Over the weekend Ron Brownstein wrote up the nightmare scenario for Democrats in terms of their appeal to white working class voters:

[P]olling just before the [health reform] bill’s approval showed that most white Americans believed that the legislation would primarily benefit the uninsured and the poor, not people like them. In a mid-March Gallup survey, 57 percent of white respondents said that the bill would make things better for the uninsured, and 52 percent said that it would improve conditions for low-income families. But only one-third of whites said that it would benefit the country overall — and just one-fifth said that it would help their own family….
Obama has already been hurt by the perception, fanned by Republicans, that the principal beneficiaries of his efforts to repair the economy are the same interests that broke it: Wall Street, big banks, and the wealthy. The belief that Washington has transferred benefits up the income ladder is pervasive across society but especially pronounced among white voters with less than a college education, the group that most resisted Obama in 2008. Now health care could threaten Democrats from the opposite direction by stoking old fears, particularly among the white working class, that liberals are transferring income down the income ladder to the “less deserving.”

Brownstein calls this dynamic “an unusual populist crossfire.” The antidote, he suggests, might be two-fold: continuing to stress the benefits for the middle class, and to the country, of health reform, while spending more time reinforcing a Democratic message on the economy and the financial system that makes Republicans, not Democrats, defenders of Wall Street and the wealthy. The White House and congressional Democrats seem to be moving briskly on both those fronts, and how well they succeed could be fateful in November. At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that perceptions (which Brownstein also documents) by poor and minority voters that health reform does in fact help them and help the country produce a greater willingness to vote this year than would normally be the case in a midterm election.

Something interesting is going on in Arkansas Democratic politics right now: a serious primary challenge to an incumbent senator, Blanche Lincoln, who is not mired in any sort of personal scandal, and is not, it would seem, mispositioned ideologically for a general election in her conservative state.
As Steve Kornacki notes at Salon today, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s primary challenge to Lincoln is hard to categorize as simply an ideological challenge to a wayward politician who has offended the party base, or as simply an “electability” challenge to a weakened incumbent who looks likely to lose in November:

Generally, it’s easy to categorize these primary challenges. There are two basic varieties: ideological, with an exercised party base seeking retribution for an incumbent’s dissent from the party-line; and pragmatic, with party members responding to the perceived electoral deficiencies of the incumbent.
And then there’s the Democratic Senate primary now underway in Arkansas, which seems to be a perfect hybrid of these two types. With the latest poll showing Blanche Lincoln’s challenger, Bill Halter, within 13 points of her, that primary – now just seven weeks away – has become the hottest Democratic contest in the nation.
Lincoln, who’s in the final year of her second term, has managed to pull off a somewhat remarkable feat, infuriating both the left-of-center base of her party and her state’s right-leaning general election audience at the same time. Thus, the challenge she’s receiving from Halter doesn’t neatly fit into either of the above categories.

Kornacki goes on to examine prior examples of ideological primary challenges, and finds little evidence of any that were also based on evidence of superior electibility (absent some non-ideological factor like a personal scandal affecting the incumbent’s political standing).
Now it should be obvious that Kornacki’s premise would not be accepted by a fair assortment of people in both parties. Among both self-identified progressives in the Democratic Party, and most especially self-identified conservatives in the Republican Party, many have argued for decades that “centrists” aren’t really more electable, and that rigorously ideological candidates could actually, if given the chance, exert a superior general-election appeal (via better “frames,” or clearer messages, or by mobilizing non-voters, or simply by providing a “choice”), even in difficult partisan terrain like the one Democrats face in Arkansas. There’s definitely evidence that this proposition is true at times and in places where there are significant numbers of voters who are “mispositioned” by adherence to parties with ideologies alien to their own (e.g., southern conservative Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s, and northern moderate-to-liberal Republicans more recently). A subset of the “electability” argument for ideological rigor is that Democratic progressives or conservative Republicans can and will offer messages that have particular appeal to swing voters in a given constituency. That’s also sometimes true, as with antiwar Democrats in times of unpopular wars, or with anti-tax Republicans in places where some state or local tax revolt is underway.
But the Halter challenge to Lincoln is emphatically not in a state where there are liberals outside the Democratic Party ripe for the picking, and there’s not much evidence that Arkansans are generally receptive to any particular progressive arguments, notwithstanding the ancient claim that southerners are especially receptive to anti-corporate “populism” (a complicated topic which I won’t get into here, other than to say that I personally think the claim is vastly overstated since southern conservatives are conservatives on nearly every imaginable topic, including economics).
Lincoln is, however, an incumbent senator at a time when incumbency is not an advantage, and that alone could make Halter as competitive as, if not more competitive than, Lincoln in a general election. And it’s not as though Halter is running as the re-incarnation of Huey Long. His anti-corporate rhetoric, in fact, is pretty much indistinguishable from what we hear from Tea Party folk, opposing bailouts rather than promoting regulation.
It appears Lincoln’s strategy (other than touting endorsements from relatively popular Democrats like Bill Clinton) is to use Halter’s challenge as evidence that she’s not the raging socialist that Republicans make her out to be. If it works, this playing-off-the-left message would presumably boost her general election standing, thus making it easier for her to appeal to Democrats on electability grounds. But she doesn’t have much time to pull this off, and if she doesn’t, she hasn’t instilled enough loyalty in Arkansas Democrats to give her much confidence in a primary win absent an electability argument.
Arkansas will thus be an interesting test of the limits of tolerance for Democratic heterodoxy in tough terrain. And if Halter wins the primary, his performance in the general election will be watched closely for its broader implications as well. The last widely-discussed Democratic primary challenge to an incumbent senator, the Ned Lamont candidacy in Connecticut in 2006, involved a totally different situation: a blue state, a more famous incumbent, a red-hot issue where Joe Lieberman was horribly mispositioned with local opinion, and most of all, a third-party Lieberman general election candidacy that Republicans largely supported. The results of a Halter nomination in Arkansas would be sui generis.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Last week, CBO issued its analysis of President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. The news was not encouraging. Here are the basic findings:

•“If the President’s proposals were enacted, the federal government would record deficits of $1.5 trillion in 2010 and $1.3 trillion in 2011. These deficits would amount to 10.3 percent and 8.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) respectively.”
•“Measured relative to the size of the economy, the deficit under the President’s proposals would fall to about 4 percent of GDP by 2014 but would rise steadily thereafter. … By 2020, the deficit would reach 5.6 percent of GDP.”
•“Under the President’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020. … Net interest would more than quadruple in nominal dollars (without an adjustment for inflation); it would swell from 1.4 percent of GDP in 2010 to 4.1 percent in 2020.”

So what? In the short term, one might argue, we need the deficit spending to prop up demand until a self-sustaining economic recovery begins. Even in 2020, the debt to GDP ratio will be lower than it was at end of World War Two, when growth induced by military spending gave way to the longest economic boom in U.S. history.
A March 21st speech by John Lipsky of the International Monetary Fund offers a compelling retort to that line of thinking. Lipsky points out that while economic growth after 1950 steadily reduced debt relative to GDP, today’s surge in government debt throughout the advanced economies is occurring “at a time when pressure from rising health and pension spending is building up.” Furthermore, he notes, “the projected government debt increase in the advanced economies is only partly due to discretionary fiscal stimulus. In fact, such measures have accounted for only about one-tenth of the projected debt increase. Thus, merely winding down the stimulus will not come close to bringing deficits and debt rations back to prudent levels, considering the projected increases in health care and other government spending.”
This matters for the real economy, because over the long term, large public debts are likely to lead to higher real interest rates and slower growth. In fact, the IMF has estimated that staying on the current trajectory of debt accumulation could reduce growth in advanced economies by as much as half a percentage point annually compared with its pre-crisis performance and expectations.
This is not an idiosyncratic forecast. Using three different models, CBO estimated the impact of the president’s budget on economic output. All three showed negative effects between 2016 and 2020, after the deficit-induced stimulus has run its course. Based on a broad historical analysis of prior fiscal crises, economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt estimate that allowing debt held by the public to rise to 90 percent of GDP would diminish annual economic growth rates by a full percent point—twice the IMF’s estimate. And of course, all other things equal, slower growth means slower improvements in our standard of living and less capital available for investment, private and public. Meanwhile, there is a compelling case that we’re under-investing in infrastructure and education.
In the face of this looming challenge, our political system is doing nothing to prepare the American people for the hard choices that lie ahead. The hyper-polarized parties are in no mood to compromise on their core commitments. Despite first-rate leadership (Alan Simpson as co-chair and Bruce Reed as executive director), many of the parties’ appointees to the president’s bipartisan fiscal commission are hard-liners. It will take skillful management of the process to avoid a total deadlock.
The parties’ failure to come clean has generated a climate of denial. Not surprisingly, a Bloomberg survey released March 24 showed that most Americans support tax increases only for the wealthy. They reject increases in income taxes that would hit the middle class, along with options such as higher out-of-pocket payments for Medicare services and an increase in the Medicare eligibility age. We can expect to live much longer on average than our parents and grandparents, and most of us work in less physically taxing occupations than they did. Still, we reject increasing the normal retirement age for Social Security.
Winston Churchill famously remarked that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else. I hope he’s right, because we’re getting close.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Open Left, Chris Bowers makes a small but important point about the stability of public opinion polling, and the continuing narrow Democratic advantage in the generic congressional ballot, that we’ve recently seen despite the turbulence of events in Washington:

The continuing Democratic advantage is significant since polls of “all adults” have almost entirely washed out of the system. CNN, Daily Kos, and the Economist are among the many organizations that have moved away from polls of all adults in favor of polls of registered voters. In theory, such a polling shift should have been beneficial to Republicans, since Republican voting groups have a higher voter registration rate than Democratic voting groups.
It remains to be seen if Democrats will be able to maintain their narrow advantage when polls inevitably shift from “registered voters” to “likely voters.”

