This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on March 8, 2013.
By most conservative media accounts, this has been a banner week for the Republican Party, snapping it out of the malaise it’s been wallowing in since last November. The week began with Republicans deciding to celebrate the appropriations sequester as a major victory for The Cause. It ended with the conservative movement and the vast majority of Republican elected officials in Washington (not to mention RNC chairman Reince Priebus) deciding to celebrate Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster of CIA nominee John Brennan as a great blow against Obama’s tyranny.
As they enjoy themselves this weekend, it’s worth noting the rather significant side-effects of these two ideological benders. By embracing discretionary spending cuts and brushing aside a “grand bargain” with the president, Republicans also kicked to the curb their one realistic opportunity to secure the “entitlement reforms” they’ve spent most of the last three years demanding as the most crucial step towards fiscal responsibility and limited government. It’s hard to see where they go next in the fiscal battle, unless they want to lurch towards a government shutdown or debt default.
As for their mid-week “Stand With Rand,” Republicans managed to produce three significant results: (a) forcing the White House to renounce any legal theory enabling the president to do something there is zero evidence he wants to do: launch drones at American citizens on American soil; (b) making a complete hash of their own positioning on national security and civil liberties; and (c) making the very favorite politician of the John Birch Society a conservative movement hero and a viable presidential candidate for 2016.
This is a good example of how pursuing short-term tactical maneuvers can lead a political party into a long-term strategic trap. It will be interesting to see how quickly their better minds figure that out.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on March 1, 2013.
In his post, “Woodward Does Duty With Phony Outrage Machine,” Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America has an interesting take on the alleged complaint by Bob Woodward that he was somehow threatened by the white house:

Woodward’s hard-to-believe tale about being threatened, based on a single innocuous sounding phrase from an email sent by a senior White House aide, was cheered by Obama’s conservative critics who claimed it proved their long-running theory about the administration’s “thug” culture. But the shaky story of a threat quickly collapsed when the full context of Woodward’s email exchange with the White House aide, Gene Sperling, was revealed. Rather than a threat, the two men had simply engaged in a vigorous, respectful debate.
Yesterday, Woodward summoned two reporters from Politico to his home and told them his tale of woe. According to the Politico article, Sperling had pushed back on Woodward’s assertion that President Obama was “moving the goalposts” on the issue, telling Woodward in an email, “I think you will regret staking out that claim.”
From that, Woodward insisted he’d been threatened, even though “I think you will regret staking out that claim” doesn’t sound like very threatening language. Instead, it sounds like someone trying to tell Woodward he would regret publishing facts that are inaccurate. (Kind of the opposite of a threat, no?)
Indeed, when Politico published the email exchange in its entirety, the whole story fell apart. Sperling had actually written, “I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.” And Woodward’s response certainly did not indicate that he felt threatened; he told Sperling, “I also welcome your personal advice. I am listening.”
Why Woodward decided to stage a media tour based on a false premise of a non-existent threat remains to be seen. But we do know Woodward’s now an honorary practitioner of the far right’s Phony Outrage Machine.
That’s where never-ending allegations of Obama misconduct are churned out on a daily, and even hourly basis. And it’s where there’s always a new claim to replace the last debunked one in an effort to meet readers, listeners and viewers’ insatiable appetite for news about Obama’s supposedly wicked ways…

Boehlert concludes, “But again, the story isn’t true. There was no threat issued. The only question that remains is why Woodward felt the need to concoct such a bizarre and public Beltway drama…By signing up for duty with the Phony Outrage Machine and by parading around on Fox News wringing his hands over a fictitious threat, Woodward does serious damage to his reputation.”
Woodward was on ‘Morning Joe’ this morning, walking everything back as gracefully as he could. To be fair, he did not use the word “threat” in his reporting of the incident, but it does appear that he was trying to imply it, when he had to know better, given the full context of the email exchange. David Axelrod confronted him on the program, pointing out that Woodward’s home paper, the Washington Post used the term “was threatened” in the headline. Give Axelrod credit for being fair and temperate in making his points.
In The Nation, Greg Mitchell’s “From Legend to Laughingstock: Bob Woodward Cites Bogus ‘Threat,’ Calls Obama ‘Nixonian’ gooses some chuckles out of the dust-up, beating up on Politico, as much as Woodward, and observing:

Published at the Politico site, this obsequious report (the writers also backed Woodward’s view on Obama as bad guy in the sequester debate) drew wide mockery on the web last night, even from some on the right. The “threat” appeared no different from someone’s simply warning another that they might be embarrassed if they continue with their current line of action or thinking…The White House quickly pointed out what most readers had already concluded: Woodward was completely hyping the alleged threat–sort of like Bush did with Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. He had even said much the same thing in a hasty CNN appearance.
Now the White House has released the full text of the e-mails exchanged by the official, IDed as Gene Sperling, and Woodward–and they should bring (but probably won’t) full shame to Woodward, Vandehei and Allen.
Politico has released the full e-mails and they give lie to Woodward’s claim of feeling “threatened,” as you’ll see in Woodward’s reply and Sperling calling him “a friend.” Now we learn that Vandehei and Allen deliberately left out the key “as a friend” lead-in to the alleged “threat.” Sperling also wrote, “my bad,” and closed with: “My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.” Some threat!
…Dan Froomkin calls the whole affair in a tweet: “Bob Woodward’s Mad Hatter tea party with Allen and Vandehei…. All of them puffed up and delusional.” A writer at The Atlantic Wire observed: “We hope Woodward never gets an e-mail in ALL CAPS.” As Dick Cheney might put it, we are simply hearing the cries of old-line DC journos in the “death throes” of their game…Charles P. Pierce has fun with it all here, but adds, seriously, that Woodward played the pair “like the two-dollar fiddles that they are.” Even The Daily Caller admits they got played by Woodward.

And Ed Kilgore adds that the illustrious Pat Caddell has weighed in on the matter, at the Fox News web page, no less, likening Obama to Nixon and calling out Woodward for not adequately popping off about Benghazi. “C’mon into the fever swamps, Bob! The water’s fine!,” urges Kilgore.
It should be acknowledged that Woodward has given a hard time to Republicans, also, going back to Watergate, though many would agree that he has drifted rightward since then. However, as one of America’s most respected MSM reporters, he shouldn’t be anywhere near the GOP’s phony outrage machine.

