In this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress website, TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira shows how congressional conservatives are “doubling down on their extreme policies” with radical budget proposals concerning taxes and Medicare that have little prospect of winning anything resembling majority support. On taxes, Teixeira explains:

President Barack Obama has severely criticized this budget plan, saying it is completely out of step with the country’s needs and values. Polling data suggest the public is having the same reaction to the conservatives’ budget. In a just-released Gallup poll, a strong 59-37 majority say next year’s budget should include an increase, not a cut, in taxes for those making more than $250,000.

Regarding Medicare:

The public is also far from wanting to end Medicare as we know it. Sixty-one percent in the Gallup poll favor only minor changes (34 percent) or none at all (27 percent) in the program. Another 18 percent support major changes and only a miniscule 13 percent say they are in favor of completely overhauling Medicare. The latter figure is significant since a “complete overhaul” is exactly what conservatives are proposing to do.

It appears that the prudent conservatives of yesteryear have all been replaced by ideologues in blinders, who may now be courting political disaster, as Teixeira suggests. “With this budget…they may finally have gone so far that they will be unable to ignore the negative reaction to their proposals.”

Political organizer and Democratic strategist Robert Creamer argues in his latest HuffPo post that President Obama has outmaneuvered his Republican adversaries with his speech on the budget. Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” now sees four factors recasting “the political equation” to favor Democrats. First:

…Obama changed the frame of debate from the realm of policies, programs and green eye-shades into a contest between the progressive values that have always defined what is best in America and the radical conservative values of the Gilded Age.
The right always goes to political war armed with a full complement of value-based arguments and symbols. They are very good at clothing the self-interest of Wall Street/CEO class in talk about freedom and individualism and self-reliance.
We lose when we talk about policies and programs and they talk about right and wrong.
But the moment we transform the debate into a contest between progressive and radical conservative values — between the progressive and conservative visions of the future — we completely change the political equation.

Creamer credits Obama’s speech with delineating — and illuminating — a critical demarcation regarding “two very different visions of American society”:

* Are we all in this together — or do we believe in a society where everyone is out for himself and himself alone?
* Should we simultaneously take responsibility for ourselves and look out for each other — or should the strongest and most clever among us simply be allowed to dominate and exploit the rest?
* Do we aspire to hope and possibility — to the belief that we can shape a better future for our kids? Or are we ready to concede that we can no longer afford to assure that every child has the education she needs to fulfill her potential =- or that seniors should be denied a dignified life in their retirement — or that if you’re sick and poor, you’re just out of luck?
…When we proudly assert our progressive values, we win.

Creamer’s second point, that the major provisions of Obama’s budget are “immensely popular.”:

…The beltway pundits would have you believe that to have a “serious” budget plan you have to do things that are “painful” and “unpopular.” The only reason that would be true is that they often advocate taking actions that are beneficial only to the top two percent of the population at the expense of everyone else.
They say that to be “serious” we have to cut Social Security for seniors who make an average of $19,000 a year and give tax breaks to people who make tens of millions — sometimes billions a year.
It’s easy to see why that would be pretty unpopular with most people. To make it palatable to ordinary people you have to convince them that they need to take the “bitter medicine now” so they can have a better life — or avoid an even more dire fate — in the future. This, of course, is self-serving hogwash…Of course we need to do what is necessary to pay for what government does. But the choice we face is not between short-term pain and long-term prosperity. It is between a better life for most people and the greed of a few people.
President Obama’s proposals are very popular because if we clearly lay out the true choices, normal people are smart enough to understand their own interests. Eighty-one percent of the population favors increasing taxes on millionaires. Huge percentages oppose cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. They oppose eliminating Medicare and replacing it with vouchers that steer you to buy private insurance. They certainly oppose increasing out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicare by $6,400 — which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says is the direct consequence of the Republican budget. They support making smart, appropriate cuts in defense spending. They support investing more, not less, in education and scientific research. They support more money — not less — for Head Start, nutrition programs, to pay for police and fire protection, to build schools and bridges and high-speed rail. They support investing more money in clean energy…

