In the midst of a very sensible and useful article on why federal spending always seems to go up, Paul Waldman makes an important point about the disconnect between conservative rhetoric and the raw facts:

Our federal spending has increased by a few points in the last two years (from 20.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2008 to 24.7 percent in 2009), but it is still small compared to that of our friends in Europe. Of course, that doesn’t tell us what the optimal level of government is. Perhaps you believe that the French or Swedes or Danes, with a public sector about 50 percent larger than ours, are terribly oppressed by their governments. It’s hard, though, to argue seriously that an increase of 4 percentage points of GDP takes us from blessed capitalism to dystopian statist nightmare….

A big part of the problem, Waldman notes, is that Republicans have as many ´budgetary “sacred cows” as Democrats, most notably the defense budget. Beyond that, as the “pledge to America” demonstrated last week, most Republicans continue to shy away from serious Social Security and Medicare cuts, particularly so long as they can convince voters that ´”welfare” or “waste, fraud and abuse” or “bailouts” or “earmarks” are a vastly larger proportion of federal spending than they actually are.

Politicians can fulminate all they want about the $2 million earmark or the silly sounding $150,000 research project. But the truth is that government spending is going to continue to rise, because neither Democrats nor Republicans really want government to get smaller — at least not badly enough to cut it in a meaningful way. It can rise at a slower or faster rate, depending on the decisions we make (the biggest source of future spending is Medicare and Medicaid, a problem the Affordable Care Act begins to tackle). But no matter who wins the election this year, or in 2012, or in any other year, it’s going to keep growing.

It´s understandable that Republicans want to disassociate themselves from the spending booms of the Bush administration, but the plain truth is that they do not unambiguously favor a set a policies that would have led to a significantly different level of spending. And if, as some Tea Party activists and candidates demand, the GOP really does come out for smaller government by privatizing Social Security and Medicare and eliminating federal involvement in education and environmental protection, Republicans will soon find that the popularity of their anti-spending rhetoric will collapse faster than you can say ´”Barry Goldwater.”

Nestled in his interview with Rolling Stone`s Jann Wenner is an important reminder from the President of the United States about the historical context within which to properly view today´s right-wing media:

The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.

The President could have gone on to point out that in the era of the Hearst newspaper empire, and before that, in the years stretching back to the beginning of the Republic, Americans typically dependend entirely on highly partisan media for most political information–basically, whatever newspapers happened to be available in a given locale. In cities with multiple daily newspapers, one´s political party affiliation was a major determinent of the newspaper of choice. But there was little or no pretense that there was some ´”objective” source of political information, and little choice at all outside the major cities.
For the most part, people decide to watch Fox News today for the same reasons that a New Yorker in the late nineteenth century chose to read the Times or the Tribune as opposed to the World or the Sun. As the President implied, telling Fox viewers the network isn´t exactly “fair and balanced” is largely a waste of time; ideologues view reality through an ideological prism in any event. Explaining that Fox`s point of view is wrong and destructive is a more fruitful approach than imagining there is some model of objectivity to which all news sources should conform. At least nowdays virtually all voters do have a choice of where to obtain information, and the best antidote for Fox viewers is to accidentally stray elsewhere on that cable guide and get exposed to a whole new world, and world-view.

In his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,” TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira makes it clear that the Republican attempt to implant the meme that “big” government is the cause of the nation’s problems in the minds of a majority of Americans has failed. As Teixeira explains, “…Several recent poll findings suggest this claim is vastly exaggerated”:

Just 37 percent of respondents in a recent CBS/New York Times poll said they believe President Barack Obama has expanded the role of the government “too much” in trying to solve the country’s economic problems. The others said either “about right” (34 percent) or “not enough” (22 percent). This hardly sounds like a conservative tidal wave.

In addition, Teixeira notes,

Another finding comes from a recent Allstate/National Journal/Heartland poll, which asked people directly about their views of the proper role of government in the economy. Just 35 percent said they subscribe to the fundamental conservative ideological position on government that “government is not the solution to our economic problems, government is the problem.” Another 28 percent said that government must play an active role in regulation and ensuring that the economy benefits “people like me.” And 33 percent said they would like to see government play an active role in the economy to benefit people like themselves, but they were not sure that they could trust the government to be effective in doing so.

