by Pete Ross
Foreign Affairs is featuring an eye-opening analysis of public attitudes towards ‘democracy building.’ The centerpiece article by Dan Yankelovich discusses two recent surveys by Public Agenda which bring bad news for neo-con interventionists:

As for the goal of spreading democracy to other countries, only 20 percent of respondents identified it as “very important” — the lowest support noted for any goal asked about in the survey. Even among Republicans, only three out of ten favored pursuing it strongly. In fact, most of the erosion in confidence in the policy of spreading democracy abroad has occurred among Republicans, especially the more religious wing of the party. People who frequently attend religious services have been among the most ardent supporters of the government’s policies, but one of the recent survey’s most striking findings is that although these people continue to maintain a high level of trust in the president and his administration, their support for the government’s Iraq policy and for the policy of exporting democracy has cooled.

And, apropos of yesterday’s post, Yankelovich sees energy independence as a rapidly rising priority of Americans:

No change is more striking than that relating to the public’s opinion of U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Americans have grown much more worried that problems abroad may affect the price of oil. The proportion of those who said they “worry a lot” about this occurring has increased from 42 percent to 55 percent. Nearly nine out of ten Americans asked were worried about the problem — putting oil dependence at the top of our 18-issue “worry scale.” Virtually all Americans surveyed (90 percent) said they see the United States’ lack of energy independence as jeopardizing the country’s security, 88 percent said they believe that problems abroad could endanger the United States’ supply of oil and so raise prices for U.S. consumers, and 85 percent said they believe that the U.S. government would be capable of doing something about the problem if it tried. This last belief may be the reason that only 20 percent of those surveyed gave the government an A or a B on this issue; three-quarters assigned the government’s performance a C, a D, or an F.

We may be witnessing the initial rumblings of a political earthquake. As Yankelovich notes:

The oil-dependency issue now meets all the criteria for having reached the tipping point: an overwhelming majority expresses concern about the issue, the intensity of the public’s unease has reached significant levels, and the public believes the government is capable of addressing the issue far more effectively than it has until now. Should the price of gasoline drop over the coming months, this issue may temporarily lose some of its political weight. But with supplies of oil tight and geopolitical tensions high, public pressure is likely to grow.

Yankelovich also discusses public attitudes about the Iraq war, outsourcing and illegal immigration — and the Administration will find scant comfort in these trends, either. The entire article is recommended to Dems who want to get a better handle on recent public opinion trends on key foreign policy issues.

Just for fun, check out Professor Pollkatz’s chart depicting the relationship of Bush’s approval ratings to gas prices. It’s not two snakes doing a precision cha cha, but they do appear to be dancing to the same beat. The chart may appear a little blurry on some monitors, but it prints out quite nicely, landscape-wise.

Armchair and real world Dem strategists are directed to the April issue of the Washington Monthly, where Decembrist Mark Schmitt has a review article “Backseat Strategists: Do the Democratic Party’s harshest internal critics finally have a plan for building a political majority?” Schmitt discusses four books: Take It Back by James Carville and Paul Begala; Foxes in the Henhouse by Steve Jarding and Dave ‘Mudcat’ Saunders; Hostile Takeover David Sirota; and Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics by Jerome (My DD) Armstrong and Markos (Daily Kos) Moulitsas Zuniga.
Schmitt is most enamored with Crashing the Gate, but provides perceptive commentary on all four of the books. It’s not a long article, but it is highly reccomended as an introduction to the current thinking of some of the Dems’ brighter strategists.

Amid the oceans of ink on the Feingold censure proposal dust-up, WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. nails the heart of the dilemma facing Dems in creating a unified strategy. As Dionne says in his most recent column:

Democrats, unlike Republicans, have yet to develop a healthy relationship between activists willing to test and expand the conventional limits on political debate and the politicians who have to calculate what works in creating an electoral majority.
For two decades, Republicans have used their idealists, their ideologues and their loudmouths to push the boundaries of discussion to the right. In the best of all worlds, Feingold’s strong stand would redefine what’s “moderate” and make clear that those challenging the legality of the wiretapping are neither extreme nor soft on terrorism.
That would demand coordination, trust and, yes, calculation involving both the vote-counting politicians and the guardians of principle among the activists. Republicans have mastered this art. Democrats haven’t.

And then the nut question that requires a thoughtful answer from from all Dems who prefer winning to endless factional disputes:

Turning a minority into a majority requires both passion and discipline. Bringing the two together requires effective leadership. Does anybody out there know how to play this game?

