Although they offered significant positive signs, the elections this Tuesday were not in any way a decisive victory for Democrats. What they did represent, however, was a very powerful and substantial setback for the bitter extremist campaign that was launched against the Dems more than a year ago.
Some fierce opponents of Obama and the Democrats were elected in Republican primaries on Tuesday and a group of moderate Republicans fell to challengers from the right even as progressive Dems had a good night and Dems won the single partisan election. But something deeper was also going on. Years from now these primary elections may very likely be seen as the moment when the furious advance of a bitter and determined conservative political assault reached its limit and ground to a halt. This Tuesday was the day when the arrogant claims that the vast majority of Americans were so ferociously and bitterly opposed to the Democratic agenda that they would swamp the political system with their fury were revealed to be hollow. It was the day that the social movement that Republicans had described as unstoppable found itself stopped and the citizen army that conservatives declared invincible encountered opposition that it could not overcome.
Let us be very clear. Millions of Americans sincerely believe that health care reform and the entire Obama agenda is profoundly misguided and they have every right to their view. They have a right to insist on that limits to government are more important than needed social legislation, that balancing the budget is more important than creating jobs and to vote and speak in support of their beliefs.
But what Democrats have faced for the last year has not been a normal political conflict, but rather an assault modeled on a military campaign — an attack conducted in the language and spirit of warfare. The defeat of the Health Care Reform bill was to be – in Jim DeMint’s memorable phrase – “Obama’s Waterloo.” The fierce conservative resistance to his plan would resonate with Americans like a modern-day version of the Alamo, or the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and lead to a stunning, catastrophic defeat that would not produce a renewed and sincere search for compromise but rather a body blow to the democrats that would break Obama’s spirit and doom his agenda.

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So welcome to the Big Time, Rand Paul! Fresh from his primary victory on Tuesday, the Kentucky Tea Party idol managed to tie himself into knots on Rachel Maddow’s show last night under questioning about past remarks doubting the wisdom of the public accomodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This morning he “clarified” his remarks and then started blasting Maddow and his critics, as conservatives across the chattering classes characterized this unforced error as a “smear” of poor innocent Paul.
In better news for the son of Ron, Rasmussen released the first post-primary poll of the Kentucky Senate race, and showed an astounding 25-point lead for Paul over Jack Conway. Rasmussen, of course, has been known to find Republican support at levels higher than any other pollster, particularly in Kentucky (a pre-primary poll showed Paul up by 14 points over Conway, when other polls showed a close race). Nate Silver wrote up some pretty good reasons why Rasmussen may have gotten this is a little wrong, mostly relating to the traditional problem that robo-polls often produce skewed response rates based on the enthusiasm of the respondent, which is a particularly bad practice when you’re doing a snap poll in the wake of a big and much-hyped primary win.
All in all, it was an up-and-down day for the Republican Senate nominee, but he best start getting his story straight, because it doesn’t require the analytical or rhetorical skills of a Rachel Maddow to deduce that the man has some beliefs that are not within shouting distance of the political mainstream. I can’t wait for the first time an interviewer demands to know exactly how he would immediately balance the federal budget without tax increases.

