One of the oldest and hoariest debates among pollsters and political scientists is the measurement of public opinion according to likelihood to vote in a particular election. Some polls show results for “all adults,” some for “registered voters,” and some for “likely voters.” This last category is especially useful, if perilous, in projecting election results. It’s useful for the obvious reason that the views of people who don’t wind up voting are irrelevant to actual election results. It’s perilous because determining likelihood to vote is not an exact science, and moreover, can produce some serious distortions. Pollsters typically use two different methods for measuring likelihood to vote: some are subjective, mainly involving poll respondents’ own expressed interest in an election, and some are objective, including past voting behavior, and most controversial, post-survey “adjustments” of raw data to reflect the expected composition of the electorate. “Adjustments,” in fact, are one of those factors (others include question language and question order) the biases of pollsters or their clients can become pretty important, but in general, “tight” likely-voter screens have recently produced results more favorable to Republicans.
Aside from measurement factors, there are two important reasons why going into the November elections, “likely voters” are more likely to lean Republican than “registered voters.” The first is that historically, midterm elections attract an older and whiter electorate than presidential elections; given the weakness of Barack Obama among old white voters even in his 2008 victory, that’s significant. The second is that likelihood to vote measures intensity of political engagement, and right now, there’s little question Republicans are more “energized” than Democrats. So I’m certainly in full agreement that Democrats have what Jonathan Chait recently called (after examining the latest Democracy Corps/Third Way data on “drop-off” voters) a “turnout emergency” in 2010
But it’s a very different matter altogether to use public opinion surveys sifted for likelihood to vote in the next election to measure the current “mood” of the American people on this or that issue–in other words, to treat polls as a sort of plebiscite on the wishes of the electorate as a whole. You see this every day when conservatives argue that “the people” or “America” has rejected health reform because likely 2010 voters in a poll tilt heavily against some formulation of health reform legislation. Such polls may well indicate a possibility that voters in November will react poorly to the enactment of health reform, but do not present a fair representation of public opinion on the subject. No one would seriously argue that only those voting-eligible adults who get through a pollster’s LV screen are “people” or “Americans.” So no one should use LV data to construct some sort of plebiscite. LV’s will have their say in November. Let all Americans have their say when they are asked to express it.

In a period of great conflict and confusion over health reform, one of the most promising signs is the general refusal of Senate “centrist” Democrats to fish into a particularly devious Republican gambit: an effort by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to recreate the bipartisan Gang of 14 that notoriously headed off the “nuclear option” of a permanent elimination of judicial filibusters in 2005.
According to Politico‘s Carrie Budoff Brown and Chris Frates, Graham’s been targeting former Democratic members of the Gang of 14 to suggest they stop the use of reconciliation for helath reform and force a start-over based on a smaller bill.
But so far “centrist” Democrats aren’t buying it, and in fact, are making something of a mockery of Graham’s effort to treat the use of reconciliation for an eleven-page set of “fix” amendments to bills already passed by both Houses to the 2005 GOP threat to kill judicial filibusters forever. Check out this embedded quote from Gang of 14 member Ben Nelson:

The Gang of 14 averted a plan in 2005 by Republican Senate leaders to abolish the filibuster for judicial nominees. The group, which included 10 members still serving in the Senate, agreed that nominees should be filibustered only in “extraordinary circumstances.” Otherwise, they should receive an up-or-down vote.
Nelson said the two situations are not the same.
“It is different to say judges get up-or-down votes except in extraordinary circumstances,” Nelson said. “The Gang of 14 was directed at getting up-or-down votes. This is aimed at stopping an up-or-down vote.”

