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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more…

This item by James Vega was originally published on November 29, 2012.
One of the most significant – and least explained – strategic errors the Obama team made after the 2008 election was to essentially demobilize the massive campaign organization they had developed during the campaign. Had they not done so, that powerful grass roots organization could have provided a progressive-democratic counterweight to the tea party, it could have mobilized support for the health care reform bill and it could have played a significant role in minimizing the Democratic losses in the 2010 elections.
As a result, it is encouraging to note that the Obama team does not seem to be contemplating a similar demobilization of the 2012 campaign organization after this recent election. Two weeks ago Obama for America sent out an e-mail asking supporters to fill out a survey describing their experiences in the campaign and expressing in their own words how they would like to see the organization operate in the future.
Over a million Obama supporters replied to the questionnaire – an absolutely stunning number, it should be noted — and apparently many if not most strongly advocated for an energetic, ongoing role for the organization. Here is how a follow up e-mail from OFA characterized the response:

Here are a few comments from supporters like you about the road ahead. We fought for the chance to continue moving our country forward for the next four years, and it’s up to each one of us to follow through on this remarkable opportunity:
“This organization has tapped into the enthusiasm of Americans that were previously on the sidelines of the political process. These Americans are now fully engaged and aware of the policies that are being advanced that will impact their lives and the lives of future generations. They are excited, ready, and willing to do whatever is within their power to influence policy makers to pass legislation that reflects and responds to the issues of our times.” — Rita, Virginia
“Create an engaged community of people that keeps the momentum alive and ensures that progressive policy is implemented at local, state, and national levels. Community here is the operative word! Build and enhance local organizing groups. Would be happy to be included in a local group and lead such a group.” — Merida, Illinois
“Don’t let the energy of the re-election slip through your fingers. This is a very powerful network of people.” — Joel, Texas
We’re going to put your survey responses to good use. Over the next month or two, a team of campaign staff from across the country is working on a project to document and analyze the work we did over the past 19 months, identifying both strengths and areas for improvement. Our goal is to pass along what we’ve learned from the 2012 campaign.
You’re the reason President Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, and your input from surveys and calls is crucial to this project. So please stay tuned. We’re putting together a final report that will be available to the public, so that your voices continue to shape the future.
Jeremy Bird
National Field Director
Obama for America

The fact that OFA will issue a public report is particularly significant. The publication of that document will provide the platform for a massive intra-Democratic discussion and a springboard for establishing the OFA field organization into a permanent grass roots base of activists and supporters for the Democratic Party.
There will be some complicated decisions required. A new and innovative grass roots Democratic organization should not be built as simply another multi-issue progressive organization, duplicating efforts that are already in existence, nor should it be just a passive fundraising/GOTV tool of the DNC that only operates for a few months before elections. It needs to combine elements of both these models as well as incorporating useful operational lessons from the Tea Party movement as well.
For the moment, however, the critical fact is that a national conversation among the coalition of Obama supporters about the future of the organization will indeed take place and provide the opportunity to convert the impressive organization created in 2012 into an ongoing grass-roots foundation for the Democratic Party.
Having promised to have a public discussion of a public report, OFA is no longer in a position to repeat the massive mistake they made in 2008 when they allowed the vast energy, excitement and enthusiasm of the campaign to dissipate. All Dems should closely follow and be ready to actively contribute to the discussion that will inevitably emerge when the final report is issued.

This item by Ed Kilgore, James Vega and J.P. Green was originally published on November 15, 2012.
Although it is only a few days since the 2012 election ended, the national media is already settling into a familiar political narrative regarding the GOP, a narrative that goes as follows: the Republican Party, having suffered major setbacks at the polls, is now “reassessing” its approach and seeking ways to “moderate” its image and positions.
This is a profoundly comfortable and comforting narrative – one that reflects a kind of ceremonial ritual in American politics. A political party, chastened by defeat, is widely praised by mainstream commentators as it moves back toward the center, re-establishing the basic “balance” and “moderation” of American political life.
But in this case there is one overwhelming problem with this narrative: it is profoundly and dangerously wrong.
Beginning last spring, a growing chorus of influential observers and commentators – political moderates and centrists rather than partisan progressive Democrats — began to express a very different view of the GOP – a view that the Republican Party was no longer operating as a traditional American political party. Rather, they argued, it had evolved into an extremist political party of a kind not previously seen in American political life.
During the presidential campaign this perspective was temporarily set aside as journalists and commentators tried to keep up with the almost daily twists and turns of Mitt Romney’s reinventions of himself as a conservative, a moderate and then a conservative once again. But now that the election is over, the underlying issue must be squarely faced.
The first major statement expressing the view that the Republican Party had embraced a dangerous extremism appeared in a very influential Washington Post article, “Let’s just say it, the Republicans are the problem” written by the well known and widely respected congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. As the article’s key paragraph said:

In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition… [It has] all but declared war on the government….