Third, Creamer cites two key “framing points”:

* Eliminating the budget deficit is not inconsistent with progressive priorities. This should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of memory, since the last time the budget was balanced was just ten years ago and that was done under Democrat Bill Clinton. However, it was necessary to make this point clear by presenting a plan to achieve fiscal balance that also embodies progressive values.
* Controlling health care costs — which is a major driver of increased spending — is not the same as simply shifting these costs to seniors and the disabled. Controlling costs is about actually controlling increases in the costs of delivering health care — chief among which are the outrageous costs of prescription drugs. Obama reintroduced a major way to cut health care costs into the debate: Allow Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate lower drug prices. But that of course would lower the profits of the drug companies.

Lastly, Creamer credits the President with playing a shrewd endgame in the budget deal:

Obama’s strategy was to settle the short-term 2011 budget battle in order to eliminate the Republican weapon of the short-term government shutdown. That was a key leverage point because it was very much in Obama’s interest to avoid the economic damage that a shutdown would cause to the fragile recovery. He wanted to get the best deal he could in terms of pure dollars and cents. But his main goal was to come to an agreement that avoided a shutdown, but did not compromise structural or policy issues that would reshape the political and economic landscape far beyond the September end of the fiscal year. In that, he was largely successful.
By coming to an agreement before he launched the broader policy debate he also had the opportunity to see exactly how far the Wall Street/CEO faction of Republican Party and the party’s political elite would allow the Tea Party faction to go in pursuit of its program. Turned out that they were unwilling to shut down the government over the Tea Party social agenda.
Obama also wanted to wait to seriously join the debate until after the Republican budget chair, Paul Ryan, had unveiled the details of their budget plan that lays bare the real contours of the right-wing vision for everyone to see. That allowed him to clearly contrast a progressive vision with a fully articulated Republican blueprint.
Obama has changed the terms of negotiation — the benchmarks — from pure dollars cut, to questions involving the purpose of government and our vision of society. That makes it much easier for him to draw clear lines in the sand -= as he did yesterday. He pledged unequivocally not to privatize Medicare, not to block grant Medicaid, and not to sign another extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
At the same time, his proposals allow him to take off the table the issue of how much Democrats want to reduce the deficit. He presented a plan that matches — and actually exceeds — the Republican deficit reduction goals. That leaves the only question for debate the issue of how that goal is achieved, which is the strongest Democratic political ground.
What about Republican claims that they will hold an increase in the debt ceiling hostage to their budget demands? They are nothing but bluster. If the Wall Street/CEO faction were unwilling to allow the Tea Party to shut down the government, they certainly are not going to allow them to explode the economy and financial markets with government default.
…The Congress does not need a “budget” for fiscal 2012 and beyond. To continue operating, the government does need new appropriation bills for 2012. Those will become the focal point of the next “shutdown” drama, but that will once again likely involve numbers and spending levels — not the long-term structural questions posed by the Republicans and Obama budget plans.

