One of the most interesting subdramas in the rise of the newly hyper-conservative GOP has been the role of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who has regularly been praised by his colleagues for substantive brilliance, but whose substantive brilliance they have often given a wide berth.
Ryan, as you may recall, produced the only thing within shouting distance of a congressional GOP budget blueprint this last year, his “Road Map for America’s Future.” The praise it received on the 2010 campaign trail faded pretty steadily as Democrats promoted awareness of the fact that said Road Map contained pretty radical changes to Social Security and Medicare (particularly since fighting cuts in the latter program had become a major GOP talking point).
Now Ryan is back in the spotlight, partly because he’s been a member of the Bowles-Simpso deficit commission (and one who rejected the commission report on grounds that it ratified ObamaCare), and partly because the post-election afterglow has given him some standing to talk big about the willingness of his fellow Republicans to embrace big cuts in popular federal programs.
Brian Beutler of TPM documents Ryan’s return to prominence as follows:

“The third rail is not the third rail anymore,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the incoming House Budget chairman, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast roundtable with reporters yesterday. “The political weaponization of entitlement reform is no longer as potent as it used to be, and the best evidence is this last election.”
Ryan and several other influential Republicans have found new confidence in the idea that the public would support entitlement cuts. Several candidates, Ryan said, won elections in tough districts on policy platforms modeled after his controversial — and conservative — Roadmap for America’s Future would would privatize social security and turn Medicare into a voucher system….
When I asked incoming Speaker John Boehner at his press conference yesterday whether he shared Ryan’s view of the new political landscape, Boehner suggested that the tide really had turned.
“I do believe that the American people expect us to have an adult conversation with each other about the serious challenges that face our country,” he said. “When you look at the promises that us Baby Boomers have made to ourselves, it’s clear that our kids and grandkids can’t afford those promises. We have to have this conversation. We ought to do it respectfully, we ought to do it honestly. But it’s time to have the conversation, and I think the American people are expecting us to come forward with a conversation.”

Now there’s a big difference between “having a conversation” about doing something very unpopular, and proposing to do it, so if I were Ryan, I’d view Boehner’s statements of support as little more than a permission slip to become a mine canary. As House Republicans get closer to that fateful day when they have to draft a budget resolution, however, it will eventually become a matter of embracing Ryan’s blueprint, coming up with something else, or just deciding to cook the numbers dramatically, with or without the help of some sort of supply-side delusion that cutting taxes for wealthy “job creators” solves all problems.

The official release of the Deficit Commission report was one of those events that could be interpreted in a wide variety of ways. No, the report did not receive the 14 commission votes necessary to trigger a vote on its recommendations by Congress. But it obtained 11 votes, including influential representatives of both parties (e.g., Tom Coburn and Dick Durbin), and certainly solidified the impression that Democrats and Republicans alike think (or at least say) that deficit reduction is an urgent national priority.
But will any of the specific recommendations made by the commission gain traction, in isolation from the overall package? That’s very hard to say, since very few of them seem to have genuine bipartisan support, and instead depend on a balance of ideas repugnant to one of the two parties. Ezra Klein does a good job of identifying “best” and “worst” ideas in the proposal. But the horsetrading value of an idea in the context of partisan gridlock isn’t necessarily related to its rationality; a matched set of “bad” ideas that are least objectionable to Democrats and Republicans could be easier to sell. And that’s the problem with “bipartisan solutions” in a partisan era.

As Bill Galston points out, there’s no longer much doubt that deficit reduction has become a very large public concern over the last year. It’s a separate question as to whether Americans are willing to support actual spending reductions or tax increases proposed by either party, and thus whether there is really a popular base for a deficit reduction compromise. But no one should argue any longer that the whole subject is just being cooked up by elites.
Still, the current extend-the-tax-cuts debate in Washington demonstrates pretty conclusively that deficit reduction is not, in fact, the preeminent value of either party in Congress. Both are pursuing a path guaranteed to increase long-term deficits and debt. And since the wealthy benefit disproportionately from an income tax rate reduction in the lower brackets (that’s how marginal tax rates work), even the Democratic approach elevates tax cuts for “all Americans” (to use the Republican battle cry) over deficit reduction.
Matt Yglesias sums up the ironic situation well:

