This item by J.P. Green was first published on August 5, 2010.
Chris Bowers’s Open Left post, “Memo to Chris Dodd: We already have a unicameral legislature” provides one of the more succinct, lucid and compelling arguments for cloture reform yet presented. Bowers does a surgical shredding Senator Dodd’s case for keeping the 60 vote threshold for cloture. First up, Bowers shatters Dodd’s argument that the 60 vote requirement is needed to affirm the Senate’s unique role and the principle of our bicameral national legislature:

…You don’t need different vote thresholds to have a bicameral system. Consider:
1. 36 states have bicameral legislatures where no filibuster is allowed. Would Senator Dodd claim those 36 states do not actually have a bicameral system?
2. The 60-vote threshold is not in the Constitution. It just isn’t. That was never a requirement for a bicameral legislature.
3. If anything, the 60-vote threshold has created a unicameral system where the Senate has rendered the House irrelevant. Getting rid of the 60-vote threshold would give the two legislative bodies more equitable power.

I would add that the 60 vote cloture threshold is the foundation of gridlocked government, which is the primary goal of the G.O.P. I say this as an admirer of Senator Dodd, who has been one of the more reliable Democratic leaders on many key issues, but who, along with a handful of other Democratic senators, is simply wrong on cloture reform.
Behind the unicameral legislature nonsense, Dodd’s case is essentially fear-driven, the old ‘we’re gonna miss the 60 vote requirement when we are in the minority’ argument. And yes, that could happen on occasion. But majority rule — the foundation of genuine democracy — is really the more important principle at stake here, and if we can’t have that, a 55 vote threshold is a step toward it. The way it is now, urgently needed reforms that could help millions of people are being held hostage by the 60-vote threshold, and that is unacceptable for a any government that purports to reflect the will of the people.
Bowers notes some related reforms that merit more serious consideration, and which might be achievable in a shorter time horizon that that which would be required for reducing the 60 vote threshold:

…if we do a better job focusing on the wider range of proposed rule changes–such as making unanimous consent non-debatable, requiring the filibuster to be a real talkathon where Senators have to stay on the floor (as Senator Lautenberg has proposed), or switching the burden of the cloture threshold on the opposition (for example, 45 votes to continue a filibuster, rather than 60 to break it, as Senator Bennet has proposed)-then the interest and momentum for reform could increase as people debate a wider range of possible reforms.

Bowers concedes that achieving any reform is an uphill struggle in the current political climate. But he adds, “Senate rules are not going to stay the same forever. The rules have changed in the past, and will change again in the future” — a key point for progressive Democrats to keep in mind in working for cloture reform. Although the obstacles are formidable at this political moment, we have to begin somewhere.

This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on August 3, 2010.
Just the other day I was wondering if it was a sign of hard times that movies and television shows seem to be featuring obscenely wealthy people, even more than is usually the case. Similarly, it seems like there are an awful lot of people running for office this year who have personal money to burn, having clearly done very well financially even as their fellow-citizens suffered.
I still can’t prove my theory about movies and television, but according to a well-researched Jeanne Cummings article in Politico, this is indeed a very big year for self-funding candidates:

About 11 percent of the combined $657 million raised by all 2010 candidates has come in the way of self-financing — nearly double the 6 percent measured at the same juncture in the 2006 midterm, according to the Campaign Finance Institute.
Of the $134 million raised by all Republican House challengers as of June 30, a whopping 35 percent of the cash came from the candidates’ own bank accounts, the analysis found. Among Democrats, the percentage of self-made donations was just 18 percent.
If such spending stays on course, the Institute’s Executive Director Michael Malbin expects the GOP challengers’ field to eclipse the 38 percent self-financing high-water mark set by Democrats in 2002. “This is or is near a record,” he said.