This item is an excerpt from an article by TDS Founding Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, cross-posted on February 22 from The New Republic.
There are two keys to achieving real political dominance for the new Obama coalition. First, it must be mobilized beyond presidential elections–in congressional elections, where turnout patterns don’t yet align very closely with presidential elections, and between elections, in the struggle to achieve legislative victories. Second, the Obama coalition must be widened to take in a larger share of the white working class. Otherwise, the hostility of these voters will undercut public support for the president’s agenda, as well as remaining a lurking threat in every election, particularly congressional ones.
The Obama team is not unaware of these necessities. But the strategy they’ve developed to address them isn’t entirely adequate. It seems to consist of emphasizing particular fights like immigration reform, gun control, same sex marriage, and climate change that appeal most strongly to different elements of the Obama coalition. This strategy does have merit. The thought is that even if all these fights don’t yield legislative victories (and they won’t so long as Republicans control part of Congress), they will nevertheless serve to generate more enthusiasm among key parts of the coalition, without imposing much of an electoral cost. Moreover, these fights are all substantively important in policy terms, so any victories attained will be important breakthroughs.
But the strategy has serious limitations. To begin with, even if these issues do little damage to Democrats’ standing among white working class voters, they will also do little to win their support. These voters are primarily looking for material improvements in their lives, improvements that are not possible without strong economic growth and the jobs, tight labor markets, and rising incomes such growth would bring. In a low-growth environment, these voters will remain exceptionally pessimistic and inclined to blame Democrats and government for their lack of upward mobility.
Even more serious, core groups of the Obama coalition will be weakened by continued slow growth. Obama was well-supported by these groups in 2012, but a sluggish economic environment, where unemployment continues pushing 8 percent, will try these voters’ patience. How much enthusiasm will Hispanics, blacks, youth, single women, etc., whose unemployment rates are considerably above the national average, continue to have for a party that cannot do more to improve economic conditions? Attrition in support will be inevitable in such a scenario and the opportunity to consolidate a dominant coalition will be lost.
How likely is it that slow growth will continue? Unfortunately, it appears to be a very serious possibility. The last quarter of 2012 actually saw the economy contract by .1 percent. And CBO’s latest economic projections, just released on February 5, anticipate that the economy will grow by only 1.4 percent this year (halving CBO’s previous projection) with an average unemployment rate of 7.9 percent. They project 2014 to be slightly better–2.6 percent growth and 7.8 percent unemployment–but the economy doesn’t really pick up until 2015. Even then, unemployment remains above 7 percent in 2015, above 6 percent in 2016, and doesn’t approximate full employment until 2017.
The reason for these gloomy projections is fiscal drag–that is, lower spending and higher taxes are subtracting demand from the economy, thereby slowing the still-fragile recovery. The fiscal cliff deal did considerable damage, chiefly due to the expiration of the payroll tax cut, which raised taxes 2 percent for middle and low income earners. The sequester will do more damage if implemented, indiscriminately cutting $85 billion from federal spending this year and every year thereafter for 10 years. And then there is possible further damage from whatever deal might be struck around the next extension of the debt ceiling, due in a few months (damage not included in the CBO projections).
It’s a bleak picture to be sure. What the economy really needs is something like Obama’s initial offer on a fiscal cliff deal. That offer included, besides tax increases on the wealthy and long-term cost reductions for Medicare, extensions of both unemployment insurance and the payroll tax holiday, as well as a roughly $50 billion jobs plan focused on infrastructure spending. The Republicans rejected the offer out of hand, of course, and the administration quickly yielded on the payroll tax cut and the jobs spending, leaving just the unemployment benefits extension. Rescinding the Bush tax cuts for those with $450,000 in income and higher was the laudable centerpiece of the deal, making the tax code fairer and helping to reduce long-term deficits, but that did nothing to alter the contractionary nature of the deal.
Now Obama has to deal with the extremely contractionary sequestered spending cuts. One of his stated operating principles on dealing with the sequester is to “do no harm” to the economy. However, the only way to really do that would be to avoid short-term spending cuts altogether.
Will he try to do that? It’s possible. But it doesn’t help matters that he has consistently evoked the possibility of a Grand Bargain with the Republicans that would, in a “balanced” way, attain $1.5 trillion in debt reduction over ten years. In all likelihood, that would mean agreeing to hundreds of billions in cuts (Obama would be lucky if only half ($700 billion) of the total savings was from spending cuts; Republicans will demand much more), starting this year and continuing until 2023. Leaving aside the content of the cuts, we know this means one thing that is indisputably bad–subtracting demand from the economy while it is still struggling, thereby making CBO’s gloomy economic projections more and more likely.
It therefore seems that another contractionary deal, despite Obama’s stated commitment to “do no harm,” is a distinct possibility. He would be well-advised to forget about such a Grand Bargain-type deal, which is not necessary in the short run (the deficit is already declining, as the CBO report notes, and will continue to do so for several years) and concentrate on what is necessary: growth. This starts with delaying or ending the sequester. As Paul Krugman points out, “kicking the can down the road,” so derided by Washingon commentators and elites, is in reality the responsible thing to do, given the state of today’s economy.
Then Obama should move to actually getting the economy some help. One obvious way to do this is through infrastructure investment. As Neil Irwin recently noted, low interest rates, millions of unemployed construction workers, and high economic development payoffs make such investment amazingly close to a free lunch. Obama did call for more infrastructure investment in his SOTU, including a new proposal for infrastructure repair called “Fix-It-First”, but this was in the wish list portion of his speech and had no clear urgency or timeline attached to it. These investments need to be moved up to short-term priority number one.
Indeed, if any deal is cut with the Republicans, it should be to put such investments immediately in the pipeline. We need a Grand Bargain for growth far more than we need a Grand Bargain for deficit reduction. Besides as many analysts have noted, the best medicine for deficit reduction is a higher growth rate, so the two goals are intimately and virtuously related. Add a half point to the growth rate and you knock $1.5 trillion off the national debt over ten years, thereby achieving Obama’s current debt reduction target.
And then there is the political payoff. The faster we move into a high growth economy, the better the opportunities for consolidating and expanding the Obama coalition. Conversely, if we stagger along for the next several years, the coalition has an excellent chance of falling apart. A very simple equation captures what’s at stake here:
Demographics + Growth = Dominance
Democrats have the demographics part of the formula already. Now what they need is the growth part to achieve electoral and policy dominance. That is the real challenge for Obama and his party if they wish to see the many worthy ideas in his State of the Union become reality.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on January 23, 2013.
Now that all the pundits have had their say about President Obama’s second inaugural address, Nate Silver brings the data to show what really matters: The public supports the president’s agenda. On climate change:

The PollingReport.com database includes two polls on global warming conducted after the Nov. 6 presidential election. An Associated Press-GfK poll in the field from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 found that 78 percent of respondents said they believed the planet had warmed over the past 100 years, and 49 percent said they thought global warming would be a “very serious” problem for the United States if left unaddressed (31 percent said they thought it would be “somewhat serious”).
Fifty-seven percent of the 1,002 adults surveyed said the United States government should do “a great deal” or “quite a bit” on global warming…A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll conducted Nov. 8 to 11 found that 57 percent of adults said they thought global warming was increasing the likelihood of storms like Hurricane Sandy.

On same-sex marriage:

The percentage of adults who favor same-sex marriage has been rising steadily for some time…Five polls on same-sex marriage have been conducted since the election and are included in the PollingReport.com database. Each poll uses slightly different question wording, but an average of 51 percent of respondents favored same-sex marriage and 44 percent opposed it.