Some pollsters, of course, most notably Rasmussen, have been employing “likely voter” screens all along, which helps account for their relatively high showings for Republicans across the board. But Chris is absolutely right: the longer polls remain stable, the more likely they are relatively accurate predictors of what will happen in November.

In mid-February most of the chattering classes, left and right, lost interest in Sarah Palin after an ABC/WaPo poll that showed rank-and-file Republicans souring on her, or at least concluding she wasn’t qualified to be president. (I personally suspect that poll was an outlier, but that’s a subject for another day, when fresh evidence is available).
But now, in the wake of her twin appearances at a Tea Party Express event in Nevada, and on the campaign trail with John McCain in Arizona, Palin has become impossible to ignore again, and there’s now an interesting effort underway among conservative elites to denounce any dissing of St. Joan of the Tundra from their own ranks.
Today neoconservative patriarch Norman Podheretz appeared on that estimable right-wing bulletin board, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to smite unnamed conservative critics of Palin, utilizing the Big Bertha of latter-day Republican rhetoric, the memory of Ronald Reagan:

Now I knew Ronald Reagan, and Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. Then again, the first time I met Reagan all he talked about was the money he had saved the taxpayers as governor of California by changing the size of the folders used for storing the state’s files. So nonplussed was I by the delight he showed at this great achievement that I came close to thinking that my friends were right and that I had made a mistake in supporting him. Ultimately, of course, we all wound up regarding him as a great man, but in 1979 none of us would have dreamed that this would be how we would feel only a few years later.

Podhoretz goes on to suggest that liberal contempt for Palin is of a piece with liberal contempt for Reagan, and thus should never be echoed on the Right. This is all interesting because it’s the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party–heavily focused on foreign policy, disproportionately led by people who are secular, Jewish, or both, and suspicious of the influence of the Christian Right and of right-wing “populism” generally–where disdain for Palin is most visible. Podhoretz is trying to rein that tendency in.
And it looks like his argument is already getting traction. In its “Arena” feature, Politico asked a bunch of prominent gabbers, most of them conservatives, to react to Podhoretz’s piece, and they generally said he was right (with the occasional condescending reference to Palin’s need for a little more seasoning).
This doesn’t mean that neoconservatives are on the brink of shouting “Run, Sarah, Run!” or emulating the adulation she arouses among Tea Party folk or Right-to-Lifers, but it does represent a disciplinary reminder that the conservative coalition can’t brook any friendly fire. Podhoretz cites William F. Buckley’s famous quip that he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculties of Harvard and MIT, and implies that the prospect of being governed by Sarah Palin rather than Barack Obama represents an equivalent choice (certainly the most back-handed of compliments to Palin; she might as well be named “Alice Aardvark” to qualify for the first page of that phne book).
But the choice, he says, is clear and must be made:

[A]fter more than a year of seeing how [Obama’s] “prodigious oratorical and intellectual gifts” have worked themselves out in action, I remain more convinced than ever of the soundness of Buckley’s quip, in the spirit of which I hereby declare that I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than by the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.

So on behalf of neoconservatives, Podhoretz is taking the coalition oath anew, and inverting the old Popular Front slogan of “Pas d’ennemis a gauche, pas d’amis a droit.” (No enemies to the Left, no friends to the Right). That’s not terribly surprising in the current Total War atmosphere of American politics, but it’s amusing that Palin is being treated as the acid test of conservative solidarity, and perhaps alarming that she passes.

