In this week’s edition of his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress website, TDS Co-editor Ruy Teixeira shows how congressional conservatives are “doubling down on their extreme policies” with radical budget proposals concerning taxes and Medicare that have little prospect of winning anything resembling majority support. On taxes, Teixeira explains:

President Barack Obama has severely criticized this budget plan, saying it is completely out of step with the country’s needs and values. Polling data suggest the public is having the same reaction to the conservatives’ budget. In a just-released Gallup poll, a strong 59-37 majority say next year’s budget should include an increase, not a cut, in taxes for those making more than $250,000.

Regarding Medicare:

The public is also far from wanting to end Medicare as we know it. Sixty-one percent in the Gallup poll favor only minor changes (34 percent) or none at all (27 percent) in the program. Another 18 percent support major changes and only a miniscule 13 percent say they are in favor of completely overhauling Medicare. The latter figure is significant since a “complete overhaul” is exactly what conservatives are proposing to do.

It appears that the prudent conservatives of yesteryear have all been replaced by ideologues in blinders, who may now be courting political disaster, as Teixeira suggests. “With this budget…they may finally have gone so far that they will be unable to ignore the negative reaction to their proposals.”

Political organizer and Democratic strategist Robert Creamer argues in his latest HuffPo post that President Obama has outmaneuvered his Republican adversaries with his speech on the budget. Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” now sees four factors recasting “the political equation” to favor Democrats. First:

…Obama changed the frame of debate from the realm of policies, programs and green eye-shades into a contest between the progressive values that have always defined what is best in America and the radical conservative values of the Gilded Age.
The right always goes to political war armed with a full complement of value-based arguments and symbols. They are very good at clothing the self-interest of Wall Street/CEO class in talk about freedom and individualism and self-reliance.
We lose when we talk about policies and programs and they talk about right and wrong.
But the moment we transform the debate into a contest between progressive and radical conservative values — between the progressive and conservative visions of the future — we completely change the political equation.

Creamer credits Obama’s speech with delineating — and illuminating — a critical demarcation regarding “two very different visions of American society”:

* Are we all in this together — or do we believe in a society where everyone is out for himself and himself alone?
* Should we simultaneously take responsibility for ourselves and look out for each other — or should the strongest and most clever among us simply be allowed to dominate and exploit the rest?
* Do we aspire to hope and possibility — to the belief that we can shape a better future for our kids? Or are we ready to concede that we can no longer afford to assure that every child has the education she needs to fulfill her potential =- or that seniors should be denied a dignified life in their retirement — or that if you’re sick and poor, you’re just out of luck?
…When we proudly assert our progressive values, we win.

Creamer’s second point, that the major provisions of Obama’s budget are “immensely popular.”:

…The beltway pundits would have you believe that to have a “serious” budget plan you have to do things that are “painful” and “unpopular.” The only reason that would be true is that they often advocate taking actions that are beneficial only to the top two percent of the population at the expense of everyone else.
They say that to be “serious” we have to cut Social Security for seniors who make an average of $19,000 a year and give tax breaks to people who make tens of millions — sometimes billions a year.
It’s easy to see why that would be pretty unpopular with most people. To make it palatable to ordinary people you have to convince them that they need to take the “bitter medicine now” so they can have a better life — or avoid an even more dire fate — in the future. This, of course, is self-serving hogwash…Of course we need to do what is necessary to pay for what government does. But the choice we face is not between short-term pain and long-term prosperity. It is between a better life for most people and the greed of a few people.
President Obama’s proposals are very popular because if we clearly lay out the true choices, normal people are smart enough to understand their own interests. Eighty-one percent of the population favors increasing taxes on millionaires. Huge percentages oppose cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. They oppose eliminating Medicare and replacing it with vouchers that steer you to buy private insurance. They certainly oppose increasing out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicare by $6,400 — which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says is the direct consequence of the Republican budget. They support making smart, appropriate cuts in defense spending. They support investing more, not less, in education and scientific research. They support more money — not less — for Head Start, nutrition programs, to pay for police and fire protection, to build schools and bridges and high-speed rail. They support investing more money in clean energy…