Bingo.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
This past Friday, without much fanfare, CBO submitted its analysis of President Obama’s proposed FY 2011 budget. The bottom line is worse than we thought. Despite sustained economic recovery, the budget deficit under the president’s proposal never falls below 4 percent of GDP over the next decade and rises to 5.6 percent by 2020. The aggregate deficit during that period is $9.761 trillion—close to $1 trillion each year on average. Not surprisingly, debt held by the public rises steadily and reaches 90 percent of GDP by 2020. If the historical study of financial crises conducted by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart is correct, that level of debt is enough to reduce our long-tem growth prospects by about a percentage point each year.
Unfortunately, the much-ballyhooed alternative to Obama’s budget—Representative Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future”—is equally flawed. Despite drastic reductions in both discretionary domestic spending and entitlement programs whose wisdom and political viability is questionable at best, the roadmap contemplates budget deficits of 5 percent as late as 2037 and produces its first balanced budget in 2063. Not surprisingly, it runs the debt up to 100 percent of GDP before the curve turns down. And these mediocre results rest on a leap of faith—namely, that Ryan’s proposed tax reforms would actually produce revenues equal to 19 percent of GDP, in line with CBO’s assessment of current policy. (The CBO analysis notes dryly that while the proposal “would make significant changes to the tax system … as specified by your staff, for this analysis total tax revenues are assumed to equal those under CBO’s alternative fiscal scenario.”)
Ryan’s roadmap does have one incontestable virtue: It demonstrates that even with draconian spending cuts, there’s no way of achieving fiscal sustainability during the next three decades without additional revenues. And the president’s budget has the mirror-image virtue: Even with health reform and tax increases for upper-income Americans, spending shoots ahead much faster than politically feasible and economically prudent revenues possibly could.
In her testimony before the Senate Budget Committee last month, former CBO director Alice Rivlin stated that “the widening gap between projected spending and projected revenues is too large to be closed by either spending cuts or revenue increases alone.” As we can see, that’s not just her opinion; it’s a political fact. How long will it take for our reality-denying political system to catch up to it?

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

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

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

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

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

One of the more interesting ongoing spectacles this year has been the crashing and burning of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the once invincible political titan who now appears destined to lose, perhaps badly, a U.S. Senate primary to conservative Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio. Initially, Rubio was considered more or less a nuisance candidate who would keep Crist from straying too far off the conservative reservation. Now, according to a new PPP poll of Florida Republicans, Rubio is trouncing Crist 60-28.
Echoing earlier complaints among Florida Republicans that Crist should have just run for re-election, there’s been talk that the heavily tanned incumbent might switch to the governor’s race (qualifying doesn’t end until April 30). Others have suggested he should get some revenge on conservatives by staying in the Senate race but running as an independent. At 538.com today, Nate Silver explores these alternatives, and concludes that Crist should probably either hang it up or run for the Senate as an indie, assuming he’s not interested in a future in the GOP. Turns out switching to the governor’s race isn’t promising:

The same PPP poll that found Crist trailing Rubio by 32 points also found him trailing Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, by 14. That’s not quite as bad a deficit to overcome, but it doesn’t account for the additional annoyance voters might feel if Crist switched races, which could come across as entitled and presumptuous. In addition, the general election could get tricky, as Crist’s approval ratings are tepid and as Democratic candidate Alex Sink — although now trailing McCollum in most polls — is considered a decent candidate.

