Just for fun, check out Professor Pollkatz’s chart depicting the relationship of Bush’s approval ratings to gas prices. It’s not two snakes doing a precision cha cha, but they do appear to be dancing to the same beat. The chart may appear a little blurry on some monitors, but it prints out quite nicely, landscape-wise.

Armchair and real world Dem strategists are directed to the April issue of the Washington Monthly, where Decembrist Mark Schmitt has a review article “Backseat Strategists: Do the Democratic Party’s harshest internal critics finally have a plan for building a political majority?” Schmitt discusses four books: Take It Back by James Carville and Paul Begala; Foxes in the Henhouse by Steve Jarding and Dave ‘Mudcat’ Saunders; Hostile Takeover David Sirota; and Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics by Jerome (My DD) Armstrong and Markos (Daily Kos) Moulitsas Zuniga.
Schmitt is most enamored with Crashing the Gate, but provides perceptive commentary on all four of the books. It’s not a long article, but it is highly reccomended as an introduction to the current thinking of some of the Dems’ brighter strategists.

Amid the oceans of ink on the Feingold censure proposal dust-up, WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. nails the heart of the dilemma facing Dems in creating a unified strategy. As Dionne says in his most recent column:

Democrats, unlike Republicans, have yet to develop a healthy relationship between activists willing to test and expand the conventional limits on political debate and the politicians who have to calculate what works in creating an electoral majority.
For two decades, Republicans have used their idealists, their ideologues and their loudmouths to push the boundaries of discussion to the right. In the best of all worlds, Feingold’s strong stand would redefine what’s “moderate” and make clear that those challenging the legality of the wiretapping are neither extreme nor soft on terrorism.
That would demand coordination, trust and, yes, calculation involving both the vote-counting politicians and the guardians of principle among the activists. Republicans have mastered this art. Democrats haven’t.

And then the nut question that requires a thoughtful answer from from all Dems who prefer winning to endless factional disputes:

Turning a minority into a majority requires both passion and discipline. Bringing the two together requires effective leadership. Does anybody out there know how to play this game?

Dionne is right. Surely there is some way that reasonable Dems can debate this issue and other questions of strategy and timing in a way that doesn’t fracture their shared oppostion to GOP domination. We’re not asking for a kumbaya love-in between Dem elected/party officials on the one hand and blogosphere/grassroots activists on the other. But it’s time for a mutual recognition that the circular firing squad has not served Dems well in the past, and better coordination on matters of timing and strategy would add some much-needed tensile strength to the greater Democratic coalition.
Doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

by EDM Staff
The Christian Science Monitor’s Josh Burek has a spirit-lifter for Dems seeking inroads in the Mountain West. In “Once-Republican Rockies Now A Battleground,” Burek argues that swing state Colorado is trending purple:

The state’s transformation from Rocky Mountain redoubt for conservative values to a proving ground for progressive policies is yielding more competitive elections here – and offering Democrats across the country a model for resurgence.

Burek quotes Denver-based pollster Floyd Ciruli: “We’re probably the No. 1 battleground in the country.” Democrats, Ciruli says, “are anxious to replicate what’s going on out here.”
Burek cites a “flurry of victories” for Dems in Colorado:

In 2004, despite a major voter- registration advantage for Republicans, and the popularity of President Bush, voters added two Democrats – brothers John and Ken Salazar – to its congressional delegation. That same fall, voters famous, or infamous, for parsimony approved $4.7 billion in transit funding, siding with Denver’s Democratic mayor instead of the state’s Republican governor. Democrats have been piling on victories ever since…And this fall, Democrats have strong prospects to win back the governor’s chair.

