This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston, is cross-posted from The New Republic, where it was originally published on November 1, 2011.
With little more than a year until the presidential election, two new reports–a survey from CBS/NYT and a CBO brief on household income–illuminate the treacherous terrain on which the campaign will be waged. The candidates will be fighting for the sympathies of an electorate that is utterly dispirited and in no mood for promises of uplift from either party. They say they want change, but they have lost confidence in the public sector as the agent of change.
That would seem to give the edge to the Republicans, but unfortunately for them, most people think they’re out to serve the interests of the rich, who already have too much. That would seem to move the edge back to Obama and the Democrats. But unfortunately for them, the people can’t figure out whose interests Obama and the Democrats want to serve–or whether they have a plan that could translate good economic intentions into tangible results.
Let’s begin with the latest CBS/NYT survey, which finds that only 10 percent of the electorate trusts the federal government to do what is right most of the time–by far the lowest level of confidence ever recorded. Only 9 percent approve of the way Congress is doing its job, which–as Senator John McCain is fond of stating–pretty much narrows its base of support to staff and family members.
Trust in the political system is low because the country is widely perceived as heading in the wrong direction and politicians aren’t seen as providing answers. From Barack Obama’s inauguration through the end of 2009, on average, 39 percent of the electorate thought that the country was generally heading in the right direction–not great, but much better than the 2008 average of 13 percent. But things have gone downhill ever since: The “right direction” choice averaged 33 percent in 2010 and 28 percent thus far in 2011. As of this week, it stands at 21 percent.
When it comes to the public’s faith in government providing effective answers, in mid-September, 43 percent of the people thought that Obama had a clear plan for creating jobs. Five weeks later, after a non-stop presidential jobs tour, that figure has fallen to 38 percent–unimpressive, but far better than the Republicans in Congress, who have persuaded only 20 percent of the electorate that they have a jobs plan. But the people aren’t grading the president on a curve: Only 35 percent approve of the way he is handling job creation, and only 38 percent approve of his handling of the economy as a whole. (By contrast, public approval of his handling of foreign policy and Iraq stands at 50 and 60 percent, respectively. But these aren’t likely to be voting issues next year.)
Such high levels of pessimism and mistrust should be political gold for Republicans. But the electorate has its own distinct worries about the GOP, and they center on the issue of income inequality. The CBS/NYT survey asked the people a blunt question: “Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly divided among more people?” 26 percent of the respondents thought that the current pattern is fair, versus 66 percent who thought the distribution should be more even.
This brings me to the second new report–from the Congressional Budget Office, on trends in household income. Its core finding can be stated simply: In the three decades from 1979 to 2007, the distribution of household income became substantially more unequal, even taking transfer payments and taxes into account. The bottom four quintiles saw their share of income drop, while the share going to the top quintile rose from 43 percent to 53 percent. And in that top quintile, near all of the gain went to the top 1 percent, whose share rose 9 percent points, from about 8 percent to 17 percent. Among that rarified group, average real household income after taxes rose by 275 percent, versus 35 percent for households at the median. When the “Occupy” movement talks about the 99 percent, they’re on to something. And so are the people as a whole.
CBO identifies the widening dispersion of income derived from the market–wages and salaries, capital and business income, and capital gains–as the major reason for the increasing inequality of household income. It turns out that all these sources of income have become less equal. In 1979, the bottom 80 percent of households received 60 percent of total labor income, 33 percent of business and capital income, and 8 percent of capital gains. By 2007, those figures had fallen to 50, 20, and 5 percent, respectively.
Simply put, people are justifiably worried that income inequality is too high, and they see Republicans as working to exacerbate it. For example, when asked whom they think the policies of Congressional Republicans most favor, 69 percent say the rich. Only 9 percent say the middle class, and only 2 percent say the poor. Only 15 percent believe that Republican policies treat all groups equally. Here are the comparable figures for the Obama administration: 28 percent say its policies favor the rich, 23 percent say the middle class, 17 percent say the poor, and 21 percent say Obama’s policies treat everyone equally. The American people know what Republicans stand for, and they don’t much like it. By contrast, they can’t figure out what Obama stands for–and they don’t much like that either.
In sum, while Americans sense that generating jobs and economic growth is an urgent task right now, they’re also concerned about the long-cycle trend toward increasing inequality and whether it’s compatible with either economic or civic health. But they still have no idea to whom they should turn to address those concerns. Unless the way the free market works changes dramatically, they know they can’t expect the “invisible hand” to reduce inequality. If the people want more equality, which they say they do, they can only get it through public policy. The catch is they don’t think they can trust the government to get the job done. They feel, in other words, that they’re stuck with a status quo they dislike.
It will be the job of the presidential candidates, of course, to capture and appeal to this dispirited mood. In that way, one thing is already clear: It won’t be a campaign full of “hope and change.”

