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.

Ed Kilgore cautions in his post below that it’s a little early to interpret the lovely special election in NY as a harbinger of the future. And the same is probably true for current polling trends elsewhere. But the deck is so stacked against Dems in Florida, that we must flag this encouraging Quinnipiac University survey conducted 5/17-23, as reported by CNN’s political unit:

Nearly six in ten Floridians are giving a thumbs down to the job their new governor is doing, according to a new poll.
A Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday indicates that 57 percent of Florida voters disapprove of how Republican Gov. Rick Scott is handling his duties, up nine points from early April. Twenty-nine percent of people questioned in the poll say they approve of how Scott’s performing in office, down six points over the past month.
The survey also indicates that 56 percent disapprove of the job the Republican controlled legislature is doing and a majority think the state’s new budget is unfair.

Even better, Independents’ disapproval of Scott hit 57 percent, with only 28 percent approving. Florida being the largest swing state and all, sunshine state Dems should hoist a Guinness, toast their prospects — and then get seriously to work.

‘Birtherism’ is on the decline following the release of the President’s long form birth certificate. But it is nonetheless instructive to consider how the meme was accepted by so many conservatives. Alan I Abramowitz has what is likely be the definitive data-driven post on the subject up at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz weighs the data regarding the influence of partisanship, ideology and race on formation of the birther meme:

Until now, debates about the influence of racial attitudes on opinions of Obama have been severely hampered by a lack of survey data including relevant questions. However, the availability of a new data set now makes it possible to directly examine the impact of racial attitudes on whites’ evaluations of President Obama.
The data used in this article come from the October 2010 wave of the American National Election Study Evaluations of Government and Society Survey (EGSS). The October 2010 survey was the first of several cross-sectional studies being conducted by ANES in 2010, 2011 and 2012 to test new instrumentation and measure public opinion between the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. The surveys are being conducted entirely on the Internet using nationally representative probability samples. Respondents are members of the Knowledge Networks KnowledgePanel, an omnibus panel of respondents recruited using telephone and address-based sampling methods who are provided free Internet access and equipment when necessary.
Evaluations of President Obama were measured by two questions, a five-point scale measuring positive versus negative feelings about the president and a seven-point scale measuring how strongly respondents liked or disliked him. The correlation between these two questions was a very strong .85, so I combined them into a single Obama rating scale with a range from 0 (extremely negative) to 10 (extremely positive). The mean score on this scale was 5.1 with a standard deviation of 3.6. About a third (34%) of respondents gave Obama a rating of 8 through 10 while 31% gave him a rating of 0 through 2. Thus, opinions of Obama were closely divided and highly polarized.

Abramowitz also notes that “Obama’s approval rating averaged 38% for whites compared with 59% for nonwhites including 85% for African Americans.” Turning to the question of ‘birther’ attitudes, Abramowitz examines the data and adds,

…Racial resentment had a strong impact on beliefs about his place of birth. While recent polling indicates that doubts about whether President Obama was born in the United States have diminished since he released his “long form” Hawaiian birth certificate, the “birther” myth has proven stubbornly resistant to evidence. In fact, 58% of white respondents in the EGSS expressed some doubt about whether Barack Obama was born in the United States including 28% who thought that he definitely or probably was not born in the United States.

Abramowitz concludes that “partisanship and ideology were the strongest predictors of overall evaluations of President Obama and opinions about his place of birth among white Americans” and that “regardless of party or ideology, whites who scored high on racial resentment had more negative opinions of Obama and were more likely to harbor doubts about whether he was born in the United States than whites who scored low on racial resentment.”
Given the tenacity of racial bias among a substantial segment of the public, President Obama’s approval ratings are all the more impressive, as is his ability to calmly navigate around the treacherous shoals of race in America.