While the budget deal falls far short in terms of meeting progressive priorities, Creamer argues that President Obama’s speech has helped to put Dems in solid position for 2012. Creamer predicts a Democratic trifecta next year — holding the white house and senate, and winning back the House majority. He adds “The president’s speech yesterday made that kind of electoral outcome much more likely.”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has crafted ‘The People’s Budget,’ and it is nicely put in perspective by TDS Advisory Board member Chris Bowers at Daily Kos, and cross-posted from Kos below:
One of the complaints the progressive blogosphere commonly levels against the Democratic leadership in DC is about negotiating strategy. Generally, the complaint is that the Democratic leadership in Congress and in the White House make opening bids that are already compromises, which results in final legislative deals skewing further to the right than necessary. Perhaps the most frequent specific example of this complaint is that Democrats in Congress should have started the health care debate by proposing a single-payer plan, and might have ended up with a public option in the final bill as a result.
Whether or not you agree with that complaint in either the general or the specific, if it is applied to the budget fight the Democratic leadership in DC should have started with The People’s Budget (PDF), which the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced today. It’s a budget that produces a surplus by 2021 without cutting services for the poor and middle-class. It thus provides a stark contrast with the recent proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan, and a left-flank to the principles outlined by President Obama.
Here’s a general overview of the People’s Budget:
* Reduces unemployment–and thus the deficit–through extensive investment in infrastructure, clean energy, transportation and education;
* Ends almost all the Bush tax cuts, creates new tax brackets for millionaires and new fees on Wall Street;
* Full American military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other reductions in military spending;
* Ends subsidies for non-renewable energy;
* Lowers health care costs through a public option and negotiating Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies;
* Raises the taxable maximum on Social Security.
That is a very quick summary, and full details can be read here. The Economic Policy Institute has a full analysis here. Today at the press conference introducing the budget, economist Jeffrey Sachs praised it as the “only budget that makes sense” and “a lot more serious than everything else on the table.” He’s also previously written about The People’s Budget on the Huffington Post.
Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva said the People’s Budget–which is an actual piece of legislation, not simply an outline–was filed with the Rules committee this morning. His fellow co-chair, Representative Keith Ellison, told me he thinks it will get more than 100 votes, which would be a majority of House Democrats. Even though that is still not enough to pass the chamber, Ellison said “we have to tell people what we would do if we had the numbers.”
Getting those numbers will of course be very difficult. However, under no circumstances should we consider it impossible. One of my favorite stories in political history is the passage of the Reform Act of 1867 by the British Parliament. This was a bill expanding the franchise that was passed by a Conservative government, even though the Conservatives had gotten into power largely by defeating a weaker form of the same bill. However, the Conservatives ended up passing the bill largely because of overwhelming public pressure in the spring of 1867.
To me, the moral of that story has always been that the location political center can, and often does, change very quickly. The first step in making change happen is by talking about new possibilities. Today, with their introduction of the People’s Budget, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has taken that first step.

Adam Serwer makes the case that, President Obama’s “liberal base” problems are “way overstated.” In a Plum Line post Servwer explains:

…Despite the loud criticism of Obama from prominent lefties, liberal and Democratic rank and file support for Obama remains solid. The one who really has the most to fear from an angry base is House Speaker John Boehner….The Post reports:
“Key liberal groups, which helped elect Obama in 2008, are raising concerns that he has given up political ground to Republicans, allowing the message of reducing government to trump that of creating jobs and lowering the unemployment rate.
Seizing on Friday’s deal, which would cut $38.5 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget, activists on Tuesday threatened to sit out the 2012 presidential campaign if Obama goes too far with further cuts.”

Serwer argues that Obama may have gotten a better budget deal than expected and is holding his own with progressives in recent polls:

…Gallup’s weekly demographics poll shows Obama’s approval rating among liberals and Democrats has been relatively stable over the past month. A recent CNN poll also showed that Democrats and independents broadly approved of the budget compromise even before the details were really out, which makes sense since unlike Republicans who seemed eager for a shutdown, Democrats tend to like compromise.
Indeed, it’s precisely because Obama’s standing among liberals and Democrats is so strong that liberal activists and elites have to make so much noise to hold his feet to the fire. Conservative elites, through an incredibly influential media ecosystem that includes Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others, have much more influence over the opinions of the conservative base than liberal elites do over theirs.
Boehner is the person who really has to worry about pleasing his base. That same CNN poll, while giving him broad approval ratings among Republicans, still showed that a bare majority of GOPers believe he has given up too much ground, and his approval ratings among conservatives and Republicans are far lower than Obama’s standing among liberals and Democrats.

Serwer concludes that President Obama is leveraging his leeway to compromise, which makes it “all the more important for liberal groups to pressure him to prevent him from giving too much ground.