Much of Cummings’ article focuses on the relatively low success rate of self-funded candidates in prior elections, and explores different reasons for that phenomenon, from lack of self-discipline to specific issues over how the candidate got rich to begin with. Several well-known candidates this year could have some of those issues:

Ohio businessman Jim Renacci, who is challenging freshman Democratic Rep. John Boccieri, for example, is expected to be attacked for going to court to avoid paying taxes on $13.7 million in income.
In the California Senate race, Republican Carly Fiorina, former head of Hewlett-Packard, is being criticized for laying off thousands of workers and taking a $42 million golden parachute.
[Florida Senate candidate Jeff] Greene is coming under fire for the way he made millions off the subprime mortgage meltdown. Those criticisms could be especially powerful in a state hit hard by foreclosures. And his relatively thin connections to Florida and prior celebrity lifestyle in Los Angeles — Mike Tyson was the best man at his wedding — are also expected to be used to paint him as an unsuitable senator for the Sunshine State.
And in Connecticut, [Senate candidate Linda] McMahon is trying to finesse using the wealth from her WWE enterprise while still distancing herself from the scandals — from steroids to sexual harassment — that have plagued the professional wrestling industry.

But as Cummings makes plain, rich candidates invariably claim they’ll be independent because they aren’t spending anybody else’s money, and a lot of voters buy it. It’s another good argument for public financing of campaigns, but until such time as that reform is enacted, there will be plenty of people who look in the mirror one fine morning, see a future governor, congressman, senator or president, and decide to share their resplendence with the rest of us.

This item by James Vega was originally published on July 28, 2010.
The exposure of the dishonest manipulation of videos first released on Andrew Breitbart’s websites has been widely and properly applauded as a major setback for the hard-right. In the future it is extremely unlikely that the mainstream media will again blindly publicize heavily edited video clips without demanding to see the complete video behind them. Even conservative commentators – who were deeply humiliated by having to publically apologize for having committed legally actionable defamation of character on national TV – will hesitate before trusting Breitbart’s propaganda materials again.
But Democrats should have absolutely no illusions that this setback will lead to any overall moderation of the fierce and bitter attacks that have been directed at Obama and the Democratic Party since last spring. Quite the contrary, Dems should seriously prepare for the possibility that even more intense and dangerous tactics will now be employed.
The reason is that the deliberate editing of video to create a false impression is actually just one specific tactic in a larger arsenal of methods that political extremists believe to be entirely justified. As an April, 2009 TDS strategy memo noted, the defining feature of modern political extremism is the vision of politics as literally a form of “warfare” and political opponents as actual “enemies” who must be crushed. Although many political commentators routinely use these terms as metaphors in writing about political affairs, for political extremists they are seen as entirely literal statements of fact.
From this point of view many tactics that most Americans consider utterly unacceptable and indeed essentially criminal come to be seen as entirely logical measures that are required by the urgent demands of the bitter political “war”. The exposure of any one particular tactic does not challenge this underlying perspective. On the contrary it simply increases the urgency for developing alternative tactics that the evil “enemy” does not yet anticipate.
As a result, Democrats should be seriously prepared for the possibility that they will soon encounter tactics such as the following:
1. Staged events — there is a disturbingly thin line that separates wildly exaggerating the influence of tiny fringe groups like the New Black Panthers – as the conservative media has done in recent weeks – and directly encouraging or financially rewarding fringe groups to engage in offensive or illegal acts that can then be filmed and presented as spontaneous. Covert subsidies to radical fringe groups were employed in the 1960’s to disrupt and discredit Civil Rights demonstrations and in the 1930’s specialized anti-union firms commonly employed undercover agents to masquerade as union supporters and then create violence during strikes in order to provide the justification for sending in state troopers or the National Guard. A chilling echo of this tactic was recently hinted by a professional conservative activist in a Playboy magazine article when he noted that “creating mayhem is not limited to dealing with the press. We’ve quietly acquired Service Employees International Union shirts to wear at tea party rallies…” The potential threat is obvious.
2. Burglary or criminal trespass to obtain documents or other information –this tactic also has a long history, including the famous 1972 Watergate burglary of Democratic Party headquarters by Nixon’s “dirty tricks” squad and the recent abortive attempt of Breitbart’s protégé James McKeefe to install wiretapping devices in the office of La. Sen. Mary Landrieu. Most major foundations and non-profit organizations as well as political candidates and organizations have substantial amounts of information whose privacy they are legally and morally obligated to protect and whose disclosure can substantially cripple their operations. Any such information presents an extremely tempting target.
3. The sabotage, destruction, misuse or theft of valuable political files such as voter contact lists and contributor lists — there are actually three different varieties of this tactic (1) the complete destruction of files (2) the misuse of files (for example, by mailing false messages that provoke discord between political allies) and (3) the subtle corruption of files to render them useless or largely ineffective.
4. Physical intimidation – there is an important distinction between protests that use civil disobedience based on the principles of non-violence and actions that are aimed at physically threatening and intimidating political opponents. In the 1980’s, for example, many anti-abortion protests carefully confined themselves to non-violent methods while other groups clearly planned their protests to physically threaten and terrify both clients and health care workers in the clinics they targeted.

Read more…

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on July 24, 2010.
One of the more notable examples of the gulf in perceived reality between Left and Right these days is the very different perceptions of the power of Barack Obama. Most Democrats think the president has been hemmed in by the economic and fiscal conditions he inherited and by an opposition party with the will and the means to obstruct his every effort. Some Democrats also think he’s been hemmed in by his own timidity, and/or by the views and interests of his advisors, but nobody much thinks he’s kicking ass and taking names.
Meanwhile, on the Right, while the dominant attitude towards the president remains one of exultant mockery, in anticipation of a big 2010 Republican victory, it seems important to some pols and gabbers to maintain the impression that the president represents an ever-growing threat to American liberties.
This “Fear Factor” is especially present in the bizarre op-ed penned in the Washington Times by former congressman, and perhaps future candidate for Colorado governor, Tom Tancredo, calling for the president’s impeachment.
Now there’s nothing particularly newsworthy about Tancredo seizing the limelight with crazy talk, or even his contention that Obama’s violated his constitutional oath by refusing to immediately launch a nationwide manhunt to identify and deport illegal immigrants by the millions as the openly xenophobic Coloradan would do.
But it’s the paranoid fear of Obama’s totalitarian designs on the nation that stands out in the piece:

Barack Obama is one of the most powerful presidents this nation has seen in generations. He is powerful because he is supported by large majorities in Congress, but, more importantly, because he does not feel constrained by the rule of law….
Mr. Obama’s paramount goal, as he so memorably put it during his campaign in 2008, is to “fundamentally transform America.” He has not proposed improving America – he is intent on changing its most essential character. The words he has chosen to describe his goals are neither the words nor the motivation of just any liberal Democratic politician. This is the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist – a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.

Aside from illustrating that Tom Tancredo knows absolutely nothing about Marxism, this passage makes you wonder why Tancredo thinks a future Republican Congress could get away with impeachment. Wouldn’t Obama simply suspend the Constitution, round up Republican Members, and then maybe ship them to one of those secret camps that FEMA–or is it AmeriCorps?–is supposedly building?
This is a perpetual problem for hard-core conservatives today, isn’t it? It’s hard to simultaneously maintain that Barack Obama is well on his way to becoming Benito Mussolini, and also that an aroused American people are on the brink of chasing him from office.
A similar contradiction seems to afflict the thinking of another conservative Republican who spoke out this week, Tennessee congressman and gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp, as explained by Hotline‘s Dan Roem:

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-03) suggested TN and other states may have to consider seceding from the union if the federal government does not change its ways regarding mandates.
“I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government,” said Wamp during an interview with Hotline OnCall.
He lauded Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who first floated the idea of secession in April ’09, for leading the push-back against health care reform, adding that he hopes the American people “will send people to Washington that will, in 2010 and 2012, strictly adhere” to the constitution’s defined role for the federal government.
“Patriots like Rick Perry have talked about these issues because the federal government is putting us in an untenable position at the state level,” said Wamp, who is competing with Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam (R) and LG Ron Ramsey (R) for the GOP nod in the race to replace TN Gov. Phil Bredesen (D).

In his case, Wamp is floating an extra-constitutional remedy for what he claims to be an extra-constitutional action by the Congress and the Executive Branch. This did not work out too well when Tennessee and other states tried it in 1861, you may recall. But more immediately, what, specifically, is Obama doing that has led Wamp to propose so radical a step? Is he threatening to bombard military facilities in Chattanooga? Is an alleged “unfunded mandate” on the states really equivalent to Kristallnacht or the March on Rome?
Rhetorical excess is one thing; extreme partisanship is still another; but projecting totalitarian powers onto Barack Obama while one is in the very process of seeking to drive him and his party from office is, well, just delusional.

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on July 23, 2010.
It’s certainly old news that anti-government sentiments are on the rise these days, and that anti-government rhetoric is at the heart of the Republican Party’s hopes for regaining control of government in November and in 2012.
But as Ron Brownstein explains painstakingly in his latest column, it’s important to unravel these sentiments into their component parts. Trust in government has been fragile even if the best of recent times, and mistrust of government sometimes has to do with perceptions of incompetence, and sometimes with perceptions of its unworthy beneficiaries:

Polls suggest that an energized core of voters — possibly around 40 percent — has ideologically recoiled from Obama’s direction. That threatens Democrats, but their greater problem is that voters open to an activist government in principle are not convinced that it’s producing enough benefits in practice.
Partly, that verdict rests on concerns about effectiveness. Many economists may agree that Washington’s economic initiatives prevented a deeper downturn. But with the economy still sluggish, surveys show that most Americans believe that the medicine simply didn’t work well enough. That judgment compounds doubts about federal competence fed by failures stretching back from the Gulf oil spill to the New Orleans flood. One senior Democrat calls this the “echo of Katrina” problem.
The second worry revolves around government’s priorities. Most voters think that the principal beneficiaries of everything government has done to fix the economy since 2009 have been the same interests that broke it: big banks, Wall Street, the wealthy.

In other words, anti-government sentiments are an amalgam of feelings that can’t be simply attributed to a Tea Party-ish fear of government trampling liberties. More common is the feeling that “big government” might be acceptable if it did a good job, or if it worked on behalf of the interests of a majority of Americans.
The first problem shows that the 1990s-era progressive emphasis on “reinventing government” to focus on tangible results needs to be revived. And the second problem shows that Bill Clinton’s identification with “the forgotten middle class” is another golden oldie we should listen to again.

This item by J.P. Green was first published on July 19, 2010.
Now that all possible angles comparing the 2010 mid terms to those in 1994 have been explored, Rebecca Kaplan argues at Slate.com that the more relevant comparison is the 1982 elections. According to Kaplan’s post, “The Lessons of 1982: Why Democrats need not fear the ghosts of 1994“:

…Speculation is running rampant, particularly in the media and especially among Republicans (and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs), that 2010 could be a replay of the Democrats’ lowest political moment in the last half-century: the 1994 midterms, when Republicans seized 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, taking control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. But the similarities between 2010 and 1994 are superficial. The more relevant election–the one that gives a better gauge of the magnitude of losses the Democrats may see–is the 1982 midterms. Although some political scientists were predicting that the Democrats would gain as many as 50 seats, on Election Day they took only 26 seats from the Republicans.
…In many respects, today’s economic conditions are identical to those in 1982. The yearly change in real disposable income per capita is a key factor in predicting midterm outcomes: When their wallets are fuller, people are more likely to send their representatives back to Washington. And right now this number is almost the same as it was at this point in 1982. For the third quarter of 2010, Moody’s Economy.com is predicting a 0.4 percent increase in real disposable income per capita from last year–a fairly stagnant number that does not show much economic growth for the average citizen. In the third quarter of 1982, the change in real disposable income per capita was 0.5 percent–also fairly flat. The unemployment rate is also eerily familiar; it’s now pushing 10 percent, while in 1982 it was 9.7 percent. In 1994, meanwhile, the economy was in better shape than it is now or was in 1982, with a 6.1 percent unemployment rate and 2.3 percent increase in personal disposable income from the third quarter of 1993.