[T]here’s no debate in Washington about whether rich people should get a permanent tax cut. Nor is there any debate in Washington about whether rich people’s tax cut should be financed by long-term borrowing. Nor is there any debate about whether rich people should get a bigger tax cut than middle class people. But we “can’t afford” unemployment insurance, we “can’t afford” to pay bank regulators competitive salaries.
We have a bipartisan consensus that the short-term deficit should be made smaller and the long-term deficit should be made bigger even when all the economic logic points in the opposite direction.

Now Republicans, of course, dispute that we’re talking about “tax cuts” at all, and maintain that failing to extend the Bush tax cuts represents a tax increase, even though the reversion to earlier rates has been established in current law from the beginning, and even though the original rationale for the Bush tax cuts was to “rebate” unnecessary revenues when the federal budget was in surplus. But that’s just another way of saying that low tax rates, particularly for those “job creators” at the top, are an end in themselves for Republicans, crucial in every fiscal or economic circumstance, and thus far more important to them than deficits-and-debt.

Many progressive Democrats are still grumbling about President Obama’s participation in the ‘Slurpee Summit’ with Republican leaders, some of whom have proclaimed the destruction of his presidency as the mother of all GOP priorities. These progressives feel he is being suckered again, not without reason, since there are zero indications that Republicans are negotiating in good faith or willing to give up anything at all to cut a deal.
I hope I’m not in denial here, but I have to believe Obama was not being suckered. He knows the Republicans aren’t interested in negotiating, but he feels he has to do bipartisan kabuki for one or more of three possible reasons: 1. polls strongly indicate the public wants Republicans and Democrats to work together, and even a gesture in that direction is better than no outreach; 2. The Slurpee Summit provided an opportunity to raise public awareness of the GOP’s obstructionism, thereby advancing support for holding the line on letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy; and 3. If he must cave, his bipartisan gesture makes it easier for him to cave a little, instead of total capitulation.
The alternative, almost too grim to contemplate but predicted by some observers, is that President Obama will capitulate on tax cuts for the rich because he feels it is his only chance to get other legislation passed in the lame duck session, after which his options diminish severely.
Wince-provoking as was Obama’s apology for not not adequately reaching out to Republicans during his first two years in office, it just may prove to have been a clever opening move. A little humility can become the image of a politician in trouble and enhance his cred as a leader who negotiates in good faith, especially when the other side tends to express disagreements in bilious diatribes. Obama’s proposed freeze on pay for federal workers, however, may look even worse if he caves on extending tax cuts for top earners.
Now the my-way-or-the-highway Republicans are threatening to obstruct all legislation, unless the Bush tax cuts are renewed for the rich. Public opinion data suggests they are on shaky ground. Undaunted, Speaker Pelosi is reportedly preparing a vote on keeping the tax cuts for those earning less than $250K only.
She is on more solid ground in terms of public opinion. There are surveys which indicate that most of the public believes top earners should pay more taxes, such as the Gallup/USA Today poll conducted 11/19-21, which found that respondents favored new limits for “how much of wealthy Americans’ income is eligible for the lower rates” over keeping the “tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income” by a margin of 44 percent to 40, with 13 percent favoring allowing the tax cuts to expire. So, 57 percent of those polled oppose keeping the Bush tax cuts at current levels for the wealthy.
The Republicans, however, are practicing impressive message discipline, always inserting “job-killer” before the term “tax hikes,” and jabbering about how the rich need the Bush tax cuts renewed because they are all hard-working small business folks who, shucks, just want to hire more workers with their hard-earned incomes. Dems can sweeten the expiration of upper income cuts in public perception with a significant tax incentive for small businesses to hire and retain workers.
As has been noted repeatedly since the midterms, polls indicate quite clearly that much of the public has limited faith in the GOP to do what is right for the country, even though midterm voters wanted to punish the majority party. Regarding bipartisanship, a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted just before the midterms found that 56 percent of respondents (66 percent of Democrats, 47 percent of Republicans, 52 percent Independents) agreed that it was more important for “politicians in congress to work with members of the other party and make consensus policy” than to “stick to their principles and hold to the issues they campaigned on.” (38 percent agreed, 29 Dems, 48 Republicans, 39 Independents)
It’s helpful to know that bipartisanship has substantial public support. But it would be good if some poll would shed a little more light on public perceptions about which party is making the most credible bipartisan effort. An August Ipsos/Public Affairs poll indicated that 28 percent of respondents blamed Democrats more for “the fighting between parties and branches of government,” while 36 percent blamed Republicans more. It would be even better to see what opinions about bipartisanship failure do to influence candidate choice. The responses to that one could be very helpful in formulating Dem strategy leading up to 2012.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Back in March, Gallup found that while Americans named unemployment and the economy as the most immediate problems, they regarded the federal budget deficit as the most important future problem. Apparently the future is now. On the eve of the president’s deficit commission report, Gallup released a survey that asked a random sample of adults the following question:
If you had to choose, which of these would be the best approach for Congress and the president to take in dealing with the U.S. economy?
Here are the answers:
Reducing the deficit and debt 39
Increasing taxes on the wealthy 31
Cutting taxes 23
Increasing stimulus spending 5
And here is the partisan breakdown (Democrats, Republicans, Independents):
Reducing the deficit and debt 24 49 42
Increasing taxes on the wealthy 52 11 30
Cutting taxes 12 35 23
Increasing stimulus spending 9 3 4
Some points of interest:
* Support for additional stimulus has collapsed, even among Democrats.
* Of the general public’s top two choices, “reducing the deficit and debt” is rejected by three-quarters of Democrats, and “increasing taxes on the wealthy” by nine-tenths of Republicans.
* Independents track overall sentiment very closely.
The conventional wisdom is that Americans accept the goal of deficit reduction but not the steps needed to achieve it. That may turn out to be right. But Gallup found that fully 75 percent of Americans believe failing to address the costs of Medicare and Social Security would create major economic problems for the United States in the future. When asked what we should do about this, the responses were:
Cut benefits, not raise taxes 19
Raise taxes, not cut benefits 30
Combination of both benefit cuts and tax increases 46
There is, it seems, at least a public plurality in favor of the kind of approach that allegedly “elitist” and “out of touch” experts and commissions typically recommend.
I’m not–repeat, not–claiming that the people are always right. But the midterm election was a massive protest against a political system that seemed not to be paying attention to what the people were saying. Before the major parties decide to default to their entrenched preferences–upper-income tax cuts for Republicans, down-the-line defense of entitlements for Democrats–wouldn’t it be a good idea to try listening a bit more attentively?

It’s no secret that exit pollsters have trouble getting representative samples of Hispanic/Latino voters, with sometimes significant consequences, as in 2004 when it was reasonably clear that the national exit polls overstated the Republican share of the Latino vote.
Well, looks like it happened again on November 2, according to a compelling analysis by Gary Segura and Matt Barreto for Latino Decisions. They note several particularly strange exit poll findings:

[T]he exit poll numbers for Sharron Angle in Nevada are mind boggling. Angle, who arguably ran the most offensive campaign against Latino immigrant is estimated to have won 30% of the Latino vote – an 8 percentage point improvement over John McCain in 2008 who won 22% of the Latino vote in Nevada. It is not possible, nor plausible that Angle improved by 8% among Latinos in 2010 given her attacks on Latinos, and Reid’s strong defense of immigration reform. Rather, the Latino Decisions data in the election poll, and our 10 weeks of data from Nevada in our tracking poll both point to very large gains for Democrats in Nevada, and our 90% estimate for Reid matches very close to the vote totals that resulted in a surprise win by Reid that pre-elections polls missed.
In California, the national exit polls would have us believe that Meg Whitman who saw her favorability ratings plummet among Latinos after her contradictory statements supporting Arizona’s SB1070 and her undocumented immigrant housekeeper scandal, also did better among Latinos than John McCain in 2008. In 2008 McCain won an estimated 23% of the California Latino vote, yet the 2010 exit polls suggest Whitman won 30% of the Latino vote, a 7 point improvement? Latino Decisions estimated just 13% for Whitman in 2010.
In Arizona, Jan Brewer, the force behind SB1070 who claimed Mexican immigrants were beheading innocent Arizonans in the southern desert is reported to have won 28% of the Latino vote according to the national exit polls. In contrast Latino Decisions found back in May that Brewer was attracting only 12% of the Latino vote, and that in October our tracking poll estimated 13% vote for Republicans in Arizona, and ultimately only 14% vote for Brewer in 2010, a far cry from 28%.
In these cases, and across the board in 2010, the NEP Latino exit poll results are laughable.

Segura and Baretto discuss glaring examples of poor Latino vote samples for exit poll purposes, and also evaluate possible reasons for the persistent problem, most notably the failure to sample heavily Latino precincts, and the sparse availability of Spanish-language interviewers.
Does this question really matter? Yes, for a very particular reason. The recent lurch of the national Republican Party towards a position of considerable hostility to comprehensive immigration reform was always a gamble that pitted potential gains among white voters against potential losses among Latinos. If someone like Sharron Angle could do as If well among Latinos as John McCain, then it would appear there was little or no marginal political cost for her immigrant-bashing, and perhaps, conservative strategists might conclude, she or future GOP candidates should double-down on the issue and go all Tom Tancredo in an appeal to white voters.
If I were a Republican, I’d be a lot less inclined to be happy about my party’s performance among Latinos in the exit polls, and a lot more interested in making sure the numbers are right before they lead GOP pols in a very unfortunate direction with respect to the country’s fastest growing voter bloc.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s time to smack down, once and for all, the idea that President Obama will face a serious primary challenger in 2012. This trope has been popping up ever since the 2008 general election, when horserace-hungry pundits speculated that Hillary Clinton would try to knock off the Democratic nominee four years down the road. And it’s only gotten worse with the rise of the “angry left,” which thinks Obama has been too eager to compromise with Wall Street and the Republicans, and considers itself the representative of the Democratic base.
Now, in the aftermath of this month’s “shellacking,” mischief-making pundits have seized on a couple of polls to burnish their narrative: One is from AP/KN in late October, showing that 47 percent of Democrats want the president to be challenged by another Democrat in 2012 (with 51 percent opposed); and one came from McClatchey/Marist just before Thanksgiving, showing 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favoring a primary challenge (with 46 percent opposed).
