After spending upwards of $60 million, much of it lately on attack ads against her Republican primary rival, Steve Poizner, California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman appears to have lost most of a large lead over Poizner and is heading towards the June 8 balloting in an astonishingly vulnerable position.
A new Survey USA poll out yesterday shows eMeg leading Poizner 39%/37%, a twenty-point net swing in Poizner’s favor since the previous SUSA survey in April. Even if you are skeptical about the accuracy of SUSA’s robo-polls, California political cognoscenti all seem to agree that Poizner is closing fast.
This is significant beyond the borders of California for at least four reasons. The first and most obvious is that Whitman’s epic spending on early television ads doesn’t seem to be doing her a lot of good. If she winds up becoming the new Al Checchi–the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who broke all previous spending records on heavily negative ads and then got drubbed in his primary–it will be an object-lesson to self-funders everywhere.
The second reason a Whitman defeat or near-defeat would resonate broadly is that it would confirm the rightward mood of Republicans even in a state where they are reputedly more moderate. At this point, both Poizner and Whitman are constantly calling each other “liberals,” with Poizner, who’s running ads featuring conservative GOP avatar Tom McClintock, getting the better of that particular argument. Whitman would have undoubtedly preferred to have kept closer to the political center in preparation for a tough general election campaign against Jerry Brown. But Poizner is forcing her to compete for the True Conservative mantle in a very conspicuous way.
Thirdly, there are signs that Poizner is also forcing Whitman–and by implication, the entire California Republican Party–to risk a repetition of the 1990s-era GOP alienation of Latino voters by endorsing harsh immigration measures. This has been a signature issue for Poizner from the beginning; he supports bringing back Proposition 187–the 1994 ballot measure pushed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson that is widely interpreted as having destroyed California’s Republican majority by making the state’s huge Latino population a reliable and overwhelming Democratic constituency. Poizner has also lavishly praised the new Arizona immigration law. Having tried to ignore the issue initially, Whitman is now running radio ads in which Pete Wilson (her campaign chairman) touts her determination to fight illegal immigration. If those ads migrate to broadcast TV, it’s a sure bet that Whitman is panicking, and that monolithic Latino support for Brown in the general election is a real possibility. And if that can happen in California, where immigrant-bashing is so obviously perilous, it can certainly happen in other parts of the country.
Finally, it’s worth noting that aside from immigration, the issue on which Poizner seems to be gaining traction is the attention he’s devoted to Whitman’s involvement with Goldman Sachs. She was on the firm’s board for a number of years, and earned a very large amount of money from an insider practice–then legal, now illegal–called “spinning,” which she nows says she “regrets.” Poizner’s having a lot of fun with this issue, and the California Democratic Party is chipping in with an ad ostensibly promoting financial reform in Washington that is mainly aimed at Whitman. Lesson to would-be-business-executive-candidates: some kinds of private-sector experience are not helpful to your candidacy in the current climate.
It’s worth noting that there’s another major statewide GOP primary going on in California, involving another female former-business-executive who gained national attention through involvement in the McCain presidential campaign. That would be Carly Fiorina, who is running for the Senate nomination to oppose Barbara Boxer, but is struggling to catch up with an opponent, Tom Campbell, who really does have a moderate repuation, at least on abortion and same-sex marriage. And one of Fiorina’s main problems is a third candidate, Chuck DeVore, who’s running hard as the True Conservative in the race. Fiorina has recently wheeled out endorsements from Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum. All three major GOP Senate candidates have endorsed the Arizona immigration law. The outcome of this race, and where the competition positions the winner, could also have a fateful impact on the general election and on the future of California politics.

One of the most unnverving aspects of the recent health reform debate was the extent to which opponents of various Democratic plans (usually lumped together as “ObamaCare”) embraced and promoted outright falsehoods, most famously the idea that the legislation would encourage euthanasia-by-rationing.
Brendan Nyhan now has an important article at The Forum that not only looks at the role of deliberate misinformation in the “ObamaCare” debate, but compares it to a similar Big Lie that “stuck” during the earlier debate over the Clinton administration’s health reform proposal (i.e., the claim that the proposal would eliminate the ability of Americans to choose doctors). He notes the seminal role of pseudo-wonk Betsy McCaughey in both episodes of disinformation, and the importance of partisan conservative media in reinforcing fabricated claims.
Nyhan’s conclusion is sobering:

The evidence presented in this article suggests that misinformation played an important role in the two most recent debates over health care reform. While some critics have faulted the response of the Clinton and Obama administrations to these charges… the argument presented in this article suggests that political myths are extremely difficult to counter. For instance, proponents of reform might attempt to address concerns in the bill-writing process, but Betsy McCaughey’s 1994 article suggests that such disclaimers can be distorted or ignored. And false claims with no actual basis in legislation such as the “death panel” myth are especially insidious precisely
because they cannot be addressed in the bill itself. As a result, until the media stops giving so much attention to misinformers, elites on both sides will often succeed in creating misperceptions, especially among sympathetic partisans. And once such beliefs take hold, few good options exist to counter them—correcting misperceptions is simply too difficult.

A particularly depressing finding of Nyhan’s is that belief in Big Lies about health reform actually increased among those Republicans who thought of themselves as well-informed on the subject. This reflects the experience many have had with conservative talk radio or Fox News fans who feel “empowered” by the “truth” about liberal policy ideas or politicians, and are exceptionally resistant to contrary facts or “objective” referees of the facts. Any progressive who’s done conservative call-in shows (or had extended discussions with conservative-activists friends or family) and dealt with inquisitors who perpetually suggest they are “on to you” and have divined your secret plans and motives, knows exactly what I am talking about.
It’s almost certainly unfair and counter-productive, and in any event a waste of time, to criticize consumers of deliberate misinformation as ignorant. When it comes to complex topics like health care, even extremely well-informed people filter information–or misinformation–via ideological presumptions, partisanship, and the “trust factor” of where they turn to become informed.
The better course, as Nyhan argues, is to focus on the elites who invent and disseminate misinformation, and relentlessly undermine their bogus credibility. Serial offenders like McCaughey should be hooted off the public stage when they pop up again (as did, to some extent, happen during the ObamaCare debate). And politicians who retail misinformation should be held accountable just as much. Personally, I wish that much of the vast progressive sea of contempt for Sarah Palin’s rhetoric and mannerisms would instead be channeled into a relentless focus on her huge and unrepentent role–via a Facebook post, no less–in turning the lie about government-encouraged euthanasia into the Big Lie of “Obama death panels.” This despicable act, aimed at terrifying seniors and the families of those with disabilities, not her general lack of intellectual curiosity or her inexperience in governing, is what should disqualify her from any elected office at least until she confesses and seeks absolution.

This item is crossposted from The New Republic.
The first thing you need to understand about Florida’s political climate is that its seemingly endless summer of Boom Times seems to be coming to a close. The vast migration to the state that caused its population to increase over 16 percent since the 2000 census seems to be winding down, and last year, shockingly enough, it actually lost population. The state’s economy is suffering from problems that are deeper than any business cycle: Its 2.7 percent drop in per capita personal income has pushed the state near the bottom of rankings by percent change of personal income data. State government and politics have followed suit, inaugurating a period of unhappy partisan and ideological wrangling with no clear outcome in sight.
Many of the troubles resemble the problems of Florida’s distant political cousins, Arizona and Nevada, both Sunbelt areas with significant retiree populations that have also been hit by an economic triple-whammy of rapidly declining housing values, reduced tourism, and eroded retirement savings. Not surprisingly, all three have developed volatile, toxic political climates this election cycle. (In Nevada, the only politician who is perhaps less popular than the Harry Reid is the Republican governor, Jim Gibbons. In Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, whom you’d expect to be riding high along with the GOP’s national renaissance, is scrambling to the right to survive a primary challenge by a defeated former congressman and radio talk show host, J.D. Hayworth.)
In addition, Florida has certainly suffered from the global economic slump because it is a major magnet for foreign investment. It also shares some of the structural problems of its otherwise very different Southern neighbors, particularly chronic underinvestment in public education. And when it comes to the fiscal and political consequences of a bad economy, Florida is one of just a handful of states with no personal income tax, which has made property-tax rates on steadily decreasing real estate values a red-hot issue (a billion-dollar deal that allowed the Seminole Indian tribe to expand its gambling operations was one of the only things that allowed legislators to balance the latest state budget).
So the question is, what does this mean for Charlie Crist, the erratic and heavily-tanned governor who is throwing the calculations of both major political parties into chaos? And what does it mean for Democrats, whose electoral future continues to depend, in part, on the whims of Florida’s diverse and fickle voters?
One thing is obvious: The situation certainly isn’t helping Charlie Crist win the Republican nomination. Not long ago, the all-around GOP overachiever was on John McCain’s short list for the 2008 vice presidential nomination. (Crist handed the Maverick a crucial endorsement that won him the Florida primary, which clinched the GOP nomination.) At the time, it seemed like relative moderates, such as McCain and Crist, might be the Republican Party’s entree back into the public’s good graces, post-W. Then came Palin, and the Crash, and the Tea Party movement angry about stimulus, bailouts, and (indirectly) unemployment. Crist, whose original sin was to appear with President Barack Obama in February 2009 and say very nice things about the administration’s economic stimulus proposal, looked ever more like the epitome of the Republican In Name Only. (He later claimed that he never “endorsed” the stimulus bill, which convinced just about nobody.)
Still, Crist was enough of a big deal in Republican circles that when he decided to run for Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee endorsed him, and few were willing to bet that conservative rival Marco Rubio had much of a chance to beat him. It’s pretty safe to say that Crist has lost ground consistently since he announced his run, as conservatives across Florida and the country have flocked to support Rubio, a Tea Party favorite who’s also something of a protégé of former Governor Jeb Bush.
Crist plotted a deep-pocketed comeback, hoping to drive up Rubio’s negatives by drawing attention to the former Florida House speaker’s involvement in a burgeoning scandal, which revolved around the state Republican Party giving its legislative poohbahs credit cards that they used for lavish non-party-related expenses. But despite hurting Rubio, nothing seemed to boost Crist himself, and rumors began to circulate that he might pull out of the primary and refile as an independent candidate in the general election (which he could still do as late as April 30).
In a deep and growing hole according to every poll of the Senate primary, Crist pretty much blew up his Republican political career by vetoing, on April 15, a bill to institute a controversial “merit pay” system for teachers. (The bill would have phased out teacher tenure and made half the value of annual teacher evaluations strictly dependent on the students’ standardized test scores, an approach that goes far beyond most “pay-for-performance” proposals in other states.) Recently, support for the bill had become something of a Republican litmus test—as well as the source of a holy war between conservatives and teachers’ unions—and the proposal was particularly close to the heart of one Jeb Bush. Crist’s campaign chairman, former Senator Connie Mack, promptly resigned.
Crist probably took the popular position on “merit pay,” which had provoked protests and marches by teachers, students, and parents all over the state. And, as it happened, a new Quinnipiac poll came out the very day of the veto showing Crist running first in a hypothetical three-way race against Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek. So, even as Crist left Floridians hanging right up until the very end on his intentions toward the “merit pay” bill, he may now keep them guessing until April 30 about his current party affiliation.

Read more…

Eric Boehlert’s post “Post-Hutaree: How Glenn Beck and Fox News spread the militia message” at Media Matters for America merits a read, not only by progressives, but also by moderates, and even conservatives, who draw the line at supporting violence. Boehlert reports:

Not only have the number of radical-right extremist groups exploded in the wake of President Obama’s election (more than 500 today, as compared to just 200 during the 1990s), but these militia members now have a proud sponsor in the person of Fox News’ Glenn Beck, who has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement’s hateful and foreboding anti-government message. Beck continues to give a voice, and national platform, to the same deranged, hard-core militia haters and self-style “patriots” who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco.
On TV and the radio, Beck rarely bothers to mention the militia movement by name. Instead, he’s simply co-opted their rhetoric as his own. He’s acted as a crucial transmitter, warning about Obama fronting his own private “army,” and urging followers to “start food storage.”
Not to mention these previous militia moments:
Beck asserts: “The second American revolution is being playing out right now”
Beck says “what is ahead may loosen the bonds of society,” may end with “a French Revolution”
Beck: “There is a coup going on … it has been done through the guise of an election”
Beck: “You can’t convince me that the founding fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede”
Beck: “[I]f we don’t have some common sense, we’re facing the destruction of our country… it’s coming”
The truth is that the daylight separating the radical, anti-government militia movement from self-styled mainstream conservatives is growing dimmer by the day. Like the fact-free Obama birthers, the militia remains a radical subset that today’s right wing refuses to part ways with. That sad fact was highlighted when scores of far-right media voices initially downplayed the Hutaree arrests last week, or even defended the militia members and — disturbingly reminiscent of Waco — cast the FBI and the federal government as the over-reaching bad guys.
And at Fox News, it’s not just Beck. The cable “news” channel’s militia-flavored message (beware gun-toting IRS agents!) has been as simple as it’s been relentless: Obama is destroying this country and he’s doing it intentionally. It’s not that people disagree with Obama and don’t like what they call his “liberal” policies as applied to the economy and health care reform, etc. Instead, the conflict is much more dire. Obama is not just misguided in this political and legislative agenda. Instead, Obama is the incarnation of evil (the Antichrist?), and his driving hatred for America, as well as for democracy, runs so deep that he ran for president in order to destroy the United States from within.

I’m old enough to remember a time when leading conservatives were champions of the police and law enforcement. Those days appear to be over, as Boehlert explains:

Blogger Pamela Geller complained that the FBI raids were “nuts.” Glenn Beck’s radio guest host Chris Baker decried the Hutaree arrests as “nothing more than attack on faith and free speech.” And Washington Times columnist and frequent Fox News talker Monica Crowley likened Hutaree members to proud patriots, as she squarely placed the blame on the government for squelching the militia’s right to dissent…Keep in mind that both Geller and Crowley conveniently forgot to inform readers that the militia members had been arraigned on charges of plotting to kill cops. Apparently that fact no longer moves the needle in today’s right-wing media, which has severed its traditional ties with the law-and-order movement and instead today pledges its allegiance to whoever hates the government — and Democrats — the most.

Boehlert also provides a graphic of the “Tea Party Patriots” website, “the official home of the American tea party movement,” which claims the Hutaree militia with the headline “FBI Raids Tea party Compound.”
Somewhere there must be some conservatives who are repulsed by the glorification of allegedly would-be cop-killers. Even Elizabeth Hasslebeck, house conservative of the popular daytime chat show “The View,” condemned Sarah Palin’s Facebook graphic putting the districts of progressive members of congress in a gunsight crosshairs. If you don’t think this sort of thing encourages violence, consider this report from today’s New York Times about the arrest of Charles A. Wilson, who allegedly threatened to kill Senator Patty Murray for her support of HCR:

“I hope you realize, there’s a target on your back now,” Mr. Wilson said in a recorded voice mail message on March 22, according to the criminal complaint. “There are many people out there that want you dead.” He added, “It takes only one piece of lead. Kill the [expletive] senator! Kill the [expletive] senator! I’ll donate the lead…Not only do I say ‘kill the bill.’ I say, kill the [expletive] senator too, ’” Mr. Wilson said in another message, according to the complaint. “Kill the bill. Kill the senator, too.”

Media Matters for America reports that 80 or more sponsors have dropped Glen Beck, after he called President Obama a “racist” who harbors “deep-seated hatred for white people.” According to MMA‘s “So who’s still advertising on Beck? April 6 edition..,” the list of Beck’s current sponsors includes:

American Petroleum Institute
Wholesale Direct Metals
Pajama Jeans
NoMask.com
Citizens 4 Healthcare
Rosland Capital
Easy Water
Quietus
Hydroxatone
Tax Masters
Weekly Standard
Dish Network
Lear Capital
IAmNotAshamed.org
Foundation For A Better Life
Merit Financial
IRSTaxAgreements.com
Wall Street Journal
Goldline International
Lifelock
Nutrisystem

One would think that companies like the Wall St. Journal and Dish Network could lose a lot of customers by supporting inflammatory hate TV. Perhaps they assume progressives don’t watch Beck/Fox, so they probably wouldn’t think to take their business elsewhere.

The new Washington Post poll conducted 3/22-26, affirms that there is still deep division about recently-enacted health care reform legislation. Current data indicates that 50 percent of respondents disapprove of the HCR act, while 46 percent said they “support the changes in the new law.”
But other polls have shown a healthy portion of those who say they disapprove of the reform package want a stronger public option and broader coverage. In this poll, 49 percent of respondents agreed that the Act provided “the right amount” or “not enough” government involvement in health care reform, while 49 percent said it provided “too much government involvement” in the health care system.
Other polls have shown that the Dems’ HCR package drew better approval numbers, once voters were told about its key provisions. Jon Cohen and Dan Balz note in their WaPo article, “Washington Post poll finds split on health-care law remains deep,”

Many key provisions of the new law have been highly popular in recent polling, particularly insurance changes such as extending coverage to young adults and eliminating exclusions based on preexisting conditions.

As TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira reports of a Gallup poll taken just after the HCR bill was signed into law by President Obama,

In that poll, 49 percent said they thought it was a good thing that Congress passed a bill restructuring the nation’s health care system, compared to 40 percent who thought that was a bad thing. This plurality possibly reflects some individuals moving toward supporting the bill who previously had opposed it because it didn’t go far enough (about 10 to 15 percent of the public). This group, whose opposition to health care bills in Congress has stemmed from progressive rather than conservative priorities, is a plausible candidate for early increases in support generated by the new legislation…Much of the public is still uncertain about what exactly is in the bill and how it will affect them, but these early reactions are nevertheless encouraging. At minimum, they suggest that conservative predictions of a massive public uprising against health care reform were decidedly overwrought.

it remains unclear how opinions about the health reform Act will impact the November elections. But Balz and Cohen note,

At this point, Democrats hold a razor-slim edge (47 to 43 percent) on the “generic ballot,” the question about which party’s candidate people support in their local districts. Independents, who swung solidly for Democratic candidates in 2006 and 2008, now divide 42 percent for the GOP candidate and 39 percent for the Democrat.

To counter the GOP’s ‘repeal and replace” campaign, President Obama should not hesitate to vigorously use all available government communications resources to educate the public about the benefits of the HCR Act. The Administration should press the case for public service announcements on radio as well as television — insisting that education about the law is a bona fide public service, whereas ads opposing existing laws are exercises in partisanship. In addition, the white house and cabinet officers should do as many television interviews as possible to explain the Act. The president has begun a speaker’s tour designed to reach moderates and make the key elements of the Act understood to a critical mass of persiadable voters. The white house should also use the franking privilege to the max to send out one-page summaries of the benefits of the Act to every household.
The Republicans will howl and bellow foul, protesting that this is a partisan cause. But the Administration must respond that, no, this is not partisan. This legislation is no longer a proposal; it is the law of the land, established by an Act of the United States Congress and the federal government has a duty to educate the citizenry about the benefits of the legislation. Such an all-out educational campaign has legal justification, as well as being a moral imperative. To refrain from using all of the media resources at the white house’s disposal (and to fail to draw a prolonged whine from the G.O.P. about abusing the bully pulpit) would be political suicide. If the Administration and Dems fail to use every available tool to educate the public about the benefits of the Act, we deserve to get clobbered in November.
A federal government campaign of unprecedented scale to educate the public about the Act can help a lot. But it can’t do the whole job. The challenge for progressive bloggers is clear: To launch their own aggressive educational campaign, one that doesn’t just preach to the choir, but also reaches substantial portions of persuadable undecided voters. Email, social media, Youtubes, teach-ins (internet and otherwise), cellphones and other new media formats, along with television and radio, should be deployed as part of the nation-wide educational campaign. The emphasis should not be on debating the Act, but on informing people about it.
When we talk about ‘national security’ in America, we tend to speak in terms of defense policy and intelligence activities. But looking at the big picture, surely the health of the American people is a critical component of real national security, and making citizens aware of life-saving improvements in their health care system is compelling obligation.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s obvious that the Golden State isn’t golden anymore. As a new transplant here, the first state political event I watched up close was a May 2009 special election, featuring six ballot initiatives designed to avert a titanic budget crisis. California’s voters responded with what can best be described as snarling apathy. Turnout was 20 percent, which beat the previous California record for low turnout in a statewide election. The five initiatives that dealt with spending and revenue—which needed to pass in order to implement a major fiscal comprom ise—all went down, hard. (Most of them lost by two-to-one margins; a sixth initiative, denying legislators pay raises when the budget’s not balanced, passed.) Californians weren’t just experiencing a momentary fit of pique, either: In 2005, a similar package of eight budget deal-related ballot initiatives met the same fate.
As of March 21, the approval rating for Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stood at 23 percent, which was where his Democratic predecessor, Gray Davis, was when he was recalled and booted out of office in 2003. But that level of support looks robust compared to that of the state legislature (controlled, if that’s not too strong a word, by Democrats), which stands at nine percent, not far from statistical zero.
California’s bad case of political self-loathing goes beyond a terrible economy, the state’s chronic monstrous state budget deficits, and the endless gridlock over virtually all major decisions in Sacramento. On the structural level, California’s permissive ballot initiative system has inserted voters—or, to be cynical about it, the special interests backing initiatives—into matters normally left to governors and legislators, resulting in constitutional limits on property taxes; excessive reliance on recession-sensitive income taxes; a crippling two-thirds vote requirement for legislative enactment of a state budget or for increasing taxes at any level of government; and a variety of spending mandates. Polls consistently show that a majority of citizens oppose tax increases and most spending cuts (they do favor cutting spending on prisons, which are operating under court rules and stuffed with inmates who have run afoul of the state’s many mandatory sentencing laws, some imposed by initiative). “Waste” is where Californians seem to want lawmakers to look for the massive savings necessary to balance the budget. Too bad California already ranks near the bottom among states in per capita state employees and infrastructure investment, and below average in per-pupil spending on education.
The obvious question is why anyone would want to be the next governor of California. But three viable candidates—two Republicans and one Democrat—are defying logic by offering themselves for this post. One Republican, state insurance commissioner and former tech executive Steve Poizner, is running on a systematic right-wing platform of massive spending cuts, new personal and business tax cuts, and, for dessert, another effort to ban access to public benefits for undocumented workers and their families. The second GOP candidate, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is running far ahead of Poizner, floating her campaign on an extraordinary sea of early money. Three months before the June primary, and eight months before the general election, Whitman (or eMeg, as local political journalists often call her) has already spent $46 million, mostly from personal funds on her campaign, and has threatened to spend up to $150 million if necessary. She has launched an astoundingly early series of saturation media ads, becoming ubiquitous on the California airwaves, as recently explained by David Crane of the influential political blog Calbuzz:

The campaign’s Gross Rating Point report, measuring total delivery of the current week’s broadcast ad schedule in 11 markets in California, shows that eMeg’s buy is comparable to what a fully-loaded campaign might ordinarily deliver in the closing weeks of a heated race—not three months before a primary that she’s prohibitively leading.
“These are some big f****n’ numbers,” said Bill Carrick, the veteran Democratic media consultant after reviewing the report. “She’s buying the whole shebang.”

Whitman’s ads mainly convey, with numbing repetition, her claim to offer a fresh start for the state, delivered by a rock-star business executive committed to cuts in spending, tax cuts, and education reform. But she recently launched another batch aimed at primary opponent Poizner—whom she leads in the most recent Field Poll by 49 points—depicting the hyper-conservative as, believe it or not, a liberal who thinks just like Nancy Pelosi. (Poizner is reportedly planning to fire back using $19 million of his own Silicon Valley fortune, which may force Whitman to tack in a conservative direction on issues that she’d just as soon avoid, such as immigration.)
These assaults have raised some old concerns about her reputation in corporate circles for being ruthless in the pursuit of her goals, and a bit deranged—exhibiting an “evil Meg” alongside the “good Meg” of her press clippings—if denied her wishes. She’s also bought herself grief by refusing, until very recently, to answer press questions or elaborate beyond the happy talk of her biographical ads about her positions on various issues. All in all, she’s in danger of earning the reputation of being something of a robo-pol like her political mentor, Mitt Romney.
Indeed, Whitman’s overall strategy appears to be to clear the primary field by bludgeoning Poizner out of the picture with attack ads, and then to run as a can-do moderate conservative who’s worth a gamble for the relatively few voters who bother to show up at the polls. And she is reportedly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building a library of negative information to use against her general election opponent, a guy named Jerry Brown.
That’s right, Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown Jr., who is, on paper, the least likely person imaginable to become the frontrunner for governor of a state that is so passionately disillusioned with politicians. The son of an old-style liberal Democratic governor who served two terms before being bounced from office by Ronald Reagan, Brown was first elected to statewide office 40—yes, 40—years ago. After a term as secretary of state, he was governor for eight years, and later state party chair, mayor of Oakland, and currently attorney general of California. He also ran unsuccessfully, and somewhat fecklessly, for the U.S. Senate once and for president three times. (Coming second to Bill Clinton in 1992.) Not many Californians can remember a time when Brown or his father wasn’t in office or pursuing office, and most can remember more than one occasion when Brown Jr. did something quirky, embarrassing, or controversial. Indeed, Whitman may be wasting her money reminding them.
But that’s the funny thing about Jerry Brown’s candidacy. Instead of being the fattest target in America for a Republican opponent, Brown is even with or slightly trailing Whitman in recent polls, despite her massive unopposed spending on TV ads—and, given California’s Democratic registration advantage, he’s a good bet to win unless the effectiveness of Whitman’s spending significantly outstrips the likely backlash against it.

Read more…

There’s been a lot of buzz, mostly in the progressive blogosphere, over the news that the proprietor of the notable right-wing RedState blogging site, Erick Erickson, of Macon, Georgia, has been given a perch on a new CNN show hosted by John King.
Most of the talk has featured some of Erick’s more colorful utterances, particularly his description of Supreme Court Justice David Souter as well, a child molester who also enjoys carnal knowledge of certain barnyard animals, and his reference to First Lady Michelle Obama as a “Marxist harpy.” As a fairly regular reader of RedState, if only to get the juices going on slow days, I can say I’m most impressed with the casual cranky extremism of Erick’s stuff on a day-in, day-out, basis, and particularly his bully-boy determination to play a role in Republican primaries around the country. His obsession, for example, with the defeat of Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah, a pretty conventional conservative by most standards, has long since passed Carthago delenda est levels and must be viewed as a matter of sheer ego, if not a clinical disorder. The sheer-ego interpretation finds support in another recent Erickson encyclical, wherein he judiciously gave Mitt Romney a partial indulgence for his endorsement of Bennett upon the news that the Mittster had also endorsed RedState favorite Nikki Haley, a candidate for governor of South Carolina (in the real world, Romney predictably endorsed both for the obvious reason that they both endorsed him in 2008).
Last month I spoke at a municipal association meeting in Georgia, and was asked by a lot of people there how seriously Erick, a city councilman in Macon, was taken by national political types (much as Georgians used to ask me the same question about Newt Gingrich when he first exploded on the national scene). Seems he was already letting it be known that he was entertaining various national media offers, and was about to go big-time. I have a hard time begrudging any blogger a shot at mainstream media exposure. But it’s a sign of the times that CNN filled a mandatory conservative slot with a guy like Erick, who seems to alternate between moods of blind rage and smug triumphalism, and who (like me) also has a face made for radio.
We’ll see how ol’ Erick handles the transition to a national audience composed of people who don’t already agree with him. But he couldn’t have been happy with CNN’s press release, which lauded him as a spokesman for small-town values “who still lives in small-town America.” This will not go over well in Macon, a proud old city whose metropolitan area has a population of close to a quarter million people.

One of the best ways to lose your mind is to track the whip counts measuring the line-up of House member votes on health care reform. Right after you read a convincingly optimistic projection that the Democratic package is a done deal, you will find an equally persuasive case that it is doomed. After going round and round with this game for a few days, I have to conclude that nobody in journalism, msm or otherwise, can make a reliable call.
It would not surprise me, however, if Speaker Pelosi or Rep. Clyburn had the real skinny, such as it is. But I wouldn’t read too much into their confident public pronouncements, which could be true or just an effort to crank up a bandwagon psychology. What seems fairly certain, however, is that it is going to be a very close vote. And what’s important to health care reform supporters is that we have work to do — in generating constituent pressure on House members, specifically those who have been called ‘undecided’ — in the broadest sense of the term.
So where do you go? Reid Wilson’s Hotline post, “Advice To Dems: Sell The Bill,” has a useful insight,

A survey conducted across vulnerable Dem districts shows most voters warm to the proposal once they learn more about it, according to a copy of a memo obtained from Capitol Hill and political sources. Included in the poll were 92 districts held by Frontline Dems and Blue Dogs, districts where Dem incumbents would feel the most heat for supporting the legislation.
Dems will target white middle-aged voters, white women under 65 and white married women. Those groups respond most positively when Dems explain what is in the bill, pollsters found.
The poll, conducted by prominent Dem pollster John Anzalone, who conducted some polling for Pres. Obama during the ’08 campaign, shows a plurality of voters currently oppose the health care bill; just 35% of swing voters favor the bill based on what they know about it. But when they hear more about it, 51% of all voters, and 50% of swing voters support the measure…when they hear more about it, 51% of all voters, and 50% of swing voters support the measure.

We knew that the HCR package polls better after respondents actually understand its key provisions. But it does help to know which white voters are most open to it, and pro-reform activists should take note. In terms of messaging, Wilson explains John Anzalone’s observation about his poll:

Dems should focus on provisions of the bill that require coverage even if someone has a pre-existing condition, and on a provision that requires members of Congress to have the same coverage as other Americans, Anzalone writes in the polling memo.
“Not only are they the most popular components of reform among voters overall, but also among key audiences, including seniors. Based on these results, any messaging in support of reform — to any audience — should prominently highlight these components,” Anzalone and pollster Matt Hogan wrote.
And though Dems have taken heat for the process by which health care legislation has progressed this year, expect the party to argue that their efforts to allow a majority vote on the bill were justified. Those who back reform “should avoid process debates,” the pollsters write, but they say Dems can use the argument that no 60-vote requirement is in the Constitution effectively.

It may be late in the game for mass mobilization of constituents. But calls to leaders and activists of the aforementioned constituencies, urging them to more vigorously lobby uncomitted House members, might do some good.
Apropos of my TDS post yesterday on the influence of African American voters in Blue Dog districts, Peter Wallsten and Jean Spencer note in their Wall St. Journal article “Opinions Harden on Health,” that a new WSJ/NBC survey indicates that “majorities of African-Americans and liberal Democrats, as well as a plurality of Latinos, would be less likely to vote for their representative in Congress if he or she voted against the health-care plan.” In this regard it’s encouraging that Dems are reportedly running pro-reform radio ads on Tom Joyner’s nationally syndicated programs in key cities.
Tomorrow will bring more optimistic and pessimistic prognoses for the fate of Democratic HCR. The important challenge for pro-reform Dems is to shrug off positive and negative predictions and do something to generate phone calls, emails and visits to the offices of uncommitted House members.

A coalition of corporate groups will spend between 4 and 10 million dollars in the weeks ahead to stop the Democratic health care reform package. As John D. McKinnon and Brody Williams explain in their Wall St. Journal article this morning,

The business coalition, Employers for a Healthy Economy, said it would run between $4 million and $10 million of ads targeting the districts of several dozen Democratic lawmakers, carrying the message that the bill would cause job losses. The ads are being funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade associations that represent a broad swath of industry, from health insurers and manufacturers to construction, retail and distribution companies.
The burst of TV advertising adds to the total of more than $200 million spent on ads last year, making the health-care debate the largest single advocacy campaign ever, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks issue advertising. Both sides in the debate spent about equally on ads last year, according to Evan Tracey, the nonpartisan group’s president.

Sobering numbers for health care reform supporters. Their opponents plan to flood the airwaves with attacks against reform. And the ads will be targeted, as the authors report:

One group opposing the legislation, Americans for Prosperity, is targeting about 21 House districts around the country with $350,000 in TV and radio ads, as well as with rallies at lawmakers’ district offices. Still another conservative group, the American Future Fund, said this week it had launched TV ads targeting 18 congressional districts.

Unions, Health Care for America Now, the AARP and other pro-reform groups will struggle to match that investment, which may end up being substantially more than $10 million, if my hunch is right. That’s quite a change from last summer when insurers were running ads supporting bipartisan reform.
Next week tea party organizers plan to flood the halls of Congress with 1,000 protestors, no doubt attracting 24-7 coverage from Fox TV, wingnut radio and whatever msm outlets get hustled into providing over-coverage. It would be good if progressive supporters of HCR were ready with an impressive counter-protest, bearing signs with messages like the three in TDS’s “Noteworthy” box above, plus some version of E. J. Dionne’s soundbite, like “Don’t let a phony argument about process derail needed reform.” Also needed are messages and creative ads making a positive pitch about the good changes reforms will secure.
Of course the quality of the ad campaigns may determine their impact, as much or more than money and saturation. Democrats have the advantage of reasonable policy, but Republicans have the edge in message discipline and air wave media resources. It will require some creative media strategy to neutralize the GOP media campaign over the next two weeks. This DNC ad is an excellent start.