One key reason for the political tilt to the Dems is a large influx of independent voters, who refuse to jerk their knees in support of every ill-considered GOP policy. About one-third of the Colorado electorate is new since 1992, according to Burek. As Mark Cavanaugh, a policy analyst for the centrist Bighorn Center explains in the article, “The state is full of informed, unaffiliated voters…not driven by bumper-sticker-like messages.”
Burek believes Colorado is not alone in the Mountain West, and offers Dems a hopeful prognosis:

It’s a tipping point that spans the Continental Divide. In 1999, every state in the region – Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona – had a Republican governor. By the end of 2006, only Utah and Idaho may have one.

If he’s right, Colorado and a couple of other states in the region could be seriously blue by ’08.

by Pete Ross
Dems who bought into the meme that, well John McCain is too moderate to get the GOP presidential nomination should check out Paul Krugman’s recent NYT article “The Right’s Man.” Krugman demolishes this myth in short order with such nuggets as:

…At a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger – Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.

and:

When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of “rogue state rollback,” anticipating the “Bush doctrine” of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Mr. McCain’s aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.

or:

He isn’t a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don’t have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation’s central provision show that he’s a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.

McCain is particularly adept at getting ‘mainstream’ journalists to describe him as a moderate, and he has a unique knack for appealing for bipartisanship in dulcet tones. I know several otherwise intelligent people who have been seduced by McCain’s style into ignoring his conservative record — to the right of 97 out of 100 U.S. Senators, according to one study cited by Krugman.
As the most mediagenic of Republican candidates, at least with respect to political moderates, McCain merits some extra scrutiny. There’s more in Krugman’s piece, and reality-based moderates — and Dems who want to better understand one of their shrewdest adversaries — are strongly urged to read the entire article.

By Alan Abramowitz
An analysis of National Election Study data on voting patterns in midterm elections between 1982 (when the NES began asking a presidential approval question) and 2004 indicates that voters with strong opinions of the president’s performance are more likely to base their House vote on their opinion of the president than voters with only weak opinions. Moreover, voters with strong negative opinions are by far the most likely to base their House vote on their opinion of the president.
Across these six midterm elections, the average percentage of each group whose House vote was consistent with its opinion of the president’s job performance was as follows:
Strongly approve 72%
Weakly approve 49%
Weakly disapprove 70%
Strongly disapprove 85%
With 44% of the public now strongly disapproving of George Bush’s performance, these results provide further reason to expect substantial Democratic gains in the 2006 midterm elections.

By Alan Abramowitz
1. A substantial majority of Americans now believe Bush to be incapable of managing the government, which is one of the core responsibilities of any president.
2. Bush’s approval has fallen to 59 percent among conservatives–the lowest level of his presidency. This is another sign that the base is beginning to erode.
3. The percentage of Americans who strongly disapprove of Bush (44%)is the highest of his presidency. Strong disapprovers outnumber strong approvers by more than two to one. This has important implications for the midterm election because voters with the strongest views on Bush are the most likely to vote and the most likely to vote based on their opinion of the president.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s March 7 WaPo column “The Democrats’ Real Problem” puts some needed perspective on all the hand-ringing about the Democrats’ supposed lack of a coherent message:

The stories about the Democrats are by no means flatly false — Democrats don’t yet have a fully worked-out alternative program — but they are based on a false premise, and they underestimate what I’ll call the positive power of negative thinking.
The false premise is that oppositions win midterm elections by offering a clear program, such as the Republicans’ 1994 Contract With America. I’ve been testing this idea with such architects of the 1994 “Republican revolution” as former representative Vin Weber and Tony Blankley, who was Newt Gingrich’s top communications adviser and now edits the Washington Times editorial page.
Both said the main contribution of the contract was to give inexperienced Republican candidates something to say once the political tide started moving the GOP’s way. But both insisted that it was disaffection with Bill Clinton, not the contract, that created the Republicans’ opportunity — something Bob Dole said at the time.

Dionne offers Dems a reality check worth considering:

The Democrats’ real problem is that they have failed to show how their critique of the Republican status quo is the essential first step toward the alternative program they will owe the voters in the presidential year of 2008…the shortcoming of Democratic leaders is not that they don’t have a program but that they have not yet convinced opinion makers that fighting bad policies is actually constructive — and that, between presidential elections, keeping matters from getting worse is sometimes the most positive alternative on offer.

