This item by James Vega was first published on June 27, 2010.
Almost all the discussions of the “enthusiasm gap” in recent weeks have tended to define the problem as the low level of enthusiasm among Democrats – a perspective that tends to suggest that “disappointment” with Obama is probably the major cause. From this perspective the most direct response would appear to be for Democratic strategists to try to challenge and refute this perception – to argue, in effect, that “Obama is really better than many Democrats seem to think he is”.
But, in fact, Democratic enthusiasm only appears as dramatically low as it does in this non-presidential election year (when turnout is far below election years in any case) because it is being compared with the unusually high level of Republican enthusiasm. This alternate way of viewing the issue leads to a very different set of conclusions about the strategy Democrats should use to combat the problem.
The key fact is that Republicans and conservatives do not see this race as anything like a normal off-year election. Instead, it is for them a decisive battle in a life-or-death existential struggle — a no-holds-barred campaign to bring down Obama and reverse the 2008 election. It is a vision of politics as a bitter ideological and social war and conservatives as an army on the march with a vast overarching objective — to “take back our country” from the forces that have literally stolen it from its rightful owners.
At the heart of the current conservative/Republican coalition is a powerfully energized conservative social movement – one with very strong and widely shared military and paramilitary overtones. This generates a high level of what in military terms is called “morale” – a powerful mixture of passion, commitment, élan, fighting spirit, camaraderie and group cohesion.
Among the core conservative activists themselves this high level of morale has developed in the course of work and collaboration. During the last year and a half friendships were formed, afternoons and weekends were spent working together on projects, successes and failures were shared, all of which built team spirit, optimism and a shared vision of heroic struggle against a uniquely evil, dedicated foe. This energy and enthusiasm was then propagated out into the comment threads of conservative blogs, the discussion groups on Tea Party websites and through e-mail chain letters passed virally among families and social circles. This process has established and disseminated an essentially warlike and combative tone to the 2010 Republican campaign that easily meshes with the similarly combative programming of Fox news and talk radio. The resulting mixture has then been transmitted again and again to a large portion of the Republican electorate.
There is simply nothing comparable to this psychology on the Democratic side. Large numbers of the voters who comprised the Obama coalition in 2008 simply do not see the 2010 elections as a vast do-or-die battle between two contending political armies struggling for control of the country and the future of America. They see it as a conventional off-year election where a patchwork variety of opposing candidates with different philosophies compete for office. As a result they simply do not have the high morale and fighting spirit of conservatives and Republicans. The broad and unifying “yes we can” spirit that was created during the 2008 campaign dissipated soon after the election. The massive Obama for America online organization sharply narrowed its focus to building support for specific elements of Obama’s agenda while other progressives redirected their efforts to promoting specific progressive issues and causes – a focus that frequently brought them into conflict with the administration. Both of these trends substantially diluted and dampened the broad “yes we can” unity and enthusiasm of the 2008 campaign.
The inevitable result was lowered morale, a literal demoralization of the Democratic base that is expressed in three distinct narratives

• That Obama has been a disappointment to his supporters and that not bothering to vote is therefore a logical reaction.
• That the Democratic candidate in a particular district is insufficiently progressive or otherwise unappealing and that not voting for him or her is therefore a reasonable reaction.
• That Washington politics is hopeless and that there is consequently no reason to participate in a useless exercise.

All of these reactions reflect a shared mental model of 2010 as a typical election and not a major and coordinated conservative assault on Democrats in a bitter ideological war. It is this notion of “2010 as just a normal election” that Democratic strategy must first and foremost challenge.