This last point regarding joblessness is not so reassuring. Looking at it from a slightly different angle, if the economy was better in ’94, and we still got creamed, how is that encouraging for Dems?
Kaplan points out that Dem and GOP congressional candidates are spending about equally now, as they did in ’82. While in 94, Republicans outspent Dems by an average of $91,383 in each race — or nearly $5 for every $3 spent by Dem candidates. Clearly, Democratic candidates have got to match their GOP adversaries in 2010, if they want to keep running the House and Senate. Kaplan goes out on a bit of a limb, noting “Without outspending the Democrats, it is unlikely the Republicans will be able to achieve all the pickups they are hoping for.”
As Kaplan explains, Republicans, under Gingrich’s “message mastery” did a particularly good job of working existing media in 94, while Democrats have a significant edge with new media in 2010. She adds that Clinton “lost control of the national conversation” and was distracted by non-economic issues, while Republicans hammered away. That is not the case today.
In a sense, however, all comparisons are not as relevant as some would have us believe. The information revolution that has occurred since ’94, and even more so since ’82, is a huge wild card. Political messaging has been transformed by the internet, Fox-TV and now MSNBC. Not to diminish the importance of economic indicators, but it matters a lot that candidates now have more opportunities to communicate with voters, and progresives seem to have an edge over conservatives in tapping this vein — for now.
Kaplan makes another good point in noting the deepening division in the GOP constituency exemplified by the tea party circus, which has produced some dicey candidates, like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, while Dems have so far eschewed the circular firing squad of earlier years.
Here’s hoping Kaplan’s insights pan out. The key thing for Dems is to learn from electoral history, not to be limited by it. If Kaplan is right, the key challenges for Dems are to keep “control of the national conversation” and invest the bucks needed to fire up the base and win a healthy share of the persuadables.

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on July 19, 2010.
It’s been obvious for quite some time–dating back at least to the fall of 2008–that the Republican Party is undergoing an ideological transformation that really is historically unusual. Normally political parties that go through two consecutive really bad electoral cycles downplay ideology and conspicuously seek “the center.” Not today’s GOP, in which there are virtually no self-identified “moderates,” and all the internal pressure on politicians–and all is no exaggeration–is from the right.
But as Jonathan Chait notes today, there are two distinct phenomena pulling the GOP to the right this year: there’s ideological radicalism, to be sure, but also what he calls “tactical radicalism:”

Obviously the conservative movement is intoxicated with hubris right now. Part of this hubris is their belief that the American people are truly and deeply on their side and that the last two elections were either a fluke or the product of a GOP that was too centrist. It’s a tactical radicalism, a belief that ideological purity carries no electoral cost whatsoever.

This is what I’ve called the “move right and win” hypothesis, and it’s generally based on some “hidden majority” theory whereby every defeat is the product of a discouraged conservative base or some anti-conservative conspiracy (e.g., the bizarre “ACORN stole the election” interpretation of 2008). As Chait observes, there is a counterpart hypothesis on the left, but is vastly less influential, and anyone watching internal party politics these days will note the major difference in tone between Democratic primaries where moderation is generally a virtue and Republican primaries where it’s always a vice.
While many Democrats (including Chait in the piece I’ve linked to) are interested in the short-term implications of tactical radicalism, such as the possibility that GOP candidates like Sharron Angle or Rand Paul could lose races that should be Republican cakewalks, there’s a long-term factor as well that no one should forget about for a moment. If, as is almost universally expected, Republicans have a very good midterm election year after a highly-self-conscious lurch to the right, will there be any force on earth limiting the tactical radicalism of conservatives going forward? I mean, really, there’s been almost no empirical evidence supporting the “move right and win” hypothesis up until now, and we see how fiercely it’s embraced by Republicans. Will 2010 serve as the eternal validator of the belief that America’s not just a “center-right country” but a country prepared to repudiate every progressive development of the last century or so?
That could well be the conviction some conservatives carry away from this election cycle, and if so, what would normally pass for the political “center” will be wide open for Democrats to occupy for the foreseeable future.