Sounds pretty dangerous for Obama, right? Well no. For a substantive primary challenge to occur, a coherent bloc of Democratic voters–whether liberal or moderate–would have to sour on Obama and coalesce behind another candidate in such a way that threatens the president’s hold over his base. There’s just no sign of that happening. For instance, the very same AP/KN poll shows that three-quarters of Democrats want to see the president re-elected; i.e., they’re not really discontented with Obama and they just like the idea of a primary that gives them options. Likewise, the McClatchy/Marist survey doesn’t show a single bloc fed up with Obama and preparing to bolt for a latter-day Howard Dean: Given a choice of hypothetical challenges, 39 percent of Democrats and leaners preferred a candidate from the left of the president, and 40 percent a candidate from the right.
What’s more, Obama’s straight approval ratings among rank-and-file Democrats are very high. According to Gallup’s latest weekly tracking poll, 81 percent of self-identified Democrats give Obama a positive job approval rating. Among liberal Democrats, who are supposedly the most likely to rebel, the number rises to 85 percent. Let’s compare that to the last three Democratic presidents, two of whom faced serious primary challenges: At equivalent points in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had a positive job rating among Democrats of 74 percent; Jimmy Carter’s rating was 63 percent; and Lyndon Johnson had a rating of 66 percent. And Carter’s and LBJ’s numbers had to fall by ten or twenty more points before either attracted another contender.
The racial politics of the Democratic Party also make a serious primary challenge less likely. Sure, some progressives have been raging at Obama as of late. But anyone credibly threatening to topple Obama would have to pry away a significant chunk of Obama’s support among African Americans–and in case you haven’t noticed, Obama is the first black president. His job approval rating among African Americans is currently 89 percent, and it has not gone below 85 percent at any point of his presidency. Can you conceive of a left-wing revolt that runs directly counter to the manifest wishes of the largest and most loyal segment of the Democratic base? Imagine Hillary Clinton launching her 2008 candidacy without any of the goodwill that her husband’s presidency had engendered among African Americans.
Above all, primary challenges to incumbent presidents require a galvanizing issue. It’s very doubtful that the grab-bag of complaints floated by the Democratic electorate–Obama’s legislative strategy during the health care fight; his relative friendliness to Wall Street; gay rights; human rights; his refusal to prosecute Bush administration figures for war crimes or privacy violations–would be enough to spur a serious challenge. And while Afghanistan is an increasing source of Democratic discontent, it’s hardly Vietnam, and Obama has promised to reduce troop levels sharply by 2012.
Most importantly, who would run? Hillary Clinton has ruled it out categorically. Al Gore’s electioneering days appear to be long over. There’s been talk of Russ Feingold running (mainly based on a misunderstanding of an “I’ll be back” statement he made on election night which seems to have referred to a future Senate race). Dean would win headlines, but has a poor reputation in Iowa, where any progressive challenge would have to be launched. There are no guaranteed primary vote-getters out there like Estes Kefauver in 1952, and certainly no one close to the stature of Ted Kennedy. And there’s a reason no incumbent president has actually been defeated for re-nomination since the nineteenth century.
So that’s it. What we are likely to see is a marginal opponent: a Dennis Kucinich, or a Harold Ford, or some celebrity who hasn’t held office but is willing to spend some money. More serious comers will be chased away by the hard, cold reality of what it would take to mount a presidential campaign against the White House in places like Iowa and Nevada and New Hampshire and South Carolina. And President Obama will be left facing challengers similar to Pete McCloskey or John Ashbrook, who came at Richard Nixon from the left and right, respectively, in 1972. To the extent that these candidates are remembered at all, it’s as roadkill on the way to Nixon’s renomination.

