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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

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How Dems Can Tap the Political Brain

Robin Abcarian has an L.A. Times article about a book that is getting big buzz in political strategy circles, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” by Drew Westen, a psychologist and brain researcher. Abcarian does an excellent job of mining the book’s main ideas and how it is being received.
Abcarian describes Westen’s book as providing “a grand unified theory of How Democrats Can Stop Blowing It,” and nails the Dems “single worst tendency: intellectual dispassion.” Abcarian notes also:


Bush’s DOJ Undermines NVRA

One of the long-standing cornerstones of GOP election strategy is the suppression of African American votes, accomplished in recent years through a host of techniques, including felon disenfranchisement laws, “caging” and voter i.d. requirements. But it turns out that one of the more effective tools used to reduce the votes of lower-income Black voters in the 21st century is the refusal of the Civil Rights Division of the Dept of Justice to enforce Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires public assistance agencies to offer voter registration to clients,
According to a report by Demos, Project Vote, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, groups that have been working for better enforcement of the NVRA:


Dems Challenged by ‘Irrational Voters’

Louis Menand has a review article in The New Yorker entitled “Fractured Franchise: Are the Wrong People Voting?,” a freebie for net users. Menand discusses “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Chose Bad Politics” by George Mason University Economist Bryan Caplan.
Menand’s review is really a spingboard for mulling over some theories of why people vote the way they do. Along the way, he provides this disturbing rant on political illiteracy:

The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. More than fifty per cent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty per cent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes twenty-four per cent of the federal budget, for example, though it actually consumes about one per cent.

It goes on. Not a pretty picture, nor a compelling argument for increasing voter turnout in general. Similar scary litanies about “low-information voters” have dogged U.S. democracy for a while now. The preferred assumption is that the political illiterati are voting mostly for the other party, or alternatively that most of them are not voting at all.
Menand sees an elitist strain in Caplan’s thesis:

The average voter is not held in much esteem by economists and political scientists, and Caplan rehearses some of the reasons for this. The argument of his book, though, is that economists and political scientists have misunderstood the problem. They think that most voters are ignorant about political issues; Caplan thinks that most voters are wrong about the issues, which is a different matter, and that their wrong ideas lead to policies that make society as a whole worse off….Caplan thinks that the best cure is less democracy. He doesn’t quite say that the world ought to be run by economists, but he comes pretty close.

According to Menand, Caplan also advocates dubious reforms, such as an “economic literacy” test for voters, and giving extra votes to people with “greater economic literacy.”
Menand also touches on the phenomenon of “shortcut” voters — those who don’t follow issues closely, but rely on the judgement of friends, relatives or political parties in deciding who to vote for. The latter may be more common in western Europe’s democracies, where turnount is much higher and where political parties and party-line voting traditions are stronger. Building Party cohesiveness is easier in Parliamentary systems, but that doesn’t mean Democrats can’t do more to encourage straight ticket voting in the 17 states where it is permitted. Such ‘shortcut voters’ may well provide the margin of victory in any number of close races.


The Amazing Shrinking Prez

Those who thought 30 percent approval was probably as low as President Bush could go need to think again. According to a just published Newsweek poll, Bush’s job approval rating has tumbled to 26 percent, which, as Kos‘s McJoan points out, approaches Nixonian levels of public support.
She also cites a new ARG poll, which indicates that 45 percent of adults want the House of Reps to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush (46 percent opposed). And things could get gnarly sooner for the puppetmaster. According to the ARG poll, 54 percent want the House to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney. There is already a fair amount of heated discussion in the blogs about the wisdom of impeachment in the context of Democratic ’08 strategy, and If this trend persists or grows, it will get even hotter.
How much of the Bush/Cheney free fall can be attributed to rising gas prices? A good question, and Professor Pollkatz’s Pool of Polls has a graphic that indicates a pretty clear relationship over time.


Dems More in Tune With Voters on Health Care

In connectiion with the growing buzz about “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s new documentary about America’s health care system, Robin Toner has an update on the health care proposals of ’08 presidential candidates of both parties in today’s New York Times. She touches on the candidates positions on public and private sector plans, inclusiveness of coverage, financial and cost containment ideas, tax incentives and other aspects.
Toner provides capsule policy summaries for each candidate here. (See also our post here for more insight into the candidates’ policies and here for an overview of how the different states are doing ).


How Netroots Strengthens MSM

Media Matters has a zinger for NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, noting his prediction last November that, if the Democrats won “control of Congress” and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became speaker of the House, then President Bush’s “approval rating will be over 50 percent by the Fourth of July next year.”
Well, Independence Day has come and gone, and Bush’s approval ratings have tanked way below 50 percent. More accurately, the Media Matters post, artfully flagged by MissLaura at Kos, cites a recent analysis of national polls conducted 6/11 to 28 pegging Bush’s average approval rating at 30.5 percent.
Just about every journalist who comments on politics for any length of time gets burned for making a silly prediction at some point, and that may be as true for netroots writers as well as the MSM over time. But unlike most political bloggers, the big networks, rags and mags pundits rarely own up or acknowledge their gullibility for GOP spin. Worse, they don’t give the bloggers with better track records any cred for getting it right. A little less hubris and a little more humility would serve us all well.
This incident not only shows the kind of blunders too often made by MSM pundits who have been fed GOP spin; it also shows the importance of progressive bloggers in restoring political balance. What has changed is that the MSM will be more closely monitored from now on — and that’s good for everyone.


Does Libby Commutation Issue Have Legs?

How broad is the outrage over President Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentence? And is the outrage likely to last through November ’08?
No way to gauge the intensity fade factor at this juncture. But SurveyUSA has a new interactive voice response poll conducted on July 2nd, measuring how respondents feel about Libby’s free ride, and Pollster.com‘s Charles has an analysis. He reports that of 825 respondents familiar with the Libby case and presidential commutation,


GOP Inaction Gives Dems Wedge on National Security

Guy T Saperstein, a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation, sees a potent wedge issue for Dems opening up in the void left by Republican inaction on key safety and security concerns. Saperstein’s just-posted Alternet article “Fighting the War on Terror: Democratic Opportunity, Republican Illusion” redefines the challenge facing Democrats and rolls out a credible action agenda.
Saperstein backs his case with a generous serving of poll data underscoring the Democratic opportunity, but also warning that Dems have thus far failed to claim ownership of an issue that is almost being handed to them. Saperstein notes for example:


Post-Election Grand Strategy for Bipartisan Consensus

The best time for bridge-building being the weeks after a presidential election, now is not a good time to make nice toward Republicans. All good Dems should instead be creatively visualizing an ’08 landslide of historic proportions, after which we will know just how much opposition support is needed.
Nonetheless, a couple of impressively-credentialed Big Thinkers over at Foreign Policy, Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz, have an article “Grand Strategy for a Divided America” that merits a thoughtful read by Dems concerned with post-election strategy. They are especially-sharp on defining the ideological divisions between the parties. For example: