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.

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest Public Opinion Snapshot reports on yet another poll indicating strong public distaste for GOP tax policy and budget cuts. As Teixeira says, “From town meetings with constituents to surveys of public opinion, the public is speaking up loudly to oppose cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and to support taxing the rich.” Teixeira adds:

The latest evidence comes from an early May Quinnipiac University poll. In that poll, 72 percent of the public opposed cutting Social Security to reduce the budget deficit, 70 percent opposed cutting Medicare, and 57 percent opposed cutting Medicaid, even after being told that 60 percent of the federal budget comes from defense, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

The poll is equally-clear about the kind of taxes they support, explains Teixeira: “On the other hand, the public does support–by an overwhelming 69-28 margin–taxing the rich to reduce the budget deficit.”
Could it be any clearer? The public strongly opposes conservative tax and budget policies — and that’s good news for Dems.

by Drew Lieberman and Andrew Baumann, Senior Associates Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research
With gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon, the big oil companies and their Republican defenders in Congress have reason to be nervous. As big oil fights to cling to the nearly $5 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies they receive each year, the American electorate has had enough. Our recent survey (see note 1) shows that American voters:
Lay the blame for high gas prices squarely at the feet of Big Oil. A 52 percent outright majority say the oil companies are most to blame for the recent increase in gas prices, a finding confirmed by a recent CNN/Opinion Research survey (see note 2) that shows 61 percent of American adults say the oil companies deserve a great deal of blame for the recent increase in gas prices, the highest percentage of any entity tested.
Strongly support ending oil company subsidies. The CNN/Opinion Research poll shows 77 percent believe the oil companies as a whole are making too much profit, three and half times the 22 percent who say they are making a reasonable profit. By a 73 to 20 percent margin in our survey, voters favor eliminating the $5 billion in subsidies and tax loopholes for oil companies each year, with 57 percent strongly favoring this proposal, the highest level of strong support among any proposal to lower gas prices.
Do not buy the oil companies’ defensive claims that ending their tax breaks will cause more hardship at the pump. While Congressional Republicans continue to defend Big Oil, voters reject the premise that ending the subsidies will cause gas prices to go up. Sixty-nine percent believe “we should end the billions in government subsidies for oil companies because we shouldn’t use taxpayer money to give handouts to oil companies already making huge profits,” while just 22 percent agree with the statement “we should keep tax breaks for oil companies because if we raise taxes on American energy producers that would just cause gas prices to increase further, hurting regular Americans.”
Note 1. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted a national survey of 1,000 likely 2012 voters (833 landline, 167 cell) between March 16 and 20, 2011. The margin of error for the survey (overall) at the 95 percent confidence interval is approximately ± 3.1 percentage points.
Note 2. Interviews with 1,034 adult Americans conducted by telephone by Opinion Research Corporation on April 29-May 1, 2011. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg have an interesting post up at MSNBC’s First Read. They report on a new survey pollster Peter Hart calls “fortifying and frightening” for President Obama’s reelection prospects, which should help illuminate his reelection strategy.
The good news for the president and for Dems hoping to ride his coattails:

NBC co-pollster Peter Hart (D) perhaps best sums up our latest NBC survey after bin Laden’s death…The president’s foreign-policy and Afghanistan handlings have hit all-time highs, while his leadership, decision-making, and commander-in-chief ratings have all increased.
…The NBC poll’s table of presidential attributes gives us a good idea on what has changed for Obama since bin Laden’s death and what hasn’t. The biggest increases: being firm and decisive (an 11-point jump from last December), having the ability to handle a crisis (11 points), being a good commander-in-chief (10 points), and uniting the country (10 points).
…Among suburban women — always a key demographic group — 55% now approve of the president’s job, and 50% say they will probably vote for him in 2012.

The not so good numbers address, as the authors note “His economic handling — attributed largely to the high gas prices — has reached an all-time low….a reminder of just how potent the issue of gas prices are right now.”
Overall, however, President Obama’s prospects are modestly encouraging, according to the poll.