President Obama is catching a lot of heat from progressive Democrats as a result of the budget deal averting a government shutdown (see here, here and here). But it appears he has bested the Republicans in the eyes of the public, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.
The poll, conducted 4/9-10, found that 54 percent of Americans approve of President Obama’s handling of the budget negotiations, with 45 percent disapproving. Nearly half, 48 percent of respondents give Obama and Democrats more credit for the agreement, compared to 35 percent giving congressional Republicans more credit. (11 percent gave both credit, with 3 percent choosing “neither” and another 3 percent undecided).
Further, according to Steven Shepard’s ‘Hotline on Call’ report at The National Journal:

Notably, Obama scores better than congressional leaders from both parties. Equal majorities, 54 percent, disapprove of how leaders of each party handled the negotiations. In fact, House Speaker John Boehner now has an upside-down job approval rating: 41 percent of Americans approve of Boehner, while 43 percent disapprove.
Overall, a healthy majority, 58 percent, approves of the budget agreement. Just 38 percent of Americans disapprove. Majorities of Democrats (66 percent) and independents (56 percent) support the agreement, but Republicans are split virtually down-the-middle, with 47 percent approving of the agreement and 49 percent disapproving of the deal.

Not that the public likes all the GOP budget cuts — 65 percent favored continued funding for Planned Parenthood. An even larger majority, 71 percent, wants continued funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and its efforts “to enforce regulations on greenhouse gases and other environmental issues,” with just 28 percent in favor of preventing the EPA from funding enforcement. As for implementing the new health care act, 58 percent want the government to fund implementation, with 41 percent opposed.
In all, 31 percent of self-identified Democrats said President Obama and the Democrats “gave up too much” in the negotiations, while 63 percent said they did not. For independents, the figures were 16 percent agreeing that Obama and Dems gave up too much, with 77 percent disagreeing.

Despite congressional Republicans assurances to the contrary, last week’s budget deal, which jettisoned the tea party’s treasured anti-abortion measures, also weakens their leverage to force cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, according to political strategist Robert Creamer, in his HuffPo post on the topic.
The GOP cave on women’s health clinics, family planning — and Planned Parenthood was a result of recognizing that the public was against them 2-1 and that they needed to compromise at this stage to appear “reasonable.” But the main factor in forcing the comprise, according to Creamer, was their lapdog devotion to making the fat cats happy:

Most important for the future is the role of the real base of the Republican Party — Wall Street and Big Business. The Republican CEO caucus — and the Chamber of Commerce — are hell bent on destroying unions, shrinking the public sector, lowering tax rates for millionaires, etc.
Frankly, they could care less about the right wing social agenda. In fact, they view social conservatives as cannon fodder to win elections. And once they had gotten all that they could on the economic side, they were not the least bit interested in jeopardizing their political fortunes or the economy simply to advance the Tea Party agenda…Apparently the Chamber and the CEO class’s chief operative, Karl Rove, weighed in heavily against a Republican shutdown.
…The Republican House Budget Chairman, Paul Ryan has proposed…about $4.2 trillion of tax cuts over the next decade for corporations and the wealthy. In other words, Ryan has proposed pulling the plug on Medicare, Medicaid and food support in order to give tax breaks to millionaires.

So now the Republicans will put their declining leverage into their fall-back position to appease the Tea Party — a cap on federal spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product. As Creamer explains it,

Holding the debt ceiling increase hostage to their radical economic demands is pretty much equivalent to a radical suicide bomber threatening to blow himself and everyone else up, if they don’t agree to his radical religious demands.
…While the Wall Street/CEO Republicans really want to wring as much as possible out of Democrats in the way of less regulation, a smaller public sector and lower taxes for them, they are not likely to knowingly allow the Tea Party extremists to blow up the credit markets and the economy….And though the Republican political class would love for the economy to stagnate between now and 2012 — they certainly don’t want to be caught with their hands on the grenade pin if the economy blows sky high.

As Creamer puts it, “The deal that was struck last week demonstrated clearly that the CEO/Wall Street faction of the Republican Party — and its political elite — are not yet prepared to allow the inmates to run the asylum.”