This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on July 16, 2010.
If you really want to understand “polarization” in today’s political climate, you have to understand that Ds and Rs, and conservatives and liberals, live in very different worlds when it comes to facts and relevant information. We’ve seen an unusually graphic illustration of this reality during the last week, when much of the conservative chattering classes have been obsessed not with the financial regulation bill, not with Republican primary battles, but with the premise that there’s a massive effort underway led by the Obama administration to harrass and demonize white people.
The main exhibit in this bizarre narrative is one Malik Zulu Shabazz, the leader of something called the New Black Panther Party. On election day in 2008, Shabazz and a few associates played the fool at a virtually all-black Philadelphia polling place, and yelled about “crackers” voting the wrong way. Despite the lack of evidence that Shabazz had actually intimidated any actual voters, the DOJ initiated a criminal prosecution, which it then downgraded to a civil suit (all of this was under the Bush administration). Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, DOJ dropped the civil suit, and a former DOJ attorney is now claiming that he and others were under instructions not to go after African-Americans for voter intimidation violations.
Now at this juncture it’s important to understand that many conservatives not only deny there are significant efforts to intimidate or otherwise discourage minority voters, but that the real threat to the integrity of U.S. elections comes from the other side of the political and racial lines. These are folks who seem to believe, for example, that the relatively marginal community organizing group (now disbanded after being denied any access to federal funds for non-political activities) ACORN may have stolen the 2008 presidential election for Barack Obama. So a pathetic self-promoting guy like Shabazz is pure political gold.
And sure enough, Shabazz has appeared frequently on Fox News to spout his nonsense, as reported by Dave Weigel:

How often does Fox bring on the Panthers, or talk about them? A Lexis-Nexis search finds 68 mentions of “Malik Zulu Shabazz,” a leader of the NBPP. The majority are appearances on Fox News, where Shabazz is repeatedly brought on to act as a foolish, anti-Semitic punching bag. Among the segment titles: “Professor’s Comments on Whites Stir Controversy” and “Black Panthers Take a Stand on Duke Rape Case.”

This last week, Shabazz’s fifteen minutes of Fox Fame was extended as Fox reporters and conservative bloggers brandished the “scandal” of the NBBP’s escape from civil liability for acting the fool as a response to the NAACP’s resolution calling on the Tea Party movement to repudiate its “racist elements.” RedState’s highly influential Erick Erickson even called on Republicans to make Shabazz the “Willie Horton” of the 2010 campaign.
Unbelievable, eh? But it all makes sense among folks who seem to believe that the only real racism in America is being exhibited by anyone who thinks white racism is a problem, and that in fact, white people are being victimized by minorities, in Philadelphia, in the Department of Justice, and in the White House itself. As Jonathan Chait notes in reference to Fox’s Shabazzaganza:

There has been a great deal of right-wing insanity unleashed over the last year and a half, but this is the first time that the fear has an explicitly racial cast. You now have the largest organ of movement conservatism promoting Limbaugh’s idee fixe that the Obama administration represents black America’s historical revenge against whites.

At a minimum, it’s scary that conservative Americans are being tutored in anti-anti-racism, the idea that what’s called “playing the race card” is always illegitimate, regardless of the facts. But what’s worse is the idea that semi-open race-baiting involving imaginary menaces like the New Black Panther Party is now being promoted as anti-racism. It’s anti-anti-racism with a particularly nasty twist.

This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on July 8, 2010.
As regular readers might recall, back in May I did an analysis which predicted that the furor over immigration policy touched off in Arizona would have its greatest political impact not in the southwest or west coast, but in the Deep South, where a combination of new and highly visible Hispanic populations, low Hispanic voting levels, and red-hot Republican primaries would likely bring the issue to the forefront.
Nothing that’s happened since then has made me change my mind about that, though southern Republican unanimity on backing the Arizona law and replicating it everywhere has reduced the salience of immigration as a differentiator in some GOP primaries, most notably in South Carolina (where in any event the Nikki Haley saga eclipsed everything else).
But in Georgia, whose primary is on July 20, immigration is indeed a big issue in the gubernatorial contest, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway:

For the next 13 days, all stops are off when it comes to debating the issue of illegal immigration.
The Obama administration’s court challenge to the Arizona law that gives its peace officers the authority to stop and impound undocumented residents is already serving as a stick to a wasp nest in Georgia’s race for governor.
Former congressman Nathan Deal’s first TV ad of the primary season on Wednesday focused on illegal immigration and a promise that Georgia would soon have an Arizona-style law.
On the answering machines of tens of thousands of GOP voters, former secretary of state Karen Handel left a message of endorsement from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. Expect to see Brewer at Handel’s side before the July 20 vote.
The climate doesn’t brook dissent. Democrats have been uniformly silent on the Arizona issue.