Third, Creamer cites two key “framing points”:

* Eliminating the budget deficit is not inconsistent with progressive priorities. This should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of memory, since the last time the budget was balanced was just ten years ago and that was done under Democrat Bill Clinton. However, it was necessary to make this point clear by presenting a plan to achieve fiscal balance that also embodies progressive values.
* Controlling health care costs — which is a major driver of increased spending — is not the same as simply shifting these costs to seniors and the disabled. Controlling costs is about actually controlling increases in the costs of delivering health care — chief among which are the outrageous costs of prescription drugs. Obama reintroduced a major way to cut health care costs into the debate: Allow Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate lower drug prices. But that of course would lower the profits of the drug companies.

Lastly, Creamer credits the President with playing a shrewd endgame in the budget deal:

Obama’s strategy was to settle the short-term 2011 budget battle in order to eliminate the Republican weapon of the short-term government shutdown. That was a key leverage point because it was very much in Obama’s interest to avoid the economic damage that a shutdown would cause to the fragile recovery. He wanted to get the best deal he could in terms of pure dollars and cents. But his main goal was to come to an agreement that avoided a shutdown, but did not compromise structural or policy issues that would reshape the political and economic landscape far beyond the September end of the fiscal year. In that, he was largely successful.
By coming to an agreement before he launched the broader policy debate he also had the opportunity to see exactly how far the Wall Street/CEO faction of Republican Party and the party’s political elite would allow the Tea Party faction to go in pursuit of its program. Turned out that they were unwilling to shut down the government over the Tea Party social agenda.
Obama also wanted to wait to seriously join the debate until after the Republican budget chair, Paul Ryan, had unveiled the details of their budget plan that lays bare the real contours of the right-wing vision for everyone to see. That allowed him to clearly contrast a progressive vision with a fully articulated Republican blueprint.
Obama has changed the terms of negotiation — the benchmarks — from pure dollars cut, to questions involving the purpose of government and our vision of society. That makes it much easier for him to draw clear lines in the sand -= as he did yesterday. He pledged unequivocally not to privatize Medicare, not to block grant Medicaid, and not to sign another extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
At the same time, his proposals allow him to take off the table the issue of how much Democrats want to reduce the deficit. He presented a plan that matches — and actually exceeds — the Republican deficit reduction goals. That leaves the only question for debate the issue of how that goal is achieved, which is the strongest Democratic political ground.
What about Republican claims that they will hold an increase in the debt ceiling hostage to their budget demands? They are nothing but bluster. If the Wall Street/CEO faction were unwilling to allow the Tea Party to shut down the government, they certainly are not going to allow them to explode the economy and financial markets with government default.
…The Congress does not need a “budget” for fiscal 2012 and beyond. To continue operating, the government does need new appropriation bills for 2012. Those will become the focal point of the next “shutdown” drama, but that will once again likely involve numbers and spending levels — not the long-term structural questions posed by the Republicans and Obama budget plans.

While the budget deal falls far short in terms of meeting progressive priorities, Creamer argues that President Obama’s speech has helped to put Dems in solid position for 2012. Creamer predicts a Democratic trifecta next year — holding the white house and senate, and winning back the House majority. He adds “The president’s speech yesterday made that kind of electoral outcome much more likely.”