…Obama’s job approval stands at 52% (a three-point increase from April) and his generic re-elect stands at 45% (up two points from last month; more interestingly, though, the “definite” vote for the Republican went DOWN eight points). As co-pollster Bill McInturff adds, these numbers underscore the “tremendous anchor the economy is to the president’s job standing.” Bottom line: The president acquired SOME political capital, but not as much as history suggests…

The post notes that Obama has 43 percent approval with ‘Independents,’ and the authors cite Hart’s belief that weak support among Indies is a serious problem for Obama. But nowadays it’s more of a catch-all category composed of disparate voters across the political spectrum. It’s all but impossible to formulate a unified strategy targeting ‘Independent’ voters. Still, it’s a number Obama wants to see increase between now and November 2012, perhaps by targeting segments of the category (e.g. youth, environmentalists, self-employed).
Of course the hope is that Obama’s high marks for strong leadership in the wake of the bin Laden raid will become generalized and supported by improving economic statistics. Polls can be helpful in formulating strategy at particular political junctures, but the numbers the President — and Dems — most want to see as 2012 approaches are declining gas prices and a lower unemployment rate.

In his current ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress Web Pages, TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports on The Pew Research Center study, “Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology.” Teixeira finds significant common ground on two key issues in particular among Americans of varying self-described political beliefs. Teixeira explains that the study,

…segments the public into nine groups: eight politically active groups and one inactive group (bystanders) composed entirely of nonvoters. Of the eight active groups, two are described as “mostly Republican” (staunch conservatives and Main Street Republicans), three as “mostly Democratic” (new coalition Democrats, hard-pressed Democrats, and solid liberals), and three as “mostly independent” (libertarians, disaffecteds, and postmoderns). In reality, however, postmoderns lean strongly Democratic, while libertarians and disaffecteds lean strongly Republican. So there are really four active Democratic and four active Republican groups.

With respect to alternative energy, Teixeira find broad support:

…Overall, the public prioritizes developing alternative energy over expanding oil, coal, and natural gas by a 63-29 margin. And, as shown in the chart below, seven of Pew’s eight active typology groups support this position, including a whopping 40-point margin among the Main Street Republican group. Only the staunch conservatives (9 percent of the public) dissent from the rest.

On providing a apth to citizenship for illegal immigrants, Teixeira cites even braoder agreement among the public:

Similarly, the public as a whole supports a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants currently in the United States by 72-24. And again, seven of eight active typology groups endorse this position, including Main Street Republicans by 19 points, libertarians by 34 points, and disaffecteds by 36 points. Only the staunch conservatives dissent, and even here there are as many supporting as opposing the position (49-49).

Despite the vociferous objections of far-right ideologues, it appears that providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and developing alternative energy are two progressive ideas that win support across the political spectrum.

The myth that the budget deficit and the national debt are the top concerns of Americans has suffered yet another major blow, as TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

In the latest CBS/New York Times poll, a plurality of 39 percent say the economy/jobs is the most important problem facing the country compared to just 15 percent who say the deficit/debt is the main problem.

Nor does the public buy the myth that “reducing the federal budget deficit is somehow going to solve the jobs problem,” notes Teixeira:

In the same poll a mere 29 percent think cutting the deficit will create jobs compared to 29 percent who believe a major reduction in the annual budget will actually cost jobs and 27 percent who think there will be an effect on jobs.

Let the conservatives rail on about deficits and debt. It appears that the party that keeps the focus on jobs will have the edge in 2012.

If you thought that, surely by now Republicans would have a clue that screwing around with Medicare is an unpopular idea, you would be wrong. The House Republican budget bill cuts funding for Medicare and substitutes a fixed amount voucher that seniors would have to use to buy private health insurance. “To say this approach is unpopular is to considerably understate the case,” explains TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot‘:

First, take cutting Medicare. In a just-released Washington Post/ABC poll 78 percent opposed cutting spending on Medicare “to reduce the national debt,” including 65 percent who were strongly opposed. This compares to just 21 percent who favored cutting the program.