Teixeira concludes, “…The American public’s dissatisfaction with government is primarily performance-based and does not reflect a sudden ideological conversion to the conservative cause, no matter what conservative pundits and politicians say.” Despite the millions of dollars Republicans have spent trying to propagate this simplistic meme, it’s clear the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t buy it.

Democratic ad-makers should have a gander at Steven Leser’s post at op-ed news, “2010 Election – A Democratic Momentum Shift Begins to Materialize,” not so much for the optimistic outlook as for the way Leser frames his critique of several Republican candidates and their party. Leser cites his reasons for the Democratic surge, including:

Republicans have been trying to make the case since a month into the Obama administration that Obama’s policies were too extreme left (they aren’t, if anything they are center-left). Instead of trying to follow-up that line of attack with center-right candidates, they nominated the most radical right wingnut candidates this country has ever seen. While it seems like I am saying the same things the Republicans and conservative media are saying, from the opposite side of course, unlike the Republicans, I can back up my claim. Consider the following:
While we are accustomed to Republican candidates being against a woman’s right to have an abortion, five high-profile Tea Party Republican SENATE candidates, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, Joe Miller of Alaska, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, are even against a woman’s right to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest! Women would have to have their rapists baby. Girls raped by an uncle or cousin or their fathers would have to give birth to a child from a resulting pregnancy.
…How does that square with the two year long Tea Party talking point that says that government is too intrusive and should stay out of people’s lives? How about the continued Republican/Tea Party fight against gay rights including the right for gays to serve in the military and marry? If you do not have the freedom to have consensual sex with other adults and have a choice over whether you reproduce (particularly if raped), I’d say that the rest of the freedoms really don’t matter much.

Leser goes on to describe the lunacy of Christine O’Donnell’s ideas about religion and science, Carl Paladino’s ugly flirtations with racism and the GOP’s WV U.S. Senate candidate John Raese’s celebration of upper-class privilege, along with Newt Gingrich’s lack of cred as a spokesman for ‘family values.’
With respect to the Republicans’ Speaker in Waiting, Leser notes what a GOP takeover of the House would mean for the speakership:

Regarding the “Pledge” the Republicans put forth, Republican house minority leader Boehner made the lack of a plan in “the pledge” clear on Fox News last Sunday when he said “The Pledge just lays down the pathway towards the possibility of building a framework for possible plan to have a real plan in the future.”

Leser provides a video showing more of Boehner’s ridiculous jive-talk. Leser concludes:

…While most Americans are normally too busy to take note of the latest Republican manufactured outrage or conservative media hyperbole, when it gets down to the 60 days before an election, people start taking a closer look. The trend in polling shows that what the American people are seeing with that closer look is not to their liking. Republicans, of course, see the danger in what is happening and in response, many campaigns are pulling back from media appearances and canceling debates with their Democratic opponents. I think it is too late and the momentum has shifted. It became too late when the Republicans nominated these wingnutty teabaggers for house and senate seats.
…The polls say the American people are having second thoughts about putting the Republican/Tea Party bums in the driver’s seat. You can almost hear what they are thinking. What are these Tea Party folks trying to sell us? Who are these crazy candidates? Why is a more severe version of the same stuff that put us into the economic crisis we are in better than the policies that have stabilized the economy? With those questions, the Republicans are seeing the Senate slip away and their hope of a Republican majority in the House start to appear in jeopardy.

Leser’s analysis makes good sense. and Democratic candidates may be able to draw from some of his framing to good effect.