I know, I know, early presidential nominating polls are not very meaningful, and usually reflect name ID as much as anything else, and yes, I know, “national” polls of this nature are especially insignificant, because a handful of early states are likely to determine the nomination. But still, PPP’s new poll showing Donald Trump pulling out to a big lead (at 26%, he has higher numbers than anyone has shown in any national poll that I’ve seen) over the entire GOP presidential field is pretty shocking.
Equally shocking is PPP’s finding that 23% of self-identified Republicans say they won’t vote for any candidate “who firmly stated they believed Barack Obama was born in the United States,” with another 39% being unsure if they could stomach such a radical proposition. Trump pulls 37% among the self-proclaimed birthers, and 28% among the maybe-birthers, so it’s reasonably clear his overall standing isn’t just the product of being a television celebrity.
Now maybe he won’t run, or he’ll run as an indie, or he won’t run seriously (there seems to be a lot of doubt about whether he’s remotely as rich as he claims to be), or those voters expressing support for him will reject him when they know more about his background and views. I certainly don’t think he’s in any danger of winning the nomination. But the real issue is that if he maintains or increases these levels of popularity among rank-and-file Republicans, the tolerance of GOP insiders for lower levels of craziness is bound to increase, giving them exactly what they do not need right now: another big push to the right.
Already, “mainstream” candidates are making some pretty crazy sounds. Newt Gingrich is addicted to Muslim-baiting. The quintessentially unthreatening Tim Pawlenty has recently been flirting with gold standard advocacy, while opposing the last appropriations deal and saying extremely irresponsible things about the upcoming debt limit vote. They’ve all adopted the habit of calling the current administration “socialist” and referring to rich people exclusively as “job-producers.” What’s next? Mitt Romney buying ads to endorse the Atlas Shrugged movie? Haley Barbour coming out for repeal of the 14th amendment? Who knows.
Perhaps some candidate will successfully play the Trump Card by convincing the powers that be in the GOP to quietly designate him or her as the one who can save the party from The Donald’s level of kookiness, and get a blank check to compete with him for the crazy-person vote. If so, things could get very weird on the campaign trail.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has crafted ‘The People’s Budget,’ and it is nicely put in perspective by TDS Advisory Board member Chris Bowers at Daily Kos, and cross-posted from Kos below:
One of the complaints the progressive blogosphere commonly levels against the Democratic leadership in DC is about negotiating strategy. Generally, the complaint is that the Democratic leadership in Congress and in the White House make opening bids that are already compromises, which results in final legislative deals skewing further to the right than necessary. Perhaps the most frequent specific example of this complaint is that Democrats in Congress should have started the health care debate by proposing a single-payer plan, and might have ended up with a public option in the final bill as a result.
Whether or not you agree with that complaint in either the general or the specific, if it is applied to the budget fight the Democratic leadership in DC should have started with The People’s Budget (PDF), which the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced today. It’s a budget that produces a surplus by 2021 without cutting services for the poor and middle-class. It thus provides a stark contrast with the recent proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan, and a left-flank to the principles outlined by President Obama.
Here’s a general overview of the People’s Budget:
* Reduces unemployment–and thus the deficit–through extensive investment in infrastructure, clean energy, transportation and education;
* Ends almost all the Bush tax cuts, creates new tax brackets for millionaires and new fees on Wall Street;
* Full American military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other reductions in military spending;
* Ends subsidies for non-renewable energy;
* Lowers health care costs through a public option and negotiating Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies;
