One pundit-task that has a shelf-life so inherently short as to make it pointless is the State of the Union Address (SOTU) forecast, which focuses on the secret of the presiden’s remarks that the whole world will soon know. So I’m more inclined to wait until after the speech to say anything.
But there’s one source of confusion going on in the runup to SOTU 2011 that is very likely to survive it: the belief that in conveying a “pro-business” tone in the speech Obama will be making goo-goo eyes at Republicans in pursuit of a “bipartisanship” they have no intention of reciprocating.
I don’t think so. Yes, Obama is likely to make a very Clintonian pitch for “progress, not partisanship” and lay out modest spending and tax proposals aimed at promoting private-sector job creation–the kind of thing Republicans used to like.
But in the current political context, this sort of “centrist” pitch will represent a deadly attack on the very fundamental tenets of the Republican Party. GOPers have now decided, and tell us every day, that the Great Recession was caused by Big Government (too much spending, taxes and regulation), and that the way to bring the economy roaring back is very simple: reduce the size and strength of government. Never mind if indiscriminate budget cuts result in layoffs of public employees and reduced buying power for consumers losing government benefits; recessions aren’t about consumer demand, they are about “job creators” going on strike, Galt-like, because they are constrained by high taxes and regulation.
Having half-convinced themeslves that Obama was going to give them the political cover they need to go after Social Security and Medicare (beloved of their own electoral base), or offer to negotiate a budget based on their enormous lists of non-defense-discretionary targets, GOPers will not react well to a speech that talks about new public investments that promote growth and innovation; the very idea offends them at this point. So however conciliatory Obama sounds, he appears to be setting a trap whereby conservatives go out of their way to make it clear they don’t give a damn about the economy except as the latest excuse to grind old axes against progressive governance and policies. We’ll soon know if I’m right, and if I am, if it works.

It won’t be official until a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting this afternoon, but it’s abundantly clear that the hopes raised during the inter-session break of Democrats lining up behind a package of serious filibuster reforms have been dashed.
Aside from the fact that there are less than 50 Democratic votes for major changes in the threshold for cutting off debate, there aren’t 50 Democratic votes for the proposition that a simple majority can set the rules for the Senate in each Congress, which was the premise of this whole “reform” exercise. Here’s HuffPo’s Sam Stein on this key point:

Some Democrats are wary of exercising the so-called “constitutional option” — which would allow them to set the chamber rules with just 50 votes — pushing instead to settle for a smaller package of reforms capable of garnering the 67 votes needed for a midsession rules change.

This is another step back after an earlier step back: the substitution of very modest measures sponsored by Sens. Udall and Merkley that didn’t really touch the 60 vote requirement, instead of the more significant reforms promoted earlier by Sen. Dick Durbin. Now even the Udall-Merkley package isn’t doable, says Stein:

The Udall-Merkley approach, said one former Senate aide following the talks, was more or less dead because “the votes aren’t there” for doing something via the constitutional option. And since that means Democrats need 14 Republican votes, the party was all but assured to settle on the low-hanging fruit.

The “low-hanging fruit” will at best involve reductions in the number of mid-level administration appointments requiring Senate confirmation, and changes in post-cloture debate and amendment procedures to make filibusters less attractive on relatively minor legislation.
While unanimous Republican opposition to real filibuster reform is the ultimate problem, it’s important to acknowledge that progressive ambivalence on the subject had a lot to do with this very disappointing outcome. Some Democrats are clearly looking ahead to the possibility of a GOP takeover of the Senate in 2012 (a real possibility even in a good Democratic year because of the Senate landscape). And they’re more concerned about their ability to defend the programmatic and policy objects of conservative wrath than to enact good legislation.
That may make some sense in the short run, but it should be obvious that the party of public-sector activism is in trouble if it supports procedures in the Senate that make progressive governance virtually impossible. Given the inherent and disproportionate power of small states in the Senate, there’s no telling if or when Democrats will ever secure 60 votes in that chamber again and obtain an outside chance of enacting legislation against the will of a united opposition. Throwing away the chance for even modest filibuster reforms sets a very bad precedent, and individual Democratic senators who made this happen need to come forward and explain themselves.

House Republicans passed repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), with loads of bluster about their doing the will of the people. But when you look at public opinion poll data, that support is “very soft indeed,” according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ in the Center for American Progress web pages.