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

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

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

Read more…

The more I think about it, the fight over a Supreme Court nomination that we are likely to see beginning in a month or so could be a major teachable moment for progressives about the underlying belief system of contemporary conservatives and of Republicans who have let themselves get radicalized to an extraordinary degreee since the latter stages of the 2008 presidential contest.
As we speak, conservatives all over the country are demanding legal action by states to challenge the constitutionality of health reform legislation (in my home state of Georgia, there’s even talk of impeaching the Democratic Attorney General, Thurbert Baker, for refusing to waste taxpayer dollars by launching a suit). Yet the basis for such suits-typically a denial of the power of Congress to legislative economic matters under the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the U.S. Constitution–is a collateral attack on the constitutionality of a vast array of past legislation, including the New Deal and Great Society initiatives, not to mention most civil rights laws.
And that questionable proposition is completely aside from other conservative efforts, many of them backed by major Republican officeholders, to “interpose” (to use the term for this strategy when it was deployed by segregationists in the 1950s) state sovereignty to block the implementation of health reform and other federal laws. And beyond that we have the even more radical nullification and secession gestures that have become standard features of conservative Republican rhetoric over the last year or so.
In other words, a debate that revolves around constitutional interpretation is not necessarily one that will help the conservative movement at this particular moment. Indeed, it could actually help progressives raise suspicions that Republicans are contemplating a very radical agenda if they return to power, one that could include (particularly given the stridency of their fiscal rhetoric lately) a direct assault on very popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Moreover, we can anticipate that a Court nomination fight will renew noisy efforts by the Christian Right, which has good reason right now to remind the news media and Republican politicians alike of its continuing power in the GOP, to advance its own eccentric views on America as a “Christian Nation” whose founders never intended to promote church-state separation, not to mention their demands for an overthrow of legalized abortion and same-sex unions. At a time when many conservatives are trying very hard to submerge divisive cultural issues and create a monomaniacal message on limited government, a Court fight will unleash cultural furies beyond control.
And finally, if it really gets vicious, a Court fight could cast a harsh spotlight on the drift of the conservative movement towards a general attitude of defiance towards the rule of law. As I noted in a post yesterday, the downside of the libertarian energy given conservatives by the Tea Party movement is its tendency to treat every major government institution, the presidency, the Congress, and the judiciary alike, with contempt as threats to liberty and “natural rights.” As much as Americans love liberty, they also love order and stability. They aren’t likely to react well to the spectacle of conservatives screaming for a virtual revolution against a popularly elected government, the social safety net, and constitutional doctrines that have been in place for 75 years.
So: bring on the Court fight, and bring it on with all the rhetoric Tea Party folk and other radicalized conservatives have been using about Obama’s “socialism” and the Nazi-like tyranny of universal health coverage! Before it’s over, Republicans may wish they had just picked a different fight.

Congress wrapped up action on health reform with considerable dispatch in the wee hours last night. It’s generally assumed that financial regulation will be the next big issue, and one that many Democrats will relish given the likelihood that the stiff winds of public opinion will be at their backs for a change.
But it appears a very different fight may be thrust upon them pretty soon, with reports that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens may retire as early as next month (when he turns 90). If that’s the case, a confirmation fight will inevitably coincide with the runup to the November elections.
Now Stevens (though appointed by Republican president Gerald Ford) is considered one of the Court’s staunchest liberals, so the confirmation process normally wouldn’t touch off the sort of frenzy on the Right you’d see if Obama were in a position to replace a conservative. But given the timing–not just the proximity to the midterms, but to the health care battle–none of that may matter. You can certainly expect the Tea Party movement and its Republican allies to use a Court fight to dramatize their claims that the Constitution is being shredded. And it’s particularly likely that the Christian Right (important to both the Tea Party movement and the GOP, but not very visible in the news media) would use the opportunity to remind everyone they’re still around, loud and proud.
The New York Times story on the probable Stevens retirement runs through the most prominent candidate for the next Court opening, with Cass Sunstein and Hongju Koh the possibilities most likely to set off a major ideological war, though the odds of either getting the nod are slim.
Given the current environment, though, the president would probably have a big fight on his hands even if he appointed a card-carrying member of the Federalist Society to the Court. After health reform, virtually anything he does will by definition be treated by much of the Right as part of his nefarious plot to turn America into Sweden, if not Venezuela. So get ready for a major rumble.

John Sides of The Monkey Cage flags a recent study, “If Only They’d Ask: Gender, Recruitment and Political Ambition” by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox. Sides quotes from the study:

Highly qualified and politically well-connected women from both major political parties are less likely than similarly situated men to be recruited to run for public office by all types of political actors. They are less likely than men to be recruited intensely. And they are less likely than men to be recruited by multiple sources. Although we paint a picture of a political recruitment process that seems to suppress women’s inclusion, we also offer the first evidence of the significant headway women’s organizations are making in their efforts to mitigate the recruitment gap, especially among Democrats. These findings are critically important because women’s recruitment disadvantage depresses their political ambition and ultimately hinders their emergence as candidates.

Sides adds that the discrimination in recruitment is “not because men are more likely to win: there is little evidence that women candidates suffer at the ballot box.” While the study gives an edge to Democrats in recruiting women, there is plenty of room for improvement, with nothing to lose and much to gain by making a more energetic commitment to recruiting women candidates.