An important TDS Strategy Memo by Ed Kilgore, James Vega and J.P. Green
In a recent Washington Monthly commentary titled “None Dare Call it Sabotage,” Steve Benen gave voice to a growing and profoundly disturbing concern among Democrats – that Republicans may actually plan to embrace policies designed to deny Obama not only political victories but also the maximum possible economic growth during his term in order weaken Democratic prospects in the 2012 elections.
The debate quickly devolved into an argument over the inflammatory word “sabotage” and the extent to which the clearly and passionately expressed Republican desire to see Obama “fail” will actually lead them to deliberately choose economic and other policies that are most conducive to achieving that result.
But, among Democrats themselves, this particular question is actually just one particular component of a much broader and deeper concern — a very real and authentic sense of alarm that there is something both genuinely unprecedented and also profoundly dangerous in the intense “take no prisoners” political extremism of the current Republican Party. There is a deep apprehension that fundamental American standards of proper political conduct and ethical political behavior are increasingly being violated.
The key feature that distinguishes the increasingly extremist perspective of today’s Republican Party from the standards of political behavior we have traditionally considered proper in America is the view that politics is — quite literally, and not metaphorically – a kind of warfare and political opponents are literally “enemies”
This “politics as warfare” perspective has historically been the hallmark of many extremist political parties of both the ideological left and ideological right – parties ranging from the American Communist Party to the French National Front.
Historically, these political parties display a series of common features – features that follow logically and inescapably from the basic premise of politics as warfare:
I. Strategy:

• In the politics as warfare perspective the political party’s objective is defined as the conquest and seizure of power and not sincere participation in democratic governance. The party is viewed as a combat organization whose goal is to defeat an enemy, not an organization whose job is to faithfully represent the people who voted for it.
• In the politics as warfare perspective extralegal measures, up to and including violence, are tacitly endorsed as a legitimate means to achieve a party’s political aims if democratic means are insufficient to obtain its objectives. To obscure the profoundly undemocratic nature of this view, the “enemy” government–even when it is freely elected — is described as actually being illegitimate and dictatorial, thus justifying the use of violence as a necessary response to “tyranny”.
• In the politics as warfare perspective all major social problems are caused by the deliberate, malevolent acts of powerful elites with nefarious motives. An evil “them” is the cause of all society’s ills.
• In the politics as warfare perspective the political party’s philosophy and basic strategy is inerrant – it cannot be wrong. The result is the creation of a closed system of ideologically controlled “news” that creates an alternative reality.

II. Tactics:

• In the politics as warfare perspective standard norms of honesty are irrelevant. Lying and the use of false propaganda are considered necessary and acceptable. The “truth” is what serves to advance the party’s objectives.
• In the politics as warfare perspective the political party accepts no responsibility for stability – engineering the fall of the existing government is absolutely paramount and any negative consequences that may occur in the process represent a kind of “collateral damage” that is inevitable in warfare
• In the politics as warfare perspective the creation of contrived “incidents” or deliberate provocations are acceptable. Because the adherent of this view “knows” that his or her opponents are fundamentally evil, even concocted or staged incidents are still morally and ethically “true.” The distinction between facts and distortions disappears.
• In the politics as warfare perspective compromise represents both betrayal and capitulation. Destruction of the enemy is the only acceptable objective. People who advocate compromise are themselves enemies.

These various components all form part of an integrated whole. Seen as a coherent package they make it clear that politics as warfare is simply not an acceptable philosophy for an American political party. It is profoundly and unambiguously wrong.
It is easy to see examples of the various politics as warfare– based views and tactics listed above directly reflected in the statements and actions of the extreme wing of Republican coalition – they range from Michelle Bachmann and Sharon Angle’s winking at violence with references to “second amendment remedies” to Andrew Breitbart’s deliberate editing of a video to smear Shirley Sherrod, Glen Beck’s suggesting that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator, Fox News’ tolerating attacks on Obama as equivalent to Hitler and airing repeated suggestions that the miniscule New Black Panthers present a real and genuine national threat of stolen elections and Grover Norquist’s endorsement of a government shutdown over extending the debt limit, despite the genuine dangers this poses to international financial stability.
The list can be continued with many other examples from Eric Erickson’s RedState, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and organizations like Freedomworks. An entire book has been written containing nothing but examples of recognized right-wing spokesmen subtly and not so subtly endorsing and encouraging the use of violence against liberals and Democrats.
And this politics as warfare perspective is not confined to the “fringes” of the Republican Party.

Read more…

Democracy Corps has a new research and strategy memo, “What Next for President Obama and Democrats?,” which delineates a clear path to victory in coming elections. The DCorps analysis, based on three post-election national surveys by by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, Resurgent Republic, Campaign for America’s Future, and Women’s Voices. Women Vote, finds that,

2010 was a voter revolt against Democratic governance during an economic and jobs crisis. Above all, voters were frustrated with the lack of progress on unemployment, the seeming ineffectiveness of the president’s policies, a shortage of sustained focus on economic issues, and the absence of a vision or message showing voters where the president and the Democrats wanted to take the country. They were angry about the bailouts, spending, and deficits that seemed only to put the country at more risk. Despite hopes for change, they could not see anybody battling for the middle class and American jobs during this crisis, yet politics as usual carried on – Wall Street and lobbyists continued to win out and the parties continued to bicker.
Health care reform was symptomatic of Washington not focusing on jobs and the president being inattentive. The new law was attacked as out-of-control spending. And a lot of seniors came to the polls to prevent the so-called Medicare cuts.

