Kos riffs on US News & World Report’s update on the progress of DNC Chair Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” and the conflict with the agendas of DCCC’s Rahm Emanuel and DSCC’s Chuck Schumer. Explains Kos:

Folks at the DSCC and DCCC have to think short-term. That’s their job. That’s why we have a DNC — to work towards building a long-term, healthy, viable national party. That there’s friction is perhaps a feature, not a bug of the system…in the long-term, a healthy national Democratic Party will make the jobs of future heads of the DSCC and DCCC much easier.

In the US News article, author Dan Gilgore reports on the DNC’s promising progress in Mississippi, and gives fair vent to the DCCC’s and DSCC’s concern that ’06 campaign funding is being damaged by the DNC’s long-term focus:

Grousing about insufficient funds from the DNC, Emanuel recently told Roll Call “there is no cavalry financially for us.” Emanuel declined interview requests, but DCCC sources say more money should go to Democratic candidates in tight races, not to field organizers in long-shot red states.

The stakes are high indeed, as Gilgore notes:

A big bet. With the future of the Democratic Party at stake, Republicans are watching closely, too. “Dean could wind up looking like a genius eventually,” says a top GOP strategist. “Or this could be the election that could have been.”
…the 50-State Strategy, for the time being, is focused more on keeping or regaining control of state legislatures, which have taken on more national political value because they draw the lines for U.S. House seats. In Mississippi, Democrats control the Legislature but have lost dozens of seats recently. In Arizona, Republicans are three seats away from veto proof majorities in the state House and Senate. The state Democratic Party there has used its DNC field organizers to do aggressive outreach to American Indians and Hispanics, particularly during the huge immigrant rights protests earlier this year. “The DNC has enabled us to become part of the fabric of these communities,” says Arizona party chair David Waid. “There used to be this sense of coming around only when we wanted your vote.”

It’s a tough call, and the article has a lot more to say about the consequences and choices involved in allocating resources short-term vs. long term.

Zachary A. Goldfarb has a WaPo update on the battle for the youth vote in the mid-terms and ’08, which should be of interest to Dem campaign staffers and strategists. According to Goldfarb, Dems can be cautiously optimistic about younger voters. First, with respect to turnout:

In 2004, young people voted in the highest percentage they had since 1992, and in the third-highest percentage in the nine presidential elections since a constitutional amendment in 1971 lowered the voting age to 18…in the 2004 presidential election, when the overall electorate showed a four-percentage-point increase in turnout from 2000, the turnout rate among people ages 18 to 24 increased by 11 points — to 47 percent from 36 percent. In 2005, overall voter turnout declined in the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, except for the student-dense precincts with big voter turnout projects.

Goldfarb’s article highlights the efforts of a new organization, Youth Voter Strategies and cites an encouraging trend for Dems:

…Recently, the group has been showcasing the results of a poll on young voters done with prominent pollsters Ed Goeas, a Republican, and Celinda Lake, a Democrat. The poll found that young people believe Democrats are better equipped to handle their top concerns — gas prices, education and the economy — by a wide margin.

Democrats are emphasizing college affordability as a hot button issue with young voters, according to Goldfarb. He also offers an interesting clue for longer-range Democratic strategy from pollster Lake.

Lake said she has told Democrats they have “a major opportunity” to nurture the future of the party. “The long-term studies show that if you capture a cohort in their youth three times in a row, then you hold their party identification for the rest of their life,” she said.

But, as Goldfarb’s article points out, it’s not all about text messaging, cell phone and internet chatter, and stresses the importance of “peer-to-peer efforts in the offline world” and good, old-fashioned Election Day reminders.

Despite the glut of articles decrying the Democrats lack of vision, message, unity etc., when it comes to rank and file “enthusiasm” for voting for Democratic candidates, the Party is in exceptionally-good shape. According to the most recent Pew Research Center poll conducted 6/14-19, Democrats hold a “sizable” voter enthisiasm advantage over the GOP, with 46 percent of Democratic RV’s saying they are “more enthusiastic about voting than usual,” compared to just 30 percent of Republican RV’s saying the same. As the Pew report concludes:

…the level of enthusiasm about voting among Democrats is unusually high, and is atypically low among Republicans. In fact, Democrats now hold a voter enthusiasm advantage that is the mirror image of the GOP’s edge in voter zeal leading up to the 1994 midterm election.
…What is particularly notable this year is the anti-incumbent sentiment expressed by independent voters. Fully 38% of independents want their member of Congress to be replaced, significantly more than said the same in 1994 (29%).