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This item by J.P. Green was first published on June 16, 2010.
The ‘liberal Dems vs. Obama’ storyline has been getting a lot of play lately in punditland, likened to the neocon-tea party split in the GOP. But it’s a simplistic interpretation of what’s really going on in the relationship between the President and progressives in the Democratic Party. Katrina vanden Heuval, editor of The Nation, has a more nuanced explanation in her weekly column in the Washington Post:

There’s a tension between the Obama administration and the progressive movement, but it’s not the one mainstream media have been describing or that the White House seems to perceive….What’s happening on the left isn’t the equivalent of the anti-incumbent anger on the right. Most progressives support Obama and want his agenda to succeed…
At the same time, progressives have come to a realization. What we see, some 500 days into the Obama administration, is a president obstructed by a partisan Republican opposition, powerful entrenched corporate interests, and a minority of corrupt or conservative Democrats. The thinking is that if progressives organize independently and forge smart coalitions, building a mass movement for reform with a moral compass that can transcend left-right divisions, we may be able to push Obama beyond the limits of his own politics, overcome the timid incrementalism of the establishment Democratic Party and counter the forces of money and power that are true obstacles to change. As Arianna Huffington has said, “Hope is not enough. . . . We need a ‘Hope 2.0’ that depends not on what President Obama or other politicians say or do but on what we as progressives do.”

Vanden Heuval goes on to describe the white house overreaction to progressive groups’ support of Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s primary opponent and she offers this clarification:

Actually, the point of the exercise was that those opposing Obama’s reform agenda will not get a free pass. And there will be more efforts like it…This agitating role isn’t a new one for the progressive movement. Progressives organized a remarkable mass movement seeking to stop the Iraq war before it began. They built a counterweight in the blogosphere to challenge the mainstream media and the right. They created the coalition that beat Bush on Social Security. They gave Democrats their voice on Iraq, energy and health care that helped to take back Congress. And they inspired a junior senator from Illinois to think that something was moving with such strength that he might run and win the presidency.

This is what real progressives do. It’s not about sniping at the white house or whining about the President being too cautious. It’s about shifting the debate fulcrum leftward to give the President and Democratic leaders courage and room to move forward toward a more progressive agenda. Astute progressives understand that the President has to contend with powerful conservative forces and institutions that come with the job, just as an astute president understands that the job of the progressives in his base is, paraphrasing FDR, to “make me do it.”
As vanden Heuval says, “It doesn’t matter whether you think Obama has done the best that he can or that he has compromised too easily. What’s important is to alter the balance of power. And that means recruiting and mobilizing to unleash new energy into the debate.”
It’s much like the “creative tension” Martin Luther King, Jr. said was needed to break through the obstructionist status quo and energize the Civil Rights Movement. As vanden Heuval concludes,

…Progressives can help Democrats find the voice they need to avoid debilitating losses this fall…by challenging limits of the current debate…to show working Americans that Democrats are fighting for them…The tension between Obama and the progressive movement isn’t a threat to the president. Rather, it may be needed to save him.

A renewed commitment to this understanding will strengthen the Democratic Party, help cut losses in November and set the stage for victory in 2012.

This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on June 14, 2010.
One of the more pernicious if deeply entrenched constitutional doctrines in this country is the idea that spending money on political campaigns is inherently an exercise of first amendment free speech rights whose regulation requires the strictest judicial scrutiny. It’s why we do not have any effective national system for campaign finance limitations, and indirectly why at any given time about half the country thinks our politicians have been bought and sold for campaign contributions. Most fundamentally, self-funding candidates can pretty much do whatever they want, and despite the hard economic times, we are seeing self-funders arise this year in extraordinary numbers, particularly on the GOP side of the battlelines.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court seems determined to undo every effort to provide candidates who face self-funders with anything like an equalizer. In 2007, in Davis v.F.E.C., a 5-4 majority of the Court struck down the so-called “Millionaire’s Amendment” to the Feingold-McCain campaign finance law on grounds, basically, that it discriminated against millionaires by allowing the opponents of self-funders higher contribution and spending limits.
By the same dubious logic, as National Journal‘s Eliza Newlin Carney explains, the Court may be about to strike down “equalizer” provisions in six state public financing systems (Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin). In a case involving Arizona, the Court has issued a stay on the collection of “extra” public money from candidates facing self-funders until it can hear a constitutional challege to the system. Given the Davis precedent, campaign reform advocates are bracing for a bad result.