This item, by Ed Kilgore, James Vega, and J.P. Green, was originally published on October 26, 2011.
In recent days the mainstream media has been rapidly converging on a new common wisdom — a set of clichés that they will use to frame the rest of the campaign for the Republican nomination and the election of 2012. This new common wisdom portrays the intra-Republican struggle as one between more moderate and extreme wings of the party, with “pragmatic” Republican elites seeking a candidate who can beat Obama in opposition to the more “extremist” fringe elements and candidates of the grass-roots Tea Party.
It is inevitable that the mainstream media will find this image utterly irresistible. It not only serves their personal and professional needs but also reinforces their ideological preconceptions.
The image of “Republican elites as pragmatic, the tea party fringe as extreme” suits commentators’ personal and professional needs because it allows them to be publically disdainful of “extremism” without ever having to actually use the term to describe any powerful and significant figure in the Republican coalition who might be in a position to retaliate. A suggestion of “extremism” directed against anyone in this latter group is a social – and possibly career-damaging – faux pas that mainstream journalists will take every imaginable step to avoid.
At the same time, the “Elites as pragmatic, grass roots as extreme” image also validates mainstream commentators’ essentially condescending view of political life, in which “extremists” are always scruffy, largely disreputable individuals on the lower rungs of society – the kind of people who live in trailer parks and rant incoherently about the second amendment. Wealthy, powerful and influential “movers and shakers” within the Republican world, on the other hand, regardless of their actual views, are still invariably accorded respect as essentially serious and sensible individuals.
There is nothing new about this pattern of behavior among the mainstream media. It follows the same pattern as the “both sides are equally to blame” clichés about partisan gridlock and “dysfunctional government.” Writers and commentators who, in private, will cheerfully concede that, of course, the crisis is fundamentally the fault of Republican intransigence will then fall back on “both sides are equally to blame” clichés in their public writing — not only to avoid charges of liberal bias but also to portray themselves as impartial and intellectually superior observers of all career politicians.
There is, unfortunately, one major problem with this “elites as pragmatic, fringe as extreme” view: it is deeply, profoundly and fundamentally wrong. The most dangerous group of political extremists today is not the grass roots supporters of the Tea Party. It is the major sector of the Republican financial and ideological elite who have embraced the philosophy of “politics as warfare.”
To see why this is so, it is necessary to very clearly distinguish between two entirely distinct meanings of the term “extremism.” On the one hand, it is possible for a person or political party to hold a wide variety of very “extreme” opinions on issues. These views may be crackpot (e.g. “abolish paper money) or repugnant (“deny non-insured children medical care”). But as long as the individual or political party that holds these views conducts itself within the norms and rules of a democratic society, this, in itself, does not lead such groups or individuals to be described as “political extremists” by the media or society in general.
Libertarians and the Libertarian Party offer the best illustration. Vast numbers of Americans consider many libertarian views “extreme.” But, because the libertarians conduct themselves within the norms and rules of a democratic society, they are virtually never described by the media as “political extremists.”
The alternative definition of the term “political extremists” refers to political parties or individuals who do not accept the norms, rules and constraints of democratic society. They embrace a view of “politics as warfare” and of political opponents as literal “enemies” who must be crushed. Extremist political parties based on the politics as warfare philosophy emerged on both the political left and right at various times in the 20th century in many different countries and circumstances.
Despite their ideological diversity, extremist political parties share a large number of common characteristics, one critical trait being a radically different conception of the role and purpose of the political party itself in a democratic society.
In the politics as warfare perspective a political party’s objective is defined as the conquest and seizure of power and not sincere collaboration in democratic governance. The party is viewed as a combat organization whose goal is to defeat an enemy, not a governing organization whose job is to faithfully represent the people who voted for it. Political debate and legislative maneuvering are seen not as the means to achieve ultimate compromise, but as forms of combat whose objective is total victory.
This basic conception of the role of political parties leads to the justification and use of two profoundly anti-democratic strategies.