* Raises the taxable maximum on Social Security.
That is a very quick summary, and full details can be read here. The Economic Policy Institute has a full analysis here. Today at the press conference introducing the budget, economist Jeffrey Sachs praised it as the “only budget that makes sense” and “a lot more serious than everything else on the table.” He’s also previously written about The People’s Budget on the Huffington Post.
Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva said the People’s Budget–which is an actual piece of legislation, not simply an outline–was filed with the Rules committee this morning. His fellow co-chair, Representative Keith Ellison, told me he thinks it will get more than 100 votes, which would be a majority of House Democrats. Even though that is still not enough to pass the chamber, Ellison said “we have to tell people what we would do if we had the numbers.”
Getting those numbers will of course be very difficult. However, under no circumstances should we consider it impossible. One of my favorite stories in political history is the passage of the Reform Act of 1867 by the British Parliament. This was a bill expanding the franchise that was passed by a Conservative government, even though the Conservatives had gotten into power largely by defeating a weaker form of the same bill. However, the Conservatives ended up passing the bill largely because of overwhelming public pressure in the spring of 1867.
To me, the moral of that story has always been that the location political center can, and often does, change very quickly. The first step in making change happen is by talking about new possibilities. Today, with their introduction of the People’s Budget, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has taken that first step.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
By now, it should be obvious that anyone hoping party insiders will draft a Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Rick Perry to rescue the lackluster Republican 2012 field from itself is living in a hopeless fantasyland. But in case you need even more evidence, consider this: Dark-horse candidates who aren’t fully committed to running for president, deep within their bones, have a terrible track record of misfires and flameouts.
We need look no further back than 2008 for a vivid historical example. That year, Republicans were in a similar mood, disenchanted for one reason or another with Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, and the whole crew. At that point, the GOP’s brilliant backup plan was Draft Fred Thompson. His positive qualities were obvious enough: The former senator and longtime actor had a conservative enough record to be acceptable to activists without being threatening to swing voters; he seemed articulate and reasonably smart; and he was, of course, a celebrity who got to play a gruff, tough, avuncular prosecutor. He was sort of Tim Pawlenty with a growl and gravitas.
Thompson’s perceived electability was such that his putative candidacy was a much-awaited event, expected to change the dynamics of the race overnight. And once he finally announced in September of 2007–on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” no less–he won a slew of early endorsements, including the coveted nods from the National Right to Life Committee and Iowa’s conservative potentate Steve King.
But it was already becoming clear that he lacked commitment. Even before his appearance on “Leno,” there were abundant signs that he wasn’t running for president so much as walking–or even riding a golf cart–with abundant stops for rest and ice cream. His first Iowa appearance, in August, was at the Iowa State Fair, a must-do for any candidate and particularly one like Thompson, who had already skipped the official Straw Poll that serves as the major fundraiser for the state GOP. With the eyes of the first-in-the-nation-caucus state on him, Big Fred showed up at the sweaty, extremely informal event sporting Gucci loafers and proceeded to spend the day tooling around the fairgrounds in the aforementioned cart–a very big no-no for anyone who wasn’t either disabled or a major Fair donor.
This turned out to be an apt harbinger of Thompson’s campaign style. In their account of the 2008 campaign, Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson summed up the problem:

His campaign went through three phases: anticipation, hype, and disappointment. He initially surrounded himself with a team that had little experience in modern presidential campaigns. They convinced him new media offered a way around the rigors of the campaign trail, which appealed to a man with a reputation in Republican circles as a not particularly hard worker. …
“Fred was sold a bill of goods about what it took to run for president,” communications director Todd Harris later told us. “He was given the distinct impression … that in 2008 all you needed to do was have a heavy blog presence, appear regularly on Fox News and specifically on Hannity & Colmes, and from time to time go out and have an event.”

Despite tons of national press, and the support of King and the NRLC, Thompson limped home with a poor third-place finish in Iowa. He then staked everything on a final effort in South Carolina, and again finished third, managing in the end simply to take votes from Huckabee and guarantee McCain a win that got him to the brink of the nomination. The whole exercise was a pointless disaster that raised the GOP’s hopes and ultimately saddled the party with a weak nominee–so weak, in fact, that McCain had to choose Sarah Palin as his running-mate in order to preserve a semblance of unity.
The truth is that Republicans ought to take a good honest look back at the Thompson campaign and ask themselves if they really want a candidate who has to be talked into running. Indeed, Fred is by no means the first to be coaxed into a race by insiders who made it sound easy to convert the acclaim of elites into caucus or primary wins. Political history is littered with Big Dogs who quickly got into trouble in the tall grass of actual nomination contests: Wilbur Mills in 1972, who won a booming 4 percent in New Hampshire; Birch Bayh in 1976, who lost with a seventh-place finish in Massachusetts; Lloyd Bentsen, who was destroyed by Jimmy Carter despite raising tons of money; John Connally, another big fundraiser who couldn’t win actual votes; Howard Baker, who dropped out after New Hampshire in 1980; and Phil Gramm, who burned out in 1996. Fred Thompson was also not the first candidate of “half a mind” to run for president whose diffidence ultimately repelled voters. Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and Bill Bradley in 2000 both famously had trouble taking their own campaigns seriously; and Nelson Rockefeller in 1968 and Ross Perot in 1992 stumbled painfully because of their indecision about whether to run at all.
The moral of the story for 2012 is that the presidential campaign trail is brutal and unforgiving–particularly right now, and particularly for Republicans. The early Republican caucuses and primaries will be dominated by conservative activists who want a crusade, not a mere political campaign, and will almost certainly punish candidates who don’t give the impression that they will fight for every vote. This is a very poor environment for a “draft,” or for a politician pretending to run, reluctantly, out of a sense of civic obligation. Even Ronald Reagan got himself into early trouble in 1980 by campaigning as though voters owed him the nomination, with bands playing “Hail to the Chief” before every speech. He lost Iowa that year, and had to run a savagely ideological campaign in New Hampshire in order to recover.
So as the days rush by and this already slow-to-develop Republican nomination contest begins in earnest, insiders hoping for dark horse salvation need to get a grip and realize that it’s very unlikely they’ll be saved from this field by Christie or Jebbie or Petraeus or Rubio or Perry. All the hype in the world can’t replace commitment and extra time spent in church basements or living rooms in Pella and Nashua and Spartanburg. Just ask Fred Thompson.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
From time to time until November 2012, I’ll be offering a snapshot of the emerging presidential race. This is the first. Here’s the headline: Given current national trends and a credible Republican nominee, the presidential election would be very, very close, and President Obama might even lose. The economic situation looks like it will not be good enough for the president to cruise to victory, yet it will not so bad that voters are in the mood to repudiate him. In such a situation, campaign tactics, branding, and the identity of the Republican nominee would likely determine the outcome of the election–and in that context, Obama’s aggressive pivot to the center, including his forthcoming speech on deficit reduction, could have a decisive effect on whether or not he wins a second term.
