This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
On Thursday, the House Democratic caucus selected Nancy Pelosi as the minority leader. A few hours earlier, Quinnipiac University released its latest survey, which sheds some interesting light on that decision.
Included in the survey was a standard question that Quinnipiac has asked for several years: Is your opinion of Nancy Pelosi favorable, unfavorable, or haven’t you heard enough about her?
Two points stand out:
1.The share of people who hadn’t heard enough about Pelosi to form an opinion declined by 25 points from February of 2007 until November 2010. During that period, the share with a favorable opinion remained constant at 25 percent, while those with an unfavorable opinion rose by 24 points, from 31 to 55 percent. In short, virtually everyone who received additional information about Pelosi over the past three and a half years reached a negative conclusion.
2.This is a long-term development and not principally the result of the advertising campaign waged against her during the peak of the midterm election. By the time of Obama’s election, her unfavorable rating had already risen by ten points; by March of this year–eight months ago, it had risen another Ten points. Between March and November, it rose by only four more points. The inescapable fact is that whatever her strengths as an inside player, Pelosi’s public presence has proved monumentally unappealing to all except a small core of supporters.
This is especially significant because, other than President Obama, Nancy Pelosi is the best-known and most visible public face of the Democratic Party. The Quinnipiac survey showed that after nearly four years as Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid is no better known today than Pelosi was in early 2007: Fully 42 percent of respondents said that they hadn’t yet learned enough about Reid to form an opinion.
In the face of all this, Jonathan Allen and John Harris have just produced a dispiriting analysis titled “Why Dems don’t dump Pelosi.” They offer five explanations:
1.Standing up to Obama, whom many House Democrats see as the principal architect of their defeat.
2.The loyalty of key blocs, including the California delegation, women, and the Progressive Caucus.
3.The fear factor–the Speaker’s demonstrated willingness to use rewards and punishments to keep people in line.
4.Her skill in raising money, rallying the base, and devising legislative strategy.
5.Pride: Many House Democrats believe that humiliating her would discredit what they have done during the past two years.
If Allen and Harris’s reporting is correct, the Democrats have convinced themselves that their agenda during the past two years is the moral equivalent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which may have cost their party dearly at the polls but was the right thing to do and was of such transcendent, transformational significance as to justify any degree of unpopularity.
Maybe that’s the verdict history will render (for the record, I doubt it). But in the here and now, the people who crafted and drove the 2009-2010 legislative agenda–including the cap-and-trade bill, reportedly one of Pelosi’s top personal priorities–are not the ones who paid the political price for it. What’s the logic of patiently rebuilding a Democratic majority–for which Pelosi deserves a considerable share of the credit–only to embark on a strategy seemingly calculated to destroy it? And why should the kinds of Democrats without whom no Democratic majority is possible expect anything better in the future?
This decision was the victory of inside baseball over common sense, and no amount of spin can change that.
Allen and Harris finish their piece with a section that begins, “There’s no one else.” Yes there was, and his decision not to challenge Pelosi is hardly a disqualification for party leadership. Why on earth should Steny Hoyer have mounted a kamikaze attack against colleagues who would rather be the majority in a minority party than do what’s necessary to regain the only majority that matters?

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Only brain-dead populists believe that the people are always right. Still, in a representative democracy, elected officials who want to remain in office and get something done should listen carefully to what the people are saying. All the more so for a president challenged to reorient his administration after a devastating rebuke.
Two recent surveys should help President Obama chart a new path for the next two years.
A just-released Pew survey finds that 55 percent of respondents want Republican leaders in Washington to “try as best they can to work with Barack Obama to accomplish things, even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters.” Only 38 percent disagreed. Conversely, 62 percent want Obama to work hard to cooperate with Republicans, even if it means disappointing some of his supporters.
A recent bipartisan survey–a collaboration between Democracy Corps and Resurgent Republic–mirrors this finding and offers additional insights. By a margin of 67 to 26, the people want president Obama to work harder to find common ground with Republicans rather than simply holding fast to his own agenda. By a margin of 60 to 36, they endorsed the proposition that “Congressional Republicans should be more willing to work with President Obama to find solutions” over the contrary proposition that “Congressional Republicans should do even more to stop President Obama’s agenda because his proposals would irrevocably harm America.”
On closer examination, two points stand out. First, substantial majorities of both independents and swing voters endorse both propositions. Second, while 73 percent of Democrats think that congressional Democrats should be more willing to work with congressional Republicans, only 30 percent of Republicans think that congressional Republicans should be more willing to work with Obama, while 65 percent of Republicans think that they should do even more to stop the president’s agenda. The bottom line: While Democrats and independents want conciliation and compromise, Republicans don’t.
So Obama faces a win-win situation. If he extends his hand to the opposition and they spurn it, the independents and swing voters whose views will determine the 2012 election will give him credit for doing what they want while coming down hard on Republican obstructionists. If the Republicans grasp his outstretched hand, then the country might actually make some progress. And by a margin of 49 to 30, the people think that the president–not congressional Republicans–should take the lead.
To be sure, many of the president’s supporters will be disappointed–at least at first. While 44 percent of Democrats believe that “in order to win in the future, the Democratic Party must move more to the center . . . to win over independent voters,” 50 percent disagree, arguing that their party needs to be more supportive of its core principles. But 57 percent of swing voters and 62 percent of independents, who moved sharply toward Republicans between 2008 and 2010, endorse the former course over the latter. If President Obama makes the right strategic choice, he can help himself and the country. And despite its misgivings, it’s hard to believe that his party wouldn’t benefit as well.