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This item by J.P. Green was originally published on October 19, 2011.
Rob Stein, Founder of the Democracy Alliance, has a sobering, must-read for Democrats in his HuffPo article “The Grand New Alliance.” Stein skillfully dissects the component elements of the right wing coalition of his post’s title (‘GNA’ in shorthand), provides a thoughtful assessment of their cumulative power and makes a compelling argument that it promises serious trouble for Democrats and Progressives in 2012 — and beyond.

A profoundly significant new political alignment within the right flank of the Republican Party is becoming entrenched in American politics.
For the modern, somewhat more mainstream economic and neo-conservative Reagan-Bush-Bush-Cheney Republican Establishment, it is a threat far more dangerous to its control of the Conservative-Right than, in their time, were the rambunctious John Birch Society, the youthful Goldwater Rebellion, or the Lee Atwater upstarts who orchestrated the Reagan Revolution.
For Independents, moderate Republicans and Democrats this new alignment should be a wake-up call that the foundations of Democracy are always fragile and the promises of America must never be taken for granted…An harmonic convergence — a “grand new alliance” — is occurring among Libertarians, the Christian Right and the disparate legions of Tea Party activists that is transforming politics as we have known it.

Stein acknowledges significant “tensions and fissures” in this multi-tentacled right-wing coalition, “around the environment, the legitimacy of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and gay marriage.” He adds, however, that,

Today, the Libertarian-Religious-Tea Party Alliance is a consciously strategic federation of separate, but inter-connected, wings of a potent right-wing political machine that is energized by the frightening uncertainties of the economic downturn, mobilized in rigid opposition to a President they cannot abide, emboldened by confrontation with some of their historic allies within the broader Republican conservative movement, and fueled by a new avalanche of post-Citizen’s United-inspired financial resources.
Its political power has risen rapidly and dramatically. In just the past twelve months, the GNAs’ successes have affected virtually every nook and cranny of American politics – sweeping victories in the 2010 Congressional and state elections, grid-locked legislative stand-off with Congressional Democrats and President Obama, scorched earth political wars in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and other states with overwhelming Republican elected majorities, and a dramatic hijacking of the current Republican Presidential Primary process through the candidacies of Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Stein goes on to describe the three key elements of the GNA — libertarians, the religious right, and the tea party — their numerical strength, what they believe, how they get funded, work together and resolve their differences. He notes that the dominant element, the tea party, successfully projects a “powerfully resonant right-wing populist economic (anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-government, anti-Obama) message that is drowning out reasoned debate, causing legislative gridlock, and strengthening reactionary forces.”

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This item by J.P. Green was originally published on October 17, 2011.
Ah, some new data rendering the myth of the ‘liberal media’ into a pile of rubble. As Politico’s Keach Hagey reports on a new Pew Research study of “11,500 news outlets — including news websites and transcripts of radio and television broadcasts, at both the local and national levels — as well as hundreds of thousands of blogs”:

Sarah Palin put an end to her possible presidential candidacy this month with a familiar parting critique: President Barack Obama has an unfair advantage as a candidate because he’s got “about 90 percent of the media still there in his back pocket.”
…But a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, in the past five months, the reverse has actually been true: Obama has received the most unremittingly negative press of any of the presidential candidates by a wide margin, with negative assessments outweighing positive ones by four to one.
Pew found that just 9 percent of the president’s coverage was positive, while 34 percent was negative — a stark contrast to the 32 percent positive coverage and 20 percent negative that it found Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the most covered Republican, received.
“His coverage has been substantially more negative in every one of the last 23 weeks of the last five months — even the week that Bin Laden was killed,” Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said of the president’s treatment in the media compared with that of the GOP field.

The wingnuttiest Republicans got plenty of positive coverage, as Pew reports:

The top four most favorably covered candidates, the study found, were all tea party favorites: Perry was followed by Palin, with 31 percent positive coverage and 22 percent negative; Michele Bachmann, with 31 percent positive coverage and 23 percent negative; and Herman Cain, with 28 percent positive coverage and 23 percent negative…Mitt Romney’s positive and negative coverage were almost in a dead heat at 26 percent and 27 percent, respectively.