On Immigration reform, Silver cites four recent polls, two showing strong majorities favoring a path to citizenship similar to what the president supports and two showing healthy pluralities supporting the president’s proposals.
On gun violence, different polls on various reforms bring a mixed message, but more favorable to Obama’s proposals than not:

…a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 54 percent of respondents favored tighter gun laws, up from 39 percent in a CBS News poll last April…A Jan. 17 Gallup poll found 53 percent of adults said they would want their representative to vote for the package of gun law reforms that Mr. Obama proposed. Forty-one percent said they would want their representative to oppose the laws.
…The most recent Fox News poll found that 51 percent of respondents said that “protecting the constitutional right of citizens to own guns” was more important than “protecting citizens from gun violence.” Forty percent of those surveyed said protecting citizens was more important…In the same Fox News poll, laws requiring criminal background checks and mental health checks on all gun buyers were both favored by more than 80 percent of respondents. (That’s in line with virtually every recent poll on guns. The Times/CBS News poll found that 92 percent of respondents favored background checks on all potential gun buyers.)
…Recent polls have found that support for a ban on assault rifles and semiautomatic weapons as well as a ban on high-capacity magazines usually falls in the low 50s to low 60s.

In his speech the president said, “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” Silver cites “a solid majority favoring such laws.” Silver did not discuss restrictions on early voting opposed by Democrats in general. But heavy participation rates indicate that it is overwhelmingly popular with voters.
Republican commentators are still parroting their message du jour that the president’s speech was somehow polarizing. Not really. Their knee-jerk response is to oppose everything he proposes. But the public clearly supports the president’s speech agenda in almost every instance — often by overwhelming margins.

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on January 8, 2013.
Many accounts of Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign strategy begin with his speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in December of 2011. Then, it is said, after nearly three years of projecting a unilateral commitment to bipartisanship, the president finally went after the Republican Party and its policies with hammer and tong, and began the process of reinvigorating a dispirited Democratic “base,” rebutting GOP efforts to evade responsibility for its extremism and obstructionism, and presenting a clear choice to persuadable voters.
In other words, Obama’s campaign strategy repudiated his political strategy as president–and perhaps the strategy he has resumed in dealing with Republicans now that the election is over, some progressives fear.
That’s an understandable judgment. But from what we know of the internal thinking of the White House, it was long-planned and represented a scheduled “pivot” in messaging rather than any sort of reversal. To put it simply, whatever it meant in terms of his legislative agenda, Obama’s long-suffering “bipartisanship” rhetoric set the stage for his increasingly edgy partisan differentiation later in the cycle by consistently depicting him as a reasonable leader dealing with a Republican Party that refused ever to reciprocate. Given the strong tendency of persuadable (and often “low-information”) voters, reinforced by the false equivalency habits of the mainstream media, to treat both parties in Washington as equally right and wrong in the various conflicts of Obama’s first term, his ever-patient efforts to “reach out” to an unreachable GOP may well have been more effective than direct partisan differentiation in keeping his personal favorability (a key asset moving into 2012, and consistently exceeding his job approval ratings) higher than his opponents,’ including the Republican presidential candidate filed.
Soon after Obama’s “pivot,” as a fractious Republican primary season unfolded, the White House focused on keeping him “presidential,” creating an implicit contrast with the squabbling and pandering GOPers. Once Mitt Romney emerged as the nominee, the Obama campaign skillfully deployed a two-phased attack on his claims to represent a moderate technocrat perfectly equipped to “fix” the economy without association with his party’s past incompetence or present extremism. The first phase constantly reminded voters of Romney’s personal background–at Bain Capital particularly–and many statements (sometimes gaffes) reflecting an exclusive identification with financial elites and the very wealthy generally. And the second phase focused on Romney’s policies as reflecting the same skewed orientation and the same extremist reduplication of the worst of Republican mistakes of the recent past.
The election-year strategy, which also relied on a general improvement in economic conditions and a relatively stable international environment, served the more fundamental missions of convincing swing voters the election was a choice of two very different directions for the country (the constant theme of Obama’s messaging during the stretch run), and convincing “base” voters they could enthusiastically support the President while avoiding the despoilation of cherished progressive priorities by the GOP. It succeed on all counts. It is an open question as to whether “accelerating” the process of sharp partisan differentiation earlier into Obama’s presidency would have worked as well, since it would have become part of the despised Washington background noise long before ballots were cast.
Romney, obviously, had a more restricted landscape on which to deploy his own grand strategy. By the time the general election campaign was fully underway he had spent most of the previous five years trying to establish his conservative bona fides, in ever more glaring contrast to his past record as a candidate and governor in Massachusetts. In the 2012 cycle, his own health care plan as governor became not only a primary-season albatross, but undercut many of his options in the general election. Thus, when he began his “pivot” to the general election, the aspects of his record he couldn’t talk about and the GOP agenda items he had more recently embraced that polled poorly left him with little to tout other than his business experience. And that, of course, left him open to exactly the Obama campaign attack on him that pulled down his favorable ratings and set up the latter assault on his and his party’s policy agenda.
Romney did successfully count on a post-primary consolidation of support from self-identified Republicans, though his choice of Paul Ryan as a running-mate indicated some nervousness about base support. His various efforts to “wedge” Democratic or swing vote constituencies–e.g., the “war on religion” campaign in the late spring, and repeated claims that Obama was insufficiently committed to Israel (which carried the bonus of appealing to conservative evangelical “base” voters)–mostly fell flat or backfired. His audacious stretch-run effort to exploit hazy perceptions of his policy agenda by suddenly posing as a “moderate” were too little and too late, and were obviously undercut by past and present expressions of fidelity to right-wing memes (most famously the “47%” remarks, which did not create but certainly reinforced the Obama campaign’s relentless description of him as an out-of-touch economic royalist).
If there was a distinct moment where the Obama campaign successfully demolished one of the strategic underpinnings of the Romney campaign, it was probably the president’s unveiling of a “Dream Act Lite” initiative in June that he promulgated by executive order. This preempted an apparent Romney plan to reverse some of the damage to his standing among Latino voters that his primary-phase rhetoric on immigration inflicted. Marco Rubio was in the process of developing for Romney a GOP version of “Dream Act Lite,” but the negative conservative reaction to Obama’s gambit left Romney high, dry and more unpopular than ever with this crucial demographic–while considerably boosting Latino enthusiasm for the incumbent, which had been lagging dangerously.
But like many aspects of the Obama Grand Strategy in action, this moment reflected a more general belief by Team Obama that the president’s high personal standing among elements of his 2008 coalition, gradually improving economic conditions, and most of all Romney’s inability to escape the taint of his party’s extremism, would bring that coalition back to life. Add in Obama’s exceptional GOTV operation, and successful efforts (aided by the courts) to blunt Republican voter-suppression tactics, and you have the ingredients of a smart strategy executed very well.