On the other hand, says Nate, some polls have shown Crist running reasonably well as an indie against Rubio and likely Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, essentially creating a three-way tie.
Either “switch” by Crist, it’s clear, would be good news for Florida Democrats, giving them a better chance in November while promoting GOP ideological warfare.
But Charlie probably owns it to his dwindling band of friends in the GOP to make up his mind soon. In neighboring Georgia, the news that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Gov. Sonny Perdue are hosting an Atlanta fundraiser for Crist has not gone over very well in Georgia Republican circles. If Crist is perceived as double-crossing Florida Republicans, he will become truly radioactive for all who have touched him.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As we all understand, Republicans are about to have a pretty good election in November. Much of the GOP excitement revolves around congressional races that could unseat “red-state” Democrats who won during the 2006 or 2008 cycles, along with a number of incumbents (some of whom have decided to retire) who have been around much longer. Ground zero for the Republican tsunami is, of course, the Deep South, where in some areas John McCain did better in 2008 than George W. Bush did in 2004, and where every available indicator shows the president to be very unpopular among white voters.
But beneath this storyline, some odd and counterintuitive things are going on. In three Deep South states, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, Democrats have a decent chance of retaking long-lost governorships, in part because of infighting among Republican candidates, and in part because Republican rule in those states has not been terribly successful or popular. It’s far too early to make predictions, but it’s possible that we’re in for a repeat of the astounding gubernatorial Trifecta that Democrats pulled off in those same three states in 1998. That event confounded widespread assessments that the South had become a one-party GOP region, and it could happen again, in even more unlikely circumstances.
Our own appraisal begins in Georgia, with one of the surprise winners of 1998, former Governor Roy Barnes. Barnes lost his reelection bid in 2002 to Sonny Perdue, a party-switching state senator, despite the power of incumbency and a huge financial advantage. Since then, Barnes has regularly admitted his mistakes. And, amazingly enough, in the latest Georgia gubernatorial poll, he’s running ahead of every single Republican candidate.
Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans, who have dominated state politics since 2002, are having some serious problems with their own gubernatorial bench. The consistent frontrunner in the polls, longtime insurance commissioner John Oxendine, is awash in ethics allegations about contributions from the insurance companies that he is responsible for regulating. His record is so blatantly bad that none other than Erick Erickson, the Georgia-based proprietor of the nationally influential, hard-core conservative web site RedState, has said he’d vote for Barnes if Oxendine is the GOP nominee.
Rather pathetically, the alternative to Oxendine and the favorite of some party insiders is Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia’s Ninth District (like Perdue, a party-switcher), who recently said he would resign his congressional seat after a health care vote to concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. As it happens, Deal’s resignation managed to short-circuit a House Ethics Committee investigation into a no-bid state auto-salvage contract that was awarded to a company which Deal controls. The insider buzz in Atlanta is that Deal was motivated to resign, in part, because of panic among Georgia Republican pooh-bahs who worried that Oxendine would walk away with the gubernatorial nomination on name id alone.
The rest of the Republican gubernatorial hopefuls are struggling as well. The entire party, and several of the gubernatorial candidates, were tainted by association with disgraced former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was forced to resign after a lurid sex-and-lobbying scandal. The one candidate who seems ethically starchy, Secretary of State Karen Handel, has struggled to raise the money necessary to win, and also suffers from the perception that she’s the unpopular Sonny Perdue’s chosen successor.
All these Republican problems could eventually fade, and Roy Barnes must also navigate a Democratic primary against Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a law-‘n-order conservative who is one of the nation’s longest-serving African American statewide elected officials (as well as two other lesser but credible opponents). Nevertheless at present, Barnes—or Baker, if he could somehow upset Barnes—looks entirely viable for November.
Next door in Alabama, you’d think that the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, Congressman Artur Davis, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s a member of the much-hated United States Congress; he’s African American; he’s a close personal friend of Barack Obama; and he’s frequently been tagged, like the president, as an Ivy League-educated, twenty-first-century–style black politician. But the sparse public polling available shows Davis in a very strong position for the general election, assuming that he dispenses with a primary challenge from state agriculture commissioner Ron Sparks, who’s been struggling to raise money. Davis, who has long nursed gubernatorial ambitions, carefully tailored his congressional record to Alabama public opinion: He voted against health care reform in the House, and he was also the first Congressional Black Caucus member (and, for that matter, the first one on the Ways and Means Committee) to call for Charlie Rangel to step aside from his powerful chairmanship.
Meanwhile, there is no real frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which bids fair to become an ideological flame war. Back in 2002, the “establishment” candidate, state Senator Bradley Byrne, made the fatal mistake of voting for a-tax reform initiative that was soundly defeated in an emphatic expression of Alabamians’ mistrust of government. Tim James, son of former conservative Democratic and Republican Governor Fob James, was one of the main opponents of that initiative, and he will bring it up constantly. Meanwhile Christian Right warhorse Roy Moore, the famous “Ten Commandments Judge,” is actually running second to Byrne in early polls. All of the dynamics in the race will pull the GOP candidates to the hard-right, while Artur Davis continues to occupy the political center; and his candidacy will almost certainly boost African American turnout to near-2008 levels. That means anything could happen in November.
South Carolina is often thought of as the most Republican of Southern states. But Mark Sanford, the disgraced incumbent governor, has complicated his party’s prospects. Meanwhile, an ideological civil war is brewing that reflects the growing tension between the state’s two Republican senators, right-wing bomb thrower Jim DeMint and the more moderate Lindsey Graham (Graham, long suspect among home-state conservatives for his friendship with John McCain and his occasional bipartisanship, has recently been formally censured by two of South Carolina’s county GOP organizations for a variety of sins). As in Georgia and Alabama, the Republican gubernatorial field is a mess: Nobody is a frontrunner and all the candidates are stampeding to the hard right. And I do mean hard right. In a sign of the times, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who has few friends in the state’s Republican establishment, delivered a speech comparing recipients of subsidized school lunches to “stray animals” who should no longer be fed unconditionally. While he took a few shots from fellow Republicans for his indiscreet language, nobody disputed, and some praised, his basic premise that any form of public assistance corrupts its recipients and should come with some sort of reciprocal obligation.
The frontrunners in early polls are Bauer and Attorney General Henry McMaster. Upstate Congressman Gresham Barrett, who must overcome the opprobrium of voting for TARP, is close behind. Meanwhile, Sanford’s protégé, state Representative Nikki Haley (who was even endorsed by the governor’s ex-wife), is trying to push the campaign hard right by opposing any expenditure of federal stimulus dollars in this high-unemployment state. At a recent candidate forum, when the rivals were pushed to call themselves “DeMint Republicans” or “Graham Republicans,” Bauer and Haley flatly identified with DeMint, while McMasters and Barrett dodged the question.
On the Democratic side, a Rasmussen poll in December showed the front-running Democrat, State School Superintendent Jim Rex, actually beating Bauer and running within single digits against other GOP candidates. (State Representative Vincent Sheheen is also a credible Democratic candidate). Again, anything could happen, but the assumption that Republicans have a lock on this state’s elections is as dubious as the same assumption back in 1998.
So, at a time when Democrats are despairing of good news, it’s important to understand that the donkey isn’t quite dead, even in the Deep South. There are consequences to Republican extremism and malfeasance in office. And, when GOP candidates battle for first place on the crazy train of contemporary conservatism, it’s Democrats who stand to benefit.