Of course there is always a cautionary note with this kind of data. Some publications carry a lot more weight than others, as do some stories. Associated Press stories, for example, tend to appear in hundreds of newspapers. Hagey quotes one AP story that put a negative spin even on the killing of bin Laden:

A nation surly over rising gas prices, stubbornly high unemployment and nasty partisan politics poured into the street to wildly cheer President Barack Obama’s announcement that Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, had been killed by U.S. forces after a decadelong manhunt. The outcome could not have come at a better time for Obama, sagging in the polls as he embarks on his reelection campaign.

Hagey goes on to show that, despite negative stories in the “liberal” media, Perry and Palin have gotten pretty positive coverage, according to the Pew data (Gingrich not so good). Ron Paul has done well on the blogosphere, but not as well in the MSM, while Herman Cain’s coverage has perked up considerably. Hagen quotes Newsweek analyst Jonathan Alter:

…Over the last 2½ years, Obama never got a honeymoon, if you actually look back into the early days of his presidency. He got very positive press on the first day, and he’s been in the scrum ever since…The truth about the American media is that we have gone, over the last 15 years, from something that could accurately be called a dominant liberal media — through the period of American liberalism, from the end of World War II to the founding of Fox News in 1996 — to a dominant conservative media in this country.

Moreover, President Obama is taking plenty of heat from the left flank inside his party, so the cumulative criticism is cited by both the left and right as proof of his growing unpopularity. Yet he still does much better in opinion polls than the Republican Party and surprisingly well in head-to-head horse race polls, considering the current economic situation.
Hagen closes with an inconclusive discussion about whether it is good strategy to attack the media for bias. But what remains clear is that conservative whining about ‘liberal media bias’ won’t find any verification in the best data out there.

This item by Ed Kilgore was cross-posted from Salon on October 12, 2011.
After fierce but inconclusive battles in Wisconsin, the great labor struggle of 2011 is now centered in that ultimate swing state of Ohio. A richly funded national right-wing effort to break the economic and political power of the labor movement in its Midwestern heartland is now facing a ballot test in a Nov. 8 referendum to affirm or overturn a union-busting law, known as Senate Bill 5.
As in Wisconsin and other states, conservatives in Ohio have focused their fire on public-sector unions, which are easy to identify with unpopular levels of government spending and taxation. But just as there is little doubt the assault on public-sector unions this year is part of a broader effort to weaken collective bargaining rights and undermine labor’s political strength, efforts to repeal Senate Bill 5 will depend on the solidarity of private-sector union members who are not directly affected by the legislation, but can see the handwriting on the wall.
The heart of Senate Bill 5, as enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. John Kasich, is a set of provisions limiting collective bargaining by public employees to wage and hour issues. Strikes by public employees (who constitute nearly half the state’s unionized workforce) would be banned, as they already are for police and fire department employees. Pensions and benefits, and a variety of ancillary issues affecting conditions of employment, such as class sizes for teachers, would be permanently off the table.
Of equal importance is a provision banning “fair-share” assessments from non-union members who benefit from union collective bargaining efforts, a step that would seriously damage incentives to join public-sector unions. This is perhaps the most obvious feature of Senate Bill 5 that might set a precedent for future attacks on private sector unions in Ohio and on unions in other states. Nationally, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is pushing state right-to-work laws banning “union shops.” Some, including, so far, at least two Republican presidential candidates, are even promoting a national right-to-work law.
Proponents of SB 5 are trying mightily to claim the legislation is mainly about “runaway” pensions and benefits, and often tout a provision requiring public employees to pay at least 10 percent of the cost of pensions and 15 percent of the cost of healthcare premiums. Unfortunately for this argument, many if not most public employees already contribute to pensions and benefits at this level or more. Just as important, public employee unions in Ohio and elsewhere have traditionally sacrificed wage increases to pension and benefit needs. Indeed, in 2008 alone, Ohio public-sector unions made $250 million in wage and benefit concessions to state and local governments.
The conservative talk about disparities between public and private-sector employees is a transparent ploy to drive a wedge between the two wings of the labor movement, while distracting attention from the more egregiously anti-union provisions of the SB 5. Polling has shown the benefit and pension issues are the only provisions of SB 5 that are reasonably popular.
These efforts certainly have not worked at the level of union or political-party leadership. The drive to repeal SB 5, spearheaded by a union-funded umbrella group called We Are Ohio, has conspicuously featured private-sector union leaders. This weekend, a Columbus-area phone-bank and door-to-door canvassing effort was personally led by Communications Workers of America president Larry Cohen, with strong participation from other private-sector unions ranging from the Steelworkers to the Plumbers & Pipefitters to the Food and Commercial Workers.
Mike Gillis of the Ohio AFL-CIO told me that building trades unions, who fear an effort to kill Project Labor Agreements ensuring union jobs for major public works projects, are also very active in the repeal campaign. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed Kasich’s approval ratings among voters in union households to be deeply “underwater” with 27 percent positive and 68 percent negative. And beyond the union ranks, the Ohio Democratic Party has been an unambiguous opponent of SB 5 from the beginning.
The apparent strategy of conservative anti-union activists to target public-sector employees as a less-popular “weak link” in the union ranks is based on questionable assumptions. Though there is little in the way of public polling on this subject, a February 2011 Pew survey showed public- and private-sector unions having almost identical favorable/unfavorable ratings from the public at large. The poll found 48 percent have favorable view of private-sector unions with 37 percent negative. For public section unions, the figures were 48 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable.