This item by James Vega was first published on June 8, 2010.
In recent days an important discussion has emerged among progressives about the proper strategy for the progressive movement. As Bill Scher, the Online Campaign Manager of the Campaign for America’s Future described it:

“The progressive community is somewhat divided between the folks who think Obama is doing everything he can against a broken political system and the folks that think he’s not doing enough, and that we need an independent force to push him…Are we the wingman of the Obama Administration or an outside pressure force?”

This question was expected to generate a spirited debate among progressives at the America’s Future Now conference held in Washington this week but, interestingly, the anticipated conflict did not materialize. Instead, there was a widespread consensus that – regardless of their specific evaluation of Obama – progressives were agreed on the need to build an independent movement capable of both supporting or challenging the administration as any particular case required.
As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka put it, progressives need to be a “troublesome ally” of Obama. Campaign for America’s future co-director Robert Borosage described it as being willing to go “off the reservation” and organize independently.
The general agreement on the urgent need to build a vastly strengthened, independent progressive movement –regardless of one’s precise view of the Obama administration – reflected an extremely wide general consensus among progressive bloggers, organizational leaders and grass-roots activists across the county. Even progressives who are very firm and enthusiastic supporters of Obama did not see support for an enhanced, independent progressive movement as representing a conflict with their generally positive assessment of the Administration.
Yet, although this support for an independent progressive movement would appear to represent a distancing of progressives from Obama, in two critical respects the movement remains excessively defined — and limited — by the way it relates to him and his administration. The progressive discussion is based on two underlying assumptions– both of which need to be re-examined:
The first assumption is that, in some sense, it is the weaknesses or failures of the Obama administration that have created the urgent need for progressives to build an independent progressive movement. In many commentaries a substantial list of disappointments or compromises by the Administration are offered as the primary evidence that an independent movement is necessary.
There are two problems with this way of framing the issue. First, taken to its logical conclusion, this kind of argument suggests that an independent progressive movement might in some circumstances actually be unnecessary – if Obama had just kept a sufficient number of his campaign promises, progressives would be able to wholeheartedly support him and an independent progressive movement would not be required. Second, it leads both Obama and progressives to become perceived and defined as failures – Obama for not living up to his campaign rhetoric and progressives for not being able to make him do so.
The second assumption is that the agenda of the progressive movement will continue to be defined primarily in relation to Obama’s political and legislative objectives. The progressive position will represent a challenge from the left, but it will still be framed as a response to the administration’s initiatives rather than presented on its own terms and in relation to its own long-range objectives.
This is too narrow an agenda for an independent mass movement – a social movement needs a set of objectives larger than the goals and initiatives of any single administration.
These two assumptions will impede and limit the effectiveness of the effort to build an independent progressive movement. They need to be reconsidered and revised.

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This item by J.P. Green was first published on June 2, 2010.
Rebecca Lefton has an important post, “BP Disaster Is Cheney’s Katrina” up at the Center for American Progress web pages. Lefton, researcher for Progressive Media at American Progress, provides a timeline, which provides a convincing rebuttal to the GOP meme that the BP spill is “Obama’s Katrina.” Says Lefton:

BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is without a doubt former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Katrina. President George W. Bush and Cheney consistently catered to Big Oil and other special interests to undercut renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives that would set the United States on a more secure clean energy path.
Oil companies raked in record profits while benefitting from policies they wrote for themselves. These energy policies did nothing for our national security and left consumers to pay the price at the pump and on their energy bills, which rose more than $1,100 during the Bush administration.

2001 – …President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney–who gave up his title as CEO of oil and gas company Halliburton to take on his new role–with developing a new energy policy swiftly after taking office. But Cheney’s relationship with Halliburton did not end. Cheney was kept on the company’s payroll after retirement and retained around 430,000 shares of Halliburton stock.
The task force report was based on recommendations provided to Cheney from coal, oil, and nuclear companies and related trade groups–many of which were major contributors to Bush’s presidential campaign and to the Republican Party. Oil companies–including BP, the National Mining Association, and the American Petroleum Institute–secretly met with the Cheney and his staff as part of a task force to develop the country’s energy policy.

