This item by J.P. Green was originally published on April 24, 2012.
Alternet’s ace Sarah Jaffe has an informative post, “Labor Unions’ Fight for the 99% Goes Way Beyond Raising Campaign Dollars,” which puts organized labor’s political role in clear perspective. I’ll just share a few graphs and urge everyone to take a few minutes and read the whole thing. Jaffe provides an historical overview and sets the stage:

You’d think people would have learned the lesson in 2011: labor is an integral part of the progressive coalition, one of the only forces capable of acting as a counterweight to the organized money that’s taken over our politics.
Yet as election season wears on, many politicians and reporters seem to have forgotten. From Wisconsin, where the former mayor of Madison claimed that candidates shouldn’t be “beholden to big unions,” to the Web, where debates over union endorsements seem to focus only on how much money labor will spend to support its chosen candidates.

Republicans whine about union money in politics. But that’s not thier greatest concern, as Jaffe points out:

“The labor movement has always given money to candidates,” Damon Silvers, policy director and general counsel at the AFL-CIO, told AlterNet. But when it comes down to winning elections, their greatest contribution is boots on the ground. “And not just any boots, but people who are plugged into their communities, who are trusted. They’re the backbone of America’s civic culture, the people who are the poll watchers, the people who volunteer at food banks, local leaders in unions, the shop stewards, the people who pound the pavement. They are the core of civil society in the United States.”
…Most of those little victories — those 4 percent raises and new contracts with health care benefits — are won day by day, inch by inch, in grinding organizing campaigns and lengthy negotiations with management. They don’t make headlines the way a multimillion-dollar ad buy does. As Perlman pointed out, unions are workers’ organizations that do politics, not political organizations. But with only 11.8 percent of Americans represented by a union, the political action unions do has become the public face of labor.

As for the real extent of union financial contributions to candidates, Jaffe notes:

“CNN’s Charles Riley calculates that for 2011-2012 the 100 biggest individual donors to super PACs make up only 3.7 percent of the contributors but supply more than 80 percent of the cash,” Noah noted.
Even as the AFL-CIO launches its own super PAC, Worker’s Voice, the difference is obvious. Eliza Newlin Carney at Roll Call reported that the AFL-CIO’s PAC has raised some $5.4 million and will report $4.1 million cash on hand when it has to file first-quarter disclosure reports. Compare that to the $76.8 million raised by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS–which got 87 percent of its cash from just 24 donations from ultra-rich donors who gave over $1 million apiece. American Crossroads, the super PAC arm of Crossroads GPS, has already spent $29 million since its founding in 2010.
…Even with the super PAC, organized labor’s monetary contribution to the election is going to look small compared to big business. AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer told Roll Call, “We were outspent 20-to-1 last time. We will probably be outspent 20-to-1 this time. But we are going to out-organize them by more than 20-to-1.”
…The labor movement is built upon grassroots organizing. Organizing workers takes conversations, face-to-face, personal connections, and solidarity. That’s why the most important contribution from labor even in today’s big-money era is going to be, as Perlman said, “actually talking to people, explaining the issues in a real way, not in a 30-second ad way.”

As Jaffe concludes, “…Really, the most important question shouldn’t be whether labor will spend a lot of money on TV ads. The question instead, for smart political watchers, will be whether the volunteers, who do the grunt work of campaigning, the door-knocking and phone-banking and stamp-licking, will show up…”

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on April 24, 2012.

There’s a bit of a dispute going on in Democratic pundit circles about how best to ‘frame’ the ‘real Romney’ in campaign messaging. Would he be most accurately — and effectively — portrayed as a flip-flopping flibbertigibbet or a slickster wingnut?
The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber comes down on the side of characterizing the GOP nominee-in-waiting as “a Goldwater-esque extremist,” tempered by “an added selling point that the coverage has so far ignored.” As Scheiber says,

My only quibble is with Team Obama’s parsing of the allegation. The formulation David Plouffe gave the Times last week went as follows: “Whether it’s tax policy, whether it’s his approach to abortion, gay rights, immigration, he’s the most conservative nominee that they’ve had going back to Goldwater.” I’d tweak this slightly (not that anyone asked for my advice) and say, “Whether it’s tax policy … abortion, gay rights, immigration, he’s *running as* the most conservative nominee that they’ve had going back to Goldwater.” I don’t think many people look at Mitt Romney and see an authentic, fire-breathing conservative. But I do think they’ll believe he’s been willing to act like one to appease his party. And that the appeasement won’t abruptly end on Election Day…On top of which, phrasing it this way lets you use both the “too conservative” argument and the “soulless” argument in a way that’s perfectly coherent, so you don’t really have to choose.