Those who are wondering about the effects of the latest wave of Republican union-busting on union voters should read Alan I. Abramowitz’s column at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abramowitz, a member of the TDS Advisory Board and author of “The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization and American Democracy,” provides an informative analysis of union members’ recent voting patterns and party i.d. data.
Acknowledging that unions are influential because of the money and turnout manpower they provide for Democrats, Abramowitz then presents data demonstrating that union influence as a voting block is small and declining: “In 1952, 28% of voters were members of union households; in 2008, only 13% of voters were members of union households.” In terms of party identification, he explains:

…Attachment to the Democratic Party among voters in union households peaked in the 1960s. At that time, 69% of union voters identified with the Democratic Party compared with 51% of non-union voters. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, Democratic identification among union voters had fallen to 58%compared with 48% among non-union voters. While union voters remained considerably more attached to the Democratic Party than non-union voters, the gap between the two groups had shrunk considerably due mainly to declining Democratic identification among union voters.

Breaking it down by race, church attendance and marital status, Abramowitz presents data in charts and tables and adds,

The decline in Democratic identification since the 1960s has been much greater among some types of union voters than among others, however. Among African-Americans, who have gone from 10% of union voters in the 1960s to 13% today, there has been no decline in Democratic identification. Between 89% and 93% of African-American union voters identified with the Democratic Party throughout this time period. Among white union voters, however, Democratic identification fell from 66% in the ’60s to 51% in the 2000s. Moreover, the decline in Democratic identification among white union voters has been greatest among socially conservative groups such as regular churchgoers and married men. Among regular churchgoers, Democratic identification fell from 67% in the ’60s to 40% in the 2000s and, among married men, Democratic identification fell from 68% in the ’60s to 44% in the 2000s.
…Evidence from the 2008 National Exit Poll indicates that even in an election in which the economy was the dominant issue, both church attendance and gun ownership exerted a substantially stronger influence than union membership on candidate preference among white voters. It remains to be seen whether an increase in the salience of issues affecting unions such as the collective bargaining rights of public employees will alter this pattern in 2012.

Abramowitz’s findings may be discouraging to Democrats, but he leaves open the possibility that the attacks on collective bargaining rights could sway union voters to support Dems in greater numbers. In addition, unions may be poised for a new era of growth, if only because we may be approaching the point at which millions of workers begin to realize that unions provide the best hope for job security, decent wages and benefits.

A new Democracy Corps strategy and research paper, “The Budget Battle in the Republican-Obama Battleground,” based on a survey of likely voters in 50 ‘battleground districts’ conducted 3/13-17, spells trouble for House Republicans occupying swing districts. From the Overview:
The Republicans’ proposed budget cuts are in trouble in the 50 most competitive Republican-held Congressional districts – nearly all of which gave a majority to Obama in the last presidential election. Support drops dramatically after respondents hear balanced information and messages, and incumbents in these battleground seats find themselves even more endangered.
These battleground voters are currently split on the Republican plan to cut domestic programs by $61 billion, with 46 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed. This would be a dramatic decline in support from January when Democracy Corps found 60 percent support for the Republicans’ budget cuts.
And after a balanced debate on the issue, support for the Republican budget plan drops sharply, to 41 percent, with a 52 percent majority opposed. The more voters hear from the Republicans on this issue, the less they like. In fact, after hearing the budget debate, 53 percent agree, the more they hear from Republicans like their incumbent, “the less I like.” Just 39 percent say the more they hear, “the more I like.” And this is reflected in the vote, as it moves a net of 5 points towards the Democrats, giving them a 47 to 44 percent lead on the ballot.
Much of the shift up to this point has come among Democrats and Democratic base groups, with independents still holding back from Democrats on budget issues. But it is independents that move in response to the messages and attacks tested in this survey.
Democrats and progressives have a strong case to make against the Republicans by focusing on their budget priorities: specifically, the Republicans’ plan to protect wasteful special-interest subsidies for oil companies and tax breaks for millionaires, while cutting support for veterans, education and Medicare and Social Security. Other critiques are weaker, but progressives clearly can win this debate – even in the battleground of Republican seats.
Key Message Recommendations
* Throughout this poll, the strongest framework and attacks center on the priorities and choices Republicans are making, not the severity of the cuts. Democrats strongly defeat the Republican arguments in the former framework, but not within the latter.
* The Democrats’ strongest thematic attack again is grounded in an attack on priorities – raising serious doubts for over 60 percent of respondents and driving voters away from the Republican budget in our regression modeling.
* Republican cuts to funding for homeless veterans, their support for oil subsidies, their support for privatizing Medicare and Social Security, and their cuts to Head Start and anti-poverty programs are their biggest specific vulnerabilities.
* The most popular Democratic proposals for addressing the deficit are “eliminating subsidies for oil and gas companies” and “instituting a surtax on families making over one million dollars a year” – which is totally consistent with the priorities framework.
[1] Based on a survey of 1,000 likely voters in 50 battleground congressional districts conducted March 13-17, 2011. This battleground was split into two tiers of 25 districts each. These districts include 44 that were won by President Obama in 2008 and were chosen based on the 2008 presidential margin, the 2010 congressional margin and race ratings from Charlie Cook and others. The margin of error for the entire sample is +/- 3.1%. In each tier it is +/- 4.5%. Please see our memo and attached graphs, which explore the political situation in these districts.