…The fact is people like a great deal about the new health care reform law and are reluctant to give up these advances. Consider these results from the latest CBS/New York Times survey. Forty-eight percent of those polled said they preferred to let the new law stand compared to 40 percent who wanted to see it repealed. The latter figure is obviously significant and, in fact, has been up to 10 points higher in other surveys.

Turns out, however, that support for repeal gets downright mushy when respondents are asked “whether they would still support repeal if that meant insurance companies were no longer required to cover those with pre-existing medical conditions.” Teixeira adds, “This query reduced the number supporting complete repeal to just 21 percent.”
No matter how loudly House conservatives crow about their “victory,” the public is not ready to sign on this particular take-away, especially with no alternative to replace it.

The news that a panel of Illinois Court of Appeals Court judges have ruled Rahm Emanuel ineligible to run for mayor of Chicago because he is not a resident of that city has mostly been greeted with cheers and jeers from Rahm-bo’s various detractors, Left and Right. Others probably assume it’s a problem that will be fixed, one way or another, before the mayoral primary on February 22.
On this last issue, I don’t think there’s much doubt the ruling creates large and immediate problems for the man leading every poll for the Democratic mayoral nomination. Early voting begins one week from today. And election officials are scheduled to begin printing ballots tonight (the process had been delayed pending this decision), without Emanuel’s name. There’s not much time for appeals or any other sort of maneuvering.
On the broader question of the ruling’s “fairness” (putting aside the proper interpretation of Illiinois’ unusually strict residency requirements for candidates), it’s obviously something of a travesty. Not only is Emanuel a native Chicagoan who has spent most of his life there, and represented the city and state in Congress; he is often said to personify the “Chicago” approach to politics. He’s a non-Chicagoan only in the sense that John F. Kennedy might have been considered a non-Bostonian because he left town to serve in the Navy, the Congress and the White House.
You also have to wonder how Alan Keyes managed to qualify to run for the U.S. Senate from Illinois in 2004 against Rahm’s former boss, the President of the United States, having never resided in the state for a moment until he was tapped to replace a disgraced Republican candidate.
Residency requirements are often hazy and even more often abused, as you might expect in a country where the national elites are typically temporary residents of the capitol, with a remarkable number of them harboring political ambitions “back home,” even if they can’t afford to maintain a physical residence in two places. As you may recall from last year’s political cycle, Dan Coats of Indiana managed to get returned to the U.S. Senate as a Hoosier despite having voted in Virginia for a decade and then buying a retirement home in still another state. My personal favorite residency story involved then-Senator, now-proto-presidential-candidate Rick Santorum, who by all accounts was living in the Horse Country of Virginia while the taxpayers of Pennsylvania bore the cost of an internet-based charter school education for his kids (Santorum eventually decided to home-school the kids).
Since there’s zero doubt Emanuel intended to remain a Chicagoan, and did nothing that cost the people of his city or state a dime for living elsewhere for a couple of years, it’s weird he could be disqualified. If he’s a carpetbagger, then so was Scarlett O’Hara.

Accompanying a modest but real upward drift in the president’s approval rating in the last couple of weeks has been some cross-talk about which element of the electorate–particularly independents–might be responsible for it.
Well, TDS Contributor and Emory University politician scientist Alan Abramowitz put together a chart (published here by Brendan Nyhan) that compares approval ratings for Obama from various groups with their actual vote-shares for him in 2008, and finds that they are remarkably similar, and in many cases identical. Obama’s potential victory coalition in 2012 isn’t any mystery; it’s hiding in plain sight, in the coalition that elected him in 2008.

Sad but true, much of the commentary on the State of the Union Address is going to focus on “signals” allegedly being sent by the president concerning this or that group of powerful people, most notably a Republican Party that is getting itself ready to be offended by his refusal to accept their policy agenda.
There will also be talk about the president’s success or failure in wooing business leaders, whose confidence in him, we are often told, is essential to economic recovery. On that topic, Matt Yglesias provides an important reminder:

The notion that economic growth depends crucially on the subjective feelings of the business executive class is one of the most pernicious ideas to take hold over the past 12 months….
The fact of the matter is that businessmen like conservative politicians. If you ask them “how do you feel about the incumbent politicians these days” they say “I feel great” if and only if the incumbent politicians are conservatives. Economic growth was better in the 1990s than in the 2000s, but businessmen liked George W. Bush better than Bill Clinton. Growth was better under FDR than under Eisenhower, but businessmen liked Ike. And that’s fine, businessmen are free to like or dislike whomever they want. But their subjective view of politicians doesn’t cause or hamper economic growth.