The poll also found that 51 percent of Americans favor the Democratic candidate in their district, compared to 39 percent favoring Republican candidates.

Former Assistant Secretary of State James P. Rubin has an interesting suggestion for Democratic strategists in his NYT op-ed “A War Democrats Can Win.” Rubin says:

Back in Washington last week, partisan warfare had erupted over a Democratic proposal to establish a timeline for withdrawing American forces from Iraq. Even though the top commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., was working on just such a plan, Republicans battered the Democrats as quitters, unwilling to hang tough in the fight against terrorism.
Next time, the Democrats should try a different strategy. Instead of calling for troop cuts in Iraq, they should call for transferring forces and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan.

It’s not a new idea, and it has been suggested from time to time by different Dem leaders in recent years. But making it a major, unifying theme just might provide a credible exit strategy for Democrats. Rubin argues further:

By forcing a debate on transferring American forces back to Afghanistan, the Democrats can avoid the trap of allowing Republicans to claim they are weak. They can argue that their proposal is not a withdrawal from the front, but rather a deployment to an equally important front where American leadership can make the difference in securing a long-term victory….If nothing else, such a debate would focus attention on the Bush administration’s failure to finish the job in Afghanistan.
Americans know that Iraq has become a drain on our resources and reputation, but they are wary of giving up. On the other hand, since the Sept. 11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan, public support for finally finishing off the Taliban and their allies in Al Qaeda can be sustained for a long time to come.

Rubin doesn’t explore the political fallout of different scenarios we might leave behind in Iraq. But the merits of Democratic candidates talking about transferring troops instead of withdrawing them deserve consideration.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding most of DeLay’s redistricting scam, WaPo‘s Charles Babington assesses the Democrats’ opportunity and willingness to pursue a more aggressive redistricting strategy of their own. Babington’s article, “Democrats Not Eager to Emulate Texas’s Redistricting,” says that the list of states where a stronger Dem reapportionment strategy is feasable is “remarkably short”:

Several states assign the redistricting task to commissions, shielding the process from partisan control. Some states, such as Texas, are controlled by Republicans. Many others have divided government, in which neither party controls both the governorship and the two legislative chambers, making blatantly partisan redistricting impossible. Finally, some Democratic-controlled states have already carved out all the Democratic-leaning House districts they can, leaving no room for gains.
The result, redistricting experts say, yields perhaps four states where Democrats conceivably could try a mid-decade gerrymander comparable to that of Texas’s: Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico and Louisiana. In each one, however, such a move seems unlikely because of factors that include racial politics, Democratic cautiousness and even a hurricane’s impact.

However, the balance of power in the states could change significantly in November if the Dems pick up a few key state legislatures and governorships, opening up fresh redistricting opportunities. (For a map depicting which states have both of their state legislatures controlled by the Dems or GOP, click here.) More disturbing is that the Democratic will to play redistricting hardball may not be there, according to Babington. He quotes DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel describing the response to his efforts to get some pro-Democratic redistricting in the states: “I couldn’t get enough fellow Democrats to see the benefits of that.” Babington cites similar reluctance on the part of Democratic leaders in other states.
The SCOTUS decision serves notice that the rules of redistricting have changed. We can be sure only that the Republicans will not hesitate to ruthlessly exploit every possible chance to tweak reapportionment maps in their favor in the years ahead, and their Texas pick-ups could be replicated in several other states. If Democrats don’t respond with equal fervor, securing and retaining a stable majority of congress is unlikely.
For a comprehesive guide to the redistricting methods of the 50 states, click here, and then select states in the left-hand column.

L.A. Times reporter Janet Hook’s “Meet the Powers Behind the Democrats’ Strategy” profiles DSCC Chair Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, chair of the DCCC. Hook credits both men with “an aggressive intensity.” She also discusses their conflict over campaign spending with Howard Dean and the politics behind some of their controversial decisions on strategy, including Schumer’s tradition-breaking endorsement of primary candidates.