The two authors quoted Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, who wrote an anguished diatribe about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades.

“The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,”

Mann and Ornstein’s forceful critique provided the impetus for other moderates and centrists to follow their lead and directly address the growing extremism within the GOP. James Fallows, for example, expressed the view as follows in The Atlantic:

Normally I shy away from apocalyptic readings of the American predicament…But when you look at the sequence from Bush v. Gore, through Citizens United…and you combine it with ongoing efforts in Florida and elsewhere to prevent voting from presumably Democratic blocs; and add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we’d identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.
Liberal democracies like ours depend on rules but also on norms — on the assumption that you’ll go so far, but no further, to advance your political ends. The norms imply some loyalty to the system as a whole that outweighs your immediate partisan interest.

American politics has always been open to the full and free expression of even the most extreme ideas, but the profound danger posed by the current extremism of the GOP lies in one deeply disturbing fact: the Republican Party’s extremism goes far beyond support for extreme public policies. Instead, in three key respects, it deliberately seeks to undermine basic norms and institutions of democratic society.
The two very different meanings of political extremism
To clearly demonstrate this, however, it is necessary to carefully distinguish between two entirely distinct meanings of the term “political extremism.”
On the one hand, it is possible for a person or political party to hold a wide variety of very “extreme” opinions on issues. These views may be crackpot (e.g. “abolish all courts and judges”) or repugnant (“deny non-insured children all medical care”). But as long as the individual or political party that holds these views conducts itself within the norms and rules of a democratic society, its right to advocate even the most extreme views is protected by those same democratic institutions.
The alternative definition of the term “political extremism” refers to political parties or individuals who do not accept the norms, rules and constraints of democratic society. These individuals or parties embrace a view of “politics as warfare” and of political opponents as literal “enemies” who must be crushed. Extremist political parties based on a “politics as warfare” philosophy emerged on both the political left and right at various times in the 20th century and in many different countries and circumstances.
Despite their ideological diversity, extremist political parties share a large number of common characteristics, one critical trait being a radically different conception of the role and purpose of a political party in a democratic society. In the “politics as warfare” perspective a political party’s objective is defined as the conquest and seizure of power and not sincere collaboration in democratic governance. The party is viewed as a combat organization whose goal is to defeat an enemy, not a representative organization whose job is to faithfully represent the people who voted for it. Political debate and legislative maneuvering are seen not as the means to achieve ultimate compromise, but as forms of combat whose only objective is total victory.
It is this “politics as warfare” view of political life that leads logically and inevitably to the justification of attempts to attack and undermine basic democratic institutions whenever and wherever they present a roadblock to achieving the ultimate goal of complete ideological victory.
Three tactics of political extremism
The new moderate and centrist critics of Republican extremism have noted three specific kinds of attacks that the GOP has launched on basic American democratic norms and institutions.

Read more…

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on November 10, 2012.
We know you’re sick of politics and you would like to give it a rest for a while. But Michael Tomasky’s post, “The Obama Coalition in the Off Years” at The Daily Beast has one of the best ideas yet for the mid-term elections, and you should check it out before it fades off the political radar screen. Noting that 2012 voter turnout was near 60 percent, Tomasky explains:

Some rich liberals need to fund a public-education group that will work full-time to make sure the liberal blocs and constituencies come out and vote in off-year elections…And off-year turnout is down around 40 percent. The 20 percent who leave the system are almost entirely Democrats. This has been true all my life. It’s basically because old people always vote, and I guess old white people vote more than other old people, and old white people tend to be Republican. So even when white American isn’t enraged as it was in 2010, midterms often benefit Republicans.