Dems will do fine in ’06 and ’08, if we make it clear that the Democratic Party stands for competence and honesty in government, peace, human rights and economic progress for working people — in stark contrast to the GOP’s deepening Iraq quagmire and lengthening record of corruption and incompetence.

EDM contributor Alan Abramowitz has a must-read op-ed in the Sunday WaPo, “What’s Behind Those Poll Numbers?” Abramowitz argues that Bush’s tanking approval numbers can be attributed to “a growing perception that he simply isn’t competent.” Abramowitz argues further that,

Competence is not a partisan issue. Last week’s polls found that somewhere between 34 and 40 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s job performance. That is discouraging enough. But for Bush and his political advisers what may be more disturbing is the fact that his approval rating among Republicans had fallen to 72 percent, 10 to 15 percentage points lower than the president’s previous level of support from his party’s voters. It’s a sign that even supporters are beginning to question Bush’s effectiveness.

Abramowitz cites the Administration’s history of bungled crises-management, including the Harriet Miers disaster and other examples of poor leadership, especially the Ports deal, which he sees as a major turn for the worse:

While escalating violence in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and Hurricane Katrina damaged the president’s standing among Democrats and independents, his support from his fellow Republicans remained largely intact — until the ports deal was announced.
…, the takeover is just plain unpopular — with Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. According to last week’s CBS News poll, 58 percent of Republicans along with 71 percent of independents and 78 percent of Democrats oppose the takeover.
Even more significantly, the way the port takeover was handled reinforced a growing impression among the public that nobody is really in charge in the Bush White House. How could the president not even have been consulted on an issue directly involving national security, Bush’s strong suit in the minds of most Americans and especially most Republicans?

Abramowitz believes Bush’s image of incompetence could be contagious for GOP congressional candidates in the November elections:

Unlike the president, congressional Republicans have to face the voters this November. Even though most represent safe Republican districts, only six Senate seats and 16 House seats would have to change hands to give Democrats control of Congress, and there is growing concern among Republicans that they could lose their grip on both chambers if the midterm election turns into a referendum on a president with approval ratings in the thirties or worse.

Abramowitz makes a compelling case that competence could be the pivotal issue in upcoming elections, and his article is highly recommended to Democratic strategists at all levels.

By Alan Abramowitz
Even though only 15 Republican Senate seats are up in 2006 compared with 18 Democratic seats, the latest Surveyusa approval ratings of all 100 U.S. senators provide reason for optimism for Democrats. Six GOP incumbents whose seats are up this year received approval ratings below 50% including Conrad Burns of Montana (42%), Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (43%), Mike DeWine of Ohio (43%), John Kyl of Arizona (47%), Jim Talent of Missouri (48%), and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island (49%). All except Kyl appear likely to face serious, well-funded Democratic challengers in the fall. Recent polls show Santorum and Talent trailing their likely Democratic challengers and Burns, DeWine, and Chafee locked in close contests. In contrast, only two Democratic incumbents whose seats are up this year received approval ratings below 50%. Bill Nelson’s approval rating was 49% in the latest poll of Florida voters, but his disapproval rating was a relatively low 34% and he has consistently led his likely GOP challenger, former FL Secretary of State Katherine Harris, by a comfortable margin in recent polls. Debbie Stabenow’s approval rating was also 49% but her disapproval rating was only 39% and she, too, has been leading her potential Republican challengers by wide margins in recent polls. Democrats need to gain six seats to take control of the Senate. With at least five vulnerable GOP incumbents and a promising open seat contest in Tennessee where Republican majority leader Bill Frist is retiring, a pickup of six seats is not out of the question. At a minimum, Democrats are likely to gain several seats in the upper chamber and be well positioned to regain control in 2008 when a larger group of Republican seats will be up.