A couple of articles about the politics of Iraq withdrawal merit a read by Democrats searching for policy consensus on this issue. Trudy Rubin’s Philly News column is generating some buzz among the progressive blogs. She points out that Iraqi leaders want US toops “drawn down” within 18 months, but don’t want “an explicit timeline”:

Instead, they favor a “road map” for troop reductions, that depends on achieving a set of goals for improving Iraqi security. They want dates, but dates that depend on meeting those targets…As for Democrats, they should stop obsessing over timelines. The Republicans and Iraqis will set those soon enough.
Instead, Democrats should focus on the issue of competence. They must convince voters they are more capable of salvaging the Iraq mess than the incompetents who created it.

And The Washington Monthly‘s Kevin Drum explains in his post on Rubin’s column that she and Iraqi leaders:

..appear to believe that an open-ended commitment to the occupation of Iraq is a bad idea, and that a vague commitment to drawing down U.S. forces that’s something short of a firm timetable is a good idea. On that score, 38 out of 44 Senate Democrats seem to agree.
…This is not precisely what the Reed-Levin resolution called for, but it’s pretty close: make at least a small start on troop drawdowns this year; don’t set a specific timetable for further drawdowns; but do insist that the Bush administration submit a redeployment plan by the end of the year that specifies “estimated dates…with the understanding that unexpected contingencies may arise.”

Meanwhile, over at Mystery Pollster, Mark Blumenthal offers insightful analysis in several posts on recent polls measuring U.S. opinion on Iraq withdrawal.

Ari Berman’s article in The Nation, “Where’s the Plan Democrats?” should be of interest to anyone involved in Democratic politics. Berman assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Dems’ readiness for the November elections, and explains what the DNC, DSCC and DCCC are doing to get the vote out for ’06 and beyond. He sees a stronger-than-usual GOP GOTV effort, but credits the Dems with significant improvement in fund-raising and mobilizing key constituencies. Berman also discusses Howard Dean’s emphasis on longer-term strategy, compared with the focus on November ’06 advocated by Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel.

The GOP appears to be anchoring its ’06 campaign hopes on stigmatizing Democratic candidates as weak on Iraq and terrorism, according to L.A. Times reporters Doyle McManus and Peter Wallsten.
GOP leaders, including President Bush and Rep. John Boehner this week accused Democrats of “defeatism,” advocating “special priviledges for terorrists” and wanting to “wave the white flag of surrender.” But blaming the Democrats may be a very tough sell for the GOP, and their timing is not the best, as the authors explain:

The environment is not entirely hospitable. A car bomb killed scores of people in a busy Baghdad market Saturday, a day after the Army announced that American soldiers were accused of raping an Iraqi woman and then killing her and three family members. Polls find most voters say they want to see Democrats take control of Congress this fall.

Democrats will likely be ready for the GOP to do its worst. Responding to Boehner’s accusing the Dems of being soft on al-Qaeda, Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Minorty Leader Nancy Pelosi replied:

Republicans are resorting to their tired tactics of distort, distract and divide. Instead of actually doing something to protect our nation, such as implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations or hiring more border control agents, they are doing what that always do: trying to incite fear and attack Democrats. It won’t work.

A good strong reply, and it is likely that other Dem leaders will not hesitate to point out the Administration’s failure to secure America’s ports and the weak response to disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as an indication of the Administration’s preparedness for possible terrorist acts. As the authors point out, races in the House, where the Dems are more likely to win a majority, will be less likely than the Senate to turn on foreign policy issues.

The new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll just out gives the GOP a lot to worry about. The poll, conducted 6/24-27, paints “a gloomy picture for the Republicans in Congress,” with Dems poised to make substantial gains in the November elections.
The poll indicates Dems enjoy a 14-point advantage among registered voters in races for congressional seats “if elections were held today.” The poll also reveals a widening gender gap, more like a gender gulf, really, with women now giving Dems a 26 point advantage in their congressional districts. The poll found that 54 percent of all respondents wanted the Dems to control both houses of congress.
The poll also indicates that, even though Bush apparently gets a small post-Zarqawi bump in his approval ratings, he is more of a liability for congressional candidates than an asset. More than one-third of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a congressional candidate who had Bush’s endorsement or who supported his policies, 45 percent said it would not matter and less than a fifth said they would be more likely to vote for a Bush-supported candidate.
The poll also addresses current opinion trends on a range of issues, including Iraq and immigration. For the time-challenged, LA Times columnist Ron Brownstein has a wrap-up here.