Conceding the exceptions of ’98 and ’06, Tomasky continues,

As long as this is true, the country’s progressive coalition will spend forever taking one step forward in presidential years, and one step back in off years. But imagine if the Obama coalition had voted, even in decent numbers, in 2010. The Democrats might still well have the House.
If liberal blocs can be conditioned in a generation’s time to vote in every federal election, well, combine that with what we know to be the coming demographic changes, and the electoral pressure on Republicans would be constant and enormous. The Republican white voting pool has limits, so the GOP would have to compete even harder for brown and black votes, which would pull our politics even more to the left.
A long-term project along these lines would be $20 million (or whatever) very well spent for some rich liberal who cares about changing the country.

Tomasky’s idea has added appeal, considering that in 2014 an unusually high number of Democratic senators will be up for re-election in red and swing states (6 for each). As for the House, Cameron Joseph notes at The Hill:

On the House side, while Democrats will have some opportunities at districts they missed out on in California and elsewhere, heavily gerrymandered GOP maps in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin and North Carolina will continue to limit their opportunities.
Democrats tend to live in more urban areas, concentrating their votes into fewer congressional districts, and legally required “majority-minority” districts further pack Democrats into a few districts and make nearby districts more safely Republican.
According to a recent study by the Center for Voting and Democracy, Democrats start off with 166 safe districts while Republicans start off with 195. There are only 74 true swing districts where the presidential candidates won between 46 and 54 percent of the popular vote, down from 89 before redistricting.
That means the GOP needs to win less than one-third of competitive House seats to stay in control — something that shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish, barring a huge Democratic wave. In a politically neutral year Democrats are likely to have around 203 seats, a number that’s only slightly higher than the number they’ll have once the remaining 2012 races are called.

In addition, it’s just possible that some of the creative GOTV techniques Dems deployed so successfully this year could be transferable to the 2014 mid-terms. In any case, meeting the challenge of making the next mid-term electorate resemble this year’s general election demographics could help insure that progressive change replaces continued gridlock and stagnation.

This staff post was first published on November 7, 2012.
For insightful analysis of elections, it’s always good to check in with the National Journal‘s ace Ronald Brownstein, who observes today:

President Obama won a second term by marrying the new Democratic coalition with just enough of the old to overcome enduring economic disenchantment and a cavernous racial divide.
In many places, particularly across the Sun Belt, Obama mobilized the Democrats’ new “coalition of the ascendant,” winning enough support among young people, minorities and college-educated whites, especially women, to overcome very weak numbers among blue-collar whites and college-educated men. But in the upper Midwest, where there are not enough of those voters to win, Obama attracted just enough working-class whites to hold the critical battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Iowa, and above all Ohio against Mitt Romney’s forceful challenge.

Brownstein notes that with Obama’s victory, Democrats have matched the GOP record of winning the popular vote in 4 of 5 elections. he adds that “Obama also held all 18 “blue wall” states that have voted Democratic in each election since 1992. By doing so he set a new milestone: that is the most states Democrats have won that often since the formation of the modern party system in 1828.”
Brownstein explains that Obama adroitly rode the “tailwind” of demographic transformation, as people of color now cast 28 percent of the ballots in a presidential election, and Obama received 80 percent of their votes, “including not only more than nine in 10 African-Americans, but also about seven in 10 Hispanics, and about three in four Asians.”
“In the key Midwestern battlegrounds with much smaller minority populations,” adds Brownstein, “the president engineered a different formula for victory…Obama exceeded his national performance among white voters by just enough to repel Romney’s challenge” by successfully characterizing Romney as “an insensitive plutocrat.” yet, nationwide, “Obama captured a smaller share of the white vote than John Kerry did when he lost in 2004.”
In that way, the election offered warning signs to each party.
It’s a warning sign for Democrats, says Brownstein, but a disaster for Republicans: “By winning nearly three-fifths of whites, Romney matched the best performance among white voters ever for a Republican challenger–and yet he lost decisively in the Electoral College.” Brownstein adds,

…By failing to compete more effectively for the growing minority population, Republicans have lowered their ceiling in presidential politics, and left their nominees trying to thread a needle to reach a majority either in the popular or Electoral College vote.

Brownstein concludes of Obama’s re-election,

…His victory underscored the enduring polarization along ideological, regional, and racial lines: For instance, while about three-fifths of Hispanics and three-fourths of African-Americans who voted said they wanted his health care law maintained or even expanded, nearly three-fifths of whites said they wanted it repealed…How Washington makes progress on the biggest challenges we face while the nation is both deeply and closely divided is the largest question looming after Obama’s historic victory.

