Not to pile on about the tanking of Arnold (see R. Michael Alvarez post below) and other GOP Govs, but My DD‘s Chris Bowers paints a very bright picture of Democratic prospects for taking the GOP-held governorships of several of the most populous States. Do visit his website and read “The Big Democratic Opportunity of 2006: Governors.” Here’s some teasers:

Ohio. Bob Taft has the lowest approval rating of any Governor in the nation. Mike DeWine has the lowest approval rating of any Senator up for re-election in 2006. Republicans in the state are embroiled in Coin-gate, and congressman Bob Ney is even deeper in Abramoff’s pocket than DeLay. Democrats can easily gain on every level here in 2006.
California. In the largest state in the Union, Schwarzenegger is circling the drain…
New York. Right now, there does not seem to be any realistic scenario under which Spitzer will not win this race in 2006. Already, he regularly leads Pataki with more than 50% of the vote, while Pataki rots in the thirties. Incumbents can’t pull out of tailspins like that….
Massachusetts. Multiple polls…have shown that Romney is in a lot of trouble in the most Democratic state in the nation.

Bowers discusses the Dems improving prospects in seven states in all, and savors the implications:

All seven of these states are ripe. Here is how sweet a sweep of these seven would be:
Right now, these are the seven largest states with Republican Governors, and combine for over 40% of the national population. Victory across the board would push Democrats in control of states worth around 400 electoral votes, rendering Republicans a small minority party when it comes to Governors.
Republican gerrymanders in Georgia, Ohio, Florida and Texas would be threatened, if not entirely done away with, come 2010. Control of elections in uber-swing states Florida and Ohio would no longer be in Republican hands.
The weakness of Republican Governors in large states presents Democrats with an opportunity to thoroughly reshape the American political landscape. We have waited some time for the Emerging Democratic majority to emerge, and these seven states represent our best chance to make it happen. This is our prize. This is our chance. We have to make it happen.

Steven Hill has a disturbing article in Mother Jones, “Why the Democrats Will Keep Losing: Biases built in to our electoral institutions hurt the Democratic Party every time.” Hill, author of Fixing Elections: The Failure of America’s Winner Take All Politics, says:

…what has been completely missing from the conversation is the fact that even when the Democrats win more votes, they don’t necessarily win more seats. That’s true in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and the Electoral College. That’s because there is a structural disadvantage for Democrats resulting from regional partisan demographics in red versus blue America that now are strongly embedded into our fundamental electoral institutions.
…Yet practically no one is talking about it. Even though this bias undercuts any attempts by liberals and Democrats to gain control over the government, and will continue to do so for years to come, no matter how many volunteers Democrats mobilize or how much money they raise, these sorts of structural barriers are being ignored.

Looking at the 2000 presidential election, for example, Hill notes:

Even though Al Gore won a half million more votes nationwide than George Bush in 2000, Bush beat Gore in 47 more of the 2002 congressional districts. And that’s up from a previous 19-seat edge, showing that trends are tilting Republican. The winner-take-all system distorts representation and the edge clearly gives Republicans an advantage, allowing them to win more than their fair share of seats. So the current Republican margin in the House of 232 to 203 — only 29 seats — actually is a decent showing for the Democrats. It will be exceedingly difficult for Democrats to improve on this.

In House of Reps races, Hill says:

When the two sides are tied nationally, the Republicans end up winning about 50 more House districts than the Democrats. Like the Conservatives in Britain, who in the UK’s recent elections won far fewer seats than Tony Blair’s Labour Party even though Labour only had 36% of the vote and 3% more than the Conservatives, the Democrats are undercut by regional partisan demographics funneled through a winner-take-all electoral system.
It turns out that there is a fundamental anti-urban (and thus anti-Democratic) bias with single-seat districts. The urban vote is more concentrated, and so it’s easier to pack Democratic voters into fewer districts. As Democratic redistricting strategist Sam Hirsch has noted, nice square districts are in effect a Republican gerrymander because they “combine a decade-old (but previously unnoticed) Republican bias” that along with a newly heightened degree of incumbent protection “has brought us one step closer to government under a United States House of Unrepresentatives.”