This item by TDS contributor and advisory board member Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, is cross-posted from HuffPost Pollster. (the site formerly known as Pollster.com)

“A week ago today, voters flipped the Obama coalition on its head and voted for Republicans in a mid-term landslide that has the potential to be a transformational election.” –Steve Lombardo

Get a grip, Steve. It wasn’t a landslide and it’s not likely to turn out to be a “transformational election” either. And that “sea of red” that you see all across the country? It’s a little misleading. That’s because land area doesn’t vote. People vote. So while Republican domination of states like Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota makes the electoral map look overwhelmingly red, there aren’t many people in a lot of those red states. Rhode Island has a larger population than any of them and solidly blue California has more people than the 20 least populous states combined.
Now don’t get me wrong–Republicans enjoyed a big victory in this year’s midterm elections. A pickup of 60-plus seats and more than 240 Republicans in the House is nothing to sneeze at even though the GOP ended up falling four seats short of a majority in the Senate.
But:
• Republicans only won the national popular vote for the House by about seven points, which hardly qualifies as a landslide. Democrats won the popular vote for the House by about 10 points in 2008 and nobody was calling that a landslide.
This year’s results were based on a much smaller, older, and whiter set of voters than the 132 million voters who turned out in 2008. More than 40 million fewer Americans voted this year than in 2008 and the nonvoters were disproportionately young, African-American, Latino, and Democrats.
• Despite the strong Republican showing in the House elections, recent polling data indicate that Democrats continue to hold a significant party identification advantage over Republicans in the broader electorate.
Two years from now we can expect voter turnout to increase dramatically, especially among younger voters and minorities. And every year, the nonwhite share of the American voting-age population keeps increasing. If there’s a transformation we can count on, it’s the ongoing demographic shift of the electorate and right now the Republican Party is on the wrong side of that transformation.
Rather than a transformational election, the 2010 midterm is more likely to be viewed in the future as a short-term shift, albeit a large one, based on a combination of the normal tendency of voters to turn against the president’s party in midterm elections, a large number of Democrats in high risk districts due to big gains in the past two elections, and a high level of discontent among voters with the state of the U.S. economy.
If the economy rebounds by 2012 — admittedly a big if — history suggests that President Obama will have an excellent chance of winning a second term in the White House and Democrats may well win back a good many of the seats they just lost in the House.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Most Democrats agree (I know I do) that the effort to make adequate and affordable health care accessible to all Americans was morally correct; they believe that the health reform bill enacted last spring was a major legislative accomplishment attained against huge obstacles; and they hope that the health care bill enacted last spring eventually will make coverage all but universal while reducing costs below what would otherwise have been their trendline. There is debate, however, about the near-term political impact of the health-reform effort–and two surveys released this week have brought the consequences into greater focus.
The bipartisan Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic survey found, as have others, a large drop-off in support for Democratic candidates among Independents–13 points since 2008, and a startling 19 points since the previous midterm election in 2006. The survey also found some clues as to why this happened. By a margin of 60 to 34, Independents endorsed the proposition that “government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals,” and rejected the claim that “government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people.” When asked whether they favored or opposed the president’s health care plan, 51 percent of Independents registered their opposition while 39 percent indicated support. The difference in intensity between these two groups of Independents was startling: 43 percent were strongly opposed to the plan, versus only 18 percent who strongly favored it. (In the electorate as a whole, strong opponents constituted 44 percent of the total, strong proponents only 24 percent.) Looking forward, 53 percent of Independents favor repealing and replacing the law (and 43 percent strongly).
I turn now to the November edition of the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, widely regarded as the gold standard on this issue. Let me begin with some basics. When respondents were asked right after the election whether they and their families would be better off, worse off, or unaffected by the new health-reform law, only 25 percent said better off, the lowest level recorded since tracking began early in 2009. When asked whether they thought the country as a whole would be better off, only 38 percent answered in the affirmative, also a new low. And consistent with the DC/RR survey, Kaiser found that 56 percent of voters favor repealing part or all of the law, compared to only 36 percent who want either to leave it alone or to expand it. Among the Independents in the Kaiser survey, 44 percent had an unfavorable view of the health reform law (32 percent very unfavorable) versus 37 percent favorable (only 13 percent strongly so). As with the DC/RR survey, Independent opponents enjoyed a considerable edge in intensity over supporters.
When asked an open-ended question about the factors that had the biggest influence on their votes, 17 percent of respondents named health care. Of those voters, 58 percent had an unfavorable view of the health-reform law, 58 percent thought it would make the country worse off, and 56 percent thought it would leave them and their families worse off. Not surprisingly, health care voters went for Republican over Democratic candidates by a margin of 59 percant to 35 percent. (Non health-care voters were divided 44 percent to 44 percent.)
But why do these respondents oppose the health care bill? There’s been debate about whether they’re unhappy about the content of the bill or, rather, because of its symbolic linkage to the general direction of affairs in Washington, D.C. The Kaiser survey probed this question in depth. Among voters opposing the health reform law, 45 percent said their disapproval was rooted more in the specifics of the bill versus 33 percent who emphasized its connection with the ills of national politics, and 14 percent who cited both equally.
Putting all these data together, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the health-reform bill had an independent impact on Democrats in the midterm election, reducing their support below the level to which the economy alone would have depressed it. A back-of-the envelope calculation suggests that health care voters contributed about 10 percent points to the Republicans’ share of the vote and only 6 percent to Democrats–a gap of 4 percentage points. No doubt a more sophisticated statistical analysis (which I hope someone will perform) would refine this estimate. But it is unlikely that this analysis would come close to eliminating the independent effect of health care on the outcome of the election.
Does this mean that undertaking health care reform in the midst of a major economic crisis was a mistake? Not necessarily. But proponents of that choice should acknowledge that it entailed significant political costs–and that it may take a painfully long time to reverse them.