There is no question that President Obama and the Democrats have won an impressive mandate. The challenge ahead is to increase the comfort level of white working class voters as a permanent constituency in the new Democratic coalition.

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on October 30, 2012.
In his Washington Post article, “Hurricane Sandy highlights how Obama and Romney respond to disasters,” Ed O’Keefe describes the President’s course of action addressing frankenstorm Sandy:

…Obama has signed at least nine federal emergency disaster declarations in the past 24 hours at the request of state governors, directing FEMA to deploy more resources in anticipation of significant recovery efforts. He canceled campaign stops for Monday and Tuesday to return to the White House to oversee the federal government’s evolving storm response.
…Obama campaigned four years ago on a promise to revamp the federal government’s disaster-response functions and has embraced changes long sought by state governors and professional emergency managers. Since becoming president, he has led the federal response to multiple natural disasters, including tornadoes, flooding and major hurricanes, learning from government stumbles during the presidency of George W. Bush — most notably in the case of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Obama’s posture has been to order federal agencies to aggressively prepare for and respond to major storms and other disasters.

It’s a portrait of a president leaving no task unmet. O’Keefe sees “a moment of sharp contrast between President Obama and Mitt Romney and how their different ideas of governing apply to the federal response to large-scale disasters.” O’Keefe adds that “Obama has been aggressive about bolstering the federal government’s capability to respond to disasters, while his Republican challenger believes that states should be the primary responders in such situations and has suggested that disaster response could be privatized.” Further,

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney requested federal disaster assistance for storm cleanup, and he has toured storm-ravaged communities as a presidential candidate, but he has agreed with some who suggest that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be dissolved as part of budget cuts.
When moderator John King suggested during a June 2011 CNN debate that federal disaster response could be curtailed to save federal dollars, Romney said: “Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

At the time, Romney didn’t have much to say about, ahem, how states should work together when a natural disaster overlaps state borders, as they most always do. But in the Romney campaign’s partial walkback statement, we get this:

“Governor Romney believes that states should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions,” said campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. “As the first responders, states are in the best position to aid affected individuals and communities and to direct resources and assistance to where they are needed most. This includes help from the federal government and FEMA.”

Which is pretty much how the system works, as O’Keefe points out. He adds that the Romney campaign is also collecting supplies for the storm’s victims, which FEMA says is not such a good idea in the earliest part of the relief effort, because cash and blood donations are more urgently needed and donated supplies can cause logistical bottlenecks too early on.
After President Bush botched the Hurricane Katrina relief effort the agency has undergone major restructuring and reorganization under the leadership of President Obama and FEMA administrator Carl Fugate, as O’Keefe explains:

Fugate and Obama have earned praise for restoring the agency’s reputation in the years since Katrina. Despite working for then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as head of the state’s emergency agency, Fugate said he rebuffed overtures from George W. Bush to lead FEMA after Katrina, saying that the GOP administration did not want to rebuild the agency in the fashion since embraced by Obama.

O’Keefe adds that “Fugate has batted away questions before about possible privatization of his agency: “I’m too busy working on other stuff. Ask that to somebody who would give you the time and day to answer that,” he said in a 2011 interview. O’Keefe notes that Obama’s FEMA reforms have “earned plaudits from then-Gov. Haley Barbour (R) of Mississippi and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) of Louisiana — usually tough Obama critics — and professional emergency managers who had sought the changes for years.” O’Keefe concludes with a quote recalling Bush’s ‘Heckuvajob Brownie” mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina relief:

Obama’s changes at FEMA “have been night and day” compared with those under previous administrations, according to one veteran emergency manager who was not authorized to speak publicly for fear of jeopardizing federal disaster grant requests. “I don’t know who will be the next president, but they can’t put a political hack in the job of leading FEMA ever again.”

Some may protest that it’s unseemly to call attention to the differing approaches of the candidates in a time of national emergency, when Americans should be pulling together. But lives are at stake and it’s important that voters pay attention to the management philosophies and track records of the two candidates in addressing major disasters. This is a matter of national security as much as any foreign policy issue.
What voters are left with is an image of Romney posturing his ideologically-extravagant privatization schema and federal government-bashing, and a more grounded and experienced President Obama taking care of business. My hunch is that the clear distinction will not be lost on observant swing voters.