In trying to assign responsibility for the financial meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession that has followed, Democrats sometimes forget what they were saying before September of 2008: that middle-class Americans were losing ground throughout the two terms of the Bush administration.
Ron Brownstein reminds us of the bigger picture in a column utilizing new Census data. The recent economic troubles, he notes, simply exacerbated a already bad situation for all but the wealthiest Americans:

From 2000 through 2009, the Census Bureau found, the median income (measured in inflation-adjusted dollars) declined by 5 percent for white families, 8 percent for Hispanic families, and more than 11 percent for African-American families. That’s almost unimaginable over an entire decade. From 1991 through 2000 (again in inflation-adjusted dollars) it had risen by 13 percent for whites, 19 percent for Hispanics, and 28 percent for African-Americans.
Similarly, the total number of Americans in poverty increased by nearly 12 million in the last decade, more than obliterating the 4.1 million reduction during the 1990s. Especially troubling is that the number of poor children jumped by 3.9 million — again, more than erasing the 2.8 million decline during the 1990s.

No wonder even Republicans don’t much like to tout the 2000s as a period of great progress, preferring to go back to a fictional version of the 1980s for inspiration. But any comparison of the economic records of the 1990s and the 2000s should create some pretty obvious implications for current policy debates, as Brownstein suggests:

It’s worth noting that this dismal performance occurred almost entirely after the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were in place. That record offers little reason for confidence that extending the tax cuts will ignite recovery, as their advocates argue. The economy produced more vibrant and broadly shared growth in the 1990s after Bill Clinton raised taxes than it did after Bush cut them. That doesn’t mean that tax hikes are a panacea; but it certainly suggests that tax cuts are not.

The only thing that would surely be accomplished by making the high-end Bush tax cuts permanent is to accelerate even more the ever-growing inequality of the 2000s. And if Democrats cannot find a way to criticize inequality without engaging in the kind of “class warfare” that turns off some middle-class voters, they certainly aren’t trying very hard. Most Americans know it’s been a long time since they’ve gained any economic ground, and counting once again on bribing the wealthiest Americans–those the GOP refers to as “job creators”–to lift the economy is a scam that should get easier and easier to expose.

Democrats have plenty to worry about over the next five weeks, but it nonetheless behooves Dems to get up to speed on the latest voter suppression scams. In that regard, Demos and Common Cause have partnered to present a must-read report on the topic, “Voting in 2010: Ten Swing States: Problematic election laws and policies in ten swing states could impact enough voters to determine election outcomes.” (PDF Executive Summary here)
The report profiles ten states (AZ, KY, CO, IL, LA, MI, MO, NV, NC and OH), where close elections are expected. The report focuses on laws and policies built into the structure of state election codes, rather than the illegal suppression practices that popped up in FL and OH during recent presidential elections.
The fact sheet on Kentucky, for example, reveals the obstacles Democratic candidates face in that state, including cutting off registration 28 days before the election, draconian felon disenfranchisement disqualifying 24 percent of African Americans, no legal mandate to disseminate voter information and a poor record of complying with the legal requirement to register people at public assistance agencies.
The report also credits each state for “exemplary voting laws” where applicable.
There are also reports of a voter caging operation underway in Wisconsin. According to Karoli’s post, “Voter Suppression in Wisconsin, Courtesy of the GOP and Americans for Prosperity” at CrooksandLiars.com,

Here’s how it works: A mailer is sent to registered voters. Any mailers returned by the post office are put in a database and those voters are submitted to be purged from voting rolls. Of course, the targets are never Republican voters. They’re Democrats, and generally minority voters in particular….One Wisconsin Now has uncovered this plot with evidence, but don’t assume this is limited to Wisconsin. I guarantee you it isn’t. They are targeting as many states as they can, but particularly swing states. Expect Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona just to name a few to have the exact same operations afoot.

