2010 Congressional Battleground: Stable and Within Normal Historical Range
Overview
With Charlie Cook and Republican leaders raising the prospect of Democrats losing control of the Congress in 2010, we thought it important to expand the Democracy Corps congressional battleground early to determine whether a loss of 41 seats was in the offing based on current polling. A new survey from Democracy Corps conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research across the 75 most competitive congressional districts suggests potential losses for the Democrats well within the normal historical range. Their losses will be offset by some further Republican losses and are unlikely to approach what it would take for Republicans to regain congressional control.
Moreover, the vote and incumbent job approval in the most contested Democratic districts are stable – without sign of a broad deterioration. This should give some perspective.
To be sure, there are serious trends that put some Democrats at risk, particularly a pervasive anti-incumbent mood across all of the Democratic seats; however, this is present in the Republican-controlled districts as well. Voters in both the Democratic- and Republican-held vulnerable seats are unsure if they will reward their members with reelection next November.
Limiting Republican gains is the continuing crash of the Republican Party across these districts. This development is part of the reason that Republicans are having trouble capitalizing on the anti-incumbent mood. It also explains why they will have trouble replicating what the Democrats did in 2006 and 2008, when the Democratic Party emerged with a surprising image advantage across the Republican-leaning districts they picked up.
This memo is based on a survey of 2,000 likely voters in the 55 most competitive Democratic-held districts and the 20 most marginal Republican-held districts conducted for Democracy Corps by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research October 6-11, 2009.
“Analysis: Anti-incumbent mood persists across marginal districts” after the jump

Read more…

TDS co-editor Bill Galston sees signs of trouble in the latest opinion polls. Here’s his take in a New Republic commentary:

The current state of American politics presents a paradox. On the one hand, survey after survey testifies to the rock-bottom standing of the Republican Party. Fewer Americans identify with the party than in the past, and fewer trust it to deal with the country’s problems. On the other hand, there are hard-to-ignore signs of a conservative resurgence. A 15,000 person Gallup survey out today shows that 40 percent of Americans now identify themselves as conservative (up from 37 percent at the time of Obama’s election), while only 20 percent regard themselves as liberal (down from 22 percent). Far more independents (35 percent) consider themselves conservative than was the case a year ago (only 29 percent).
These findings would be less compelling if they were not linked to conservative shifts on specific issues–but they are, and the Gallup organization enumerates a considerable list. Among them: increasing opposition to government regulation of business and gun ownership; an uneasy feeling about the influence of labor unions; increasing support for immigration restrictions and government promotion of traditional values; and diminished support for strong action on climate change. The percentage of Americans who believe that government is trying to do too much stands at its highest level (57 percent) in many years. Trust in government is near all-time lows, and Americans believe that 50 cents of every federal tax dollar is wasted–the highest level ever.

Read the rest of his commentary here:

We’re one week out from Election Day in New Jersey and Virginia.
No matter how the governors’ races in those two states turn out, plenty of pundits will argue that the outcomes are a referendum on the Obama Presidency.
At least with Virginia, we’ve got an excellent data point to show that this argument is demonstrably false.
Greg Sargent has looked at the internals of the new Washington Post poll (which puts McDonnell ahead by 11 points) and pulls out one key stat:

Seventy percent of likely voters say Obama is “not a factor” in ther choice. Only 15% say opposition to Obama is a factor, while 14%, say support for him is a factor.

The real issue in the race is the lack of enthusiasm for Deeds’ campaign among those who voted for the president last year. As Marc Ambinder points out, it isn’t so much a gap as it is a chasm.
That said, it’s important to keep in mind that we’ve always had a historic hurdle to cross this year.
For instance, the last time that the party of presidential power won one of the two governors races in an off-year was 1985.