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This item by J.P. Green was originally published on October 3, 2011.
Campbell Robertson’s New York Times article “For Politics in South, Race Divide Is Defining” scratches the surface of a trend Democrats should try to understand better.
Robertson focuses on Mississippi, the state where African Americans comprise the largest percentage of residents:

At a glance, Democrats may seem to be in better shape here than they are in neighboring states. Republicans won a supermajority in the Alabama Legislature in the 2010 elections and took over the Louisiana Legislature a month later as a result of several party switches, while Mississippi Democrats still control the State House of Representatives. Unlike in Louisiana, Democrats in Mississippi have actually managed to field candidates for a few statewide offices in this year’s elections, and hold the office of attorney general.
But the tale told by demographics is a stark one. Mississippi has, proportionally, the largest black population of any state, at 37 percent. Given the dependably Democratic voting record of African-Americans here, strategists in each party concede that Democrats start out any statewide race with nearly 40 percent of the vote.
…Merle Black, an expert on politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said that point is arguably already here. In 2008 exit polls, he pointed out, 96 percent of self-identified Republicans in Mississippi were white. Nearly 75 percent of self-identified Democrats were black. …Indeed, it is hard to imagine that Democratic support among whites could get any lower when, according to 2008 exit polls, only 6 percent of white males in Mississippi described themselves as Democrats.