In his latest HuffPo post, political strategist Robert Creamer sounds the call to arms, urging Dems to resist cuts in three major entitlement programs.

Friday, the Democratic group Third Way published a memo arguing that Democrats should support “entitlement reform” — by which they mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t doubt the sincerity or intentions of their proposal, but I believe that if Democrats took their advice it would result in a moral, economic and political disaster.

Creamer dissects and eviscerates conservative arguments for “entitlement reform,” revealing them as schemes to rip off working people to fatten the already bulging wallets of the uber-wealthy. He then rolls out public opinion data to show how little support there is for conservative “entitlement reform”:

“Entitlement Reform” would spell political disaster for Democrats. The Third Way memo argues that next year’s election will be about “deficits.” That’s just non-sense.
First, a recent CBS News poll found that 51% of Americans say the economy and jobs are the most important problem facing our country today — but just 7% cited the budget deficit.
…The polling shows clearly that the voters oppose cuts in in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
• The public opposes cutting Social Security benefits by 70% to 80%.
• Two-thirds of likely voters oppose raising the retirement age.
• Up to two-thirds support making the Social Security Trust fund solvent for generations by raising the payroll tax to cover income above $107,000 a year.
…A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that a 51% to 46% majority says the government should do more, rather than less…It found that by 54% to 18%, Americans do not believe that cuts in Medicare are necessary to reduce the deficit. Forty-nine to twenty-two percent say cuts in Social Security are not needed.

Creamer points out that elections are not about “issues” per se. Rather elections are about candidates’ credibility as leaders who will protect and advance the interests of the middle class. He explains how this plays out with respect to entitlements:

…if a voter becomes convinced that a candidate actually intends to take something away that they value — to cut their Social Security or Medicare benefits, for instance — they will decide in a nano-second that the candidate advocating that position is not on their side…Most Americans believe that they are owed their Social Security and Medicare benefits since they have paid throughout their working lives into Social Security and Medicare. Voters don’t view Social Security and Medicare just as “government programs.” They view them as “insurance programs.” Americans believe they deserve Social Security and Medicare benefits just as they would the benefits owed under any other insurance contract.

With respect to senior voters, Creamer has a warning:

The Third Way memo argues that seniors rarely break for Democrats anyway. Precisely. President Obama won in 2008 while losing seniors by eight points. Last fall, Democrats lost seniors by 21 points. The President can win re-election while losing seniors by 8 points – but not by 21. The election passes through states with old populations – like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida.
A decent chunk of seniors who voted against Democrats last year have to be convinced that Democratic candidates are on their side in 2012, or Democrats are toast. If they see Democrats bargain away their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — or those of their kids — they won’t vote Democratic in November of 2012. It’s that simple.

Creamer says that if Democrats cave and approve proposed entitlement cuts, it will prove to be “a moral, economic and political disaster.” His post merits a read from all Democrats– especially those who want to be re-elected in 2012.