The Senate today invoked cloture on the financial regulations bill, with three Republicans–Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and–yes-Scott Brown–joining 57 Democrats in favor. Russ Feingold and Maria Cantwell, who wanted to make changes in the bill, voted “no.”
This clears the decks for final passage, and then a complex House-Senate conference to resolve differences in this bill and the one passed by the House in December, which seems like many years ago.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
I believe in comprehensive immigration reform—so much so that I helped organize a bipartisan task force on the matter. (Here is the report.) I understand that most Americans have qualms about taking harshly punitive measures against illegal immigrants. And there is little doubt that a party seen as anti-immigrant will eventually lose the support of an increasingly diverse population, and especially of young people, as the fate of the post-Pete Wilson Republican Party in California demonstrates.
But I still have no idea why some leading Democrats, such as Chuck Schumer, think that pushing this issue right now will be helpful in November. If they believe that recent events in Arizona have created a public groundswell for a more liberal response, they’re just wrong. Let’s look at four high-quality national surveys conducted this month.
According to a CBS/New York Times poll, 65 percent of Americans see illegal immigration as a “very serious problem,” 74 percent think it weakens the economy, and 78 percent believe the U.S. should be doing more to stop it. These beliefs help explain why 51 percent of the people think that the new Arizona law is “about right,” versus only 36 percent who say it “goes too far.” They reach this conclusion despite the fact that 72 percent think it will have disproportionate effects on certain racial and ethnic groups and 78 percent believe it will burden police departments. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds the same thing: 64 percent of respondents support the Arizona legislation (46 percent strongly) despite the fact that 66 percent believe that it will lead to discrimination against Latino immigrants who are in this country legally.
The Pew Research Center probed more deeply and came to a similar conclusion. Its researchers began by examining public opinion on three key provisions of the Arizona law: requiring people to produce documents verifying legal status (73 percent approval); allowing the police to detain anyone unable to verify legal status (67 percent approval); and giving authorities the right to question anyone they think may be in the country illegally (62 percent approval). Pew then asked whether, “considering everything,” respondents endorsed the Arizona bill: 59 percent said yes, versus only 32 percent who disapproved.
Pew breaks down its results by subgroup. While the results for Republicans and independents are predictable, those for Democrats aren’t. Sixty-five percent of Democrats support requiring people to produce documents, 55 percent would allow detention of non-verifiers, and 50 percent would allow questioning based on police suspicion only. Accordingly, Democrats are split down the middle on the Arizona law: 45 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed. Notably, Pew finds somewhat more Democratic support than do the other surveys, suggesting that additional information about the Arizona law tends to move Democrats toward it rather than away from it.
For its part, a series of Gallup surveys also underscores the public’s concerns with immigration. A majority believes that we should emphasize better border-control, and 51 percent of Americans who have heard about the Arizona law support it as opposed to 39 percent who don’t.
This does not mean that the United States as a whole is on the verge of a new era of nativism. Each survey identifies reservoirs of sympathy for immigrants, illegal as well as legal. But when Americans strike an overall balance, their concern about the social and economic consequences of the current situation outweighs their worries about the humanitarian consequences of changing it. That is why Gallup concludes one of its surveys as follows: “Recent Gallup polling found nearly as many Americans rating immigration reform as an important national priority as said this about financial reform for Wall Street. That aligns with the wishes of some Senate Democrats who are reportedly pressing for quick action on comprehensive immigration reform.” However, continues the Gallup report, “Public opinion on the issue might not align as well with the policies these Democrats have in mind.” Based on the evidence I’ve cited from four respected survey organizations, it’s hard to disagree.
Democrats who favor proceeding with this issue have two remaining arguments. They claim that, win or lose, pushing hard on an immigration bill would mobilize parts of the party’s base and produce net gains for Democratic candidates in key districts and states. Given the fact that at least nine out of ten voters this November will be non-Latinos and that most contests involving high percentages of Latino voters are likely to remain safely in the Democratic column anyway, this claim is intuitively hard to believe. At any rate, the burden of proof is on its proponents.
Second, one may argue that all of this is irrelevant: the Arizona law is an unconscionable assault on the civil rights of immigrants who are here legally and on the human rights of those who aren’t. The soul of the Democratic Party is at stake, and shrinking from the fight would be a disgrace. Maybe so. But no one should believe that virtue will be its own reward—certainly not between now and November.

Last week I did a post asking if it was actually possible that California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who’s on course to break every national record for spending in a state political race, could actually lose her primary. Now one of the more respected California polling outfits has weighed in, and yes, Whitman’s in some trouble, though still ahead.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Whitman’s 61-11 lead over Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in March has dropped to 38-29, with the undecided vote actually going up to 31%. With less than three weeks left to go until the June 8 primary, Whitman’s spending total for the cycle is now up to $68 million (!), and Poizner’s dropped $24 million himself in a much shorter period of time. It is very, very difficult to watch television in California right now without heavy exposure to constant back-and-forth attack ads from these two candidates.
I’ve written the contest up over at FiveThirtyEight for anyone who’s interested. The bottom line is that the Whitman-Poizner battle is good news for Democratic candidate Jerry Brown, and if Poizner’s immigrant-bashing message prevails or forces Whitman to emulate it, it could have long-term repercussions for party politics in the Golden State.