Hill’s analysis of the struggle for control of the U.S. Senate is also revealing:

The disproportionality is even worse in the United States Senate. Bush carried 31 of 50 states in 2004, showing Democrats’ near impossible battle to win a majority in the malapportioned Senate where each state, regardless of population size, has two U.S. Senators.
Yet the Democrats consistently win more votes for Senate than Republicans. The current 100 senators have been elected over the past three election cycles, dating back to the year 2000. According to Professor Matthew Shugart from University of California-San Diego, in those elections, over 200 million votes were cast in races choosing each of the fifty states’ two senators. The Republicans won 46.8% of the votes in these elections — not even close to a majority. The Democrats won 48.4% of the votes, more than the Republicans — yet the GOP currently holds a lopsided 55 to 44 majority. In 2004, over 51% of votes cast were for Democratic senatorial candidates, yet Republicans elected 19 of the 34 contested seats.
…The GOP has been over-represented in the Senate in nearly every election since 1958, primarily due to Republican success in low-population, conservative states in the West and South. Not surprisingly, the Senate is perhaps the most unrepresentative body in the world outside Britain’s House of Lords, with not only Democrats under-represented but only five of 100 seats held by racial minorities and only fourteen held by women.

Hill makes a strong case in his article that, even in 2004, when the electoral college appeared to almost work toward Kerry’s advantage, the GOP bias insured Bush’s victory. He concludes:

So from the Democratic Party perspective, the political geography does not work. In the current climate of Red vs. Blue America, any “emerging Democratic majority” must overcome an 18th-century political system that puts urban-centered Democrats at a decided disadvantage. As I wrote above, it’s like having a foot race in which one side (the Republicans) begins 10 yards in front of the other (the Democrats), election after election. It’s time to level the playing field.
But has this stark reality of our political landscape made a dent in liberal or Democratic understanding of “what to do?” Hardly. Instead, moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party have been cannibalizing each other over the no-win debate about the base versus swing voters. Or else they have been fiddling to the latest fad about Lakoffian reframing.
How convenient, to think you don’t have to engage in the hard work of enacting fundamental electoral reform, city by city and state-by-state, all you have to do is find better speechwriters and produce slicker TV ads and then the left can go back to its poetry nights.
It’s hard to hold out much hope for the Democratic Party as long as it remains railroaded by structural biases built-in to our basic electoral institutions of which they appear to be blissfully unaware.

Hill is correct that the electoral college and the U.S. Senate are fundamentally and irreparably anti-democratic, and a strong GOP bias corrupts many House Districts. But he ignores important demographic trends breaking significantly in the Dems’ favor (see Ruy Teixeira’s May 18 post, “Hunting for EV’s.”) Meanwhile, electoral reform will have to wait until Dems regain control of the executive and legislative branches and a majority of state legislatures. With that accomplished, a full-court press for a constitutional amendment providing direct popular election of the President would be good for starters. Until then, we have no choice but to fight harder, develop stronger candidates and build party unity.

Following the example of Nebraska, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack announced on June 17th that he would restore voting rights for all convicted felons who have completed their sentences in his state. When Vilsack signs the executive order on July 4th (a nice touch), he will make 80 thousand ex-felons eligible to vote.
Disenfranchisement of felons has been used by the GOP as a powerful tool for reducing the vote of African Americans in particular, who vote close to 9-1 Democratic in presidential elections. As Kate Zernicke explains in her article in today’s New York Times:

Nationally, about 4.7 million people are ineligible to vote because of felony convictions, about 500,000 of them war veterans, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to incarceration. About 1.4 million are black men.