And here’s a recent report on voter suppression in Texas.
In addition to the aforementioned laws and policies, and ‘caging,’ Dems should be ready for other suppression practices, like switching poll places, intimidation, parking obstruction, misleading and incorrect poll information, inferior computer equipment at polls in minority neighborhood polling places,
Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh also have a contribution to the topic in their “Early and Often” post at the Boston Review, in which they note,

Registration problems create barriers to voting and make it difficult for administrators to communicate with voters, identify voters at the polls, and audit elections after the fact. Reforms following the 2000 election sought to improve the accuracy and currency of the voter-registration lists. Most important, all states now have statewide voter files. So how good are the files today?…
This summer the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project issued the first comprehensive, nationwide analysis of the quality of information stored on voter registration lists…Nationwide, approximately 1 in 16 entries on the registration lists is unmailable. The magnitude of the problem varies greatly throughout the country. In California, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., about 1 in 50 entries is problematic, but in Arkansas, that number is 1 in 5.

The authors provide a chart ranking every state. This is not just about incompetence and sloppy registration management. The states are all well-aware of their rankings and the reasons for it, and in most cases it’s a matter of political manipulation — almost always to the detriment of Democrats.

Jane Mayer has an interesting post at The New Yorker, based on her telephone interview with former Vice President and Democratic Presidential nominee Walter Mondale in advance of his forthcoming memoir, “The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics.”
While it’s always good to give a fair hearing to the political advice of Democratic winners, like Bill Clinton, I think there is also value in hearing what smart candidates who have lost elections — those who have learned the lesson — have to say. I would say Mondale fits this description, perhaps better than his ticket mate Jimmy Carter, based on Mayer’s article and Carter’s recent comments about Senator Kennedy blocking health care reform.
Here’s Mondale, comparing his experience as Carter’s veep to the Democrats current predicament, as reported by Mayer:

…He could not help noting the similarities between Obama’s embattled White House and Carter’s. The problems that he and Carter faced from 1976 until 1980, he recalled, often seemed “overwhelming,” with “no good answers” in sight. As the economy was ravaged by what was known as “stagflation,” he said, the public “just turned against us–same as with Obama.” He went on, “People think the President is the only one who can fix their problems. And, if he doesn’t produce solutions, I’m telling you–when a person loses a job, or can’t feed his family, or can’t keep his house, he is no longer rational. They become angry, they strike out–and that’s what we have now. If you’re President, they say, ‘Do something!’ ”
…Mondale recalled that President Carter, as his standing in the polls slid, “began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public.” The President, he said, should have “got out front earlier with the bad news and addressed the people more.” He sees a similar problem with Obama: “I think he needs to get rid of those teleprompters, and connect. He’s smart as hell. He can do it. Look right into those cameras and tell people he’s hurting right along with them.” Carter, on the other hand, he said, might not have been able to. “At heart, he was an engineer,” Mondale said. “He wanted to sit down and come up with the right answers, and then explain it. He didn’t like to do a lot of emotional public speaking.”
…”In my opinion, Obama had a few false presumptions. One was the idea that we were in a post-partisan era.” The other was “the idea of turning things over to Congress–that doesn’t work even when you own Congress. You have to ride ’em.” Further, he suggested that Obama should stop thinking about what he can get from the Republican opposition: “You should explain clearly what you want, and, if they oppose you, attack them for it.”

Mondale worries about the public’s “outsized expectations,” but he says of Obama “he’s in a fairly good position to keep the Party united.” Coming from one of the lions of Democratic liberalism, that’s encouraging.

Wanna see what happens when a Democratic House candidate confronts a murky group spending big bucks on ads attacking him? Check out Amanda Terkel’s HuffPo post, “Rep. Peter DeFazio Turns The Tables, Confronts Shadowy Conservative Group Running Attack Ads Against Him (VIDEO).”
Terkel’s post is of interest for a couple of reasons: 1. These shadowy groups are popping up all over the country, with little accountability, in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision giving them free reign, and 2. DeFazio shows how to reveal their sleazy origins.
Here’s an excerpt of Terkel’s post:

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is turning the tables on a political group launching attack ads against him in an attempt to bring its shadowy practices to light. On Friday, he went to the Capitol Hill headquarters of the Concerned Taxpayers of America to deliver a letter and speak with members of the organization about making its donors public. But the person who answered the door misrepresented himself and lied, saying he had never heard of Concerned Taxpayers, even though subsequent information shows that he is affiliated with the group…According to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) filings, Concerned Taxpayers is spending $86,000 for ads to help DeFazio’s opponent, Art Robinson.