If we really believe the profit motive is an important factor in the functioning of a capitalist economy, we have to accept that capitalists will take advantage of opportunities offered by an economy governed by politicians they don’t approve of. Sure, business folk rightly look to the political class for stable policies and competent management. But beyond that, anxious measurement of their temperature towards Obama and his administration is a waste of time.

A new poll conducted 1/9-12 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps and Campaign for America’s Future presents “a clear and dramatic message” for the President and Congress: It’s all about jobs and the restoration of a healthy economy. As the memo from TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Robert Borosage, explains:

The media pundits and Washington conventional wisdom say deficit reduction and cutting gov-ernment spending are the top priorities for the nation; yet, the Republican Congress has prioritized health care repeal and Social Security cuts (which are on the table for the first time.) They could not have it more wrong. It is jobs, stupid.

This survey results, released on the eve of the President’s State of the Union address, shows a significant uptick in his “personal favorability” ratings, all the more impressive since it was conducted before his much-praised address memorializing the victims of the Tucson shooting. Also, for the President, “strong disapproval has plummeted.” Moreover, President Obama is “marginally ahead of Mitt Romney and dramatically ahead of Sarah Palin in the 2012 race.”
The poll also shows some modest improvement for congressional Democrats over 2010, when they were down by 8 points. Dems trail Republicans in a named Congressional ballot by 3 points and by 4 among Independents. The survey concludes that Dems and the GOP “are at rough parity in public image.” The authors warn, however, that,

…Right now, Democrats are basically invisible on the economy and jobs. Republicans are more trusted by 4 points on the economy and the parties are at parity on creating jobs…We all know the unemployment rate will exceed 9 percent for some time to come, and will probably remain above 8 percent up to the election. There is no more important fact. In this survey, 17 percent report being unemployed in the past year; 41 percent counting themselves or someone in their immediate family – one half of white non-college men.

But, looking forward, Dems could gain traction:

Voters could be on the verge of registering some buyers’ remorse for the Republican leadership…Republicans are about to confront the gap between the mandate they claim and the voters’ priorities. This presents an opportunity for Democrats to define themselves, the choice ahead, and more importantly, to finally show what they believe about the economy and how they plan to achieve growth – above all, how to create jobs now and in the future…The President and the Democrats have to start over in communicating their vision on the economy. The country embraces long-term plans for investment to create jobs and favors growth as the best route to deficit reduction – strongly favoring investment over austerity.

In terms of priorities, the survey findings couldn’t be more clear:

Though respondents could choose two problems, just 25 percent say “the budget deficit is big and growing.” While it is important, it is not their top concern.
Just 17 percent think the priority for the new Congress should be repealing health care. The Republican obsession with health care repeal does not correspond with the views of the voters…
The new Congress is about to get it very wrong. The voters believe the top priority should be economic recovery and jobs (46 percent), protecting Social Security and Medicare (34 percent), and making sure children receive an education for these times (27 percent). Cutting spending and the size of government is fourth on the list, at 25 percent, and reducing the size of the budget deficit is sixth–at only 15 percent.

The poll presents additional data indicating that the Republicans are on shaky ground with proposals to cut Social Security, reduce spending and repeal health care reform. For Dems, it is a “better environment than last November,” according to the authors, who dilineate the demographic challenge ahead for Dems:

…In the broad base at the heart of their electoral majority, Democrats are doing respectably at the outset of 2011, though they have to make significant additional gains with young voters and unmarried women if they are to get back to 2012 levels. They also need to do better with union households.

In addition, the authors note continuing Democratic weak support with “white non-college voters,” “white seniors” and “rural non-South white voters.” To make inroads with these and all constituencies, Greenberg, Carville and Borosage see a clear path to victory in 2012: “This is an opportunity for Democrats and the president to show that they get the message: jobs and a big plan to get America going. Protect Social Security and Medicare. This is both good policy and good politics.”

