coverage and long term care for certain low income people” and “each state administers its own Medicaid program … but all states are required to provide coverage to anyone who meets minimum criteria set by the federal government.” The Ryan proposal, which truly would end Medicaid as we know it, was rejected by a thumping 60-35 margin.

If Republicans were hoping that changing the topic from screwing the elderly out of their health security to ripping off health care services for the neediest Americans would give them some breathing space, they were clearly mistaken.

The following article by political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo.
In recent American political history, changes in political momentum typically revolve around a seminal political battle.
After the Republican sweep in 1994, that battle was over the GOP plan to cut Medicare to provide tax cuts for the rich. It featured Newt Gingrich’s government shutdown and his subsequent retreat in 1995. From that point forward, Clinton built momentum and ultimately defeated the Republican nominee Bob Dole by 8.5 percentage points.
A similar decisive battle turned the tide ten years later, after the Republican victory in 2004. In the months following their defeat, Democratic prospects looked bleak. Republicans controlled the Senate, House and the Presidency and were poised to seize control of the Supreme Court for a generation.
But then Bush and his Wall Street allies launched a massive effort to privatize Social Security — a move designed both to eviscerate the social insurance program that lay at the foundation of the New Deal and to allow Wall Street to get its hands on the Social Security Trust fund. President Bush toured the country to stump for his plan, the Republican leadership signed on in support.
Democrats stood solidly against the proposal and together — with the labor movement and other progressive organizations — ran a campaign that ultimately forced the Republicans to drop the proposal without even so much as a vote in Congress. It turned out that privatizing Social Security — which would have simultaneously lowered guaranteed benefits, and increased the deficit — had zero traction with ordinary voters who believed that the money they had paid into Social Security entitled them to the promised guaranteed benefits.
The battle to privatize Social Security shifted the political momentum in America. Democrats got back off the floor after being thrashed in 2004, regained their footing and self-confidence and went on the offense — attacking the increasingly unpopular War in Iraq and capitalizing on the unbelievable incompetence surrounding Hurricane Katrina. After Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006, that momentum continued through Barack Obama’s victory in 2008.
After their defeat in 2008, Republicans used the battle over health care reform to turn the political tide themselves. They didn’t win the fight over the health care bill, but they won the political war. They used that momentum to invigorate their base and to capitalize on the slow pace of economic recovery after the financial catastrophe that was actually caused by reckless Republican economic policies coupled with wild excesses on Wall Street.
Politics is like war — or for that matter competitive sport. Momentum is critical to victory and changes in momentum inevitably center on turning-point battles. Just as important, turning-point battles reframe the terms of debate. They become emblematic of whether or not a political leader is “on your side.”
Political momentum shifts have an enormous effect on political psychology. For one thing, there is the band-wagon effect. People don’t like to sign on with losers — or political parties that are despondent and divided. Voters, candidates and donors, want to be with self-confident winners — not losers who are searching for direction. They get on the train when it’s picking up steam — not when it is grinding to a halt.
That’s why the perception that political momentum has changed can often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Regaining the political momentum will do wonders for Democratic attempts to raise funds and recruit candidates for the elections in 2012. It has already encouraged several of the strongest contenders in the Republican presidential field to take a pass on the race.
And without iconic battles, momentum shifts in politics rarely occur.
After George Bush won the Presidency in 2000, the battle over the Bush tax cuts could have taken on that kind of iconic importance. Unfortunately, even though Democrats could have stopped his tax cuts for the wealthy, much as they stopped his attempts to privatize Social Security after 2004, some Democrats did not hold firm and draw a line in the sand. A few Democrats joined the Republicans to support the Bush tax cuts that have led directly to our current budget deficit. Their success passing tax cuts for the wealthy built momentum for the Republicans.
And, of course, there was another iconic moment that most defined the first years of the Bush Presidency: the attack on 9/11. The Republicans used that attack as a huge political momentum builder, and it served as the rationale for almost all of their policies for the next four years.
By proposing to eliminate Medicare, Republican Budget Committee chair Congressman Paul Ryan set the stage for exactly the kind of iconic battle that signaled fundamental changes in political momentum in the past. Over the last six weeks, that battle has played out in town meetings and talk shows across the country. It culminated last week in the stunning Democratic victory in New York’s blood-red 26th Congressional District, where it became crystal clear to everyone that the Republican plan to eliminate Medicare is a political kiss of death.
The fact that Ryan and the Republicans chose political low ground to engage this battle is not entirely a result of Republican hubris or dumb luck. David Plouffe and the Obama team deliberately laid in wait for the Republicans, holding back at engaging the budget debate until Ryan and company made their incredibly unpopular proposal — and then the President’s budget speech sprung the trap.
They knew that once the Republicans had elaborated their strategy to eliminate Medicare in gory detail they could demonstrate graphically just what America would look like if the Republican ideologues had their way.
Amazingly, this weekend, Republican leaders doubled down on their proposal, pledging to make it part of the terms Republicans will demand to avoid default of America’s debts.
Apparently the Republican leadership’s desperate need to pander to the extremist Tea Party element in their ranks has overwhelmed their good political sense – and that is great news for Democrats.
The battle over Medicare — and the entire Republican budget — puts the question of “who’s on whose side” in clear, unmistakable relief. As in 1995, the issue is simple. In their budget, Republicans proposed to cut – actually eliminate – Medicare in order to give tax breaks to millionaires.
During the 2005 battle over privatizing Social Security, the Republican leaders never even came close to actually forcing their Members to cast a vote to support Bush’s radioactive privatization plan — yet the battle still turned the political tide. This year, the Republicans were so cowed by the Tea Party that they actually corralled all but four Republican House Members — as well as forty Republican Senators — into voting yes on a bill to eliminate Medicare. Astounding.
The decisive battle that has changed the political momentum between the conservative and progressive forces in American society has happened — and once again Progressives have stood up straight and are on the march.
Now we must press our advantage and use this iconic engagement to demonstrate clearly that the radical conservatives are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CEO/Wall Street class – the wealthiest two percent of Americans — while Democrats and Progressives stand squarely with the middle class.