However, the analysis also notes,

For all that, there is no evidence that this was an affirmative vote for Republicans. Their standing is no higher in this year’s post-election polls than it was in 2008 and 2006. There is a lot of evidence that voters do not share Republicans’ priorities, particularly on Social Security and Medicare, and voters did not mandate a consuming focus on spending cuts and deficit reduction. That voters decided to hammer Democrats for spending does not translate into a mandate for Republicans to slash spending and squander the next two years trying to repeal health care…
Voters also do not share the Republicans’ determination to limit President Obama to one term and stop his agenda. A large majority remains hopeful that President Obama can succeed, and above all, they want the president and the leaders of both parties to work together to get things done. Voters are hungry for a different tone during this crisis and are looking for evidence that they have been heard.

The memo adds:

There is opportunity for the president to reach out on budget reform, energy, comprehensive immigration reform, and job creation – such as an infrastructure bank leveraging private capital…The more the president reaches out on these issues, the more opportunity he has to draw firm lines on central aspects of his agenda, including letting the top-end Bush tax cuts expire, pressing for infrastructure and energy investments, and protecting health care reform. Even in this difficult post-election environment, we battle to a draw on the toughest issues and prevail as the agenda shifts to growth.
Voters want leaders to focus on both growth and deficit reduction; indeed, they are looking for leaders to offer a vision for a successful America with a rising middle class.

The DCorps memo concedes that moderate economic growth and the likelihood of only small declines in unemployment make the Democratic path to recovery a rocky road. Rather than focus on the political center and Independents, DCorps urges Dems to put more effort in engaging minorities and young voters, both of which are essential for good results in 2012. More specifically,

The starting point is the new Democratic base and the areas where Democrats have been making steady gains since 2000. This is not a narrow slice of the electorate or an ideologically straightforward target. It includes the rising proportion of young people (up to one-fifth of the presidential electorate in 2012); the growing Latino bloc (at least 10 percent) that joins African-Americans and other racial minorities (to form at least a quarter); single women (more than one-fifth) who have emerged central to the new progressive base; and union households (more than 15 percent of the electorate). They have been joined by the more diverse, professional, and affluent suburbs – identified by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis[2] – that have moved steadily Democratic over more than a decade, account for the Democrats’ congressional gains over that period and gave Obama big victories.
The reason why Democrats won the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008 is that their base is a majority of the country.

The DCorps memo provides much more detail concerning performance and prospects regarding key demographic groups, including single women, young people, union households and the suburbs. It includes recommendation for targeting swing voter demographics, including white non-college, white non-south rural and industrial midwest voters.
The “getting-the-car-out-of-the-ditch” metaphor ended up resonating poorly with pivotal constituencies, according to DCorps data. Rather, the message that 2010 voters wholeheartedly endorsed in the DCorps study, was:

…America has been falling behind, while countries like China have a vision to succeed. We need our own vision for American success. Our economic problems have been building for years — with good jobs outsourced and wages and benefits falling behind rising costs. Schools, sewers, and roads are in disrepair. We need a clear strategy to make things in America, make our economy competitive, and revive America’s middle class.

Further, DCorps found that the GOP’s most treasured priority “to focus above all on cutting spending, reducing deficits and keeping taxes low” performed poorly, and warns “…Do not assume that the clubs used to punish Democrats this year translate into the preferred policies for the future.” The Republicans’ mono-maniacal obsession with defeating Obama did not resonate well either, especially among swing voters who want to see an end to partisan bickering and some effort towards bipartisan cooperation.
Dems can benefit by hanging tough with protecting Social Security and Medicare from GOP cuts, while not waivering from calling for letting tax cuts for top earners expire. The analysis concludes by noting a two-thirds favorable response to President Obama’s following statement:

The economy isn’t creating enough jobs but we can’t go back to rising debt and dangerous bubbles. My commitment is to build a new foundation for jobs and growth that begins with making things in America again. Yes, we have to reduce our deficits, but it is not enough. We have to make investments in education, in research and innovation, in a competitive 21st century infrastructure. We have to lead in the new energy, Green industrial revolution sweeping the world. This has to be affordable, but my priority is working together to rebuild a successful America with a rising middle class.