Of course, as the issues director of Walter F. Mondale’s presidential campaign from 1982 until the end, I’m better positioned than most to understand the limitations of such snapshots. At this point in 1983, President Reagan’s approval ratings were in the low forties, and several polls showed him and Mondale in a statistical dead heat. Eighteen months later, his ratings were in the high fifties, and he ended up with 59 percent of the vote. In the interim, of course, economic growth had surged, and the unemployment rate had fallen by 3 percentage points.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme. If economic growth averages 4 percent between now and November 2012, unemployment falls to 7.3 percent, and the real per capita income of average families grows by 3 percent, Obama will be the odds-on favorite for reelection against any Republican. Conversely, if growth languishes, unemployment remains close to its current level, and per capita income doesn’t improve perceptibly, Obama will probably lose to a credible Republican–especially if he also faces stubbornly high gas prices. But if the overall economic picture is between the best and worst case, which is what the consensus of economic forecasters now predicts, the election will be close, campaign themes and tactics will influence the outcome, and the identity of the Republican nominee will matter hugely.
Here’s what the numbers show right now, leading into Obama’s speech on long-term fiscal policy. His approval rating averages about 47 percent–not bad, but not good enough to prevail in the general election. A number of surveys indicate that more people like the president personally than like his policies. In the most recent Pew survey, for example, while 47 percent approved of his overall performance as president, his favorable rating on handling the economy was 39 percent; energy policy 40 percent; the budget deficit a woeful 33 percent. And remarkably, when it comes to the deficit, young voters aged 18 to 29–the cohort most favorably disposed to Obama–are even more critical, with only 29 percent approving.
When people are asked to think about Obama’s reelection in broad terms, additional evidence of potential vulnerability emerges. In recent months, a number of national surveys have posed similar versions of the question: Do you think Barack Obama has done well enough to deserve reelection, or would the country be better off with someone else? The “well enoughs” average about 43 percent; the “someone elses” 49 percent.
When framed in terms of head-to-head competition between the president and a generic Republican, Obama also appears vulnerable. In the 14 national surveys conducted over the past two months, Obama averages about 44 percent, the unnamed Republican about 41 percent. Seven of these surveys show the president in the lead, four give the challenger an edge, and three are tied.
Of all these surveys, the only one that gives Obama a significant advantage–47 percent to 37 percent–is Pew’s March 23 offering. This anomaly intrigued me, so I asked Pew to provide me some internal breakdowns: On ideology, their sample broke down 41 percent conservative, 35 percent moderate, 20 percent liberal–right in line with the national averages. Not surprisingly, the president enjoyed better than 80 percent support among liberals. But he was also favored in the Pew survey by 66 percent of the moderates who chose between Obama and a generic Republican, and by 33 percent of the conservatives. To put it mildly, these last two numbers are implausible leading indicators. Since 1976, no Democrat has received more than 62 percent of the two-party moderate vote, and only Jimmy Carter has gotten anywhere near 30 percent of conservatives. Bill Clinton received 22 percent of the two-party conservative vote in 1996; Obama got 20 percent in 2008. And given what has transpired since, he’d do well to equal that figure next time. Thirty-three percent? No way.
And what about head-to-head competition with specific Republicans? Four of them enjoy high enough name recognition to make comparisons meaningful, and they divide neatly into two groups. All the surveys show essentially the same thing: While Obama would beat Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich by double-digit margins, he’s in a statistical dead heat with both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
Additionally, this must all be thought of in the context of the electoral college. For the reasons discussed in previous columns, I persist in my belief that traditionally pivotal swing states such as Florida and Ohio will continue to be decisive in 2012. During the past month, I’m aware of two credible surveys–by Quinnipiac and Public Policy Polling (PPP)–done in each of these states. Let’s take them in turn:
For Florida, Quinnipiac found Obama’s job approval at 47 percent (49 percent disapproval).When asked about Obama’s reelection, 45 percent said he deserved a second term versus 48 percent saying no; and 40 percent said they would vote for Obama compared to 42 percent for an unnamed challenger. While 70 percent of respondents said they like the president, only 41 percent like his policies. PPP showed Obama’s Florida approval rating at 48/47, Romney’s at 39/39, and Huckabee’s at 40/39. In head-to-head contests, he leads Romney 46 percent to 44 percent (well within the margin of error) and Huckabee by 50/43.