Read more…

This item by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPost:, where it was originally published on January 14, 2013.
It is a well-known fact that President Obama wants a “grand bargain” with the Republicans, a deal that would reduce future deficits both by raising tax revenues and cutting spending, including on the so-called “entitlement programs.” He has offered this idea up repeatedly to Speaker Boehner and other Republican leaders in the 2011 debt ceiling talks and in the 2012 fiscal cliff debate, and media reports suggest that he is discussing the idea again with Republicans in the lead-up to the next perils of a budget crisis that is only a few weeks off.
Democrats in the progressive wing of the party (of which, full disclosure, I am a card carrying member) think the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicare and/or Medicaid benefits is terrible public policy because senior citizens who can least afford it will be badly hurt, and we have been working hard to convince the president to back away from this offer. This may be difficult to do, though, as the president has some strong (wrong, in my judgment, but compelling to the president’s political and legislative team) political reasons for wanting to do this grand bargain. But the politics of this deal are very different for the rest of the party, and it may well be that progressives can win over a lot more of those Democrats than conventional wisdom currently expects.
The Obama team’s logic is that they are sick and tired, understandably, of Republicans wanting to make every single issue, every policy debate, about the deficit issue, and they don’t want our country to keep lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis as Republicans continue to look for “leverage” to force more cuts. And the White House, to their credit, is eager to move on to other issues that will move the country forward, such as immigration reform and gun safety issues. They believe that if they can finally close the deal and get the grand bargain they have been searching for that they will be on strong political ground to be able to say regarding the deficit, “Hey, we’ve already done something big on that, it’s time to move on.”
Now I happen to believe their logic is wrong on the politics of the issue, as Republicans’ strongest political issue by far is the deficit, and they will never give it up — no matter what happens, they will keep demanding more and more cuts, and the deficit hawks in the media and well-funded groups like Fix The Debt will back them up. But even if you were to grant that the White House was right on the politics of this issue for them, for Democratic members of Congress the politics on this issue are completely different.
For starters, members of Congress are far more affected by what I call the intensity factor. Remember about 25 years ago when senior citizens surrounded Con. Rostenkowski’s car and started rocking it back and forth because of a bill they didn’t like on catastrophic health care? Think what seniors today might do if their Social Security benefits were cut. That kind of intensity drives bad media coverage back home, primary challenges, contributions to opponents — and it kills your contributors’ and volunteers’ and base voters’ enthusiasm levels.
The threat of a primary is not as great on the Democratic side as on the Republican, as the progressive movement has less money and capacity in general to mount many successful primary challenges. In the last several cycles, there has usually been one major primary challenge (some successful, some not) to an incumbent from the left, and that isn’t enough to strike fear into most Democrats’ hearts. The intensity factor, though, might change the dynamics on this, adding new money and volunteers to primary fights. Add to that the combination of progressive forces with older voters who have just had their Social Security cut, and incumbent Democrats might have something to worry about, especially in states like PA, OH, MI, WI and IA with both large numbers of seniors and large numbers of union members.
Beyond the primaries, though, the politics of cutting benefits is far worse for Democratic incumbents in an off year general election. Think about the demographics alone: in the past two presidential elections, the percent of the electorate that came from voters 65 and over was 16 percent, whereas in the 2010 off-year election it jumped to 21 percent. And seniors have been one of the most volatile demographic groups in the electorate in recent years, and one not inclined to like Democrats very well: Democrats lost them by 8 percent in 2008, by a whopping 21 percent in 2010, and by 12 percent in 2012.
But seniors are far from the only worry with a bad vote on Social Security or Medicare. The voters that Democrats have to turn out in big numbers in an off-year are base voters. Base voters hate the idea of cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and a Democrat who had to defend that vote would be looking square in the face at a base voter constituency that was likely to be very depressed. I’ve lived through two off-year elections where Democratic base voters were unexcited about voting — 1994 and 2010 — and I don’t relish living through that again.