As it happens, Deal and Handel are battling for a runoff spot. Handel and long-time Republican front-runner John Oxendine are also proposing radical changes in the state tax code, abolishing income taxes entirely, but so far that momentous issue is not getting the kind of attention generated by the action of another state on immigration three time zones away.

This item by J.P. Green was first published on July 2, 2010.
Rhodes Cook, senior columnist at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, has some encouraging observations for Democratic candidates’ mid term prospects. Cook sees 2010 Dems in much better shape relative to the 1994 disaster. First, it’s about exposure, says Cook:

Fully half of the Democratic seats in that strongly anti-incumbent, anti-Democratic election 16 years ago were in districts that had voted for the Republican presidential ticket in one or both of the previous two presidential elections. This time, just one third of Democratic seats are in similarly problematic territory.
It is an important distinction since the vast majority of House seats that the Democrats lost in 1994 – 48 of 56, to be precise – were in “Red” or “Purple” districts. And this year, the Democrats have fewer of such districts to defend…The number of “Blue” districts they hold has risen by 43, from 128 in 1994 to 171 today, while the number of “Purple” districts they must defend has dropped by 39 (from 77 to 38). Meanwhile, the total of “Red” districts occupied by House Democrats is down this year by four from 1994 (from 51 to 47).

Even in 1994, notes Cook, “House Democrats ran very well in “Blue” districts that year. They lost barely 5% of those that voted for the party’s candidate in the previous two presidential elections.” If that pattern holds in November, Dems should keep their House majority.
Second, Cook sees Dems as “a more cohesive, top-down party than they were in 1994,” and adds,

Now, the Democrats have the look of a much stronger party. They are coming off a string of five consecutive presidential elections since 1992 in which their candidate has swept at least 180 districts each time. The byproduct of this consistent top of the ticket success has been the creation of more hospitable “blue” districts for House Democrats than their colleagues enjoyed in 1994.

Third, Cook finds encouragement for Dems in the House “special elections”:

But in recent decades, if a “big wave” election was brewing, there were signs of it in the special House elections that preceded the fall voting. That was the case in early 1974, when Democrat John Murtha scored a special election victory for a Republican seat in western Pennsylvania that proved a precursor of huge gains for his party that fall.
It was also the case in early 1994, when Republicans picked up a pair of Democratic seats in Kentucky and Oklahoma. And it was the case again in early 2008, when Democrats peeled off a trio of Republican seats in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi.
This election cycle, Republican Scott Brown has already scored a conspicuous special Senate election win in Massachusetts. But Republicans have been unable to post a similar high-profile breakthrough on the House side in spite of a handful of opportunities.
To be sure, Republicans did pick up a previously Democratic seat May 22 in Hawaii, where the incumbent had resigned to focus on his campaign for governor. But the victory by Republican Charles Djou was clearly a fluke. In a district that Obama had carried in 2008 with 70% of the vote, Djou prevailed with less than 40% as two major Democratic candidates divided the bulk of the remaining votes. There was no provision for a runoff election.
Much more noteworthy have been the special elections held over the last year in a trio of “Purple” districts. Republicans were unable to win any of them. Two were in upstate New York, the other Murtha’s seat in southwest Pennsylvania.
A GOP victory in the latter contest on May 18 would have been a loud reminder of 1974 – rekindling memories of how Murtha’s special election victory served as a harbinger of his party’s great success that fall.
That the vote last month was a loss for the Republicans, though, underscored the opposite – that winning a House majority this year might not be nearly as easy for the GOP as many political observers have predicted.

As Cook concludes, “…There are plenty of targets for the Republicans this fall. But there are not as many ripe ones as was the case in 1994.”