I don’t have too much to add to J.P. Green’s analysis of the May 18 primaries. But here are a few thoughts:
(1) Blanche Lincoln failed to win without a runoff because she didn’t do nearly well enough in her old House district (the 1st, which is NE Arkansas) to offset a virtual drubbing in the 4th CD (southern Arkansas). She actually won Pulaski County (Little Rock), Bill Halter’s home town, very comfortably, and won throughout NW Arkansas. Since my own pre-primary analysis suggested that a large undecided African-American vote might be the key, it’s worth noting that the 4th and 1st districts have, respectively, the highest (24%) and next highest (19%) African-American population percentages. Without exit polls or precinct level data, it’s hard to say this is why Lincoln failed to win, but it looks like that might be the case, particularly since the black vote was tilting towards Halter in pre-primary polls. If so, this could be a danger sign for Halter in the runoff, since African-Americans traditionally don’t participate in southern runoff elections in anything like a proportionate manner. Otherwise, the runoff dynamics definitely favor the challenger, particularly if labor’s financial involvement on Halter’s behalf continues.
(2) The CW is that in Jack Conway KY Democrats nominated the stronger candidate against Rand Paul. That could well be true, though Dan Mongiardo’s regional strength in Eastern Kentucky, a traditionally Republican area where hard-core conservatives often struggle, might have posed some special problems for Paul.
(3) In retrospect, Arlen Specter’s long Senate career has been a continuing minor miracle. This is a guy who has managed over the course of decades to deeply alienate both liberals and conservatives, and he’s also known as one of the least attractive personalities in Washington, which is saying a lot. To survive after a party-switch would have been truly incredible.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In a night of big political developments, the one that will echo for some time is the victory by Rand Paul in the Kentucky Republican Senate primary. Why? Well, for one thing, it’s not often that someone leapfrogs a still-active and very famous congressional father to get a short track to the U.S. Senate. While it may have been over the top to speculate about a “Paul Dynasty,” as one writer did following a quirky Rasmussen poll in April that showed Ron Paul running even with Obama in 2012, the story of Paul père et fils is a definite crowd-pleaser.
Just as importantly, Rand Paul’s win over State Treasurer Trey Grayson epitomizes the major themes that are emerging around the 2010 elections. (Unlike, say, victories by more “politically safe” candidates like Indiana’s Dan Coats.) Let’s review them :
(1) 2010 is the year that insurgents and outsiders overturn incumbents. Rand Paul is the ultimate outsider. An opthamologist who hasn’t run for office before, he set out to battle Grayson, who’s in his second term as a statewide elected official. And the Paul brand screams insurgent: Rand’s old man ran the entire 2008 presidential race as an outsider heading up a movement of outsiders. Rand Paul didn’t beat an incumbent senator—in fact, the incumbent senator in Kentucky, Jim Bunning, endorsed him—but it was Trey Grayson who looked like an establishmentarian, after he received endorsements from Dick Cheney and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
(2) 2010 is the year of the Tea Party. Sure, other major Republican candidates this year have worn the Tea Party label—but they haven’t done so very well. TP favorites lost the Republican Senate primaries in Illinois and Indiana. Scott Brown, who got into office with Tea Party help, quickly turned out to be a moderate Republican. And even Marco Rubio of Florida has declined to follow the Tea Party faithful into a potentially suicidal endorsement of Arizona’s new immigration law. Paul, on the other hand, is a true outsider with sterling ideological bona fides. His win embodies the kind of success that Tea Party folk hope to achieve.
(3) 2010 is “about” fiscal conservatism and little else. Paul is a nice example of the trend—real or imagined—in which economic issues have eclipsed concerns about social and foreign policy among Tea Partiers and conservatives. He brushed off Grayson’s efforts to make the primary turn on abortion or foreign policy: Republican voters apparently didn’t care that Rand’s “cuckoo” views about national security are far outside the post-9/11 GOP mainstream. (On his campaign website, the section on “National Defense” focuses heavily on border security, while its foreign policy content is limited to attacks on the U.N., the IMF, and the World Bank.) Meanwhile, Paul has been relentlessly radical on fiscal issues—demanding an immediate balanced budget, for example—despite Grayson’s warnings that Kentuckians will lose all their federal goodies with a guy like Paul representing them in the Senate.
You can see why the media will treat Rand Paul as an icon of the political times between now and November—and beyond that, if he wins (he has quite a lead in general election polls). But even more importantly: Beyond the short-term buzz of 2010, Rand Paul’s victory illustrates some deeper truths about latter-day conservatism and the Republican Party.
For one thing, Rand Paul didn’t draw on help from independent voters to execute his conquest of Grayson and McConnell. The primary that Paul just won was closed, and Kentucky also cut off changes in party registration for this primary back in December. So, if Paul’s victory represents a humiliating defeat for the Republican establishment, it was a defeat inflicted by Republicans themselves, not by the traditional independents who back “insurgents” like Ross Perot.
Furthermore, there’s evidence that Paul’s victory was driven by a trend that’s been going on in the GOP for decades, long before it occurred to anyone to brandish tea bags: the effort by “movement conservatives” to take over the GOP and root out heresy. Certainly, the endorsements that Paul won from Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint—and from Christian Right warhorse James Dobson, who originally endorsed Grayson—reinforce that impression. And check out this nugget from PPP’s pre-election survey of Kentucky Republicans:

A Paul victory will be a clear signal that Kentucky Republicans want the party to move further to the right. 32% of likely primary voters think the party is too liberal and Paul has a 71-21 lead with them that accounts for almost his entire polling lead.

This sort of finding raises the broader question of whether the Tea Party movement, for all its professions of populism and independence, is in many respects just a radicalized segment of the conservative GOP base (see John Judis’s new TNR piece for a learned discussion of that proposition). But whatever the “story” of conservatism turns out to be in retrospect, Rand Paul is likely to figure prominently, and colorfully, in that tale.

The entire Republican strategy of the last year has been based on inflaming the passions and mobilizing the energy of the base and yet, as E.J. Dionne noted this morning, “what we didn’t see is a huge Republican surge that the “enthusiasm gap” registered in many of the polls might have suggested.”
Let’s face it. If the demented hysterics of the last year have not succeeded in creating a mobilized, energized “new” conservative electorate rising up against Obama and the Dems, there is little reason to think that anything that will happen between now and November will suddenly do the trick.
The Republicans needed the electoral equivalent of the windmill scene in Frankenstein yesterday– and they didn’t get it. As Sherlock Homes would have put it, it was “the dog that did not bark”.

Thoughtful Republicans won’t find much to cheer in the results of Tuesday elections, while both moderate and progressive Democrats are hailing the results.
In the special election to fill the PA-12 congressional seat vacated by the death of Rep. John Murtha, Democrat Mark Critz, a Murtha aide, beat Republican Tim Burns, who Critz will oppose again for the November general election. With 70 percent of precincts counted in the potential bellwether election, Critz lead Burns by a margin of 53-45 percent, according to Paul Pierce’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article.
Democrats were encouraged by the victory in the swing district (2-1 Democratic registration edge, but a Cook PVI rating of R+1), as DNC Chairman Tim Kaine noted:

Tonight’s result demonstrates clearly that Democrats can compete and win in conservative districts, including ones like Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, which was won by John McCain in 2008…The Republican Party’s failure to take a seat that they themselves said was tailor-made for them to win is a significant blow and shows that while conventional wisdom holds that this will be a tough year for Democrats, the final chapter of this year’s elections is far from written.