This is the vision that Dems can carry forward for optimal results in 2012 and beyond.

If we’re going to be good sports like the President and admit Dems got ‘shellacked’ in the midterms, then it’s fair to say we got pulverized in the south. On that topic, Jonathan Martin is getting buzz with his Politico article “Democratic South Finally Falls.”
Martin’s title seems a little melodramatic, considering most of the south has been red territory for a few cycles. But Martin makes a persuasive case, mining a couple of angles:

After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further.
…this year’s elections, and the subsequent party switching, have made unambiguously clear is that the last ramparts have fallen and political realignment has finally taken hold in one of the South’s last citadels of Democratic strength: the statehouses.
…Democrats lost both chambers of the legislature this year in North Carolina and Alabama, meaning that they now control both houses of the capitol in just two Southern states, Arkansas and Mississippi, the latter of which could flip to the GOP in the next election…The losses and party switching, one former Southern Democratic governor noted, “leave us with little bench for upcoming and future elections.”

And according to the Associated Press,

In Alabama, four Democrats announced last week they were joining the GOP, giving Republicans a supermajority in the House that allows them to pass legislation without any support from the other party. The party switch of a Democratic lawmaker from New Orleans handed control of Louisiana’s House to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.
In Georgia, six rural Democratic state legislators — five from the House and one in the Senate — have switched allegiance to the GOP since Nov. 2…In Georgia, the GOP swept every statewide office this year and brought, in the words of state Rep. Alan Powell, “an effective end, at least for the foreseeable future, to the two-party system in state government.”

Martin says ten Democrats in southern state legislatures are switching party affiliation to the GOP, and yes, there will undoubtedly be more. But I’m not too worried about the “bench” factor. Most southern cities have Democratic mayors, and some of them are going to run impressive statewide campaigns in future cycles when the economy is not so sour. Grim as it seems now, we will see southern Democratic governors and U.S. Senators being sworn in down the road. As Martin acknowledges:

For all the bad tidings, there is one important development that could bode well for Democrats in some Southern states. While they may never get back the rural areas that once served as their bulwark, Southern Democrats are now competitive in some fast-growing suburbs in states that have a significant number of transplants. There was a reason why Obama won Virginia and North Carolina in 2008 — both are filled with newcomers who are open to supporting either party.
“The more metropolitan a state has become, the more resilience that gives Democrats,” said Ferrel Guillory, an expert on Southern politics at the University of North Carolina.
So even as Democrats lose long-held seats in places like rural eastern North Carolina, they can potentially make up the difference by capturing districts around Charlotte and the Research Triangle. “As those metro areas continue to grow, Democrats can find a new base of support,” Guillory said.

The main flaw in Martin’s article is that he doesn’t put the pro-Republican trend in the southeast in economic context. According to the most recent BLS data, two-thirds of southeastern states have higher unemployment rates than the national average (9.6 percent in October). The anger about the economy is at least as palpable and politically-consequential in the southeast as it is in the rust belt and elsewhere. If the economy rebounds during the next two years, the GOP will lose some of its edge in the south.
Large African American populations in southern states, particularly MS (37.1 percent), LA (31.5), GA (29.7), SC (28.3) and AL (26.2), will eventually serve as a solid base for Democratic candidates who only have to win the support of a third or so of white voters to get elected. NC (21.2 percent black pop.) and VA (19.5) have the additional demographic factor of rapid in-migration from residents of less conservative states.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latino voters are still a small segment of southern voters, with the exception of Florida, where they were 14.5 percent of eligible voters in 2008, followed by VA, where Latinos comprised just 3.3 percent of eligible voters. While Florida’s Cuban-Americans have tended to vote Republican, they are today less than a third of FL Latinos. Meanwhile, Hispanics as a demographic group are growing rapidly in NC and GA.
Despite the daunting situation facing Democrats in the south in the wake of the midterms, there is cause for optimism about the future — particularly if Dems invest needed resources in party-building and leadership development in the region. If we are going to be a healthy political party with strong roots and a promising future, we have to work at being competitive everywhere.