Terkel goes on to explain that the ads try to portray DeFazio as “a puppet” of Speaker Pelosi, even though he has opposed her on key legislation. Terkel notes that Concerned Citizens’ treasurer is Jason Miller, who is with a Republican political consulting firm, Jamestown Associates, according to the FEC filings and she continues:

DeFazio decided to confront Concerned Taxpayers on Friday, intending to deliver a letter requesting that the group make its donors public. “Since you intend to try and buy Art Robinson a congressional seat, by raising and spending ‘unlimited amounts of money,’ the voters of Oregon are entitled to know who is picking up the tab,” wrote DeFazio.
The Huffington Post, along with a couple of journalists from The Washington Post, accompanied DeFazio on the short walk from the Rayburn House Office Building over to Concerned Taxpayers’ headquarters, listed as 10 E St, SE, which turned out to be a small grey townhouse. DeFazio had to ring the doorbell, knock, and yell through the mail slot before someone came to the door. The man identified himself as Mike Omegna and he told the congressman that he had never heard of Miller or Concerned Taxpayers, nor was his voice on the organization’s voicemail…

Terkel adds,

It appeared that Omegna was dissembling. The Huffington Post called Concerned Taxpayers’ phone number, and the message, in Omegna’s voice, said:
You’ve reached Michael Omegna at Jamestown Associates. I can’t get to my phone right now, but if you leave me your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. If this is regarding Concerned Taxpayers of America, please leave a detailed message and I will respond back as soon as possible.
So not only did Omegna clearly have an association with Miller — who works at Jamestown Associates — but he also has a tie to Concerned Taxpayers and his voice was on the answering machine, despite what he told DeFazio.

There’s more. But the important thing is that DeFazio got in their face and exposed their origins, as Terkel reports:

…”We’ve got to take it to them,” he told HuffPost. “I’m an activist, always have been my whole life, and I’m going there to confront them and say, ‘Who are you, and why are you so afraid to disclose where your money come from? Would it totally discredit your attacks on me and other Democrats? Would it totally discredit your organization?’ We don’t know who they are. And as I said earlier, how can we enforce existing law, which does say it can’t be a foreign government, a foreign entity, a foreign individual, but if we are allowed no disclosure, how will we ever know who funded these campaigns?”

It’s clear that, by revealing the source of the ads as something other than a genuine independent ‘citizens organization,’ — and showing his guts in getting a videotaped confrontation — DeFazio increased the chances that the ads will backfire. If DeFazio wins, it may be because enough swing voters admired his courage.

According to the settled and conventional view of things, Democrats are in trouble in this midterm election in no small part because progressives, unhappy with the Obama administration’s timidity and/or pro-corporate leanings, plan to stay at home. This is, indeed, the central conviction at the heart of all the talk about an “enthusiasm gap” between Democrats and Republicans.
That’s why Public Policy Polling’s Tom Jensen’s recent post on Obama approval ratings among his own 2008 voters is so very interesting.

Our national poll last week- which is conducted with registered, rather than likely, voters- found that 88% of people who voted for Obama still approve of the job he’s doing.
It’s a different story with likely voters in the 16 states we’ve polled since switching over to LVs for our horse race polling in mid-August. Only in 3 of those states- Alaska, North Carolina, and Texas- has Obama maintained that level of popularity with people who voted for him. And in several key states where Democrats are having a lot of trouble it’s dropped quite a bit.

So disgruntled 2008 Obama voters aren’t, by and large, progressives who are planning on sitting on their hands November 2. They are likely voters who are straying into the Republican column, even as many satisfied Obama voters don’t bother to go to the polls. That’s certainly how Jensen sees it:

What these numbers suggest to me is that Democrats staying home aren’t necessarily disappointed with how things have gone so far. The Democrats not voting are more pleased with how Obama’s done than the Democrats who are voting. And when you’re happy you simply don’t have the sense of urgency about going out and voting to make something change. That complacency, more than the Republicans, is Democrats’ strongest foe this year.