The voucher idea long-favored by conservatives’ fared even worse in the poll, notes Teixeira:

As for turning Medicare into a fixed amount voucher to be used to purchase private health insurance, 65 percent in the same poll prefer that the system remain the way it is. And that number rises to 84 percent when a follow-up query is posed stipulating that the value of the voucher would rise more slowly than the price of private health insurance (as the Congressional Budget Office projects will be the case).

As Teixeira concludes, “This can fairly be characterized as massive opposition.”

Writing at Daily Kos, Chris Bowers has a post up that makes the case that Wisconsin volunteers working to recall their union-busting state legislators, not D.C. Democrats, are providing the kind of leadership needed to invigorate the Democratic Party. Bowers explains:

For the past couple months, I have been looking for a way to engage the community in activism around the spending fight in D.C. The problem has been that the fight has just been so utterly bleak. It hasn’t been about the deficit, as the actual deficit impact of the deal shows. It hasn’t been about cutting spending in general–there is a ton of federal spending a lot of us here want to see cut, such as wars and subsidies to polluters, but that type of spending isn’t on the table. Instead, the fight is just about cutting programs that support the poor and working class. Further, it’s not if those programs should be cut, but how much they should be cut by. The situation has been just altogether too depressing for worthwhile action.
Despite this, Friday before last, when House Republicans voted to privatize Medicare, there seemed to be an opening for activism on the budget. There was a positive vibe flowing through the community after President Obama’s deficit speech, and I had an idea for a action on Paul Ryan that I thought would make a splash. My thinking was that we could do a petition thanking Paul Ryan for finally being honest about the Republican plan to privatize Medicare. We could deliver it at either a town hall back in his district, or at the next Budget Committee hearing. It would probably make the people taking action feel good, let us know which members of the Daily Kos community are interested in taking action on Medicare, and also get some press (all three are keys to making a petition successful). My plan was to launch the action on Tuesday, April 19, after the tax day news cycle had passed.
Then Dick Durbin happened. On Tuesday morning, literally as I was starting to put the Paul Ryan action together, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat made national news for endorsing cuts to Social Security benefits. When I read Durbin’s comments, it took all the wind out of sails on the Paul Ryan action. I no longer wanted to join in attacks against Republicans for going after entitlements when high-ranking members of my own party were going after entitlements, and I figured a large chunk of the community wouldn’t want to, either. Additionally, I didn’t even want to put together an action laying into Dick Durbin, because in his current role as “grand bargain” negotiator such attacks would actually be doing him a favor. All too often, some high-ranking Dems use us netroots types as a foil to present themselves as “reasonable” and “serious.” By attacking them as sell-outs, we give them exactly the press narrative they are seeking.

Bowers was momentarily stumped for ideas. But then “…just as Durbin was making his comments, Democratic activists in Wisconsin once again demonstrated why right now they are more worthy of our attention than Democratic leaders in D.C.” Bowers explains further:

…Recall petitions were filed against Republican state Senator Luther Olsen on Monday and state Senator Sheila Harsdorf on Tuesday. Further, there were rumors of a massive petition filing against Budget Committee chair Albert Darling coming later in the week.
In stark contrast to the national fight, here a revved-up grassroots operation is being endorsed and directly supported by the local Democratic leadership–often at great political risk to themselves–rather than being used as a foil. As a result, they are making historic achievements. With the Paul Ryan thank-you petition fresh in my mind, it wasn’t much of a leap to conclude that we should just thank the Wisconsin volunteers instead.
And so, that’s what we’re doing. Please, tell them how much you appreciate what they are doing, because it is only through efforts such as theirs that we are truly going to be able to win these spending fights over the long-term.

Bowers reports that his thank you projects has generated 10,000+ thank you notes to the Wisconsin recall volunteers, and you can add yours to the effort by filling out this form.