Describing Romney as a “vulture capitalist who lacks a human core but has embraced a conservative agenda to lead his fellow Republicans and plutocrats to victory in November,” Alec MacGillis’s take, also at TNR, “A False Choice For Obama’s Anti-Romney Message,” offers a melding of the two views:

I also see the two frames as linked and not as inconsistent as some are making them out to be, but in a slightly different way–as fully symbiotic arguments that each would not work all that well entirely on their own, that are stronger if yoked together….Yoking the two frames together works even better when they are combined with the third frame at Obama’s disposal: Romney as the plutocrat who (after a blessed start in life) made his millions slicing and dicing companies, regardless of the human collateral, and who now benefits from a very low tax rate on his fortune. This framing makes each of the other two more persuasive. It buttresses the notion of Romney as one without a core–he’ll do whatever it takes to get on top. And it explains Romney’s current conservatism, making it seem more than just sheer opportunism at least when it comes to taxes and the economy–of course he’s embracing the Ryan plan: It lowers rates for people like himself, even to the point of saving his own sons millions in estate taxes!

Ed Kilgore also envisions a synthesis of the two views at WaMo’s ‘Political Animal,’, albeit angled differently:

I don’t see a problem here. Of course the Obama camp emphasized the “no core” argument during the primaries, since it reinforced conservative doubts about Romney and also painted him as someone so character-less that he’d do or say whatever was necessary to win the nomination. Now that Mitt’s spent months and months pandering to conservative activists and blasting his opponents for ideological heresies real and imagined, it’s perfectly logical to point out how he’s harnessed himself to a political movement that’s partying like it’s 1964. But the “no core” attack line must be recalled now and then to turn on bright flashing lights whenever Romney tries to reposition himself, which he really does need to do lest he come across as Paul Ryan with a lot less personality.
Is it really confusing or risky to depict Romney as an empty suit in the thrall of radicals? Weaver says something I’ve also heard from anxious Democrats who fear that calling Romney is flip-flopper could make him more attractive to swing voters: “Being a flip-flopper might actually help Romney. It shows he’s not an unreasonable person.”
Really? People who don’t like the ideology Romney has been incessantly peddling for the last two presidential cycles are going to vote for him because they believe he’s an incorrigible liar?
I don’t think so. Mitt has built a trap for himself throughout his public career, and Team Obama would be foolish not to bait it and spring it. Persuadable voters don’t much like flip-floppers and don’t much like “severly conservative” ideologues, either. And they really don’t like pols without the character to maintain a reasonably consistent point of view even as they ingratiate themselves to people who are unreasonably enslaved to an extremist ideology against which every decision made by Romney every single day of his presidency would be policed relentlessly and viciously.

Put another way, we are now talking about a flip-flopper who no longer has the wiggle-room to tack back towards sanity, much less moderation. That’s not a problem for the Obama campaign; It’s an embarrassment of messaging riches.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on April 3, 2012.
I hate to admit it, but I’m wondering if conservative Ramesh Ponnuru has a point in his Bloomberg post accusing Dems who believe that the Supreme Court striking down the health care law or the individual mandate would be a good thing of “magical thinking.” Ponnuru’s argument:

Let’s say the court strikes down the entire law. The Democratic fantasy goes something like this: The public will still be upset about the number of Americans without insurance, rising premiums and the difficulty people with pre-existing conditions have getting insurance. Republicans will have no plan for achieving universal coverage. Sooner or later, single payer — which would probably be more popular than a mandate, and thus an easier sell to the public — will prevail
Reality-check time: When Obamacare became law, Democrats had more power in Washington than at any time since the Carter administration in the 1970s. They had the presidency and lopsided majorities in both houses of Congress. Because conservative Democrats have declined in numbers, it was probably the most liberal Congress since 1965-66. They were still barely able to pass the law. And that was with important medical industries either neutralized or in favor of the legislation, which they would not be in the case of single payer.
Democrats attained that degree of power because of an unusual set of circumstances: an unpopular Republican president reaching the end of his second term and a financial crisis hitting at exactly the right time. The odds are that it will be a long, long time until Democrats again hit the jackpot. And without an overwhelming Democratic majority, getting single payer through Congress would be almost impossible: Republicans won’t acquiesce to any steps toward such a system.