House Republican spending-cut talk has been all over the lot during the last year. Remember Paul Ryan’s 2010 “Road-Map” document, designed to shut up critics who said GOPers were unwilling to commit to any specifics? Republicans soon backed away from the Road-Map because it included major structural changes in Social Security and a “voucherization” of Medicare. GOP interest in “entitlement reform” was also undercut by the failure of the Bowles-Simpson commission to draw much support from either party for a entitlement-cuts-for-tax-increases deal.
A focus on discretionary spending as opposed to entitlements was also encouraged by the emergence of current-year appropriations as the flashpoint of the deficit debate. And even before that, Republicans incautiously threw out a $100 billion figure for immediate appropriations cuts in their campaign-stretch-run “Pledge to America.” John Boehner eventually backed off that number, arguing that it was measured from Obama appropriations requests rather than actual spending. And then, this week, the hyper-conservative and very influential House Republican Study Committee released a proposal for very, very large permanent cuts in non-defense discretionary spending that would accompish both the $100 billion first-year target and a supposed ten-year harvest of $2.5 trillion (with lots of magic asterisks thrown in for TBD across-the-board reductions); the numbers suggest a 40% reduction over what would be necessary to continue current services. Maybe this is just a mine canary to test the willingness of Republicans to support cuts far beyond anything ever seriously proposed in the past, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor immediately made positive noises about the package.
With me so far? The next cookie on the plate was the announcement that Paul Ryan would provide the official GOP response to the State of the Union Address.
So where are Republicans headed on spending? One thing that’s clear is that none of their proposals include defense or homeland security spending. A second thing that’s clear is that it’s entirely possible to promote discretionary cuts in the short-term and entitlement cuts later on (indeed, the Road-Map backloads entitlement cuts by “grandfathering” current beneficiaries). And a third thing that’s clear is that Republican squeamishness on big domestic appropriations cuts is a product of the popularity of most of the programs they would cut, not some concern about the impact on the economy. Republicans appear to have fully and universally drunk the kool-aid of 1930s-era belief that cutting public employment or public benefits somehow can’t damage the economy via reduced consumer demand.
On this last point, the most telling recent quote was from RSC member Tom McClintock (R-CA):

Presidents like Hoover and Roosevelt and Bush … and now Obama, who have increased government spending relative to GDP all produced or prolonged or deepened periods of economic hardship and malaise.