Dionne is right. Surely there is some way that reasonable Dems can debate this issue and other questions of strategy and timing in a way that doesn’t fracture their shared oppostion to GOP domination. We’re not asking for a kumbaya love-in between Dem elected/party officials on the one hand and blogosphere/grassroots activists on the other. But it’s time for a mutual recognition that the circular firing squad has not served Dems well in the past, and better coordination on matters of timing and strategy would add some much-needed tensile strength to the greater Democratic coalition.
Doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

by EDM Staff
The Christian Science Monitor’s Josh Burek has a spirit-lifter for Dems seeking inroads in the Mountain West. In “Once-Republican Rockies Now A Battleground,” Burek argues that swing state Colorado is trending purple:

The state’s transformation from Rocky Mountain redoubt for conservative values to a proving ground for progressive policies is yielding more competitive elections here – and offering Democrats across the country a model for resurgence.

Burek quotes Denver-based pollster Floyd Ciruli: “We’re probably the No. 1 battleground in the country.” Democrats, Ciruli says, “are anxious to replicate what’s going on out here.”
Burek cites a “flurry of victories” for Dems in Colorado:

In 2004, despite a major voter- registration advantage for Republicans, and the popularity of President Bush, voters added two Democrats – brothers John and Ken Salazar – to its congressional delegation. That same fall, voters famous, or infamous, for parsimony approved $4.7 billion in transit funding, siding with Denver’s Democratic mayor instead of the state’s Republican governor. Democrats have been piling on victories ever since…And this fall, Democrats have strong prospects to win back the governor’s chair.

One key reason for the political tilt to the Dems is a large influx of independent voters, who refuse to jerk their knees in support of every ill-considered GOP policy. About one-third of the Colorado electorate is new since 1992, according to Burek. As Mark Cavanaugh, a policy analyst for the centrist Bighorn Center explains in the article, “The state is full of informed, unaffiliated voters…not driven by bumper-sticker-like messages.”
Burek believes Colorado is not alone in the Mountain West, and offers Dems a hopeful prognosis:

It’s a tipping point that spans the Continental Divide. In 1999, every state in the region – Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona – had a Republican governor. By the end of 2006, only Utah and Idaho may have one.

If he’s right, Colorado and a couple of other states in the region could be seriously blue by ’08.

by Pete Ross
Dems who bought into the meme that, well John McCain is too moderate to get the GOP presidential nomination should check out Paul Krugman’s recent NYT article “The Right’s Man.” Krugman demolishes this myth in short order with such nuggets as:

…At a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger – Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.

and:

When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of “rogue state rollback,” anticipating the “Bush doctrine” of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Mr. McCain’s aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.

or:

He isn’t a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don’t have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation’s central provision show that he’s a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.

McCain is particularly adept at getting ‘mainstream’ journalists to describe him as a moderate, and he has a unique knack for appealing for bipartisanship in dulcet tones. I know several otherwise intelligent people who have been seduced by McCain’s style into ignoring his conservative record — to the right of 97 out of 100 U.S. Senators, according to one study cited by Krugman.
As the most mediagenic of Republican candidates, at least with respect to political moderates, McCain merits some extra scrutiny. There’s more in Krugman’s piece, and reality-based moderates — and Dems who want to better understand one of their shrewdest adversaries — are strongly urged to read the entire article.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s March 7 WaPo column “The Democrats’ Real Problem” puts some needed perspective on all the hand-ringing about the Democrats’ supposed lack of a coherent message:

The stories about the Democrats are by no means flatly false — Democrats don’t yet have a fully worked-out alternative program — but they are based on a false premise, and they underestimate what I’ll call the positive power of negative thinking.
The false premise is that oppositions win midterm elections by offering a clear program, such as the Republicans’ 1994 Contract With America. I’ve been testing this idea with such architects of the 1994 “Republican revolution” as former representative Vin Weber and Tony Blankley, who was Newt Gingrich’s top communications adviser and now edits the Washington Times editorial page.
Both said the main contribution of the contract was to give inexperienced Republican candidates something to say once the political tide started moving the GOP’s way. But both insisted that it was disaffection with Bill Clinton, not the contract, that created the Republicans’ opportunity — something Bob Dole said at the time.

Dionne offers Dems a reality check worth considering:

The Democrats’ real problem is that they have failed to show how their critique of the Republican status quo is the essential first step toward the alternative program they will owe the voters in the presidential year of 2008…the shortcoming of Democratic leaders is not that they don’t have a program but that they have not yet convinced opinion makers that fighting bad policies is actually constructive — and that, between presidential elections, keeping matters from getting worse is sometimes the most positive alternative on offer.

Dems will do fine in ’06 and ’08, if we make it clear that the Democratic Party stands for competence and honesty in government, peace, human rights and economic progress for working people — in stark contrast to the GOP’s deepening Iraq quagmire and lengthening record of corruption and incompetence.