The following article by political strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo.
The ongoing battle over the federal budget and the role of government in America has certainly clarified the fundamental difference in the visions of the Republican and Democratic Parties — and the progressive and conservative forces within American society.
At the same time, however, the budget battle has also opened up two gaping rifts within the Republican Party itself. The first threatens to do massive damage to the GOP’s election chances in 2012. The second may cause the collapse of its 2011 legislative agenda.
First is the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the “Tea Party” class of GOP “young turks” — who want to go for broke to destroy the New Deal and impose their social agenda — and those elements of the Party whose highest concern is winning general elections.
More “moderate” Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Dick Lugar are terrified of being defeated in primaries by Tea Party insurgents who are eager to take advantage of any deviation from ultra-right orthodoxy. But they know very well that purist right wing positions like ending Medicare and privatizing Social Security are the kiss of death in general elections.
Last week, Newt Gingrich became the poster boy for the corrosive effect of this conflict, as the nation watched him pleading for forgiveness from the right for his characterization of Paul Ryan’s Republican budget as “extremist right wing social engineering.” Even though Gingrich himself remains a hard core right wing ideologue, he has had an experience many of the Tea Party newcomers have not: he knows what it’s like to lose.
Gingrich is smart enough to know that it’s one thing to prevent people from achieving their aspirations — it’s quite another to take something away that they already have — that they’ve already paid for — like Medicare and Social Security. He can read the polls that show almost 80% of the electorate wants Congress to keep its hands off Medicare and Social Security. And almost as many oppose cutting or restructuring Medicaid. Remember that Medicaid not only provides health care for the working poor, and children, but also provides nursing home care — and home care that lets seniors and the disabled stay in their own homes instead of institutions.
Of course it’s not just Gingrich that is caught in the vise between primaries dominated by well-organized right wing ideologues and a general electorate that has no use for candidates who want to abolish Medicare or defund Planned Parenthood. The entire Republican presidential field will have to cope with this virtually unsolvable conundrum every day during the upcoming primary season.
The same difficulty faces GOP Senate challengers and House incumbents. Sixty one D battles for House seats will be fought in districts won by Barack Obama in 2008 — and fourteen were won by Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004. In the 2010 elections, seniors voted Republican by 21%. Now that the Republican leadership and Ryan’s “young guns” have rounded up all but four members of the GOP House caucus and got them — incredibly — to cast a public vote to abolish Medicare — don’t expect seniors to flock to their cause again in 2012.
And in case the Republicans didn’t notice, it’s not just seniors who strongly oppose abolishing Medicare. All of those 45- to 50-year-olds who would be most directly affected and have paid their Medicare taxes all of these years aren’t too happy either.
Before this year is done, many Republican office holders and candidates will feel as though they’re on a political rack. On the one side they will find themselves and their colleagues pilloried at town meetings for voting to abolish Medicare. On the other, they will watch those who are bold enough to distance themselves from the Republican budget “Koolaid,” smacked back into line by Tea Party zealots.
This of course will be great news for Democrats in 2012. Many Republicans are taking the path of the least short-term pain in order to avoid humiliation in a primary. They are refusing to distance themselves from Ryan’s politically radioactive proposals. And of course candidates like Gingrich who try to head for a radioactive free zone — and then have to reverse themselves — look as though they have cast their principles to the winds. In politics, appearing to flip flop — to have no core commitment to values — is often the most toxic quality of all. Remember, Republicans beat John Kerry by — erroneously — convincing many swing voters that he was a “flip flopper.”
Already we’ve seen the power of the Medicare issue to drive swing seniors into the Democratic column. In the Special election for heavily Republican New York’s 26th Congressional District, Democrat Kathy Huchel has actually surged ahead of Republican Jane Corwin in last-minute polling — mainly on the strength of the Medicare issue.
But the Medicare issue doesn’t just move swing seniors. The Republican Budget — coupled with President Obama’s response — has drawn clear lines between the Democratic and Republican visions for our society. That clear distinction has already reinvigorated the Democratic Party base and will serve to rally Democratic turnout in 2012.
Paul Ryan has given Democrats the gift that will keep on giving right through November, 2012.
But the second great conflict in the Republican Party will have an impact in just a few months. That’s the conflict between the real base of the GOP — Wall Street and America’s corporate elite — and the Tea Party bomb throwers who are willing to risk allowing America to default on its debts to advance their ideological goals.
Now don’t get me wrong — much of the Wall Street/corporate CEO crowd would love to abolish Medicare and force draconian cuts in the Federal budget so they could have yet another round of tax cuts and free themselves of “meddlesome” government “regulation.” They would love to be freed to devise exotic trading schemes, sell worthless mortgage securities, decertify unions and slash middle class salaries, defund public education and all of the rest.
But they’re not interested in risking the collapse of the economy, and the markets to get it. They are smart enough to prefer the billions they have in their hot hands, to the risk that their portfolios will plummet in value once again as they did in 2008. And that is exactly what might happen if their erstwhile Tea Party allies force House Speaker John Boehner to play chicken with the nation’s debt limit in order to pressure the Democrats to scrap big portions of the New Deal.
Wall Street is terrified by guys like Illinois’ Republican Congressman Joe Walsh who said that default wouldn’t be so bad — that we should be thinking “outside of the box.” Or Congressman Devin Nunes who thinks that a default would benefit America by forcing politicians to go through a “period of crisis”. These “default deniers” just scare the bejezus out of the investor/CEO class.
But Boehner has a whole flock of these folks in his caucus, and before the default battle is over he may look like a pancake — squeezed by Wall Street on the one side, and by his Tea Party crew on the other.
It is likely that whatever deal to avoid default ultimately emerges from the Biden talks, will ultimately pass with more Democratic than Republicans votes in both houses. That means that the deal cannot contain poison pill proposals that are completely unacceptable to most mainstream Democrats. But that, in turn, may very well be unacceptable to the right-wing ideologues who see the debt-ceiling vote as their one chance to make big changes in the federal budget.
If Boehner allows a vote on such a proposal — and it does indeed pass with more Democrats than Republicans — he is afraid there may be a mutiny and he may no longer swing the big House gavel when the smoke clears.
This kind of division massively weakens the Republican’s bargaining position. As the prospect of default barrels toward us, looming larger and larger in the weeks ahead, the pressure from the Wall Street/CEO gang will grown unbearable.
The fact of the matter is that the Party’s big dogs will not allow Boehner to pull the plug on the grenade that sends the economy back into a major recession and causes markets to plummet. And of course, if they did, the political consequences for the GOP in 2012 would be catastrophic.
Had the Republicans simply continued to scream about deficits (as hypocritical as that may seem) they would have had a much stronger hand. Instead they handed Democrats a politically iconic example of exactly what the world would be like if they had their way — abolishing Medicare.
Now the Party’s candidates and its legislative leadership are divided, confused and in disarray.
In this situation, Democrats and Progressives need to remember one important axiom: when you’ve got them on the run, that’s the time to chase them.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports on the good news for Dems regarding Ohio voter attitudes towards the GOP’s legislation stripping public worker collective bargaining rights:

A new Quinnipiac University poll of Ohio registered voters documents this opposition. According to the poll, Ohio voters oppose limiting collective bargaining rights for public employees (51-38), do not believe limiting collective bargaining for public employees is necessary to balance the state budget (52-38), oppose banning public employee strikes (58-35), and oppose banning public employee bargaining over health insurance plans (54-38).

And it’s not just about attitudes. Ohio voters are ready for action, reports Teixeira: “Ohio voters also favor repealing the whole law through a referendum (54-36)…Conservatives should get it through their heads that voters don’t support taking rights away from workers, whether they’re in the public or private sectors.”

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile’s USA Today article “GOP’s 2012 Game Plan Is to Keep Voters Home” merits a read from Democratic leaders, campaign workers and, come to think of it, rank and file voters who don’t want to find themselves disenfranchised on election day. Here’s an excerpt:

…From coast to coast, the GOP is engaged in what appears to be a coordinated, expensive effort to block voters from the polls….The motivation is political — a cynical effort to restrict voting by traditionally Democratic-leaning Americans. In more than 30 states, GOP legislators are on the move, from a sweeping rewrite of Florida’s election laws to new rules for photo identification in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and more than 20 other states.
As a result, 11% of Americans –21 million citizens of voting age who lack proper photo identification — could be turned away on Election Day. And these people tend to be most highly concentrated among people of color, the poor, the young and the old.

Brazile details some the obstructions being thrown up by Republican-controlled legislatures across the nation, including restricting early voting, fines for voter registration drives and dubious photo i.d. requirements. “What the GOP is attempting to do,” concludes Brazile,” is change the rules of the game, leaving only their players on the field.”
Republicans have engaged in ‘ballot security’ campaigns and other voter suppression activities for decades. But it appears that the effort is now more widespread and deeply-entrenched than ever. Brazile’s warning should be heard and heeded by Democratic organizers, coast to coast.