This number represents about 13 percent of Black men, and in six states, one out of every four African American males have been disenfranchised as a result of felony convictions. In addition, convicted felons who are white often tend to be from impoverished and low-income families, another constituency which may lean Democratic.
The hope is that Vilsack’s example will inspire other states to take similar corrective measures. Currently, only Maine and Vermont give felons full voting rights, while other states have a patchwork of different restrictions, notes Zernicke:

According to the Right to Vote Campaign, which works to reverse laws preventing felons from voting, 14 states automatically restore voting rights to felons after they are released from prison; four states restore rights after ex-felons complete parole; and 18 states do so after they complete their prison sentence, parole and probation.
Iowa is one of five states – the others are Kentucky, Alabama, Florida and Virginia – that deny a vote to anyone convicted of a felony or an aggravated misdemeanor…Ryan King, a research associate at the Sentencing Project, said that about one million ex-felons, including 600,000 in Florida alone, would be eligible to vote if the four states with laws similar to Iowa’s granted voting rights to ex-felons

Movements to enfranchise felons who have served their time are underway across the nation, and lawsuits have been filed in behalf of them in several states. Of course there is no guarantee that, once enfranchised, ex-felons will exercize their voting rights. But Dems should take note that, given the statistics in Florida alone, it’s clear that this constituency could have a potent impact in election outcomes.

SurveyUSA has just released a report on the approval ratings of U.S. Senators, and the news is good. Of the 25 US Senators with the highest approval ratings, 17 are Democrats, plus Independent Jim Jeffords. Stated in reverse terms, only 7 of the 25 senators with the highest approval ratings are Republicans. Ed Kilgore over at New Donkey notes further:

Barack Obama is America’s most popular Senator in his own state, with a 72/21 approval/disapproval ratio. The least popular Senator is John Cornyn from Bush’s home state of Texas, who registers at 40/36. Notable 2006 target Rick Santorum actually has the highest disapproval rate of any Senator, with a 45/44 ratio. Ohio’s Mike DeWine continues to beg for a strong opponent in 2006, coming in at 44/43. Conrad Burns of MT is at a marginal 50/42 ratio. Supposedly vulnerable Democrat Ben Nelson is at a robust 64/26, while the other Nelson, Bill of Florida, is doing relatively well at 47/29.

Not too shabby — and it gets better. Republicans are 8 of the 10 senators with lowest approval ratings. True, it’s a little early for high-fives and it would be better, as Kilgore notes, if more of the GOP bottom-feeders were up for election in ’06. But as an overall trend indicator, the SurveyUSA report offers encouragement to Dems hoping for a net gain of 7 seats needed to regain a Senate majority.

Salon.com’s Tim Grieve continues his excellent series on Dems to watch with his interview with Virginia’s popular Governor Mark Warner, frequently mentioned as a presidential contender for ’08. Warner, Grieve says,

…got himself elected governor of Virginia in 2001 in large part by reaching out to rural voters who were supposed to be in the Republicans’ pocket. Warner sponsored a NASCAR team, used a bluegrass song as his campaign theme, and appealed directly to gun-loving hunters and sportsmen — and it worked.

Warner would bring impressive assets to a white house race. As Grieve notes,

He’s a governor, not a Washington politician; he’s got money and the ability to raise more; he’s got a base of supporters in the high-tech world; he’s a Southerner, or at least he is one now; he’s got crossover appeal because of his centrist views; and he’s got time because Virginia terms out its governors after just four years.

Warner says that “perhaps the most vulnerable entity in politics today is not the liberal Democrat but the moderate Republican.” But he says the Dems must “get past some of the cultural issues that just make us seem foreign.” Not surprisingly, Warner sees the “write-off the south” strategy as a sure loser for Democrats:

If Democrats do not commit to being a national party, competitive everywhere in this country, we do not only our party but our country a disservice. Because even if we elect a president on a 16- or 17-state strategy, we skip two-thirds of this country, and I’m not sure we truly set the agenda.

Warner describes the Dems greatest failure in ’04

There was discontent leading up to the 2004 election. Somehow, we didn’t have that aspirational, future-oriented, hopeful vision of America — we didn’t lay it out. We laid — “Here are the programs.”

Grieve does get Warner to outline various policy positions. But he also draws out Warner’s views about what the Democratic Party must do to win. Warner, who has established a federal political action committee, says Democrats have to focus more intently on crafting a future vision:

My starting premise is that I really think we need to change the framing of the political debate, from right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal, to future vs. past. The Democratic Party at its best has always been when it has been about the future…Democrats have to be a party that recognizes that, in a global economy, the way America is going to maintain its position in the world is by having the best educated workforce. Democrats should be the party that says America has got to lead the world not only with our military might but with our moral might as well. Democrats ought to be the party that represents innovation, investment in research.