Bush released the fiscal year 2002 budget on April 9 that included steep cuts for clean energy research and development: “Solar and renewable energy R&D would drop by more than a third; nuclear energy R&D would be almost halved; and energy conservation R&D would fall by nearly 25 percent.”

…The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service–the agency responsible for managing oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf and collecting royalties from companies–decided in 2005 that oil companies, rather than the government, were in the best position to determining their operations’ environmental impacts. This meant that there was no longer any need for an environmental impact analysis for deepwater drilling, though an earlier draft stated that such drilling experience was limited. In fact, MMS “repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews.” And an interior general analysis even found that between 2005 and 2007 MMS officials let the oil industry to fill out their own inspection reports.

This item by Alan Abramowitz, who is Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University and a member of the TDS advisory board, was first published on May 25, 2010.
As Ed Kilgore recently discussed at FiveThirtyEight.com, it has become almost an article of faith in Republican circles that the best way for the GOP to regain the ground it has lost in the last two elections is to nominate candidates who take consistently conservative positions on the issues facing the country. According to the “move right and win” theory, by standing forthrightly for traditional family values, smaller government, and less regulation of business, Republican candidates can energize their party’s base and win back conservative voters who became disillusioned with the free-spending ways of the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans.
But while the move right and win theory is extremely popular among Republican activists, it directly challenges the widely accepted view of American voting behavior among election scholars. According to the median voter theory first proposed by Anthony Downs in his seminal work, An Economic Theory of Democracy, general election candidates in the U.S. who take strongly conservative or strongly liberal positions tend to alienate moderate voters and therefore perform more poorly at the polls than candidates who hew more closely to the center of the ideological spectrum.
Fortunately, there is some readily available evidence that allows us to test these two competing theories. We can compare the performance of moderate and conservative Republican incumbents in recent U.S. Senate elections. If the move right and win theory is correct, we should find that conservative incumbents did better than expected based on the normal vote for their party while moderate incumbents did worse than expected; if the median voter theory is correct, however, we should find that moderate incumbents did better than expected based on the normal vote for their party while conservative incumbents did worse than expected.
In order to determine whether Republican incumbents did better or worse than expected based on the normal vote for their party, I measured their vote share compared with that of the current or most recent Republican presidential candidate in their state. I measured the conservatism of Republican senators based on their voting records in previous two years using a modified version of the familiar DW-NOMINATE scale with a range from 0 (moderate) to 8 (very conservative).