EDM contributor Alan Abramowitz has a must-read op-ed in the Sunday WaPo, “What’s Behind Those Poll Numbers?” Abramowitz argues that Bush’s tanking approval numbers can be attributed to “a growing perception that he simply isn’t competent.” Abramowitz argues further that,

Competence is not a partisan issue. Last week’s polls found that somewhere between 34 and 40 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s job performance. That is discouraging enough. But for Bush and his political advisers what may be more disturbing is the fact that his approval rating among Republicans had fallen to 72 percent, 10 to 15 percentage points lower than the president’s previous level of support from his party’s voters. It’s a sign that even supporters are beginning to question Bush’s effectiveness.

Abramowitz cites the Administration’s history of bungled crises-management, including the Harriet Miers disaster and other examples of poor leadership, especially the Ports deal, which he sees as a major turn for the worse:

While escalating violence in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and Hurricane Katrina damaged the president’s standing among Democrats and independents, his support from his fellow Republicans remained largely intact — until the ports deal was announced.
…, the takeover is just plain unpopular — with Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. According to last week’s CBS News poll, 58 percent of Republicans along with 71 percent of independents and 78 percent of Democrats oppose the takeover.
Even more significantly, the way the port takeover was handled reinforced a growing impression among the public that nobody is really in charge in the Bush White House. How could the president not even have been consulted on an issue directly involving national security, Bush’s strong suit in the minds of most Americans and especially most Republicans?

Abramowitz believes Bush’s image of incompetence could be contagious for GOP congressional candidates in the November elections:

Unlike the president, congressional Republicans have to face the voters this November. Even though most represent safe Republican districts, only six Senate seats and 16 House seats would have to change hands to give Democrats control of Congress, and there is growing concern among Republicans that they could lose their grip on both chambers if the midterm election turns into a referendum on a president with approval ratings in the thirties or worse.

Abramowitz makes a compelling case that competence could be the pivotal issue in upcoming elections, and his article is highly recommended to Democratic strategists at all levels.

Democratic candidates are firming up their chances to win a majority of governorships in November, reports Dan Balz in the Washington Post. Balz quotes Democratic Governors Association Chairman and Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson:

…we could go from 22 Democratic governors to 27 or 28 after the ’06 elections…The real reform and the real action in the Democratic Party is with governorships. It’s a good omen for strengthening the Democratic Party for ’08

Balz also provides a short, but informative survey of the politics of the Governors’ races 8 months out, and offers this interesting observation:

The gubernatorial landscape tramples conventional notions of an America rigidly divided into red and blue. In the 19 Bush-won states with contests, Democrats hold seven of the governorships. In the 17 states won by Sen. John F. Kerry (D) with gubernatorial elections this year, Republicans hold 10 of the governorships.
Some of the most popular and politically secure Democratic governors facing reelection this year preside over states won by Bush in 2004. They include Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal. The same is true for many Republican governors in states won by Kerry, among them Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle and Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas.

SurveyUSA reports a slight edge for Dems in current approval ratings for the 50 governors — an average 54 percent for the 22 Democratic governors, compared to 52 percent for the 28 Republican governors.
With 36 governorships at stake, the November election may have a pivotal impact on the ’08 presidential races by giving the Dems “tangible organizational advantages,” explains Balz. Governors have leverage in the redistricting process, as well as staff support and publicity resources unavailable to other candidates. As Robert Tanner observes in his recent Associated Press article on upcoming Governor’s races:

…there’s no question that governors have an impact on national politics. Four of the last five presidents had previous experience running a state, and governors can help presidential campaigns by marshaling big organizations and getting out the vote.

by EDM Staff
Apropos of the post below, Dems need to insure that as many Katrina evacuees as possible are registered to vote in time for the November elections. No doubt some evacuees are reluctant to register in new states where they now live for a number of reasons, such as uncertainty about their residence in the near future. But there are a significant number of votes at stake here. For example, FEMA estimates that there are 34,575 evacuee households now residing in Georgia — and growing quite rapidly. It’s not hard to envision 50,000 or so potentially eligible voters associated with these households, a significant number for any state. Nor is it too much of a stretch assume that many, if not most of them are angry about the Administration’s weak leadership on their behalf.
No doubt there will be GOP shenanigans aplenty in the months ahead to prevent these potential voters from getting registered, and the states have a range of different residency and registration requirements (see this link for a state by state comparison). Hopefully, Democratic party leaders in affected southern states are already planning strategies to get as many of these potential voters as possible registered. Not a few important races, including the governorship of Georgia, could depend on it.