If most of the ACA survives, but the individual mandate gets invalidated:

……Or let’s say the court strikes down the mandate, but leaves in place the insurance regulations. The regulations without the mandate would lead healthy people to drop their coverage — the insurance rules mean such people would be able to get it again if they get sick — and with only ill people covered, premiums would soar.
…Democrats would be outraged if the court struck down the mandate, and would presumably blame any resulting problems in the health-care market on its decision. Republicans, meanwhile, would blame the Democrats for enacting a flawed law that couldn’t survive legal scrutiny.
The public is likely to side with the court, for two reasons. Americans express significantly more confidence in the court than in the presidency or Congress. And most Americans dislike the individual mandate and actually want it struck down.

Ponnuru has no happy outcomes for Dems in either case. Another conservative publication, Forbes, has a more encouraging post, “What’s Democrats’ Plan B If the Individual Mandate Goes Down?” by Avik Roy, which merits skeptical consideration.
Roy begins by noting that Dems could have bulletproofed the law in terms of the Commerce Clause by creating a tax to pay for health care, coupled with a credit for those who sign on — “equivalent to the mandate in policy terms, but would have been far sounder from a constitutional standpoint.” Alternatively, Dems could have embraced the “German provision” that allows individuals to opt out, but then wait five years before they can qualify for “guaranteed-issue insurance that doesn’t exclude pre-existing conditions.”
As Paul Starr puts it in The New Republic, the German provision “That deters opportunistic switches in and out of the public funds, and it helps to prevent the private insurers from cherry-picking healthy people and driving up insurance costs in the public sector.” It would likely also compel ‘free market’ purists to put up or shut up.
Roy goes on to discuss grim possible scenarios of chain reactions to the elimination of the individual mandate, including the crumbling of ‘community rating’ and ‘guaranteed issue,’ in a “death spiral” for the act. he then makes his pitch for “A Democratic “Plan B” that could gain Republican support” —“a universal tax credit for the purchase of insurance” with “a stronger cap on the employer tax exclusion.”
In other words, cave to the GOP agenda. No thanks would be my reaction to such a plan. As with all such tax credit/voucher schemes, it’s hard to see any credible cost-containment at work.
The more credible ‘Plan B’s, in Roy’s post would be to amend the act to include the ‘German provision,’ or alternatively converting the mandate into a tax credit rigidly linked to a tax to pay for the coverage. Republicans, of course will fight anything resembling a doable fix, which may be a good argument for building a movement for single payer.
It’s hard to develop any ‘Plan B’ without knowing exactly what the court will do. Whatever they do, however, Dems should have an alternative ready to go, so we don’t look like we are floundering around. Pollsters will likely move quickly to assess where most of the blame is directed, which will help Dems target their strategy.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on March 23, 2012.
At WaPo’s ‘The Fix,’ Aaron Blake has an interesting read, “On health care, Supreme Court loss could be electoral win.” Blake believes the GOP’s glee about the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on the ACA could backfire — in an unexpected way. Blake explains:

…Some Republicans are worried that their big challenge to Obama’s health care law could backfire come election time.
Obama, of course, does not want to see his signature initiative overturned by the Supreme Court, which holds oral arguments on the bill next week and should render a decision by late June. And Republicans who have long railed against the bill would certainly be overjoyed to see the bill struck down.
But in an electoral milieu (yes, we just used that word) in which winning is often based more on voting against something rather than voting for it, losing at the Supreme Court may be the best thing that could happen to either side — and particularly Democrats.
“In a perverse way, Obama is helped if it is overturned, because then he can use it to rally his base,” said GOP pollster Glen Bolger. “If it is not overturned, then Republicans have a frying pan to bash over the Democrats’ head…”

That last point may be a bit of a stretch. It’s just as easy to imagine the GOP looking like whiners, grumbling about a pro-Republican court saying the law is sound. Plus it may be overstating the intensity of opposition to the mandate — many who don’t like it may be willing to at least give it a try, especially if the High Court says it’s OK.
In addition, don’t forget that polls indicate many who opposed the bill wanted a stronger role for government. Asked “What, if anything, do you think Congress should do with the health care law? Expand it. Leave it as is. Repeal it.” in a Pew Research poll conducted March 7-11, 53 percent said “expand it” (33 percent) or “leave it as it is” (20 percent), with just 38 percent supporting repeal.
Blake is on more solid ground, however, in arguing:

Republicans already hate the law, and if it gets struck down, there’s nothing to unite against. Obama may pay a price from his political capital for enacting a law that is eventually declared unconstitutional, but all of a sudden, the bogeyman disappears, and the GOP loses one of its top rallying cries.
The Democratic base, meanwhile, would be incensed at the Supreme Court, which has generally tilted 5-to-4 in favor of conservatives on contentious issues, and could redouble its efforts to reelect Obama so that he could fill whatever Supreme Court vacancies may arise.

Blake argues less persuasively that Republicans will still put energy into repealing the law, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Seems to me that this would be a huge loser for the GOP. The public was tired of the legislative debate a long time ago. I would agree with Blake’s assessment, however, that Dems may “have more to gain than Republicans do” in terms of the election — even with an adverse ruling.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on March 15, 2012.
Jamelle Bouie has an important article, “The Other Glass Ceiling” up at The American Prospect addressing the dearth of African American elected officials in the age of Obama. Indeed, conservative advocates of eliminating section 5 of the Voting Rights Act often argue that it is unnecessary, since having an African American President shows that discrimination in voting laws are largely a thing of the past. As Bouie points out, however, Black Americans are still very much under-represented in our major political institutions:

…Since the momentous 2008 election, there has been no great flowering of black political life, no renaissance in black political leadership. In a year when the first black president is running for re-election, the only African American bidding for a top statewide office is Maryland state Senator C. Anthony Muse, who is challenging Ben Cardin–a well-liked incumbent–in a hopeless race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. At most, by the end of 2012, two of the nation’s 150 governors and senators will be African American.
…If the number of officeholders was in line with African Americans’ share of the population–12.2 percent–there would be at least 12 African American senators and six governors. By contrast, the percentage of African Americans in the House of Representatives is nearly consistent with their share of the population–42 members, or almost 10 percent.

Bouie goes on to discuss plausible demographic and financial reasons for the shortage of Black candidates for these offices, as well as failed efforts by promising candidates, like Harvey Gantt’s bid for U.S. Senate in NC. He notes also the ugly racial stereotypes promoted in GOP ad campaigns designed to gin up irrational fears among white voters, such as GOP political consultant Alex Castellanos’s infamous “hands” ad, which helped Jesse Helms defeat Gantt.
Bouie stops short of exploring possible solutions, no doubt because there are not a lot of viable options available at the moment. Democrats, of course have done much better than Republicans in electing African Americans and other people of color, as well as women, to office. But there is no question that Dems have also failed to make much of an effort to achieve anything resembling proportional representation in terms of race and gender.
One thing that is needed is an active policy driven by a conscious commitment on the part of the national and state Democratic Parties to recruit, train and fund more African American, Latino and Women candidates. Some state Democratic parties do better than others, but there is enormous room for improvement everywhere.
Perhaps a special effort to recruit potential African American, Latino and women leaders from the ranks of organized labor and business would yield more viable state-wide candidates. But there has to be a real commitment to providing them with the needed financial and training resources.
One thing remains clear: The dearth of people of color and women candidates is an embarrassment to a party which bills itself as the hope of a more progressive society. All of the legitimate demographic and financial obstacles notwithstanding, Democrats must more forcefully address this issue at the national and state levels. In doing so, we just might find a pivotal asset in the struggle for a more permanent progressive majority.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo, where it was originally published on March 6, 2012.
Eight months before the fall elections, Republican strategists are in a dour mood.

The economy has begun to gain traction.
Their leading candidate for president, Mitt Romney, is universally viewed as an uninspiring poster child for the one percent, with no core values anyone can point to except his own desire to be elected.
Every time Romney tries to “identify” with ordinary people he says something entirely inappropriate about his wife’s “two Cadillacs,” how much he likes to fire people who provide him services, or how he is a buddy with the people who own NASCAR teams rather than the people who watch them.
The polls show that the more people learn about Romney, the less they like him.
The Republican primary road show doesn’t appear to be coming to a close any time soon.
Together, Bob Kerrey’s announcement that he will get into the Senate contest in Nebraska and the news that Olympia Snowe is retiring from the Senate in Maine, massively increase Democratic odds of holding onto the control of the Senate.
The Congress is viewed positively by fewer voters than at any time in modern history — and two-thirds think the Republicans are completely in charge.
Worse yet, the polling in most presidential battleground states currently gives President Obama leads over Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