Read more…

Adam Serwer makes the case that, President Obama’s “liberal base” problems are “way overstated.” In a Plum Line post Servwer explains:

…Despite the loud criticism of Obama from prominent lefties, liberal and Democratic rank and file support for Obama remains solid. The one who really has the most to fear from an angry base is House Speaker John Boehner….The Post reports:
“Key liberal groups, which helped elect Obama in 2008, are raising concerns that he has given up political ground to Republicans, allowing the message of reducing government to trump that of creating jobs and lowering the unemployment rate.
Seizing on Friday’s deal, which would cut $38.5 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget, activists on Tuesday threatened to sit out the 2012 presidential campaign if Obama goes too far with further cuts.”

Serwer argues that Obama may have gotten a better budget deal than expected and is holding his own with progressives in recent polls:

…Gallup’s weekly demographics poll shows Obama’s approval rating among liberals and Democrats has been relatively stable over the past month. A recent CNN poll also showed that Democrats and independents broadly approved of the budget compromise even before the details were really out, which makes sense since unlike Republicans who seemed eager for a shutdown, Democrats tend to like compromise.
Indeed, it’s precisely because Obama’s standing among liberals and Democrats is so strong that liberal activists and elites have to make so much noise to hold his feet to the fire. Conservative elites, through an incredibly influential media ecosystem that includes Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others, have much more influence over the opinions of the conservative base than liberal elites do over theirs.
Boehner is the person who really has to worry about pleasing his base. That same CNN poll, while giving him broad approval ratings among Republicans, still showed that a bare majority of GOPers believe he has given up too much ground, and his approval ratings among conservatives and Republicans are far lower than Obama’s standing among liberals and Democrats.

Serwer concludes that President Obama is leveraging his leeway to compromise, which makes it “all the more important for liberal groups to pressure him to prevent him from giving too much ground.

Reactions to the president’s “budget speech” today are slowly rolling in, but based on how he tackled the basic issues, I think we can expect two fundamental positions from Democratic opinion-leaders.
Some progressives believe any talk about budget deficits being a paramount issue or spending cuts being necessary concedes crucial ground to Republicans. Others–often the same people–think any talk of a “budget deal” with Republicans concedes equally crucial ground, because (a) GOP intransigence will inevitably make any deal a victory for their cause, no matter what Republicans say about it publicly, and (b) any gestures of bipartisanship make both parties seem equally responsible for failures to reach agreement, which disguises GOP extremism
To these folk, Obama’s speech probably represented a continuation of a deeply flawed strategy, albeit not so bad as the full-throated endorsement of the Bowles-Simpson recommendations that some had feared.
Other progressives think genuine public concern (not to mention elite concern) over deficits is now significant enough that it cannot be ignored, and that the persuadable element of the public also wants bipartisan action with visible participation by the president, which means regular gestures of bipartisanship are valuable if only to expose Republican extremism.
For this faction, which views deficit-talk and bipartisanship-talk as a strategic necessity, Obama’s speech will probably be viewed as quite good, particularly since most of it was devoted to an attack, explicit and implicit, on the GOP “narrative” of the deficit problem and its recommendations for dealing with it.
Without question, the president provided a brisk but pointed critique of Paul Ryan’s budget proposals that highlighted their radical intent–not just in the context of public opinion but of American history–and deceptive nature. He also, however briefly, introduced a discussion of income inequality as background to his call for “shared sacrifice” and his resistance to Ryan’s demand for still more tax cuts for the wealthy. These are themes progressives have been begging him to raise.
All in all, the speech will probably reassure those progressives who hadn’t already despaired of Obama’s budget strategy. And it’s worth noting that this cohort of Democrats remains dominant among the rank-and-file, if not elites. The latest Gallup weekly breakdown of presidential approval ratings showed 80% of self-identified “liberal Democrats” approving of his job performance. For the record, that’s a bit better than Bill Clinton’s 76% approval rating among Democrats as a whole at this point in 1995.

When the alleged presidential front-runner of the allegedly ascendant political party takes his first formal step towards candidacy, and pretty much everybody either yawns or jeers, it is clearly not a good sign for the politician in question. And in general, I can’t recall a presidential “front-runner” who’s been written off as a hopeless loser long before the contest begins by about half the political cognoscenti.
But that’s where we are with Mitt Romney. In a piece designed to be studiously neutral, and the first of a series outlining the strategies of the leading GOP candidates, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post goes through the case for Romney’s nomination methodically: he’s got the obsessive economic message the country’s waiting for; he’s got two early caucus and primary states he ought to win; and he’s got money out the wazoo. Then Chris gets to the “hurdle” part of his analysis, and pretty much says he doesn’t think Romney has a clue about how to overcome it:

Today marks the five-year anniversary of his signing of a health care bill in Massachusetts that has drawn unfavorable comparisons among conservatives to the law pushed by President Obama last year.
Romney, to date, has given little indication of how he will clear this hurdle; he never mentioned health care in his announcement video on Monday, for example….
Romney allies also insist that the idea that a single issue will bring down his candidacy ignores the recent history of nomination fights, noting that Sen John McCain’s embrace of comprehensive immigration reform didn’t foreclose his chances in 2008. (Of course, only when McCain abandoned any talk of immigration reform did he begin his political comeback.)
What’s clear is that whether or not Romney wants to talk about health care, his primary opponents are going to do their damndest to make it issue number one for him.