The title of Robertson’s article is a little misleading. Robertson is not saying, as the title implies, that white southerners in the polling booth think, “Gee, I better vote Republican because I’m a white person.” Nor are African and Latino Americans voting Democratic at the polls solely because of their skin color. In reality, southerners vote more along the lines of their perceived economic interests.
People of color vote their real economic interests for the most part. The distortion in the south is more about the white working/middle class voters casting ballots against their own economic interests. This happens across the country to some extent, but it is more of a problem for Democrats in the south, where unions are weak and so-called “right-to-work” laws keep them that way.
Robertson notes that there are little pockets of Democratic strength in predominantly white communities throughout the south, with northeast Mississippi being a prime example. However, white progressives in the south are more concentrated in the big cities, closer-in suburbs and college towns.
Outside of the cities, most of the mainstream media targeting the working and middle class are conservative in policy outlook. Too many white voters in rural areas rarely hear or read a well-argued liberal opinion. Hopefully, MSNBC and the growth of the progressive blogospshere are beginning to change that. As income inequality continues to grow unabated, it’s not hard to imagine a tipping point at which southern whites will begin to question the wisdom of ever-increasing tax cuts for the rich and the party that pushes such policies as a panacea for all economic ills.
Robertson quotes Brad Morris, a Democratic strategist, on Democratic prospects, saying “We’ve hit rock bottom,” in the south, and I tend to agree. There’s just not much more room for growth of Republican political influence in the region, given current demographic parameters. And most of the demographic trends going forward favor Democrats.
The Republican echo chamber has been very successful in the south in terms of making demagogic attacks against Democratic candidates and policies stick. State Democratic Party organizations tend to be weaker and underfunded in the south and their messaging suffers as a result, while anti-union corporations in the south make sure Republicans have all the money they need. This is the heart of the GOP’s southern hustle.
President Obama’s victories in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida certainly suggest the Democrats should not write-off any southern states, as some have urged. With stronger candidates, Democrats can win more elections.
Looking to the future, Democrats are going to do better as a result of explosive growth of Latino and African Americans in the southern states. But there must also be more of a conscious effort on the part of state and local Democratic parties to recruit and train stronger candidates. Dems need more candidates of color to turn out these rapidly-growing demographic groups. But they also need more candidates, women in particular, who have white working-class roots and/or know how to reach white working families. With that commitment, a substantially more Democratic south in the not-too-distant future is a good bet.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on September 23, 2011.
Viewing videos and reading articles about the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ campaign (e.g. here and here), I was encouraged, even though it was only a few hundred protesters, mostly idealistic young people, who will likely evaporate before too long. “Hell, at least somebody is in the street,” I mumbled to no one in particular.
Although the stated goals of the Wall St. protesters seem broad, who knows, this could be the beginning of an ‘American Spring,’ Al Gore and others have called for. One of the common denominators with the Egyptian uprising is that we, too, have a large number of bright, well-educated young people looking at lousy job prospects, though not yet at the crisis levels Egypt is suffering.
The difference between the Wall St. protests and the London riots may just be a matter of time. The progressive hope is that the Occupy Wall St. protest will take on more of the scope, substance and goal-oriented militance of the Wisconsin uprising.
Whether it’s Wall St. occupiers, Madison unionists, London rioters or Cairo demonstrators, working people everywhere want stable, secure employment. Regardless of what the Ayn Rand ideologues and the financial barons say, a decent job ought to be considered a fundamental human right in any nation that calls itself a democracy, and most certainly in the world’s most prosperous democracy. And when the private sector fails to deliver, government should step in and put people to work on needed public works projects.
The American Jobs Act which President Obama has proposed is a start. Reasonable progressives can disagree about how good of a beginning it is and what more needs to be done. But we have to begin somewhere, and right now this is the best single jobs bill we have. Let’s pass it and then fight for more. We might not be able to pass it before the election. It might even take a few years. But let it not be said that it failed to pass because of weak support from the Democratic rank and file.
The American Jobs Act may be a grandiose title for what the legislation actually delivers. But the thing is to view it as a small but important part, a first step goal of something bigger, call it the American Jobs Movement. Such a movement must be a broad-based, well-organized coalition that puts feet in the street and in the halls of congress as citizen lobbyists, not just here and there but continuously, until we exhaust the opposition. Numerous polls indicate that we already have the numbers to make it happen. We just need the organization.
In addition to legislative reforms, an American Jobs Movement could also leverage consumer economic power, in the form of ‘selective patronage’ campaigns, stockholder activism and even targeted boycotts if necessary, to persuade American companies to provide and keep more jobs in the U.S. This part of the American Jobs Movement would not depend on or be limited by any politician. We can only blame our political leaders so much, if we don’t organize our economic power to compel investment in American jobs. After that, it’s on us.
We’ve had a lot of dialogue in the MSM and blogosphere about the need for jobs and what should be done. And some great ideas and insights have been shared. But the missing ingredient has been a mass movement focused on securing the reforms that can produce jobs for Americans. It’s time to add it in and stir it up.

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on September 20, 2011.
You knew this would happen the moment the president’s job speech and his deficit reduction proposal were interpreted as a “move to the left” aimed at “energizing the base:” MSM and conservative jabberers would have to come up with some “Democratic centrists” who were offended by the “move.”
And like clockwork, Mark Penn popped up with a HuffPo column that is careening around the chattering classes, accusing Obama of waging “class warfare” by proposing upper-crust tax rates closer to those that prevailed before Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.
Watch in awe as U.S. News‘ Ken Walsh turns Penn’s isolated protest and scattered Senate objections into a major factional fight:

Some centrists such as Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana are firmly opposed to higher taxes on energy companies, which provide jobs and an economic foundation for her state. Other centrist Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska oppose any tax increases.
In sum, moderate Democrats argue that Obama is departing too far from the political center and this move to the left will hurt him and other members of his party in 2012.
A leading advocate of that centrist position is pollster and Democratic strategist Mark Penn, who was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton in his 1996 re-election campaign and to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008. In an essay for the Huffington Post, Penn argues that, “Barack Obama is careening down the wrong path toward reelection. He should be working as a president, not a candidate. He should be claiming the vital center, not abandoning it. He should be holding down taxes, rather than raising them. He should be mastering the global economy, not running away from it. And most of all, he should be bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.”