The one thing Republican political pros are cheering right now is the rapidly increasing price of gas at the pump and the underlying cost of oil.
The conventional wisdom holds that if gas prices increase, it will inevitably chip away at support for President Obama — and there is a good case to be made. After all, increased gas prices could siphon billions out of the pockets of consumers that they would otherwise spend on the goods and services that could help continue the economic recovery — which is critical to the president’s re-election.
But Republicans shouldn’t be so quick to lick their chops at the prospect of rising gas prices.
Here’s why:
1). What you see, everybody sees. The sight of Republicans rooting against America and hoping that rising gas prices will derail the economic recovery is not pretty.
The fact is that Republicans have done everything in their power to block President Obama’s job-creating proposals in Congress, and they were dragged kicking and screaming to support the extension of the president’s payroll tax holiday that was critical to continuing economic momentum.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell actually announced that his caucus’ number one priority this term was the defeat of President Obama. The sight of Republicans salivating at the prospect of $4-plus per gallon gasoline will not sit well with ordinary voters.
2). Democrats have shown that they are more than willing to make the case about who is actually responsible for rising gas prices — and the culprits’ footprints lead right back to the GOP’s front door.
Who is really to blame for higher gas prices?

The big oil companies that are doing everything they can to keep oil scarce and the price high;
Speculators that drive up the price in the short run;
Foreign conflicts, dictators and cartels — that have been important in driving up prices particularly in the last two months;
The Republicans who prevent the development of the clean, domestic sources of energy that are necessary to allow America to free itself from the stranglehold of foreign oil — all in order to benefit speculators and oil companies.

The fact is that the world will inevitably experience increasing oil prices over the long run because this finite, non-renewable resource is getting scarcer and scarcer at the same time that demand for energy from the emerging economies like China and India is sky rocketing.
Every voter with a modicum of experience in real-world economics gets that central economic fact.
That would make Republican opposition to the development of renewable energy sources bad enough. But over the last few months the factor chiefly responsible for short-term oil price hikes have been the Arab Spring and Israel’s growing tensions with Iran — all of which are well beyond direct American control.

Read more…

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on February 27, 2012.
Juan Cole blogs today on the uproar over the burning of old copies of the Qur’an at the US military at Bagram Base in Afghanistan, which has already claimed the lives of U.S. serivice men, as well as Afghanis. The tragedy is made more horrific by demagoguery on both sides amplifying animosity in Afghanistan and the U.S.
We can’t control bigotry in other nations. But when it is practiced by Americans, it should be called out, as Cole does:

Newt Gingrich and now Rick Santorum have slammed Obama for apologizing. Santorum called the gesture weak. (This stance is sheer hypocrisy from someone who has complained that Obama is ‘waging war on religion’ !)

No one should be surprised by the reaction of Muslims in Afganistan and other Arab nations, nor that their protests would escalate into violent protests. It’s right to condemn those violent protests, but it’s also important to understand its causes, in this case the perception of Muslims that their sacred scriptures have been disrespected by an occupying military force from half-way around the world.
There is no question in my mind that President Obama did the right thing in apologizing for the Qur’an burnings. A cornerstone of American values must always be respect for all religions — that’s the American way of our best ideals. Not apologizing for the burnings would the equivalent of insulting millions of people who belong to one of the world’s most widely-practiced faiths. It would also exacerbate animosity towards American troops in Afghanistan and perhaps elsewhere.
The President did the right thing. But the most important lesson for the Obama administration would be that the longer we occupy Afghanistan, the greater the chances for such incidents to occur.
Meanwhile, Santorum, Gingrich and their Republican echo chamber enablers are playing a risky game for political advantage, and one which has the potential for endangering American troops. They should be held accountable by the media and the electorate.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on February 3, 2012.
Democrats have reason to be encouraged by this morning’s report that that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January and the overall unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3 percent. Of course the Administration should vigorously exercise its bragging rights concerning the monthly report, and especially the overall favorable employment trend of recent months.
For those who want a more nuanced understanding of what the latest employment numbers may mean for the 2012 elections, however, Nate Silver’s “Obama’s Magic Number? 150,000 Jobs Per Month” at his FiveThirtyEight NYT blog may be the most incisive data-driven analysis yet published on the relationship of employment to presidential politics. Silver takes a sobering look at the connection, and explains:

No economic indicator is the holy grail…And there are a number of non-economic variables pertinent to predicting presidential elections — wars, candidate quality and ideology, turnout, scandals and so forth…But if you want to focus a single economic indicator, job growth during the presidential election year — especially as measured by the series called nonfarm payrolls — has a lot going for it.
…Data related to the change in the level of employment have had among the highest correlations with electoral performance in the past. The correlations aren’t perfect by any means. But if you perform a true apples-to-apples comparison (that is, looking at the economic indicators alone rather than muddying them with other sorts of extraneous variables), they do at least as well as anything else in predicting elections, and slightly better than some other commonly used metrics.
Just as important, there are a lot of qualitative reasons to focus on the jobs numbers. They measure something tangible and important. They receive much attention from economists, investors, political campaigns and the news media, and therefore inform the public discussion. They are released every month after only a minimal lag. They are subject to revision, and the revisions can be significant, but they aren’t quite as bad as those for other economic series like G.D.P. or personal income growth. The jobs numbers are calculated in a comparatively straightforward way, and are usually in pretty good alignment with other economic measures. They don’t need to be adjusted for inflation.

Silver then taps some creative methodology to correlate the nonfarm payroll growth rate with the popular vote margin of defeat or victory for the incumbent party in 16 post WWII presidential elections, and he comes to some interesting conclusions, including:

Overall, the relationship between job growth and electoral performance is good but not great…Roughly speaking, there were 10 election years in which you could make a pretty good prediction about the election outcome from knowing the jobs numbers alone: 1948, 1960, and then the eight elections from 1980 onward…In six other elections, you would have needed to look beyond the jobs numbers to come to a good prediction about the outcome.

Citing some of the complicating factors that can cloud his data-driven analysis, such as Eisenhower’s charisma, the Watergate scandal and foreign policy debacles. Regarding a possible Obama-Romney race, Silver argues,

…If we knew nothing else about the election but how many jobs were created between January and October 2012, we would deem Mr. Obama to be a favorite if the economy created more than 107,000 jobs per month and an underdog otherwise. Basically, this would represent job creation at about the rate of population growth.

That’s good news for Obama. The “what have you done for me lately?” factor may signal even better news:

…The public has tended to give greater weight to recent job growth, discounting earlier performance when the trajectory seems positive…If you break it down in more detail, you’ll find that job growth during the third year of a president’s term has a positive effect on his re-election odds, while the coefficients attached to the first two years are negative.
But none of these results are statistically significant or particularly close to it; only job growth during the fourth year of a president’s term has a clear effect.

Silver then factors in presidential approval ratings into his calculations, which indicate:

Mr. Obama’s approval rating is now 46.5 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average…That isn’t terrible — it’s in the range where Mr. Obama might be able to eke out a victory in the Electoral College — but it’s somewhat below average. From 1948 through 2008, the average president had an approval rating of 52 percent as of Feb. 1 of the election year, according to the Roper Center archives.
If Mr. Obama has an approval rating of 52 percent by November, he will almost certainly win re-election. He’d also be a favorite if he’s at 50 percent. And 48 percent or 49 percent might also do the trick, since at that point Mr. Obama’s approval rating would likely exceed his disapproval rating.
But Mr. Obama is not quite there yet. The surest way for him to improve his approval rating will be to create jobs at a rate that exceeds the rate of population growth.
We can come up with an estimate of just how many jobs this might be if we put a president’s approval rating as of Feb. 1 and the payrolls numbers into a regression equation…I’ll spare you the math (although it is straightforward), but this works out to a break-even number of 166,000 jobs per month — not a huge number, but more than the 107,000 that we had estimated before accounting for Mr. Obama’s middling approval rating.
…If you run another version of the analysis that considers a president’s net approval rating, along with the rate of payroll growth net of population growth, you come up with a break-even number of 151,000 jobs per month.