What will be especially brutal in the off-year election for Democrats who believe they have cut a responsible bipartisan deal that will protect them from Republican attacks is that the unaccountable outside groups with their millions of dollars in attack ads won’t hesitate to do brutal ads on them for cutting Social Security and Medicare, just as they did the last two elections attacking them for “cutting” Medicare. It won’t matter that the Republicans wanted to cut even more, or that the money for the ads comes from millionaires who would love to see these programs privatized: the attack dogs will not hesitate to make political hay off such a vote.
Beyond rank and file members of Congress, there is another major force in the Democratic party for whom a grand bargain is potentially deadly, and that is potential presidential candidates. Try explaining your vote cutting Social Security to the heavily senior citizen and base activist dominated Iowa caucuses. Having been involved in 5 different presidential campaigns, I feel pretty confident saying that it would be extremely tough to win a Democratic presidential primary having supported cutting Social Security benefits.
Even if you grant that the politics of the grand bargain idea are good for President Obama, they are poison for Democrats in Congress who have to run again in 2014 and 2016. The president, who will never run for office again, may feel like his best political alternative is to ignore the wishes of both his base and the seniors, who have never voted for him anyway on an issue like Social Security cuts. For the rest of the party, they had better take a close look at how this will affect their own political well-being.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on January 2, 2013.
Democrats will be arguing about President Obama’s strategy in negotiating the fiscal cliff deal for months, and there is a lot to criticize from all points on the Democratic spectrum. Senate passage of the compromise was predictable enough. But one day out, it’s worth looking at the breakdown of the votes in the House of Representatives to fairly evaluate the white house and Democratic strategy.
The New York Times has the complete House roll call, along with a good roll-over map. The final House vote was 257-167. In all, 172 Democrats and 85 Republicans voted for the bill. In opposition were 16 Democrats and 151 Republicans.
Among Republicans Speaker Boehner and Rep. Ryan supported the compromise, with Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other GOP “leaders” opposing it.
The 16 Dems who opposed the compromise included a few strong progressives, who objected on principle to elements of the compromise and a small group of remaining Blue Dogs who couldn’t accept any tax hikes. Eight members did not vote, for varying reasons, some personal. (e.g. Liberal stalwart Rep. John Lewis’s wife, Lilian just died). Of course, most of the ‘Yes’ votes included strong progressives, who disliked elements of the deal, but held their noses and took one for the team. Here’s the Democratic breakdown of the “no” votes, according to the Washington Post:

The 16 Democrats voting no split between the liberal and the moderate. More liberal Reps. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Peter DeFazio (Ore.), Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Jim McDermott (Wash.), Brad Miller (N.C.), Jim Moran (Va.), Bobby Scott (Va.), Pete Visclosky (Ind.) voted no. But they were joined by moderate-to-conservative Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Jim Cooper (Tenn.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.) and Adam Smith (Wash.).

Without getting into the elements of the deal and the specific concerns of the members who voted, the tally reflects a fairly comfy pillow of 39 more votes than were needed for passage, since 218 votes were needed to pass the compromise. From a purely bipartisan standpoint, the bigger the ‘pillow,’ the better the compromise. From a progressive perspective, the smaller the margin, the better the indication that “the best possible deal” has been negotiated.
Of course it can be argued, as many do, that the negotiating strategy was flawed from the get-go, so the tally on this vote means little with respect to all of the more optimistic ‘might-have-been’ scenarios. Not surprisingly, much of the progressive critique falls into the ‘Obama-gave-away-the-store-too-early’ category. See here, here, here and here, for example.
The vote tally reflects a pretty good measure of tea party strength in the House. It appears that there are 151 unrepentant tea party votes in the House. These Republicans are unfazed by national economic concerns and narrowly focused on what right-wing activists in their district want. Most of them are well-protected by gerrymandered districts. These are the obstructionists Dems have to work around to get any legislation passed until the new congress is seated in January, 2015.
From my perch, maybe the President could have hung a little tougher. But it was a tough call with all of the bluffing and bluster going on to determine how many Republicans were running scared enough to be persuadable.
We Dems must have our hour of self-flagellation before we can move on to the next struggle. But it would be folly to overlook our party’s failure to mobilize a good voter turnout in 2010 as a root cause of the fix we’re in now. Instead of hand-wringing about the deal we are going to have to live with, let’s apply what we have learned in this vote and in our successful 2012 voter mobilization — to win back control of the House in 2014.