On June 6, we took stock of the number of vulnerable Republican seats in 2006 and argued that Democrats did indeed have a shot at gaining enough seats to take back the House. A reader wrote in to say our argument was fine as far as it went….but it didn’t go far enough! I’m inclined to agree. Here’s the reader’s comment:

I just wanted to pass along a brief comment on your June 6 posting on “GOP Ethics Mess…”. I agree with you (and everyone else) that the various scandals swirling around DeLay and the GOP Congress helps the Dems, and that the appropriate response is to think big and try to nationalize the 2006 election (a la Gingrich in 1994). That’s why your count of vulnerable Republicans (4 from the Post, 7 from Abramowitz, etc.) struck me as discordant. The point is that ethics (and other failures) makes every Rep more vulnerable, not just 10 or 20 or 30.
There’s a practical reason that I’m bothering you with this sort of hair-splitting. Both parties (and their allies) have fallen into the practice of trying to identify their top tier races to focus their attention on them. They see it as a way to magnify their impact rather squander resources on longshots. There are several problems with this approach. No one is that good at forecasting, especially that far out. Diminishing marginal returns means that much of the money lavished on top races is wasted, and would certainly be better spent elsewhere. The relentless focus on the top tier means that other races are ignored, limiting the Dems’ potential to win a 1994 (or 1982 or 1974) style sweep. And so on. The bottom line is simple: targeting is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
My fear is that, if history is any guide, if the Dems think in terms of winning 15 seats, they’ll count to 15 or maybe 25 and pour everything into those races. That puts enormous pressure on winning those contests and lets scores of other potentially vulnerable Reps off the hook. Donkey Rising isn’t responsible for that sort of thinking, of course, but as one of the best blogs and certainly the most data-intensive, I wanted to bring this to your attention.

Thanks, reader! Let’s hope someone out there involved in 2006 planning for the Democrats is listening.

I like the way Gadflyer Paul Waldman put it concerning the teapot tempest swirling around Howard Dean’s recent remarks:

Let’s go over this again: You’re a Democratic office-holder, or maybe a political consultant. A reporter comes to you and says, “Can I bring a camera into your office and get you to say some bad things about Howard Dean?” If you say yes, and go ahead with it, then there will be a story about how Democrats can’t stand that terrible Howard Dean, who keeps saying mean things about Republicans. If you say no, there will be no story. The reporter will have do a story about how Bush’s Social Security plan is failing, or about how his approval ratings are in the toilet, or about something, anything, else

In another post on the same topic, Waldman puts Dean’s comments in context for his critics, including some Democratic leaders who should know better, and offers them a smarter alternative:

They should have said this: “If the Republican leadership doesn’t want us to call them elitist, they should consider doing something for working families for a change. But until they do, we’re going to keep talking about how they’re hurting regular Americans.” That keeps the focus where it should be.

There’s nothing wrong with constructive internal criticism. But they call it internal criticism for a reason. If any real Democrat has a problem with our chairman’s, or any other Democratic leader’s remarks, then call his/her office and complain, rather than being duped into doing the GOP’s negative spin for the media.
Addressing a similar concern in the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. said it well: “Our enemies will adequately deflate our accomplishments; we need not serve them as eager volunteers.”

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll has some very bad news for Bush and the GOP–even by the standards of recent polls, most of which have not been kind to the president and his party. Here’s the lead from ABC News polling director Gary Langer’s analysis of the poll:

The corrosive effects of the war in Iraq and a growing disconnect on political priorities have pushed George W. Bush’s performance ratings — notably on terrorism — to among the worst of his career, casting a pall over his second term and potentially over his party’s prospects ahead.
For the first time, most Americans, 55 percent, say Bush has done more to divide than to unite the country. A career-high 52 percent disapprove of his job performance overall, and, in another first, a bare majority rates him unfavorably on a personal level. Most differ with him on issues ranging from the economy and Social Security to stem-cell research and nuclear power.
Iraq is a major thorn. With discontent over U.S. casualties at a new peak, a record 58 percent say the war there was not worth fighting. Nearly two-thirds think the United States has gotten bogged down in Iraq, up 11 points since March. Forty-five percent go so far as to foresee the equivalent of another Vietnam.
Fifty-two percent, the first majority to say so, think the Iraq war has failed to improve the long-term security of the United States, its fundamental rationale. As an extension — and perhaps most hazardously in political terms — approval of Bush’s handling of terrorism, the base of his support, has lost 11 points since January to match its low, 50 percent in June 2004 when it was pressured both by the presidential campaign and the kidnapping and slaying of American Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia (emphasis added).

Lo, how the mighty have fallen! When disapproval (49 percent) is almost as high as approval (50 percent) in Bush’s strongest area (the handling of terrorism), you know things are going very poorly indeed for the incumbent and his administration. Consider some other results from the poll not alluded to in the Langer excerpt above.
1. Disapproval of Bush’s performance far outweighs approval on Social Security (62-34), on the economy (58-40), on Iraq (58-41) and on stem cell research (55-33).
2. The drop in Bush’s approval rating on fighting terrorism has been most pronounced among political independents. In March, 63 percent of this group approved of Bush’s performance in this area;. That dropped to 54 percent in April and has sunk to a mere 40 percent this month. Independents are also pushing the rise in sentiment that the Iraq war has not made America safer; today around 60 percent endorse that view.
3. By 61-37, the public believes Bush and the Republicans are not making good progress on solving the nation’s problems. And, among those who believe progress is not being made, the blame is far more likely to be pinned on Bush and Republicans themselves (67 percent) than on the Democrats in Congress (13 percent).
4. On Social Security, just 27 percent support introducing private accounts within Social Security if these accounts are accompanied by a reduction in the rate of growth of guaranteed benefits. By 56-32, the public believes that such a change in Social Security would decrease, not increase, the overall retirement income most seniors receive. And, by 63-32, they believe that Bush’s proposals for Social Security would not improve the long-term financial stability of the system.
5. By 5 points (46-41), the public believes Democrats can do a better job coping with the main problems facing the nation in the next few years. Prior to the 2002 Congressional elections, Republicans were consistently running ahead of the Democrats on this measure.
6. By 2:1 (65-33), the public does not believe the Bush administration has a clear plan for eventually withdrawing from Iraq.
7. As Bush’s second terms began, Americans, by 55-29, expected Bush to do a better job in his second term than in his first. The last several months have dashed that sense of optimism. Now only 30 percent expect him to do better, actually less than the number (38 percent) who expect him to do worse.
8. Is Bush concentrating on things that are important to “you personally” The public, by a 58-41 margin, says no.
It’s difficult to look at these and other recent data and perceive much the Bush administration currently has going for it, other than general support for the war on terror. And, as we’ve seen, faith that Bush knows what he’s doing has now been sharply eroded even in this area.
That just doesn’t leave the GOP with much to brag about to voters. No wonder so many Republicans running for re-election in 2006 are acting so nervous!