The Hill has a new staff survey of Democratic House of Reps members positions on the Democratic health care reform package (all Republicans expected to vote “No” as of this writing). Although there is some overlap, this list is substantially different from Chris Bowers list, which J.P. Green flagged here. ( Y) denotes ‘voted yes in November’, while asterisk denotes ‘voted for Stupak amendment in November.’ All unnamed Dems are on record in favor of the HCR package.
Firm no
Dan Boren (Okla.) *
Bobby Bright (Ala.) *
Artur Davis (Ala.) *
Larry Kissell (N.C.)
Dennis Kucinich (Ohio)
Frank Kratovil (Md.)
Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Collin Peterson (Minn.) *
Mike Ross (Ark.) *
Ike Skelton (Mo.) *
Gene Taylor (Miss.) *
Leaning No
Michael Arcuri (N.Y.) (Y)
Undecided
Brian Baird (Wash.)
Marion Berry (Ark.) * (Y)
John Boccieri (Ohio) *
Dennis Cardoza (Calif.) * (Y)
Kathleen Dahlkemper (Pa.) * (Y)
Steve Driehaus (Ohio) * (Y)
Bart Gordon (Tenn.) *
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio) (Y)
Ron Kind (Wis.) (Y)
Dan Maffei (N.Y.) (Y)
Scott Murphy (N.Y.)
Solomon Ortiz (Texas) * (Y)
Tom Perriello (Va.) * (Y)
Nick Rahall (W.Va.) * (Y)
John Spratt (S.C.) * (Y)
Bart Stupak (Mich.) * (Y)
John Tanner (Tenn.) *
Leaning Yes
Russ Carnahan (Mo.) (Y)
Jim Oberstar (Minn.) * (Y)
No comment
Mike Doyle (Pa.) * (Y)
Clearly, the situation is very much in flux, hopefully in a good way. The biggest disappointment has to be Dennis Kucinich, who could conceivably become the Republicans’ favorite Democrat as a result of his purist position favoring a strong public option or single-payer reform. All of the undecideds and leaners need phone calls.The toll-free phone number for the Congressional switchboard is 1-866-220-0044.