This item by James Vega was originally published on December 24, 2012.
Back in the 1990’s, the perspective called “political centrism” played an important role in the intellectual and organizational growth of the Democratic Party. While progressives often deeply and passionately disagreed with particular centrist policies and tactics, in retrospect most Democrats will now agree that centrist politicians like Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore and others played a significant role in building today’s broad Democratic coalition. Today’s Democratic Party is a coalition of both progressives and centrists that has come of age in the era of Barack Obama, a man who personally embodies a very unique fusion of both centrist and progressive impulses and views.
In fact, most politically serious centrists as well as most progressives would today agree that although Obama has championed major progressive initiatives like national health care, he is more accurately described as closer to a 1990’s Clintonite centrist than to a traditional post-war New Deal Democratic progressive.
There are, to be sure, still very deep disagreements between the centrist and progressive wings of the Democratic coalition. Right now these are reflected in very substantial arguments over the extent of Obama’s concessions in his negotiations with the GOP. But these disagreements exist within the context of an extremely powerful underlying Democratic consensus – one that was emphatically ratified by the November election. The consensus is that there is a profound and fundamental difference between the views and values of today’s Democratic coalition and the right-wing extremist views and values of today’s conservatives and Republicans. Bill Clinton’s passionate defense of Obama and his agenda at the Democratic convention symbolized the basic unity and agreement that exists on this core issue within all sectors of the Democratic community.
That’s why it is genuinely dispiriting to see the distorted way that “centrism” is now being redefined by the current group “Third Way.”
Consider the recent Op-Ed commentary by two principals of the group that appeared in the weekend Washington Post. The commentary repeatedly implies that most or at times all “Democrats” and “Progressives” hold views that most political observers would more accurately describe as the views of “the left-wing” – or even “the most extreme left wing” — of the progressive coalition. The op-ed commentary does this in order to invent an artificial space for Third Way’s own “centrist” alternative – one that presumes to identify a moderate middle ground between what the commentators clearly imply is an unacceptable degree of partisan extremism on the part of many Democrats and progressives as well as Republicans.
Here’s how the commentary re-frames the views of the present Democratic coalition:

“If Democrats and their progressive allies are to achieve real gains during Obama’s second term, they must understand how we got here, and they must be willing to challenge some of their most cherished ideas and messages. If they do not, this historic opportunity could easily be squandered.”

Notice that the “they” who must “challenge some of their most cherished ideas and messages” refers without distinction to all Democrats and also to all progressives. Many of the most basic views of most Democrats and progressives are, it seems, so deeply wrong that they must be “challenged” or disaster will result.
The authors then apply this implicit criticism of the excessively extreme views of Democrats and progressives to a range of major issues, in each case identifying a new “centrist” middle ground alternative to the implied Democratic left-wing partisan extremism on the one hand and the right-wing views of the GOP on the other. In order to make this dubious argument, in each case they create either a “straw man” left-wing Democratic position or a non-existent opportunity for political compromise that Democrats have ignored.
Watch how this is done:
Taxes and Spending
The commentary says:

“Democrats can demand tax increases on the wealthy, but only as part of proposals that also include sizable spending cuts. A plan involving tax increases alone would be rejected by moderate voters and clearly is immovable in a divided government.”
Questions:

1. Has any major faction within the Democratic Party -the Progressive Caucus in Congress, for example or the largest progressive organizations — ever actually demanded that Obama only propose or accept deals that involve absolutely no spending adjustments at all? Has any major faction within the Democratic coalition ever threatened to withdraw support from Obama unless he embraced a plan of pure tax increases and no spending reductions? The answer is obviously no.
2. Is a deal involving a genuinely balanced mixture of tax increases and spending cuts actually “movable” in the current “divided government”? Again the answer is obviously no.

In short, the implicit criticism of the supposedly extremist position of many Democrats and progressives combines both a “straw man” left-wing position that Democrats and the major progressive organizations have not actually insisted upon and a non-existent missed opportunity for compromise.