By Alan Abramowitz
Remember back when California was one of the keys to the Republican “lock” on the White House? Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, California was actually somewhat more Republican than the nation as a whole, partly because the Republican candidates in five of those presidential elections hailed from the Golden State. Since 1992, however, California, with the nation’s largest bloc of electoral votes, has been been considerably more Democratic than the nation. In 2004, John Kerry carried the state by just under 10 percentage points–not quite a landslide, but a pretty decisive margin.
But could the Democrats’ recent domination of California be coming to an end? Some Republicans, including Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman apparently think so. According to an Associated Press story posted on the CNN website today, these Republicans believe that GOP prospects in California are improving thanks to a combination of demographic changes and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “star power.”
Schwarzenegger’s “star power” seems to be fading rapidly–his approval rating has fallen below 50 percent in recent state polls. And these same polls show that President Bush is even less popular in the Golden State than he is in the rest of the country. But according to the AP story, “analysts have noted several population shifts that suggest potential for Republicans to expand their reach” in California. And what are those population shifts? According to the story, “while population growth is slowing in left-leaning coastal areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco, it is accelerating in more conservative areas such as the Central Valley and the Inland Empire area east of Los Angeles.”
The problem with this analysis is that these population shifts are nothing new in California. The Central Valley and the Inland Empire have been growing more rapidly than the Bay Area and Los Angeles County for decades. But this hasn’t turned California’s color from blue to red because these areas still make up a fairly small percentage of the state’s population and much of the is a result of a growing Hispanic population. Moreover, an analysis of 2004 exit poll data for California shows that younger Californians are less white, more Hispanic, more liberal, and more likely to vote Democratic than their elders.
According to the 2004 exit poll data, only 50 percent of California voters under the age of 30 were white while 34 percent were Hispanic. In contrast, 86 percent of California voters over the age of 60 were white and only 7 percent were Hispanic. 32 percent of California voters under the age of 30 described themselves as liberal while 23 percent described themselves as conservative. In contrast, only 23 percent of Californians over the age of 60 described themselves as liberal while 32 percent described themselves as conservative. It is not surprising therefore that 60 percent of Californians under the age of 30 voted for John Kerry. This was about six points higher than Kerry’s support among voters over 30.
These generational differences suggest that California’s electorate is almost certain to become less white, more Hispanic, more liberal, and more Democratic in the future. It’s will take a lot more than Arnold Schwarzenneger’s “star power” to reverse these trends. Not even the Terminator himself would be likely to move California’s 55 electoral votes out of the Democratic column in 2008.

In today’s edition of the Washington Post, Mike Allen has good news for Dems hoping to win back a controlling majority in the House of Representatives. In his article, “GOP Worries Ethics Issue May Hurt Party in ’06,” Allen cites four GOP House members, whose deepening ethics problems have made them vulnerable targets: Robert Ney (OH); Richard Pombo (CA); Tom Feeney (FL) and Charles Taylor (FL). Add to this list the seven Republican House Members Alan Abramowitz has identified as also vulnerable in his April 17 post, plus Tom Delay (see John Judis’s New Republic article on DeLay’s ’06 vulnerability), and it appears that Dems are rapidly closing in on the 15 seats needed to win back a House Majority.
Allen quotes GOP strategist Rick Davis, the former manager of John McCain’s presidential campaign:

The combination of gridlock and ethics charges indicate that the system’s busted, and the system is the majority party…The contest for us in the bi-election is to explain what we’ve gotten accomplished in the last two years, and right now, it’s not looking so hot. The focus is on the problems, because there isn’t that much happening.

Gerrymandering has made it more difficult to unseat incumbents in recent elections. Yet, ethics and corruption issues alone could give Dems new leverage in the quest to regain majority control of the House. Slowly, the outlines of a winning Democratic strategy for ’06 are beginning to take form. As Christopher Hayes, noted in “Corruption — A Proven Winner” in The Nation (flagged in EDM’s April 21 post “Cookie-Jar Republicans Give Dems Edge”):

Congressional Democrats should take a page out of Gingrich’s and Blagojevich’s books and propose comprehensive ethics reform. They should talk about the “corrupt Republicans” and “restoring transparency and integrity” at every turn. They should use DeLay’s mounting ignominy to tar fellow Republicans who benefit from his fundraising and clout. In short, they should make Republican scandal and Democratic reform one of the central narratives of their opposition over the next two years. “Newt Gingrich came to power because of an ethics scandal,” says Obama’s state political director, Dan Shomon. “Rod Blagojevich got elected partly because of scandal. You can defeat an incumbent if you can catch his or her hand in the cookie jar.”

As noted in EDM’s May 19 post, a Wall St. Journal/NBC News Poll conducted 5/12-16 indicated that 47 percent of Americans chose Democrats when asked “which party they want to control Congress after the 2006 elections,” while only 40 percent chose the GOP. The latest revelations of GOP ethics problems will likely increase that margin to the Democrats’ benefit.
As Abramowitz noted, 15 House seats is close to the average mid-term loss of the Party occupying the white house. Looking at the average loss of the President’s party in the last five “six-year itch” elections (see May 31 post below), the number is considerably more encouraging — 44 seats.