Via Joan McCarter at Daily Kos, you should check out this nifty NPR interactive map of the small, incestuous world of “independent” organizations spending mega-millions to attack Democratic candidates.
The consultants who run these groups, and the donors who finance their nasty attack ads, constitute a self-appointed shadow political system that operates outside virtually all the rules that govern the parties and candidates. Some of the folks involved have backgrounds and views that belong at a Halloween Party rather than any conventional political party.
This is the sort of thing that political scientists will be studying about Campaign 2010 for many years to come.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Recently, three respected national surveys–Gallup, Pew, and now Battleground–have given Republicans a double-digit edge among likely voters. While I’m no expert on this history of public opinion research, I can think of no parallel to these findings during my three decades of involvement in national politics.
There are only two possibilities: Either this election is so distinctive that existing likely voter models, which are derived inductively from past experience, are simply inapplicable, or we are looking at a potential Republican sweep of historic proportions, larger even than 1994, long regarded as the ne plus ultra of contemporary swings. If so, the oft-repeated characterization of this election as a “wave” seems inadequate; tsunami would be more like it.
In particular, these findings have implications closely contested Senate races, which are numerous right now. During recent decades, three elections–1980, 1986, and 2006–have featured tossup races that all ended up falling in the same direction. If Republicans enjoy anything like a double-digit edge on November 2, 2010, may well be another such election.
This is a time of testing–for Democrats, but also for the profession of survey research. On November 3, one or the other will have to go back to the drawing board.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
No one really knows what the final numbers will be when the dust settles, but we already know the most important outcome of the November 2 elections: The strategy Democrats used to pass legislation during the 111th Congress will no longer be operative. Even if Democrats retain narrow majorities in both the House and Senate (a bet I wouldn’t take), Republican gains in the Senate will be too large to allow the Democrats to get to 60 votes by uniting their party and picking off two or three Republican moderates.
So the options for the 112th Congress reduce to two: either confrontation and gridlock, or a new discussion across party lines. The majority prediction inside the Beltway is the former, but as frequently happens I find myself in dissent.
To be sure, the majority can draw upon a lot of supporting evidence. An already polarized party system will become even more so; the new Republicans will be even more conservative, and the remaining Democrats will mostly be liberals. Lots of new Republicans in Congress will either represent Tea Party views or be beholden to its supporters, and veterans will be looking over their shoulders to see whether primary challengers are coming up behind them. In the early months of next year, anyway, conservative enthusiasms will find vociferous expression, and confrontation will predominate.
The question is what happens after that. After a fast start in early 1995, Newt Gingrich & Co. found out the hard way that they had been sent to Washington to check Bill Clinton, not to push their own agenda. When they refused to yield on budget proposals that would have imposed large cuts on Medicare and Medicaid, as well as education and environmental programs, and decided instead to shut down the government, the American people sent a loud signal that they had gone too far. It wasn’t long before the Republican leadership came to the table, to the dismay of their more rabid backbenchers, and some genuine accomplishments followed in 1996 and 1997.
Could history repeat itself, or at least rhyme? Well, rumor has it that while John Boehner will face an exquisitely difficult job of managing his coalition, he is determined not to repeat Newt Gingrich’s mistakes. And if his troops do manage to force his hand, the new tranche of conservative insurgents will discover that the people’s appetite for limited government remains … limited.
Once a modicum of sobriety is restored, Democrats and Republicans may discover that areas of agreement do exist. An energy bill that focuses on investments in new as well as traditional sources of power, and on technological innovation, seems within reach. So does agreement on a “mend it, don’t end it” reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which No Child Left Behind is the Bush-era version. It is more than conceivable (if less than probable) that the parties could agree on the modest package of adjustments needed to stabilize Social Security for the long-term without altering the system’s basic structure. (This would be more likely if the president’s fiscal commission is able to agree on a package.) And momentum is quietly building across party lines for a new round of fundamental tax reform to broaden the tax base and lower rates for both individuals and corporations, along the lines of the 1986 act. (Many conservatives and liberals have come to agree that much of what takes place under the heading of “tax expenditures” is in fact spending that dares not speak its name.)
Beyond these measures lie the issues that will require sustained presidential leadership. If President Obama hopes to redeem his pledge of doubling exports within five years, he will have to assemble majority support for a trade package that gets tough on China while moving long-stalled bilateral pacts to the finish line. He will have to persuade reluctant conservatives that many of their own supporters favor increased investment in infrastructure. If he wants to draw down troops in Afghanistan slowly, rather than precipitately, he will have to rely on Republican votes to replace dwindling support within his own party.
And if President Obama is serious about going down in history as a transformative president, he will have to address our country’s long-term fiscal challenges more comprehensively than he has so far. This summer, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen stunned his audience when he declared that “[o]ur national debt is our biggest national security threat.” Sometime next year, we’ll find out whether Obama agrees, and whether he is prepared to reach across the aisle to do something about it.