Read more…

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on December 18, 2012.
At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum flags Reid Wilson’s National Journal article, “The GOP’s Electoral College Scheme,” which warns Democrats of a coming battle:

Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.
Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

Drum adds that “If, say, Michigan switched to a proportional system, then Mitt Romney wouldn’t have won zero of its 16 electoral votes this year. He would have won eight or nine. Voila! More votes for Mitt.” Further, says Drum,

Do this in other states that are either solidly Democratic or trending Democratic, and you could snag 40 or 50 extra electoral votes for the Republican nominee. Needless to say, there are no plans to do something similar in states that tend to vote for the Republican candidate. Texas and Georgia have no intention of going proportional and allowing the Democratic nominee to get a share of their electoral votes.

In his post, “Electoral College Shakeup: How Republicans could put a lock on the presidency” at In These Times, Rob Richie explains:

If Republicans in 2011 had abused their monopoly control of state government in several key swing states and passed new laws for allocating electoral votes, the exact same votes cast in the exact same way in the 2012 election would have converted Barack Obama’s advantage of nearly five million popular votes and 126 electoral votes into a resounding Electoral College defeat.
The power of elector-allocation rule changes goes further. Taken to an extreme, these Republican-run states have the ability to lock Democrats out of a chance of victory in 2016 absent the Democratic nominee winning a national landslide of some 12 million votes. In short, the Republicans could win the 2016 election by state law changes made in 2013.

Richie notes that the scheme is already in motion in Pennsylvania and “In the last year, Republican leaders have indicated interest in dividing electoral votes in such states as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and, just this week, Virginia, where state senator Bill Carrico has introduced a bill to allocate Virginia’s electoral votes by congressional district.” He crunches the numbers and provides an interesting chart showing two scenarios using the ‘allocation by district’ method under which Romney would have won an electoral college majority. He demonstrates that under existing political realities, there is no possibility of Democrats using the technique to their advantage.
Jamelle Bouie’s post on the topic, “Republicans Float Plan to Make Electoral College More Unfair” at The American Prospect adds “Republicans…want to “reform” the system by adopting the worst of all worlds–winner-take-all for Republican states, proportional distribution for Democratic ones…it amounts to little more than a scheme to rig presidential elections in favor of GOP candidates.”
As Richie concludes,

…The very fact that such a scenario is even legally possible should give us all pause. Election of the president should be a fair process in which all American voters have equal ability to hold their president accountable. It’s time for the nation to embrace one-person, one-vote elections and the “fair fight” represented by a national popular vote. Let’s forever dismiss the potential of such electoral hooliganism and finally do what the overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently preferred: Make every vote equal with a national popular vote for president.

This may indeed be the most viable strategy for Democrats, since some Republicans will likely join the direct popular vote movement, concluding that direct popular vote gives them a better shot than trying to ‘run the table’ in winning district allocation of electoral votes reforms in all the swing states. Democrats on, the other hand, will continue to have a growing edge caused by demographic trends. It’s the only way to insure a fair playing field for all parties.

This item by James Vega was originally published on December 3, 2012.
Immediately after the debt limit debate in 2011, GOP Senate minority leader “Mitch” McConnell made the following profoundly illuminating comment about his party’s basic negotiating strategy:

“I think some of our Members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage worth ransoming.”

Many commentators minimized the importance of this comment because, on the surface, it can be viewed as merely a metaphor. But when one considers how the GOP actually negotiated in regard to the debt limit, it becomes clear that McConnell’s comment actually represents something substantially more significant. His comment describes a clear and distinct negotiating strategy – one that is quite different from other well-known negotiating strategies such as “seeking a win-win outcome” or “getting to yes” that are widely used in business or international affairs.
If we look at President Obama’s current negotiations with the GOP from this distinct perspective, one excellent place to find expert advice is on the PoliceOne database, “the most comprehensive and trusted online destination for law enforcement agencies and police departments worldwide.” On that site there is a quite detailed description of the negotiating strategies that are used in hostage situations, a description written by police expert Lawrence Miller PhD – author of “Hostage negotiations: Psychological strategies for resolving crises.”
The following are some of Dr. Miller’s recommendations for negotiating in hostage situations. These recommendations are actually remarkably illuminating when one systematically compares them with the actual negotiating strategies that President Obama is currently using in his dealings with the GOP. Although the GOP currently has less leverage to hold the economy “hostage” than they did in 2011, they still have a very substantial ability to threaten to damage the economic recovery if Democrats do not acceed to their demands.
Here are some of Miller’s recommendations:

Even with foul-mouthed HTs (i.e. hostage-takers), avoid using unnecessary profanity yourself. Remember that people who are stressed or angry are more likely to use profanity. You are trying to model mature, adult speech and behavior in order to calm the situation.
For emotional HTs, allow productive venting, but deflect dangerous escalation of speech tone and content. In many instances, the whole rationale for the hostage situation is so the HT can “make a point” or “tell my story.”
Focus your conversation on the HT, not the hostages. …Remember that hostages represent power and control to the hostage taker, so try not to do anything that will remind him of this fact…

Read more…