Lord a-mercy, Ken. Mary Landrieu is from Louisiana, and is going to defend the bottom line of the oil and gas industries as a matter of constituent services as much as ideology. It has nothing to do with being a “centrist,” and does not represent the views of anyone else who is not equally beholden to fossil-fuel energy interests. Aside from being perpetually to the right of virtually every other Democrat in the Senate, Ben Nelson is a highly endangered incumbent up for re-election in a deeply red state; of course he’s going to object to anything and everything Obama says and does.
As for Penn, anyone taking his opinion to account as representing anyone other than himself and his corporate clients needs to remember that the position on taxes that now supposedly makes the president anathema to “centrists” is not only the same one that Obama consistently promoted during the 2008 campaign, but the same one promoted by Penn’s boss Hillary Clinton. Obama hasn’t shifted at all; Mark Penn has.
It seems reasonably clear, moreover, that Obama’s much-ballyhooed “shift to the left” is really little more than a change in strategy–or arguably, a pivot anticipated by his strategy all along–to reflect the fact that he’s gotten all the mileage he’s ever going to get from promoting bipartisanship in the face of obdurate Republican opposition, and it’s time to draw lines in anticipation of 2012. People supposedly representing the “left” and the “center” in the Democratic Party have often disagreed violently on Obama’s strategy, but it’s doubtful they do at this particular moment.
Barack Obama himself probably represents the views of Democratic “centrists” about as much as any politician presently does. And from what I regularly read and hear, if there are “Democratic centrist” dissenters from Obama’s general direction, they are more rather than less likely to think he remains too accommodating to conservative opinion on taxes and a variety of other issues.
And if there is some Penn-Landrieu-Nelson bloc in the Democratic Party, it could easily meet at one of Burson-Marsteller’s smaller conference rooms, with plenty of space at the table for interns and lunch.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on September 16, 2011.
Forbes, ‘the capitalist tool’ has a post by Ed Cain, “Of Trifectas and the Electoral College,” pointing out that 20 states now have Republican control of all houses of their state legislatures, plus the governorship. Cain riffs on Nick Baumann’s Mother Jones piece I flagged yesterday, which discusses the Republican plans to ‘reform’ their electoral college vote allocation in PA and perhaps other states. (Nate Silver also weighs in with a longish analysis of the GOP’s PA gambit in today’s five thirty eight blog).
But Cain’s post also sounds an alarm about the danger facing Dems when 40 percent of the states are under complete Republican control. Only 8 states, 16 percent of the 50 states, have Democratic trifectas. In the remaining 22 states no party controls both the governorship and state legislatures.
The consequences include, as Cain explains:

Now that Republicans now control twenty trifectas across the country (state governments run by one party in the House, Senate, and Governorship) changes to state laws, redistricting, and electoral rules are all fair game. This could tilt not only future congressional elections, but the presidential election in 2012.
Since 2010 was a census year, districts will be drawn up without a fight in 20 states by Republicans, and changes to these districts won’t happen again until 2021, after the 2020 census. This is a major structural shift, and one that gives Republicans, who already benefit from the Electoral College more than Democrats, a serious advantage leading into the 2012 election cycle.
…The redistricting across the country could give Republicans a firm control of the House until as late as 2022, making the 2010 victory a possible 12 year coup, and making another federal trifecta, like the one Democrats enjoyed for two brief years between 2008 and 2010, exceedingly unlikely for Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, have the electoral upper hand for the conceivable future.
…Republicans are very good at politics, and they’re especially good at taking old rules and using them to achieve legislative victory. As we’ve seen in Wisconsin and Michigan in the past year, Republicans are willing to take extreme positions even in the face of public outcry. That’s why we’ve seen union-busting in Wisconsin in spite of protests and public backlash, and equally radical moves in Michigan under its own Republican trifecta.