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This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic, where it was published on May 19, 2010.
I believe in comprehensive immigration reform–so much so that I helped organize a bipartisan task force on the matter. (Here is the report.) I understand that most Americans have qualms about taking harshly punitive measures against illegal immigrants. And there is little doubt that a party seen as anti-immigrant will eventually lose the support of an increasingly diverse population, and especially of young people, as the fate of the post-Pete Wilson Republican Party in California demonstrates.
But I still have no idea why some leading Democrats, such as Chuck Schumer, think that pushing this issue right now will be helpful in November. If they believe that recent events in Arizona have created a public groundswell for a more liberal response, they’re just wrong. Let’s look at four high-quality national surveys conducted this month.
According to a CBS/New York Times poll, 65 percent of Americans see illegal immigration as a “very serious problem,” 74 percent think it weakens the economy, and 78 percent believe the U.S. should be doing more to stop it. These beliefs help explain why 51 percent of the people think that the new Arizona law is “about right,” versus only 36 percent who say it “goes too far.” They reach this conclusion despite the fact that 72 percent think it will have disproportionate effects on certain racial and ethnic groups and 78 percent believe it will burden police departments. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds the same thing: 64 percent of respondents support the Arizona legislation (46 percent strongly) despite the fact that 66 percent believe that it will lead to discrimination against Latino immigrants who are in this country legally.
The Pew Research Center probed more deeply and came to a similar conclusion. Its researchers began by examining public opinion on three key provisions of the Arizona law: requiring people to produce documents verifying legal status (73 percent approval); allowing the police to detain anyone unable to verify legal status (67 percent approval); and giving authorities the right to question anyone they think may be in the country illegally (62 percent approval). Pew then asked whether, “considering everything,” respondents endorsed the Arizona bill: 59 percent said yes, versus only 32 percent who disapproved.
Pew breaks down its results by subgroup. While the results for Republicans and independents are predictable, those for Democrats aren’t. Sixty-five percent of Democrats support requiring people to produce documents, 55 percent would allow detention of non-verifiers, and 50 percent would allow questioning based on police suspicion only. Accordingly, Democrats are split down the middle on the Arizona law: 45 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed. Notably, Pew finds somewhat more Democratic support than do the other surveys, suggesting that additional information about the Arizona law tends to move Democrats toward it rather than away from it.
For its part, a series of Gallup surveys also underscores the public’s concerns with immigration. A majority believes that we should emphasize better border-control, and 51 percent of Americans who have heard about the Arizona law support it as opposed to 39 percent who don’t.
This does not mean that the United States as a whole is on the verge of a new era of nativism. Each survey identifies reservoirs of sympathy for immigrants, illegal as well as legal. But when Americans strike an overall balance, their concern about the social and economic consequences of the current situation outweighs their worries about the humanitarian consequences of changing it. That is why Gallup concludes one of its surveys as follows: “Recent Gallup polling found nearly as many Americans rating immigration reform as an important national priority as said this about financial reform for Wall Street. That aligns with the wishes of some Senate Democrats who are reportedly pressing for quick action on comprehensive immigration reform.” However, continues the Gallup report, “Public opinion on the issue might not align as well with the policies these Democrats have in mind.” Based on the evidence I’ve cited from four respected survey organizations, it’s hard to disagree.
Democrats who favor proceeding with this issue have two remaining arguments. They claim that, win or lose, pushing hard on an immigration bill would mobilize parts of the party’s base and produce net gains for Democratic candidates in key districts and states. Given the fact that at least nine out of ten voters this November will be non-Latinos and that most contests involving high percentages of Latino voters are likely to remain safely in the Democratic column anyway, this claim is intuitively hard to believe. At any rate, the burden of proof is on its proponents.
Second, one may argue that all of this is irrelevant: the Arizona law is an unconscionable assault on the civil rights of immigrants who are here legally and on the human rights of those who aren’t. The soul of the Democratic Party is at stake, and shrinking from the fight would be a disgrace. Maybe so. But no one should believe that virtue will be its own reward–certainly not between now and November.

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 18, 2010.
From time to time TDS publishes “strategy white papers” that provide an in-depth analysis of major strategic issues facing the Democratic Party and its leaders. Today we are publishing a new strategy white paper by Andrew Levison, whose study of white-working-class voters dates back all the way to the 1970s.
Levison’s study begins by isolating non-college-educated white voters who are not attracted to the Tea Party Movement, but who are rapidly trending Republican, as an important strategic target for Democrats in 2010 and particularly in 2012. He then examines the often-heard proposition that a strong anti-corporate “populist” message is the key to attracting these voters, and finds it lacking in terms of the strong anti-government and anti-politics sentiments that have become an entrenched factor in the world views of many non-college educated voters in recent years. He instead suggests a comprehensive message of “government reform” that addresses the legitimate and perceived concerns of those white working class voters who are still open to persuasion, and that contextualizes progressive policy proposals in a way that makes them far more acceptable to skeptics of government and politics.
Levison’s paper, which draws on the extensive academic literature on the white working class, along with public opinion research, communications theory and sociological findings, provides, we believe, something of a landmark on a subject of perennial interest to progressives, and of considerable urgency given today’s political landscape. It also constitutes a good antidote to oversimplified media discussions of the Tea Party Movement and of “populism,” by looking at what non-college-educated voters actually think and how they process information on politics and government. It is well worth the time it takes to read, digest, and we hope, discuss with others.