So the disparity in current likelihood to vote between Democrats and Republicans in part represents a “complacency gap” as much as an “enthusiasm gap.” You’d think it would be relatively easy, particularly as Election Day approaches, to convince satisfied Obama voters that the president and the country are in pretty hot water if Republicans retake Congress. But time’s running out for making that case, and sometimes voters need to be reminded graphically of the consequences of civic negligence, whether it’s rooted in happy or unhappy sentiments.

Ed Kilgore’s post above clearly highlights one very important aspect of a broader problem: the common assumption in media commentary that trends in voter behavior can be meaningfully condensed into just one or two simple factors like an “enthusiasm gap” or “disappointment.”
To a substantial degree this desire by commentators to present simple explanations is motivated by two factors – the 800 word limit for most political commentary and the desire to propose simple answers of the form “If the Dems would just do X, they could win the election.”
In the case of the “enthusiasm gap,” for example, most commentary quickly lumps all of the “unenthusiastic” Democrats into one of the following three categories (1) left critics discuss the trend as reflecting anger at Obama’s “betrayal” of his campaign promises (2) mainstream commentators point to “disappointment” with the lack of significant change and (3) conservatives explain the problem as clearly reflecting a rejection of Obama’s agenda.
It’s not often noted by political commentators that advertising professionals – the people who are held directly and personally responsible for the success or failure of their communication strategies — generally don’t think this way. Quite the contrary, Ad people are trained to try and segment any overall audience they are trying to reach into meaningful sub-groups with distinct outlooks and then create specific message that speak to those unique perspectives. In many textbooks, copywriters are taught to create a dozen or more “profiles” of audience segments. They are told to write short biographies e.g. “Jessie is a 24 year old graphic designer who lives in a studio apartment with a grey and white cat and furniture she bought at from Rooms to Go….” Often, copywriters and designers cut out pictures from magazines to go with the biographies and hang them on the walls of their offices so that they have a specific visual image of the particular kinds of customers they are trying to persuade.
Faced with a vague concept like “unenthusiastic” Democratic voters, most advertising specialists would immediately think about segmenting the group. Market research would fairly quickly produce a list of subgroups something like the following:

1. People who voted for Obama because of the unique “cool” excitement of the 2008 campaign but who are largely indifferent to politics and never bother to vote in off-year elections.
2. People who voted for Obama out of a sense of profound outrage against some particular aspect of the Bush administration but now do not feel a similar sense of anger compelling them to get out and vote.
3. People who voted for Obama and now feel frustrated with the lack of progress but do not blame Obama himself for the problem. Rather the political stalemate has just made them feel cynical about the value of voting.
4. People who voted for Obama and feel frustrated with him for failing to accomplish more than he has.
5. People who voted for Obama and feel that Obama betrayed them on one or more issues but who still prefer him to the Republicans. They would vote for Democrats if they were standing in the voting booth but have no real enthusiasm for going to the polls.
6. People who voted for Obama but now feel so betrayed by him on one or more issues that they flatly refuse to vote for Democrats.

Looking over this list, it is fairly easy to recognize the quite distinct outlooks of these different “unenthusiastic” Democratic voters and the lack of a simple common view. This quickly suggests one key conclusion:
If you were doing door to door voter canvassing and campaign work, you would vary almost everything in your approach depending on which of these different kinds of voter you were talking to – what you would say, your tone of voice, the degree to which you would express empathy and understanding – all these things would be substantially different depending on the particular person.
This, in turn, leads to one key political conclusion: the most important and effective form of pro-Democratic campaigning this year will be face to face personal communication. There is no single slogan or message that will do the job. The only thing that will reliably influence all these different groups – except perhaps the sixth — is being personally contacted by pro-Democratic advocates who sincerely and passionately insist that voting is still worthwhile.
So let’s stop looking for a “magic bullet” slogan, policy or last minute game-changer. The most important thing Democrats can do right now is person-to-person contact and communication.