I have no idea whether the sexual harrassment allegations against Rep. Eric Massa (whose resignation takes effect today) are true or false, and do believe in a presumption of innocence, along with some sympathy for the apparent condition of his health. But there’s no way around the fact that this once-proud progressive Democrat is now flipping over to the Other Side at warp speed.
After owning up to vaguely described misbehavior initially, he’s suddenly alleging a grand conspiracy by the House Democratic Leadership to cook up sexual harrassment charges in order to force him out of office and get a tad closer to passing final health reform legislation. And tomorrow he’s going to spend an entire hour telling this lurid tale on Glenn Beck’s show.
So before you can blink, among conservatives Massa has gone from being a much-derided symbol of Democratic corruption, and/or “the Democrat Mark Foley,” to being a victim of vicious socialists, or even perhaps of a gay cabal.
Something tells me Massa is not much going to like his new friends. One old friend, the ever-honest Chris Bowers of OpenLeft, had this to say about Massa’s flip-out:

Act Blue pages which I co-managed supported Eric Massa in 2006 and 2008 to the tune of nearly $100,000. Further, before these charges, I was going to help him win re-election no matter his vote on health care. However, there are good reasons to be suspicious of his actions since Friday. And frankly, while I was very proud of it until Friday of last week, I don’t feel very good about my past activism for Eric Massa now. No matter the veracity of his contradictory charges, he is not coming across very well right now.

I doubt an hour with Glenn Beck is going to help.

Here’s something to tuck away in your files on both health care reform and 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, from Tim Noah at Slate (via Jon Chait). Looking at Romney’s new pre-campaign book, Noah observes:

Romney’s discussion of health reform is, from a partisan perspective, comically off-message. (How could he know what today’s GOP message would be? He probably finished writing the book months ago.) Remove a little anti-Obama boilerplate and Romney’s views become indistinguishable from the president’s. They even rely on the same MIT economist! At the Massachusetts bill’s signing ceremony, Romney relates in his book, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., quipped, “When Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy are celebrating the same piece of legislation, it means only one thing: One of us didn’t read it.”

Noah goes on to mix up some Obama and Romney quotes on health care reform, and challenges the reader to say which is which. Can’t be done.
Back in January, I predicted that Romney’s sponsorship of health care reform in Massachusetts might turn out to be a disabling handicap in a 2012 presidential race, given the shrillnesss of conservative rhetoric about features in Obama’s proposal that are also in Romney’s–most notably, the individual mandate.
Something happened since then, of course, which has been of great value to Romney in protecting his highly vulnerable flank on health reform: Scott Brown, another supporter of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, became the maximum national GOP hero and set off to Washington to try to wreck Obama’s plans. That meant that not one, but two major Republican pols would be promoting ludicrous distinctions between RomneyCare and ObamaCare as though they were actually vast and principled.
But I can’t see this illogical brush-off as working forever. If the Mittster does crank up another presidential campaign, fresh media attention will be devoted to his record and “philosophy” on health care. And more importantly, Romney’s rivals in a presidential race won’t for a moment give him a mulligan on the issue the GOP has defined as all-important. Mitt’s “socialism” in Massachusetts will eventually re-emerge as a big, big problem for him, and arguments that it was just state-level “socialism” won’t quite cut it in a Republican Party that’s moved well to the Right since the last time he ran for president. Before it’s over, they’ll make it sound like he’s the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller, money and all.

Beginning about half way through this Meet the Press clip, WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne chews Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) a brand new one. Dionne underscores several key points about the use of reconciliation exceptionally-well. He points out that Republicans have used it on many occasions for what Hatch calls “sweeping social legislation.” He notes that reconciliation would only be used for a portion of HCR. Then he brings out the point he made in his last column (flagged here by TDS) that it’s wrong to let “a phony argument about process get in the way of health coverage for 30 million Americans.” Dionne’s response provides an excellent debate template for health care reform advocates.