Over at the Daily Beast, long-time Republican operative Mark McKinnon didn’t bother to attempt neutrality:

[W]hy is it that with the announcement of his exploratory committee today there seemed to be a huge collective yawn? And the refrain from most people, including me, “What, I thought he announced his exploratory committee a year ago.”
Mitt Romney is damned by timing and circumstance.
Let us ponder some of Romney’s problems:
• He is an entirely conventional candidate in an entirely unconventional time in American politics. People don’t want the Cola. They want the Un-Cola.
• He may try to make the moves, but he sure doesn’t look or sound like a Tea Party candidate. And the more he makes the moves, the more he looks like the human pretzel he became in 2008, when he contorted himself to try to please the right wing of the party.
• The No. 1 issue for Republicans in 2012 is going to be President Obama’s health-care law. And Romney is already wrapping himself around the axle trying to explain how the health plan he engineered in Massachusetts is substantially different than Obama’s. And how is this for irony: Romney announced his exploratory committee on the fifth anniversary of “Romneycare.”
• Nobody really thinks or talks about Romney as the prohibitive favorite he ought to be.

Whatever else it means, this insider attitude guarantees that Romney is going to be operating without a net once the campaign is under way. With the entire political world impatiently waiting for his inevitable demise so that the “real” campaign can get under way, every mistake the man makes is going to get exaggerated in the hope that he will see the light and stop taking up space.
I do know people who think Mitt will win the nomination, but only because they rate the GOP field as so bad and chaotic that Romney will probably wind up in one-on-one competition with someone blatantly unelectable (e.g., Michele Bachmann) or incapable of rubbing two nickels together (e.g., Mike Huckabee). In other words, Romney’s a loser unless he’s facing an even bigger loser than he is.
From the perspective of the Invisible Primary of elite opinion, it’s not the sort of atmosphere that makes you hear faint but unmistakable strains of “Hail to the Chief” when Romney enters the room.

Since it’s reasonably clear the president is going to talk about the need for more revenues in his budget speech today, the theological opposition of the Republican Party to any measures that raise tax rates on the wealthy is of more than passing interest right now. And according to Politico‘s Jake Sherman, there are signs John Boehner, of his own volition or under pressure, is back-tracking on prior statements that revenues, like everything else, are “on the table” in budget talks.

[O]n Tuesday Boehner seemed to firm up his stance in advance of President Barack Obama’s speech on the deficit at George Washington University Wednesday, calling tax increases a non-starter.
“(I)f the President begins the discussion by saying we must increase taxes on the American people – as his budget does – my response will be clear: tax increases are unacceptable and are a nonstarter,” Boehner said in a statement. “We don’t have deficits because Americans are taxed too little, we have deficits because Washington spends too much. And, at a time when the American people face skyrocketing prices at the pump, energy tax hikes are a particularly bad idea.”

A “non-starter,” eh? But not, according to his spokesman, precisely “off the table”:

A spokesman for Boehner, Michael Steel, added that the statement doesn’t preclude discussion. “What Boehner said is that he’s willing to talk to anyone to try to find common ground,” Steel said.
“Raising taxes will hurt our economy, and it certainly won’t be part of any common ground. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and raising taxes is only going to make it harder for small businesses to create jobs in America.”

So apparently Boehner will talk about taxes so long as it’s understood he is not open to persuasion on the subject. This is how he reconciles roles as Big Time Washington Wheeler Dealer and conservative ideologue.