Peter Beinart argues in his op-ed “A Democratic Call to Arms” in the Sunday Washington Post that Democrats must make big progress among military voters to counter the Republicans’ big success among black and Hispanic voters. As Beinart puts it:

Republicans have been conquering their demographic challenge, while Democrats have not. Between 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush increased his share of African American votes from 9 percent to 11 percent….Among Hispanics, Bush’s total rose from 35 percent to as much as 44 percent. But despite widespread talk about military disaffection over Iraq, John Kerry won only 41 percent of Americans with military experience.

I think it’s a fine idea for Democrats to increase their share of the military vote–but not because they need to match big Republican gains among blacks and Hispanics. Indeed, the idea that, based on the last election, Republicans have somehow conquered “their demographic challenge” is absurd.
In terms of the black vote, Kerry’s 88-11 margin is the highest obtained by a Democratic candidate since the exit polls started in 1976, except for 2000 and Mondale’s 1984 campaign. To say the 2004 result represents a breakthrough for the Republicans is ridiculous.
In terms of the Hispanic vote, if Bush had really gotten 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, that would represent some kind of a breakthrough. But he almost certainly did not. The 44 percent figure Beinart alludes to is the NEP national exit poll figure which has more or less been repudiated by the exit pollsters themselves, due to sampling problems in the 2004 poll. The best exit poll figure for the Hispanic vote at this point is 40 percent, based on aggregating all the state exit polls. And there are good reasons for thinking that the true figure may actually be closer to 39 percent.
So, by all means, go after the military voters. But Democrats should go after them not out of desperation (Help! We’re losing blacks and Hispanics!), but because it’s a good idea in its own right.

The New York Times has an interesting roundtable discusssion in “Left Behind‘ on the challenges facing American liberals. Peter Beinart, Katrina vanden Heuval and Michael Tomasky, editors of The New Republic, The Nation and The American Prospect, respectively, share their thoughts on Democratic strategies for future victories. Some ideas:

The party has to have a listening tour within its own base but also a listening tour among swing constituencies that are moving away: Hispanics, Jews, the military in particular. (Beinart)

One of the things that came out of this election, which is exciting, is that there’s the beginning of an independent infrastructure outside the Democratic Party, a kind of fusionist politics combining movement politics with electoral politics. And I would build on that, building a farm team of new, Paul Wellstone-type leaders, developing messages and ideas.(vanden Heuval)

Liberal concepts still have more resonance than you might think. Polls continually show that people are rhetorically conservative and operationally liberal or progressive.(Tomasky)

There’s more, including a lively reader’s forum responding to the editors’ ideas now underway.

Yesterday, I reviewed several recent polls that show how public opinion is turning against Bush and, particularly, his proposal to privatize Social Security. Bad as these polls are for Bush, perhaps the bleakest news for him is in the just-released CBS News/New York Times poll. Here are the key findings:
1. Bush’s overall approval rating is 49 percent, his rating on Iraq is 45 percent and his rating on foreign policy is 44 percent. Bad, but par for the course for Bush these days. More startling, this poll has his approval rating on the economy down to 38 percent, with 54 percent disapproval. That’s only a couple of points above his worst rating in this poll, indicating that the public may be losing patience with the continued failure of the Bush recovery to generate robust growth. And Bush’s approval rating on the federal budget deficit is a miserable 29 percent, with 60 percent disapproval.
2. The poll asked respondents whether they thought Bush had the same or different priorities as most Americans on two different types of issues. On foreign policy issues, 58 percent thought he had different priorities and only 37 percent thought he had the same priorities. And on domestic issues, the verdict was a substantially more negative 63 percent different/31 percent same. And we are supposed to believe that Bush is somehow in tune with the American people, even if his party is not? Not by the evidence of this poll.
3. Slightly more people say they are uneasy with Bush’s ability to handle an international crisis than say they are confident (51-47)–hardly a ringing endorsement. But that looks robust compared to 63 percent uneasy/31 percent confident judgement on Bush’s ability to make the right decisions on Social Security.
4. On abortion and legal recognition of gay or same sex couples, people say the Democrats are closer to their views than the Republicans by margins of 5-10 points. And Democrats are favored by 17 points (48-31) as the party more likely to make the right decisions about Social Security.
5. The poll asked:

Some people have suggested allowing individuals to invest portions of their Social Security taxes on their own, which might allow them to make more money for their retirement, but would involve greater risk. Do you think allowing individuals to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes on their own is a good idea or a bad idea?

That wording returned a 51 percent bad idea/43 percent good idea judgement–the most negative response yet on this question, which was first asked in May, 2000. Moreover, consistent with other recent polls, the question has been following a downward trajectory as Bush has pushed his privatization proposal to the fore.
Followup questions reduce the number saying individual accounts are a good idea to 22 percent, if guaranteed benefits are cut, and to 17 percent, if the accounts would increase the federal budget deficit.
6. The public overwhelmingly believes individual accounts would not have a positive impact on Social Security’s financial situation. Only 19 percent believe such accounts would make Social Security’s financial situation better, while 69 percent believe it would either make it worse (45 percent) or have no impact (24 percent).
7. Currently, 50 percent believe the US should have stayed out of Iraq, compared to 46 percent who believe the US did the right thing in taking military action. That’s only the second time the “stay out” figure has broken 50 percent–more evidence that the failure of the Iraqi elections to substantially change the facts on the ground in Iraq is feeding into a jaundiced view of the US intervention. And people are actually less convinced now than they were before the November election that Bush has a clear plan for dealing with the Iraq situation (71 percent now believe he doesn’t, while only 21 percent believe he does).
8. Bush is continuing his long-term work of alienating the political center. That didn’t quite kill him in 2004, but this trend can’t be good for the GOP’s future prospects and the hopes they harbor of creating a new political majority.
In this poll, Bush’s overall approval rating among independents is 42 percent. Among the same group, his rating on Iraq is 42 percent, on foreign policy, 40 percent, on the economy, 33 percent and on the federal budget deficit, 23 percent.
And on Social Security, it is extraordinary how close the views of Democrats and independents are on most key issues and how far apart both are from Republicans. Bush is completely losing the battle for the middle on this one.
For example, independents reject private accounts by 56-37, fairly close to the 63-31 opposition among Democrats. But Republicans support them by 65-28, a huge gap. Similarly, just 14 percent of independents and of Democrats think individual accounts would be a good idea, even if guaranteed benefits were cut, while almost three times as many Republicans (40 percent) think so.
While Bush did just manage to squeak by in 2004, despite the many ways he alienated the political center, he and his party are likely to pay a considerable price for this approach as the Social Security struggle unfolds and we move toward 2006 and 2008.

There’s been a rather remarkable string of polling data in the last week or so detailing how public opinion is turning against Bush and, particularly, his proposal to privatize Social Security. A second term that was to have been turbocharged by the Iraq elections and his grandiloquent inauguration and State of the Union speeches seems to have gone sour more quickly than his opponents dared hope.
A Zogby poll released on February 27 included the following dreadful job approval numbers for Bush: 46 percent overall; 44 percent on taxes; 40 percent on foreign policy; 39 percent on the Iraq war; 37 percent on jobs/economy; 37 percent on education; and 32 percent on the environment. He only cracks 50 percent on one issue: the war on terror (54 percent). In addition, this poll found only 39 percent saying the Iraq war was worth the cost, compared to 54 percent who say it wasn’t worth the cost.
Then there was the NPR poll that I wrote about in my February 28 post. In that poll, voters said they opposed Bush’s “proposed changes to Social Security” 53-30, bad enough on the face of it. But subsequently-released charts of the poll data make the situation seem even more dire for Bush.
To begin with, the more familiar people were with Bush’s Social Security plan, the more likely they were to say they opposed it, including 64-31 opposition among those who were “very familiar”. Even worse, voters living in counties carried by Bush in ’04 actually said they opposed his plan 49-34. And changing the wording of the question to Republican-leaning language resulted only in a split 45-45 verdict among Bush county voters, while Democratic-leaning language elicited solid 53-39 opposition among these same voters.
That suggests just how difficult the situation is getting for Bush on this particular issue. That difficult situation is underscored by the latest Pew Research Center poll, which also documents considerable slippage for Bush in other areas. Here’s the lead of Pew’s report on the poll:

President George W. Bush is losing ground with the public in his efforts to build support for private retirement accounts in Social Security. Despite Bush’s intensive campaign to promote the idea, the percentage of Americans who say they favor private accounts has tumbled to 46% in Pew’s latest nationwide survey, down from 54% in December and 58% in September. Support has declined as the public has become increasingly aware of the president’s plan. More than four-in-ten (43%) say they have heard a lot about the proposal, nearly double the number who said that in December (23%).
The new poll indicates that the Social Security debate is packing a powerful political punch. It finds that just 29% of Americans approve of the way that Bush is handling the issue. This is the president’s lowest approval rating for any policy area, and is considerably lower than his overall job approval rating of 46%. Moreover, by a 65%-25% margin, most say the president has not explained his Social Security proposal clearly enough.
Further, the public expresses much more confidence on this issue in the AARP, which is strongly opposed to private accounts, than they do in the president or in Republican congressional leaders.

Ouch! That’s gotta hurt down at the White House and RNC headquarters. It looks like Bush’s efforts on Social Security are only succeeding in diminishing support for his own proposal and lowering his approval rating in that area. Not only that, his unsuccessful efforts are probably helping drag down all his other ratings besides. Confirming the pattern seen in the Zogby poll, only his approval rating on “terrorist threats” (59 percent) cracks 50 percent, while every other job rating in a specific area is 44 percent or less: education (44 percent); foreign policy (43 percent); economy (43 percent); environment (42 percent); budget deficit (41 percent); Iraq situation (40 percent); health care (36 percent); and, of course, that abysmal 29 percent (22 percent among independents), with 55 percent disapproval, on Social Security.
More on “Unpopular from Coast to Coast” tomorrow…

With 120 thousand more votes in Ohio or spread out over a few western states John Kerry would be President today, even though he wrote off the South. But, in his article in The Nation, “Southern Strategies,” Chris Kromm argues that writing off the South in future Presidential elections could be a strategic disaster. Kromm puts it this way:

Given that almost a third of the country lives in the South and it’s growing fast, and that the South still sets the tone for national politics (look at the Tennesseans and Texans who lead the White House and Capitol Hill), ignoring the South is hardly an option….There are four Southern Democratic governors, hundreds of Democratic state legislators, and in six of thirteen Southern states, more registered voters identify as Democrats than Republicans.

But Kromm has no illusions about the magnitude of the challenge facing Democrats. Reporting from “New Strategies for Southern Progress,” a conference of 200 southern progressives in Chapel Hill, Kromm quotes Dem consultant David ‘Mudcat’ Saunders, a proponent of the ‘NASCAR Dads’ strategy: “We’ve lost the white working-class male.” Kromm adds:

Poll analyst Ruy Teixeira rolled out a compelling set of numbers to back up the claim: Although the ideology of the Southern electorate hasn’t changed over the last decade — it’s now 14 percent liberal, 41 percent moderate and 45 percent conservative, only a hair to the right of 1996 — voting patterns have. Bill Clinton got 46 percent to Bob Dole’s 44 percent of the Southern white moderate vote in ’96; in 2004 Kerry had a 58-to-41 deficit to Bush among the same voting group. Even accounting for Clinton’s Southern touch, it’s clear that Democrats have lost ground.

Democrats need to pay very close attention to this discussion as it develops in the months ahead. To help get up to speed, read the DR posts on Democratic prospects and strategies in the South (Feb. 20, 23 and 27) below. In addition, a new blog, “Facing South,” where Kromm and other southern progressives discuss their strategies, merits the attention of Democrats seeking future victories.

Today’s Daily Kos makes Frank Luntz’s GOP Playbook on Republican strategy (see Feb. 24th entry below) available in a much more accesible format, which can be read chapter by chapter on line. Before today, it was available only as a problematic 160-page download.

A new poll by Ipsos-Public Afairs for the Associated Press indicates that a solid majority of Americans oppose President Bush’s proposals for privatizing Social Security. The poll, conducted 2/22-24, found that 56 percent of respondents “disapprove of President Bush’s handling of Social Security and oppose investing a portion of Social Security taxes in stocks and bonds,” with 39 percent saying they approve. In addition, 66 percent of the respondents said they oppose increasing the retirement age, 93 percent opposed cutting benefits for current retirees and 87 percent opposed reducing benefits for future retirees.
The poll indicated that there was substantial support for one potential reform — 74 percent favored requiring those earning more than $90,000 per year to pay Social Security taxes on all their earnings.
The poll also included some good news for Dems. Asked “who do you trust more to handle the issue of Social Security?”, 43 percent chose Democrats, while 37 percent chose Republicans.

Georgian Ed Kilgore of New Donkey follows up on DR’s recent posts (see Feb. 20 and 23 below) on Democratic prospects among white moderates in the south. Kilgore offers some clarifying insights about the weakness of Kerry’s and Gore’s messages for southern voters in 2000 and 2004:

Personalities aside, the biggest difference between Clinton ’96 and Gore ’00 had to do with how each candidate dealt with two sets of issues: culture, and role-of-government–both big “trust” issues in the South. Clinton was thoroughly progressive, but went well out of his way to make it clear that he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” that he supported a modest gay rights agenda because everyone who “worked hard and played by the rules” should be treated the same; and that he fought to maintain and even expand the social safety net on condition that it truly represented a “hand up, not a handout.”…in general, Clinton’s whole ’96 message was that he was willing to reign in government’s excesses, while fighting to defend its essentials–the famous M2E2 (Medicare, Medicaid, Education and the Environment).
Compare that message to Gore’s, and you go a long way towards understanding why the guy lost nearly half of Clinton’s southern white support. Gore was forever bellowing about partial-birth abortion legislation (supported by about three-fourths of southerners) representing a dire threat to the basic right to choose. While Clinton called for “mending, not ending” affirmative action, Gore pledged to defend every aspect of affirmative action with his life. Clinton talked about balancing gun ownership rights with responsibilities. Gore talked about national licensing of gun owners. Clinton talked about making government “smarter, not bigger.” Gore never mentioned his own role in the “reinventing government” initiative, and boasted an enormous policy agenda that added up to a message that he wanted to expand government as an end in itself.
…Kerry tried to avoid Gore’s mistakes on specific cultural and role-of-government issues, but never talked about these themes more than occasionally, and never came across with any kind of authenticity in his efforts to project himself as a man of faith, a hunter, a government-reformer, or a family guy. While Gore got killed by his positioning and the lack of a compelling message, Kerry got killed by the lack of a compelling message and by those personal characteristics–distorted and exaggerated by GOP propaganda–that made him seem alien to southern voters.

Rightly or wrongly, both Kerry and Gore wrote off the south in their campaign strategies. But demographic trends, such as the rapid increase of African American and Hispanic voters and continuing reverse migration may well put some southern states back in play by 2008 — especially with a more thoughtful strategy targeting southern moderates.

A newly-released poll for National Public Radio gives Democratic congressional candidates an early lead in the 2006 congressional campaign. The poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research 2/15-17 indicated that 42 percent of repondents would vote for the Democratic candidate and 36 percent would vote for the Republican candidate in their district, “if the election for Congress were held today.”
The 6 point Democratic advantage was in line with a GQRR poll conducted in January that gave the Dems a 5 point advantage in ’06. A December Ipsos-Public Affairs poll gave the Dems a 7 point advantage in response to the question “And if the election for congress were held today, would you want to see the Republicans or Democrats win control of Congress?”

A new Siena College Research Institute Poll for Hearst Newspapers provides strong encouragement for women Presidential candidates. The Poll, conducted 2/10-17, found that 81 percent of the respondents would vote for a woman for President. A surprising 60 percent expect a woman to head the Democrats’ 2008 ticket and 42 percent expect a woman to be the Democrats Vice Presidential candidate. Only 18 percent of the respondents expect a woman to head the GOP ticket, while 28 percent expect a woman to be the Republicans’ Vice Presidential candidate.
Interestingly, the poll found very little difference between men and women on expectations of and support for a woman Presidential candidate. Two-thirds of the respondents said that a woman would be “better than a man president” on domestic issues and 52 percent said that there would be no difference on foreign policy, 24 percent said a woman would be better and 11 percent said a woman would be worse on foreign policy. Asked which gender would make a better “Commander-in-Chief,” 45 percent said there would be no difference, 18 percent said a woman would be better and 23 percent said a woman would be worse.
Asked their preferences of which of four women political figures should run, 53 percent said Hillary Clinton should run, followed by 42 percent for Condoleezza Rice, 33 percent for Elizabeth Dole and 13 percent for Barbara Boxer.