Michael Sean Winters takes a crack at brainstorming some potential TV ads Dems could run to get a grip on immigration issues and expose GOP demagoguery at the same time. Winters’ New Republic Online piece “Democrats Immigration Opportunity: Defining Moment” suggests using baseball and other celebs to address the moral dimensions of the issue head-on:

Swing voters are probably not impressed by Bill Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico. They are impressed by Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals. Pujols is from the Dominican Republic, he is a perennial all-star, and he is a born-again Christian. The spot would begin with him reading from the Book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 34: “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Pujols could then put down the Bible, look into the camera, and say, “I believe Americans are a God-fearing people, but these Minutemen seem to have forgotten their Bibles.”
The Hebrew and Christian scriptures are filled with such texts. I picture Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, who is Dominican American, reading the story of the Good Samaritan. Or Colombian-born singer Shakira reciting the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew: “For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. … Whatever you have done for these the least of my brethren, you have done for me.”

Or these:

another could take place in front of the Statue of Liberty…Liberals should not be afraid to insist that it is their position on immigration that is the truly patriotic one.
…Democrats could produce a spot with a ten-year-old girl in the kitchen helping her grandmother bake cookies. The girl might say, “Those Republicans call immigrants nasty names. In our family, we call immigrants Grandma and Grandpa.” Ads that go for the emotional jugular tend to attract free media attention, and therefore do not require expensive media buys to be effective.

The discussion thread following Winter’s article reveals some legitimate concerns about his moral confrontation approach. But credit Winters with proposing some creative ‘framing’ ideas for Dems. And making use of television to expose Republican pandering and xenophobia is a jolly good idea. Dems should also run ads that advocate some solutions to guest worker-related and other concerns.
But it’s hard to argue with Winters’ conclusion:

Last month, the Dubai Port story came and went with no real long-term benefit to the Democrats. They failed to turn the narrow issue of port management into the broader issue of Republican failure to provide adequate port security, an issue with legs, as well as an issue on which Democrats could benefit from being seen as the tough guys. The demographics of the Latino population explosion make support for immigrants smart politics as well as humane policy. If only the Dems will jump on the wave.

Painfully true about the missed opportunity regarding port security. Winters’ article and the accompanying discussion thread provide a good beginning for readers who want to seize the opportunity presented by immigration issues.

My DD’s Chris Bowers concludes his three-parter “Building a Real House Majority” with a strong case for “the northeast strategy.” As Bowers explains it:

The “Northeast strategy,” as I propose it, entails looking at potential 2006 Democratic pickups in the House, and weighting their order of value based upon the degree of difficulty in holding the seat once we take it…Now, I am not writing about this strategy to in any way diminish my personal commitment to the fifty-state strategy. I still believe 100% in competing everywhere, in challenging Republicans everywhere, and on staying away from selective targeting of races and states as much as possible. I feel, instead, that this is another strategic layer to an overall theory of retaking the House…Specifically, I am advocating for the full-scale targeting of every Republican held seat with a partisan voting index of +1.5% Democratic or more in every election. While I believe that every Republican in Congress should face a democratic challenger with at least $40K to run a campaign, I also believe that every Republican in a district with a Democratic PVI of 1.5 or more should face a challenger with at least $400K and a strong, complimentary grassroots / netroots operation. This should be the target for every election cycle.

Bowers discusses specifics in key districts and makes a strong case for using his numerical guidelines in developing a flexible Democratic resource-allocation strategy for winning back the House. While most of the states meeting his p.v.i. guidelines are in the northeast at this time, there are some districts in other regions that meet the criteria. All in all, it seems a reasonable approach, provided exceptions can be made for strong Dem candidates in other districts that may fall short of the +1.5 standard.

Most Democratic speculation about which ’06 U.S. House races to target for optimal resource allocation tends to focus on GOP-held seats we can win. But that’s only part of the strategy for creating a majority to retake the House. Dems also need to protect their most vulnerable House members. Swing State’s DavidNYC offers a thoughtful contribution to this discussion, “House 2006: Where Their Targets Are,” and includes a nifty chart featuring 41 Dem-held seats in districts that went for Bush in ’04 which Rahm Emanuel should stick on his fridge.
Yet, even considering ’06 House races from a defensive vantage point, DavidNYC sees a very weak GOP effort to win these seats and concludes:

Now, don’t get me wrong here: I am absolutely, absolutely not counseling complacency, or suggesting we’ve got this one in the bag, or anything like that at all. We have tons of work cut out for us. Rather, I’m pointing out the simple fact that the GOP has forty-one prime targets and is only mustering a serious assault against a handful of them. This just empirically confirms something we’ve probably all felt to be true for a while: The GOP is very much on the defensive this year. And that gives us a lot of opportunities to expand the playing field.

We’ll drink to that. But let’s do encourage the DCCC to protect our most vulnerable incumbents.

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.