It’s already election day in much of the country, as early voting begins or intensifies. And it’s useful from here til November 2 to keep an eye on George Mason University’s Michael McDonald, who has been a pioneer in the analysis of early voting.
Here’s a snippet from McDonald’s latest report at pollster.com:
What do the numbers tell us so far?

First, early voting continues along at a strong clip. If early voting continue at this pace, some states and localities appear poised to easily meet or exceed their 2008 levels.
Second, despite stories about an enthusiasm gap, registered Democrats have gotten off to a jack rabbit start in Ohio and Iowa, and are keeping up with registered Republicans elsewhere. The early voting period has become a marathon, so we will have to wait to see if the Democrats can sustain their sprint or if the Republican tortoise will win. This race ain’t over yet.
Third, the early numbers are not smelling so rosy for Democrats in Nevada. True, Democrats have an 9 percentage point registration advantage among early voters in Clarke County — home of Las Vegas — but this is not as the 21 point margin Democrats enjoyed in 2008. And they are currently behind in Washoe by 5 points, a county where they had a 12 point margin in 2008. Anecdotal evidence is that Tea Party supporters were out in force over the weekend for the opening of early voting, but that their efforts were not as organized as the Democrats. We will have to see if Nevada is a state where conservative enthusiasm can beat Democratic GOTV efforts.

According to McDonald’s own site, an estimated 2.3 million votes have already been cast for the midterm elections (and that’s a low estimate based on uneven reporting from the states). Some states report early votes in terms of registered voters by party, which is how McDonald’s reaching his tentative conclusions about Iowa, Ohio and Nevada. States under Voting Rights Act scrutiny typically report a host of demographic data about early voters, most notably minority status, and we’ll be seeing some of that any day now.