Dr. Melanie Blumberg, a poly Sci professor at California University of Pennsylvania, quoted in Pierce’s article, added,

I think the GOP’s attempt to nationalize the election by all the references to (House Leader) Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama failed miserably. Critz read the district better, and he apparently knew their conservative leanings from working with Congressman Murtha

Former half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and House Minority Leader John Boehner, stumped for Burns, as did Sen. Scott Brown and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Former President Clinton and Sen. Bob Casey campaigned for Critz, a “pro-life, pro-gun” Democrat, who made jobs his top policy priority. Critz’s win suggests that candidates who articulate a convincing vision for job-creation and economic recovery will have an edge with working class voters.
Joe Sestak’s decisive win (8 percent) over Arlen Specter is getting lots of national attention, and soon perhaps, contributions from Democrats who see him as a rising star. (For an interesting map depicting the geographic breadth of Sestak’s win, click here). Let it not be lost on Dems that his win was also an impressive demonstration of the power of media over Specter’s well-established ground game — Sestak’s uptick in the polls tracked the emergence of his sharply-focused attack ads. In a tough economy, it appears that well-done attack ads have more resonance than the warm and fuzzy ‘I love my family and my country’ ads of more prosperous times.
Perhaps one lesson of the May 18 elections is that making primary endorsements is not such a good idea for a sitting president, who after all, is the leader of his party. I understand the argument for rewarding a Senator who made an important party switch — to show others who may be considering a switch that they won’t be left out on a limb. Obama reportedly backed off some as more recent polls showed Sestak gaining. Primary neutrality may give the President more leverage as a unifying force in the party and in campaigning for the primary victor in the general election, especially when the winner may not have been his first choice.
Sestak, a retired rear admiral with 31 years of naval service, is a mediagenic candidate of considerable promise, a rust-belt progressive with strong national security cred. Dems, including Obama, should work like hell to get him elected.
In the Arkansas Democratic primary, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is supported by many progressive Dems, forced Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a run-off. Democratic voters cast more than twice the number of Republican ballots in the Arkansas Senate primaries, and both Lincoln and Halter out-polled Republican primary winner Boozeman. The so called ‘enthusiasm’ gap favoring Republicans did not materialize in the May 18 elections.
Even in KY, Dem Senate candidates Jack Conway and Daniel Mongiardo both received more votes in the Democratic primary (226,773 and 221,269 respectively) than did MSM and tea party darling Rand Paul in the GOP primary (206,159). Nearly half a million Kentuckians voted for Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, compared with less than 350 thousand who voted for Republicans.

From time to time TDS publishes “strategy white papers” that provide an in-depth analysis of major strategic issues facing the Democratic Party and its leaders. Today we are publishing a new strategy white paper by Andrew Levison, whose study of white-working-class voters dates back all the way to the 1970s.
Levison’s study begins by isolating non-college-educated white voters who are not attracted to the Tea Party Movement, but who are rapidly trending Republican, as an important strategic target for Democrats in 2010 and particularly in 2012. He then examines the often-heard proposition that a strong anti-corporate “populist” message is the key to attracting these voters, and finds it lacking in terms of the strong anti-government and anti-politics sentiments that have become an entrenched factor in the world views of many non-college educated voters in recent years. He instead suggests a comprehensive message of “government reform” that addresses the legitimate and perceived concerns of those white working class voters who are still open to persuasion, and that contextualizes progressive policy proposals in a way that makes them far more acceptable to skeptics of government and politics.
Levison’s paper, which draws on the extensive academic literature on the white working class, along with public opinion research, communications theory and sociological findings, provides, we believe, something of a landmark on a subject of perennial interest to progressives, and of considerable urgency given today’s political landscape. It also constitutes a good antidote to oversimplified media discussions of the Tea Party Movement and of “populism,” by looking at what non-college-educated voters actually think and how they process information on politics and government. It is well worth the time it takes to read, digest, and we hope, discuss with others.