The Wall St. Journal is predicting an average of 155K jobs being added per month in 2012, notes Silver. But he adds that forecasting track records are “frankly pretty mediocre.” Taking all of the factors into consideration, Silver ventures, ” If payrolls growth averages 175,000 per month, Mr. Obama will probably be a favorite, but not a prohibitive one. If it averages 125,000 per month, he will be a modest underdog.”
Silver’s numbers appear to be sound enough, and 150K jobs per month seems like a good guidepost. Rachel Weiner cautions at WaPo’s The Fix, however, that “No president in recent history has been reelected with unemployment above 8 percent, and analysts suggest it would take growth of between 167,000 and 260,000 jobs a month to get there by November.”
It would be interesting to see what Silver’s analysis could do scaled down to the state level, taking into consideration Geoffrey Skelley’s point at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles (50 states plus Washington, D.C.).” It might be worthwhile to look at needed job growth and margins of victory in the half-dozen most volatile swing states. That could be helpful to Dems in terms of laser-targeting resources.

This item by Andrew Levison was originally published on February 2, 2012.
The Republican primary campaign has provided a foretaste of the bitter and divisive super-PAC driven media tactics that will be used against Obama in the fall. The fundamental and inescapable fact is that Democrats will be on the receiving end of a propaganda campaign of a scope and ferocity unparalleled in American history. Democrats must begin planning now how they will respond.
The attack will be three pronged:
First, there will be a “high road” attack directly sponsored by the Republican presidential candidate – now almost certainly Romney – and the RNC. It will be based on sanctimoniously accusing Obama of having “failed” — that he has not fulfilled his campaign promises and that his policies have proved ineffective. The media has already reported on this planned campaign and how it will reduce the need for Romney to attack Obama personally by using Obama’s own words against him.
This part of the three-pronged approach does not represent any major departure from the practices of past campaigns. Where it will significantly differ is in the use of bogus “facts” and statistics on a scale that would have been previously unacceptable. Years ago statements such as “the stimulus did not create any jobs” and “unemployment has risen under Obama” would have been dismissed as simply false by the media as soon as “mainstream” economists objected. In the modern “post-truth” Fox News world, on the other hand, even the most unambiguously false charges will be described as “debatable” rather than nonsense.
The second prong of the strategy will be a feverish invocation of the culture war narrative — one that will far excel Sarah Palin’s sneering and divisive “we’re the real, the good America; they are the degenerate coastal elites” framework that she used in the 2008 campaign.
The ads – which will come from Super-PAC’s more than official sources — will be ugly and distasteful: they will portray Obama as deeply “un-American” – foreign and alien to the heartland values and daily life of the “real” America. Romney and the Republicans have already made this the centerpiece of their “hardball” attack. Obama “goes around the world apologizing for America.” “He wants to turn America into France.” “He is a socialist who hates free enterprise.” The third-party ads will repeat these same accusations but with an overt appeal to prejudices that will be more accurately described as xenophobic rather than racial. The ads will identify Obama not with ghetto hoodlums or Black Panthers but rather with foreign ideas and ethnicities — “commies”, “America-hating Muslims” and “illegal aliens and foreigners,” all of whom support his goal of undermining America.
The most important and destructive change in 2012, however, will be in the vastly expanded dissemination of a third, flagrantly dishonest and utterly propagandistic “low road” attack – one that will be conducted both above and below the radar.
In 2008 the low road attack on Obama was conducted largely outside the official candidate and Republican party media or the major PAC’-s (one clumsy ad by the McCain campaign that attempted to make a “dog-whistle” suggestion that Obama was the anti-Christ was a notable exception). Most of the 2008 low road attacks circulated under the radar – through distribution to informal e-mail lists and comment threads, through micro-targeted direct mail, through robo-calls and through phone banks run by shadowy outside firms. Within these closed communication channels the claims were widely circulated that Obama was a secret Muslim, a radical/communist, a sympathizer with domestic terrorist bombers, and that he was behind a range of “Birtherist” and other conspiracies. Media Matters for America made pioneering attempt to map these “below the radar” attacks during the 2008 campaign and to outline how they were circulated and amplified within the various conservative communication networks, but the study was discontinued after the elections.
Observers were at first uncertain how important these sub-rosa attacks would be in the 2008 election but the absolutely pivotal role they played became very clear as the passion and enthusiasm of the Republican base became largely driven by these “disreputable” views rather than the more policy-based attack made by McCain himself. The real energy of the Republican base in 2008 was reflected in the almost fanatical Sarah Palin supporters whose enthusiasm vastly exceeded any support for McCain himself and whose signs and shouted slogans reflected the “disreputable” rumor-based views rather than opposition to Obama’s actual platform or priorities.
(The influence of the rumor-based attacks reached a dramatic climax when McCain – in the most honorable single action of his campaign – explicitly rejected the claim of a woman who asked why he didn’t tell voters “the truth” – that Obama was a Muslim terrorist and a traitor during one rally in September. McCain tried to reason with the woman, arguing that Obama was not a terrorist but simply an American with whom he disagreed but the crowd howled its fierce disapproval of his conciliatory remarks.)
Democrats should not assume that Romney will behave as honorably in 2012 as did McCain in 2008. While Romney will hold himself personally aloof, there is little or no chance that he will explicitly disavow the massive low road campaign that will be launched on his behalf.
In 2012 this low road attack – which will once again circulate in large part “under the radar” by e-mail, phone, mail and social media –will have three key characteristics:

Read more…

This item by James Vega was originally published on January 15, 2012.
Last weeks’ story — reported in Huffpo and elsewhere — about a group of James O’Keefe’s confederates who attempted to vote in the New Hampshire primary using falsified ID’s “in order to prove voter fraud is possible” has not gotten the attention it deserves.
In principle, the perpetrators’ actions are no different than walking into a church and robbing the minister at gunpoint (while covertly filming the crime) in order to “prove” the need for metal detectors in church doorways.
As it happens, the perpetrators in O’Keefe’s criminal conspiracy didn’t even get away with it. A poll watcher recognized one of them as using a false ID and alerted the authorities. The debate is now whether O’Keefe’s criminal “perps” should be prosecuted for committing a serious crime that carries a jail sentence.
But the deeper issue that has not gotten any attention yet is the profound moral red line that the O’Keefe gang has now crossed. To understand it, one just has to look back at the past.
The history of political extremism in the 20th century offers a vast number of examples of actions by groups traditionally called “provocateurs” – extremists who pretended to be members of some opposite group and then committed crimes in their name in order to discredit them. In American history the most extensive use of this tactic was by anti-union forces in the 1930’s who infiltrated union demonstrations and then attacked police or bystanders in order to provoke a violent clash and police crackdown on the demonstrators. Another example were covert payments by segregationists to Black teenagers to throw rocks and bottles during some civil rights demonstrations.
The inescapable fact is that the moment that any group decides it has the moral right to commit covert illegal acts in order to “prove they are possible,” it then becomes morally reasonable and even obligatory to take the next step and commit illegal acts while pretending to be members of some other group because “our opponents are going to do it anyway; we’re just exposing the real truth about what they are going to do.”
Just consider how small a step it would have been for the O’Keefe gang to have used African-American or Latino fraudsters and then release the video as proof that actual voter fraud had occurred, rather than as proof that fraud is technically possible. Even if the video at some point identified the fraudsters as actually working for a conservative group, once the video began to circulate on the internet, the distinction between “staged” voter fraud and “actual” voter fraud would be completely lost.
In fact, this is already happening with the video filmed by the O’Keefe gang. On many conservative sites the video is being presented as documentation of actual voter fraud not “staged” voter fraud. Before long, tens of thousands of people will be passionately citing this video as “smoking-gun proof” that actual voter fraud is occuring.
(O’Keefe has deliberatied encouraged this kind of confusion about his videos and has also directly falsified them in the past. Images of the famous “pimp suit” he claimed to have worn during covert taped interviews with members of ACORN were actually edited into his videos after the fact, dramatically altering the viewers impression of what the people being interviewed were seeing. Any moral line between adding phony pimp suits to a video after the fact and hiring African-Americans or Latinos to act as fraudsters is quite literally impossible for normally honest people to distinguish).
Right-wing “provocateur” actions of even greater malevolence are already being committed in the Wisconsin recall campaign. Opponents of the campaign to recall Governor Scott Walker are openly boasting on conservative websites of misrepresenting themselves as petition gatherers for the recall and throwing out the signatures they collect or of providing misleading information to people who wish to sign. Other opponents brag that they have deliberately signed petitions with false names in order to invalidate the petitions and the recall process in general.
There is no reason to mince words: these are nothing less than right-wing extremist attacks on American democracy itself. The perpetrators can be called with perfect justice both “subversives” and “un-American.” Democrats should not only demand that they be punished to the maximum extent of the law but that conservatives and Republicans should publically denounce these acts and join in the demand for forceful prosecution. Anything less on their part will represent a shameful wink of tacit approval and repugnant evidence of moral complicity.