One of the most common insider assumption in American politics right now is that the Republican Party, having richly indulged the tantrums of its radicalized conservative base going into the midterm elections, will revert to its grown-up habits in 2012 and nominate for president someone like that boring but respectable grown-up, Mitt Romney. Never mind that Romney’s long and unrepudiated championship of a health insurance purchasing mandate is going to be a major problem for him next year as congressional Republicans treat the ObamaCare mandate as a devilish product of the slavedrivers of collectivism; the Mittster has earned the right to the nomination by running a decent race in 2008, we are told, and GOPers will not be stupid enough to choose a Palin or a Huckabee or a DeMint.
Maybe that’s how it will all come down, but as John Ellis noted, Team Mitt is not making things any easier for him, as illustrated last week when one of his advisors deliberately dissed the Iowa Caucuses, where Romney’s 2008 campaign came to grief:

After the 2008 debacle, one might have assumed that Romney would clean house and get himself a new team. No dice. Roughly the same team is still in place. And they’re busy making new stupid mistakes which make Romney’s nomination as the GOP standard-bearer in 2012 less likely.
Consider the state of Iowa, home to the nation’s first presidential preference vote (a straw poll attached to precinct caucuses). Iowa has played host to the GOP’s first serious presidential straw poll for as long as anyone can remember. And it will again in 2012.
Not so fast, says Mr. Romney’s legal advisor Ben Ginsburg, who may be the only person in the world who thinks Iowa will not lead off the 2012 presidential campaign voting. Specifically, Mr. Ginsburg is quoted as saying: “Whether Iowa goes first in 2012 is up for grabs in unprecedented fashion….”

This is no small matter. Political activists in Iowa, as in New Hampshire, are acutely defensive about their “first in the nation” status, and do not tolerate even a hint of a challenge to that status from presidential candidates. Indeed, their willingness to puniish candidates for doing so is the real source of their power to maintain the status quo.
So the Romney campaign’s apostasy is not going to go unnoticed:

Iowans will translate Ginsburg’s musings as follows: “Romney really doesn’t like us very much, doesn’t want to campaign here, thinks Iowans are too difficult and prickly, so he’s going to do everything he can to lessen our influence on the nomination process.” ….
[D]issing the first-in-the-nation caucus state is an astonishingly stupid tactical error. That’s what the Romney campaign just did.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Every so often a confluence of individual events points toward an emerging reality. Today, that’s true regarding global trade. Consider the following from last week:
*On Monday the Wall Street Journal published a stunning but not surprising piece headlined “Americans Sour on Trade.” As recently as a decade ago, more Americans thought that free-trade agreements helped than hurt the United States. Last month, more than half said that these agreements were harmful, versus fewer than 20 percent who still think they are beneficial. The article noted that support for a policy of getting tough with China on the currency issue now crosses occupational, economic, and political lines: last week’s House vote to that effect gained the support of more than half the Republican caucus as well as nearly all Democrats.
·
*On Tuesday the Financial Times featured an op-ed by the redoubtable and respected economic commentator Martin Wolf. It began this way: “Has the time for a currency war with China arrived? The answer looks increasingly to be yes. The politics and economics of an assault on Chinese exchange rate policy are increasingly convincing. The idea is, of course, deeply disturbing. But I no longer believe there is an alternative.
·
*On Wednesday Stan Greenberg and James Carville published a Democracy Corps survey showing that attacking Republicans for supporting free-trade agreements and tax provisions that (allegedly) promote the outsourcing of American jobs is one of the two strongest arguments Democrats can make.
·
*Also on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner delivered a talk at Brookings in advance of this weekend’s IMF and World Bank annual meetings. His message was blunt: The necessary rebalancing of the world economy was “at risk of being undermined” by countries trying to prevent their currencies from rising in value. One consequence of this behavior, he said, was to depress consumption growth while “intensifying short-term distortions in favor of exports.”
The meaning of all this is pretty clear: The status quo is neither economically nor politically sustainable. If the United States cannot bring about a negotiated collective solution to imbalances in the world economy, we will be forced to act unilaterally, with incalculable consequences.
Nearly two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed that “[t]here are, at the present time, two great nations in the world [Russia and America] which seem to tend toward the same end . . . . Their starting points are different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.” Tocqueville would not have been surprised that the conflict between Russia and America defined much of the twentieth century. It requires much less prescience to discern that the relationship between the United States and China will dominate the twenty-first. Much depends on the ability of both nations to keep their inevitable competition within the bounds of peace and mutual benefit. Developing a more sustainable relationship between our two economies is the essential first step.
Amid all the uncertainties of this process, which may require threats as well as more irenic forms of persuasion, one thing is clear: The faster we set our fiscal policy on a better path, the stronger our hand will be. Right now, the Chinese can argue that our savings deficit is at least as responsible for the trade imbalance as is their consumption deficit. Depriving them of that defense will ratchet up the pressure on them to change course.