The first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was marked by an all-out PR offensive by the Bush Administration to hype its limp relief efforts in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Bush blitz, which deployed First Lady Laura Bush bragging about the restoration of a few libraries, as well as a host of GOP spin doctors, was calculated to offset media coverage revealing the continuing mess on the Gulf and the weak federal response. It seems doubtful that the media campaign will have much of an effect. But the stakes are high, particularly if the issue affects the outcome of the November elections.
So far there are no polls asking respondents how the Katrina relief response will affect their votes in November’s congressional elections. But today’s WaPo features Chris Cillizza’s article “Parsing the Polls: Hurrican Katrina,” discussing how Bush’s approval ratings have been adversely impacted by public perceptions of the federal Katrina relief effort. The polls Cillizza mulls over, taken just before the Bush media blitz, are bad news for the Administration, and Democrats hope public disapproval will extend to the GOP-lead, do-nothing congress. Regarding the polls, Cillizza notes:

Consider the poll conducted Aug. 24-25 by Princeton Survey Research for Newsweek. Asked whether Bush had followed through on his promise to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, 32 percent of the 1,002 adults surveyed said he had, 51 percent said he had not…Independents clearly thought Bush had not kept his promise (26/60).
Those results were confirmed in a number of other surveys taken earlier this month. In a CBS News/New York Times poll, 41 percent of voters approved of “the way George W. Bush is responding to the needs of people affected by Hurricane Katrina,” while 51 percent disapproved. A CNN poll conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation showed even more negative numbers: Just 34 percent of the sample approved of “the way George W. Bush has handled the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina,” while 64 percent disapproved.
There is little doubt that the latest numbers continue a trend that began in the spring of 2005 and accelerated in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when Bush’s disapproval numbers spiked to historic highs. For the most part, he has not recovered.

Cillizza quotes DSCC Chairman Senator Chuck Schumer’s contention that Bush’s inept Katrina response was a defining moment in the eyes of the public:

“It’s like the Wizard of Oz. “It showed the man behind the screen.”

Clearly, Democrats have a lot to gain by reminding voters that Bush is the leader of his party, and by forcing GOP candidates to defend his ineptitude and indifference. Cillizza concludes:

While they may have passively disapproved of the chief executive prior to Katrina, they became ardent opponents following the disaster and the administration’s handling of it. And, remember that in midterm elections only the most passionate (or most angry) of voters tend to turn out — a factor that could lead to major Democratic gains this November.

Another question being pondered in southern states in particular is what affect hundreds of thousands of Katrina evacuees — 250 thousand in Texas and 40 thousand in Georgia alone — will have in their new congressional district elections and state-wide races. If a healthy majority of them are as angry as media interviews indicate, they may provide margins of Democratic victory in key state and local races.

Chris Bowers debuts the “MyDD House Forecast 2006,” likely to be an obligatory stop for political pundits and strategists during the next two months. Bowers evaluates 60 of the most competitive House races in terms of the most recent polls, partisan voting trends, campaign cash, 2004 district election results and DCCC ad buys. He provides mini-commentaries on the campaigns in each district and offers his first projection, which should brigthen Democratic spirits:

I currently project Democrats to take 15-25 seats, which would give them a narrow majority of between 218-228 seats.

Bowers worries that he may be a smidge optimistic about a few races, but his projections are credibly calibrated by the up-to-date evidence he cites. Nobody works harder at mining and assaying political data than Bowers, and this should prove to be a vital resource for politicos looking toward November. His PDF data is tiny, even on a 19 inch screen, but is more readable in print.

A writer with the handle “Mr. Populist” has an insightful post at Daily Kos on the Clinton-Kerry ‘Count Every Vote Act,” and its provision restoring voting rights to convicted felons — as well as the GOP spin machine’s efforts to discredit it. This is one of the better articles yet written on the topic of felon disenfranchisement, and it sheds fresh light on moral and practical concerns related to the issue.

Which comes first, a strong Democratic party or strong unions? It is a chicken-and-egg argument of no mean consequence, arousing fierce passions on both sides and occupying the heart of organized labor’s recent split. Our August 12th post cheered the cooperation of both factions of the union movement in mobilizing resources for the November elections. Well and good for the short run and for the Democrats’ hopes to win majorities in both houses of congress in November.
But the long-term strategy of allocating more resources to build strong unions and less to politics merits a fair hearing and some serious consideration by all Democrats. A good place to begin is Kelly Candaele’s piece in today’s Los Angeles Times “Unions Should Organize, Not Politicize: More collective bargaining, not government action, is what workers need most.” Candaele, a former employee of the Los Angeles County AFL-CIO makes several good points:

The American labor movement is using political power to make up for its own failure to organize new unions. It’s unclear whether this trend is a sign of weakness or strength.
…While recognizing the power and importance of the state, the most successful and dynamic unions have also had a healthy independent ethos. Despite its flaws and current weakness, the best bet for providing the protection and decency that working people need is still a revitalized labor movement.
Some labor leaders argue that the Gompers approach simply doesn’t work in today’s hostile environment, and that improving conditions through politics is the only alternative. There is some truth to this. After all, where would the elderly be without Medicare and Social Security? But if there is a future for organized labor in the private sector, workers have to build power from the bottom up. Government can be helpful, but unions also have to save themselves.

Strong progressive parties in other nations are undergirded by a much higher level of union membership. For the long-range health of the Democratic Party, American progressives outside the union movement should begin to direct more attention to making it true in the U.S.

Harold Meyerson shows political beat reporters how it’s done in his WaPo op-ed “A Democrat for Main Street.” Meyerson’s article sheds fresh light on the complex politics of bellwether Pennsylvania and its marquee Senate race, and should be of keen interest to Democrats. Here’s a teaser, but read it all:

Politically, north-central Pennsylvania is one of the most venerable Republican terrains in the land, and it’s grown more Republican in recent decades with the closing of unionized steel and textile mills. James Carville once famously observed that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.
…With Northeastern and Middle Atlantic states clearly moving in a more Democratic direction, Santorum — whose voting record and social philosophy are more suited to an Alabama Republican — heads the list of Republican senators whom the Democrats think they can defeat this year. But there are enough places like Mifflin County in Pennsylvania to make it a real fight, which is why the Democrats have rallied to the socially conservative, economically progressive Casey. Early on, the Senate Democratic leadership (Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer) and the state’s Democratic governor, Ed Rendell (a onetime Casey opponent), made it clear that Casey was their guy.

Meyerson points out that the candidacy of a Green Party “Naderistic nihilist” has cut Democrat Casey’s once-formidable lead to 6 points in the polls. Meyerson also notes that the same bloggers who backed Lamont in Connecticut are supporting conservative Casey, laying bare the GOP big lie that the netroots are extremists. All in all, an informative primer on PA senate politics.