So don’t expect Republicans to embrace the pump-priming Keynsian theories of that notorious socialist Herbert Hoover.
The Democratic response to this mania will obviously depend on which budgetary strategy the GOP decides to pursue. It’s clear some sort of bait-and-switch from Tea Party “cut it all” rhetoric will occur, but whether Republicans will lurch in the direction of shutting down whole major federal functions or going after Social Security and Medicare is very much in the air.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As preparation for President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, I’ve reread two noted presidential speeches delivered days apart, half a century ago. I need not dwell on JFK’s inaugural; many of us know its stirring cadences by heart. Its cardinal virtue is courage; its mood, audacity; its ambition, not just global but galactic. It is a young man’s speech, self-consciously so.
Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address is the surprise. It is remembered, of course, for its warning against the “acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military-industrial complex.” But the real point of the speech is moral. Eisenhower cautions against “any failure traceable to arrogance.” He highlights the perennial temptation to believe that “some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” Meeting the challenge of a hostile ideology calls for, “not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle.”
We are required, Eisenhower insists, to think not just of ourselves, but of posterity. In words even more relevant today than 50 years ago, he declares that “we–you and I, and our government–must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
The foundation stone of Eisenhower’s farewell address is the necessity of preserving balance in all things–“balance between the public and private economy; balance between cost and hoped for advantage; balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the moment. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.”
Consistent with this theme is Eisenhower’s celebration of bipartisanship. “Our people,” he says, “expect their president and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.” Fortunately, he continues, their expectations have not been disappointed: In his eight presidential years, “the Congress and the administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward.”
The tone of Eisenhower’s speech is pacific throughout. Rather than a summons to greatness, it is a warning against hubris. If the cardinal virtue of JFK’s speech is courage, that of Eisenhower’s is prudence. Courage finds its natural home in war; prudence is a virtue for all seasons. In many ways we are a better country than we were 50 years ago. Nonetheless, I cannot help wondering whether, in the process of becoming better, we have lost, first our balance, then our way. In a moment of exasperation, the president I served once complained that we’re all Eisenhower Republicans now. We could do worse.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The Republican Party–and indeed much of the media establishment–is living in a fantasy world when it comes to 2012. To hear most of the pundits and soothsayers tell it, the presidential nominating contest is still a long way off. The GOP heavies we’ve been talking about since 2008, such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty, are all terribly flawed: Mitt’s got his RomneyCare; Newt has been a national pariah; Huck has money problems; Palin is toxic outside her base; and T-Paw induces narcolepsy. But the entire presidential field will change, we are told, when a white knight (possibly handsome, possibly not), comes riding in to save the day. Everything will be different when Mitch Daniels enters the race, the argument goes. You’ll stop scoffing when Mike Pence gets here!
To which I say, look at the calendar. The truth is that if the Republicans’ Galahad is going to save the day, he needs to announce before midnight, and midnight is fast approaching. As Dave Weigel recently pointed out, at this point four years ago, 15 would-be presidents (eight Republicans, seven Democrats) had launched exploratory committees or announced candidacies. And eight years ago, by this time, five Democrats–all of the major candidates other than Wesley Clark–had at least formed exploratory committees, and two had formally announced. Today, in contrast, only the radio talk-show host Herman Cain has launched an exploratory committee. All of the other potential candidacies remain notional and virtual, built around leadership PACs, buzz-generating book tours, and flashy travel announcements.
The simple fact is that, for a white-knight candidate to actually win the nomination, this kind of virtual campaign is not enough. Consider the hurdles that a real, substantive presidential bid must surmount. The first contest of the election takes place on March 11, when the Iowa branch of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition holds a candidate “forum,” which is another word for “debate.” And the first major event in the 2012 cycle–the Ames, Iowa, Republican Straw Poll–is scheduled for August 13, 2011, less than eight months from now. It is not what you’d rightly call an optional event for anyone who wants to win or place in the 2012 Iowa Caucuses. The straw poll is this election cycle’s major fundraiser for the Iowa GOP, and its sponsors are making it abundantly clear that anyone who skips Ames might as well skip the Caucuses. This event requires either a big operation that will bus eager Republicans to Ames, or the kind of passionate team support that Mike Huckabee had in Iowa in 2008. It cannot be dialed in.
Right now, only four putative candidates can afford to ignore this ticking clock: Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, and Palin. Each has enough name ID, or prior experience on the presidential campaign trail, that they won’t be hurt by waiting until just prior to the straw poll, or even later, before going official. And there are currently two others, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum, who are already spending enough time in Iowa to prepare for the first contest. (Another possible candidate, Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann, will soon dip her toes into the Iowa waters, buoyed by a personal connection to Iowa’s own fire-breather, Representative Steve King. Particularly if Palin takes a pass on 2012, Bachmann could be quite formidable.) For everyone else, time is a-wasting. It’s hard to imagine any of the potential white knights–John Thune, Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, Haley Barbour–becoming credible, much less formidable, unless they take the plunge very soon.
It’s not just about Iowa: New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney has a big early lead in polls; and South Carolina, where two of the big dogs of Tea Party-era conservatism, Jim DeMint and Nikki Haley, could have a big impact via endorsements, require early attention too. Despite all the changes the Republican Party has undergone, its nomination contest remains a state-by-state slog in which a few key victories are dispositive. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, whose failed 2008 candidacy vividly demonstrated once again how futile it is to pretend you can ignore the early states altogether, or ask Fred Thompson, a powerful on-paper candidate who couldn’t overcome his own unwillingness to campaign like a wolverine in heat.
Barbour, Daniels, Thune, and Pence may walk tall in Washington, and they can raise money quickly, but they are not particularly well known to the rank-and-file outside their own states. Barbour has to spend time overcoming the poor impression made by his recent clumsy defense of civil-rights-era Mississippi. Daniels has infuriated social conservatives–who dominate the Iowa Caucuses, and who are obsessed with overturning the state’s gay marriage law–by calling for a “truce in the culture wars.” If he is to have any chance at all, he needs to decamp to Des Moines immediately and spend the next several months begging them for forgiveness. Thune has to work to show he’s something other than handsome and inoffensive. And Pence may or may not be running for governor of Indiana. If any of them wants to score a win on the ground in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, he will have to confront these p.r. problems and begin campaigning seriously more or less now. Otherwise, we should all admit that the field of legitimate contenders for the Republican nomination looks like this: Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, Palin (or Bachmann in her absence), and Pawlenty. Talk about anyone else is just a sign of denial.