Some of the damage is done, since reapportionment after the 2010 census is in place in some states and the consequent gerrymandering is set or in motion. But the good thing is that the margin tilting the balance of power in state legislatures is often a matter of flipping a few votes, and that can be changed every two years. If Dems have just a fair year in 2012, it is possible that it could make a big difference in the “trifecta” spread.
I would encourage all Dems to do a little research and adopt a candidate or two in a state legislature where the margin for busting a trifecta is fairly close (map here has a useful rollover widget for this), and make a contribution. It doesn’t have to be your own state. It would be great if some energetic blogger could put together a list of state legislature candidates across the country who have a good shot at winning a race in states where the GOP trifecta margin is fairly close.
Just thinking here.

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on September 8, 2011.
There have been plenty of assessments, some quite lengthy, of last night’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Simi Valley. Some focus on conventional debaters’ points, and typically adjudge Mitt Romney the “winner.” Others focus on personality, and tend to award the prize to “alpha male” Rick Perry. Still others looked at who did and didn’t dominate the event, and noted how the fiery Michele Bachmann is beginning to fade from first-tier status.
But in the long run, the enduring significance of this debate is that Mitt Romney went after Rick Perry’s denunciations of Social Security, and Perry did not back down.
Romney’s decision showed how alarmed he and his team must be about Perry’s rapid ascent in the polls and his superior positioning in the GOP field as the guy Tea Partiers and Christian Right activists love and the Establishmetn can tolerate. Many of the most certain participants in early nominating contests–the kind of people who tell pollsters they are “very conservative”–pretty much agree with Perry’s uninhibited remarks in Fed Up that Social Security is not just a “Ponzi scheme” and a “lie” but was from the very beginning a huge step down the road to serfdom that should be retracted to the maximum extent possible. This is why Paul Ryan has become such a conservative icon–he seems to be challenging the very fundamentals of the “socialist welfare state,” the New Deal/Great Society legacy, not just ObamaCare or the 2009 stimulus package. Perry’s attack on that legacy in Fed Up was a lot more direct and visceral.
But with polls showing resistance to cuts in (much less abolition of) Social Security and Medicare being very unpopular even among rank-and-file Republicans (a broader subset of voters than likely caucus and primary participants), Perry’s stance is also perilous. You’d figure, however, that rivals like Romney would let Democrats and the news media focus attention on Perry’s radical views. That he did so himself at so early an opportunity tells us a lot about Team Romney’s sense of urgency.
Perry’s tack on the subject is now also pretty clear. He won’t take back what he said in Fed Up. But he will promise to take the edge off his attacks on Social Security and Medicare by focusing on the “Ponzi scheme” aspect of the former program–i.e., its current solvency–instead of his criticism of its original design and basic moral character. And he’ll also promise not to change the two programs for current and near-term beneficiaries on grounds that they have already planned on them.
“Grandfathering” entitlements for people over 55 or so while suggesting they are socialist abominations is a very old and transparently cynical conservative tactic. It was a feature of George W. Bush’s failed 2005 Social Security partial privatization effort, and of Ryan’s proposals for both of the big programs. Up until now, it hasn’t worked to tamp down fearful opposition among seniors–even very conservative seniors who don’t quite understand why we can’t just eliminate “welfare” for shiftless poor people and stay away from retirement programs that are a reward for a virtuous lifetime of working and saving.
We are about to find out if the generational warfare characteristics of contemporary U.S. politics have advanced to the point where at least conservative seniors will take Rick Perry up on his offer to gut entitlements for younger Americans while holding old folks harmless, and ignore his rather obvious feeling that anyone receiving such benefits is a parasite. If that happens, then Perry will become a maximum hero to those conservative activists and opinion-leaders of all ages who are determined to make the right-wing uprising of the last few years an attack on three-quarters-of-a-century of “socialist” policymaking.
If conservative seniors (and younger Republicans who are only interested in retaking power and repealing Obama’s initiatives) instead respond positively to Romney’s efforts to label Perry as too extreme on entitlements, then we’ll know that there are indeed limits to the rightward movement of the GOP at this juncture of history. I would not put big money on this proposition, however, particularly if it depends on a messenger like Mitt Romney.
Either way, it’s becoming obvious that the 2012 cycle is not just a referendum on Barack Obama, but on the New Deal and Great Society. And that’s a referendum Democrats ought to be able to win.