This item by J.P. Green was first published on May 19, 2010.
Thoughtful Republicans won’t find much to cheer in the results of Tuesday elections, while both moderate and progressive Democrats are hailing the results.
In the special election to fill the PA-12 congressional seat vacated by the death of Rep. John Murtha, Democrat Mark Critz, a Murtha aide, beat Republican Tim Burns, who Critz will oppose again for the November general election. With 70 percent of precincts counted in the potential bellwether election, Critz lead Burns by a margin of 53-45 percent, according to Paul Pierce’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article.
Democrats were encouraged by the victory in the swing district (2-1 Democratic registration edge, but a Cook PVI rating of R+1), as DNC Chairman Tim Kaine noted:

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

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

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on May 14, 2010.
You already knew it, but WaPo columnist Michael Gerson puts it exceptionally-well in his op-ed today. As W’s former speechwriter and a GOP political operative, his concerns about the Latino vote are of interest. Here’s Gerson on why the GOP’s latest round of immigrant-bashing looks a lot like “political suicide”:

…it would be absurd to deny that the Republican ideological coalition includes elements that are anti-immigrant — those who believe that Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, are a threat to American culture and identity. When Arizona Republican Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth calls for a moratorium on legal immigration from Mexico, when then-Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) refers to Miami as a “Third World country,” when state Rep. Russell Pearce (R), one of the authors of the Arizona immigration law, says Mexicans’ and Central Americans’ “way of doing business” is different, Latinos can reasonably assume that they are unwelcome in certain Republican circles.
…Never mind that the level of illegal immigration is down in Arizona or that skyrocketing crime rates along the border are a myth. McCain’s tag line — “Complete the danged fence” — will rank as one of the most humiliating capitulations in modern political history.
Ethnic politics is symbolic and personal. Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gained African American support by calling Coretta Scott King while her husband was in prison. Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater lost support by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A generation of African American voters never forgot either gesture.

Coming after the debate over GOP-sponsored Proposition 187 in California and the disastrous (for Republicans) immigration debate during the last mid term elections, the new Arizona immigration law may well be strike three for the GOP regarding Hispanic voters in particular. (It will probably hurt some with all voters of color). Gerson cites a 2008 poll by the Pew Hispanic Center, which indicated that 49 percent of Hispanics believed “Democrats had more concern for people of their background,” while only 7 percent believed it true of Republicans. Says Gerson, “Since the Arizona controversy, this gap can only have grown. In a matter of months, Hispanic voters in Arizona have gone from being among the most pro-GOP in the nation to being among the most hostile.”
Gerson trots out some interesting demographic data to underscore his point:

…Hispanics make up 40 percent of the K-12 students in Arizona, 44 percent in Texas, 47 percent in California, 54 percent in New Mexico. Whatever temporary gains Republicans might make feeding resentment of this demographic shift, the party identified with that resentment will eventually be voted into singularity. In a matter of decades, the Republican Party could cease to be a national party.

Gerson tries to conclude on a hopeful note for his GOP brethren, pointing out that Hispanics tend to be “socially-conservative” and “entrepreneurial,” adding that “…Republicans do not need to win a majority of the Latino vote to compete nationally, just a competitive minority of that vote.” But cold logic forces his final sentence: “But even this modest goal is impossible if Hispanic voters feel targeted rather than courted.”
The rapidly-tanking GOP brand in Latino communities is one of the reasons why Republican leaders are so excited by Hispanic candidates like Marco Rubio in Florida — they think it helps project an image that they are Hispanic-friendly, despite their miserable track record on issues of Latino concern. Sort of a ‘Potemkin village” with large smiling portraits in the front and very little behind it.
Dems have been given a gift by the xenophobic wing of the GOP. That doesn’t, insure, however, that Latino voters will always turn out for Dems. But it does strongly suggest that Dems have much to gain by supporting accelerated naturalization of Hispanics applying for citizenship, investing in Hispanic registration and GOTV and especially by recruiting and training more Latino candidates.