Republican leaders and conservative pundits have spun Democrat Kathy Hochul’s upset win in New York’s 26th Congressional District as exceptional – with peculiar ballot lines, Tea Party independents, quality of the candidates, and Democratic message discipline. We concede: yard signs in Upstate New York did read “Save Medicare: Vote Hochul.” But our national poll completed on Wednesday shows that New York’s 26th is not alone. It is an advance indicator of a sharp pull back from Republicans, particularly those in the House.
Disapproval of the Republicans in the House of Representatives has surged from 46 percent in February to 55 percent in April to a striking 59 percent now. Disapproval outnumbers approval two-to-one; intense disapproval by three-to-one. For the first time in more than a year, the Democrats are clearly even in the named Congressional ballot – an 8-point swing from the election – and Obama has made a marked gain in his job approval and vote against Mitt Romney – with the President now leading by 4 points. This period captured the introduction of the Republican budget plan and vote by the House – and voters do not like what they see.
Perhaps most notably, this survey flags a major retreat from the Republican approach to deficits and spending, the economy, and jobs. As the Republicans have unveiled their plans and approach during this four-month debate on the deficit, priorities and the economy, they have pushed many voters away.
On Wednesday, Democracy Corps will release a major multi-study report on the economy and economic messaging, but we wanted to release these political findings before the holiday weekend.
The memo and frequency questionnaire can be found at Democracy Corps.

In his comment following our staff post on the latest Quinnipiac poll of Florida voters , Victor E. Thompson flagged a good read for those interested in political demographics, “Florida Has Much Greater Diversity in Latino Population” in The Americano. Here’s a few of the interesting stats and trends concerning the Hispanic population of the largest swing state:

…According to the 2010 Census, Hispanics now make up almost 1 in 4 Floridians, up from 1 in 6 a decade ago.
…Hispanic growth in the Puerto Rican-heavy central Florida counties along Interstate 4 was almost as large as the Latino gains in Cuban-dominated South Florida during the past decade.
…Sill at just over 1 million, Cubans-Americans still are Florida’s largest Hispanic group, making up about a third of the state’s Latinos, according to the Census’ American Community Survey. Puerto Ricans now number more than 725,000.
…Nearly all of the 13 Latino members of the State Legislature are Cuban-American. One is Puerto Rican, one is Colombian-born and another is of Spanish descent. In Florida’s congressional delegation, the three Hispanic members of the House and Sen. Marco Rubio are all Cuban-American.

Puerto Ricans have not voted as heavily Democratic as some other Latino constituencies (e.g. Mexican-Americans). But it is also true that they have not voted as heavily Republican as have Florida’s Cuban-Americans. A new majority Latino and heavily Puerto Rican congressional district is likely to be formed in central Florida soon, with a possibility of the creation of another more mixed Latino district in south Florida.
The article notes the under-representation of Puerto Rican officials in Florida’s political institutions. It appears that Democrats can benefit by supporting citizenship education and leadership development among Florida’s Puerto Rican demographic.