The following commentary by leading Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from The Huffington Post:
The Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid — and a majority of Members of the Senate — support the inclusion of public health insurance option in the Senate’s health care reform bill. The debate over where the Senate of the United States stands on this question is now settled. The Senate — like the American people, the House of Representatives and the president — supports a public option.
What is not settled is whether the majority will be allowed to have an up or down vote on a health care bill that includes a public option.
The question is: will any of the Democratic Senators join with the Republicans to prevent an up or down vote on a bill containing a public option — one that is supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people?
Will any of those Democratic Senators allow themselves to be used by the insurance industry to stifle the will of the majority of Americans who want to end that industry’s stranglehold over the American health care system?
Sixty members of the Senate caucus with Democrats — 58 Democrats and two independents (Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders). These 60 members share in the benefits of being part of the majority party, including committee chairmanships. Together they control enough votes to end a Republican filibuster aimed at blocking health insurance reform, and allow an up or down vote that this critical bill deserves. This should be a no-brainer. To their credit, many Democrats who are not strong supporters of the public option have in fact indicated that they would not stand in the way of an up or down vote. Yet several Democratic Senators have not yet committed to vote with the Democratic leadership and support a vote to proceed.
Remember that to pass a bill in the Senate you only need 51 votes — or 50 votes plus the tie-breaking vote of the vice president. We do not need every Democrat to pass a bill. But every one of them must vote to end debate on a bill to allow an up or down vote to take place, since ending debate in the Senate requires 60 votes.
If some Democrats disagree with the content of the bill — or oppose a public option — so be it. They should vote no on final passage. But they should never side with the Republicans on a procedural vote to prevent an up or down, majority vote on the substance of the issue.
Frankly, if a Democrat votes against the party on a procedural vote and empowers the Republicans to block a vote on the party’s top domestic priority, the caucus should strip that Senator of all of the power that comes from being part of the majority party — including committee chairmanships.
It is one thing to oppose the substance of a bill. It’s another to oppose the party leadership on a procedural motion and block the will of the majority. That kind of breach of party discipline makes it impossible for a majority party to govern. On procedural votes members of a majority party have to stick together or they might as well not be in the majority — they hand the reins over to the minority.
In this case they would also be thwarting the will of the voters who — very intentionally — ended Republican control of Congress and put Democrats in the majority so they could make change.
By voting with Republicans on a procedural vote, a Democrat would, in effect, be handing the gavel back to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. They would be allowing the minority Republicans and their insurance industry allies to set the parameters for the kind of change is even allowed to come to a vote in Congress.
That would be true on any issue. But it is especially true of the party’s marquee issue, health care reform. By joining with the Republicans and preventing its leadership from calling an up or down vote on health care reform, a Democratic Senator would be engaging in a traitorous act. Not only would he or she be preventing implementation of a critical party priority. That Senator would also be politically endangering many of the swing seats held by House and Senate Members who are up for re-election next year.
That’s right — it is the swing district Democrats that would be endangered by the failure to pass President Obama’s health insurance reform. Look at what happened after the 1993 failure of the Clinton health plan that was also the centerpiece of his presidency. In 1994, Democrats lost 54 seats. Of those, 36 were incumbents. It wasn’t the members from strong Democratic districts, who had fought hard for health care reform, who lost. It was mainly members from swing districts, rural districts and southern districts.
The Clinton health care bill never came to a vote in the House, but only 11 of the 36 incumbents who lost had co-sponsored the bill. Many of the 25 others had opposed the Clinton health care plan. Didn’t matter; they were the biggest political victims of the failure of health care reform.
History shows that when the popularity and job performance rating of an incumbent President drops, the odds of swing Democrats being elected to Congress drop as well.
And it wasn’t just that swing voters lost faith in Democrats. Base Democratic voters failed to turn out. Republican base voters — smelling Democratic blood in the waters — turned out in record numbers.
The fact is that just as a rising political tide lifts all boats, when the political tide recedes those in the shallowest political water are most likely to be left aground.
Failure to take action on health care would be the most likely way to end the majority status for Democrats. Such a failure would massively damage the political standing of the president and the Democrat brand. That, in turn, would sink swing district Democrats. The Republicans know this. That’s why they are fighting so hard to prevent the passage of health insurance reform. Any Democratic Senator who helps them is endangering fellow Democrats.
That is particularly true since polls show that the policy question at issue, the public option, is uniformly popular in swing, frontline and Blue Dog districts. The firm of Anzelone Liszt recently released the results of a poll it conducted in 91 Blue Dog, Rural Caucus and frontline districts. The poll found that 54% of the voters in these battleground districts support the choice of a public option.
In fact, throughout the country, giving consumers the choice of a public option is one of the most popular elements of the overall health insurance reform bill.
But what is more important is that Democrats in swing districts need a public option to convince voters to favor a health insurance mandate. Anzeloni and Liszt make clear in their polling report that in swing districts: “It’s wrong to think about the public option in isolation from other elements of reform. Forcing an individual mandate without a public option is a clear political loser (34% Favor / 60% Oppose), and only becomes more palatable when a public option is offered in competition with the private sector (50% Favor / 46% Oppose).”
Turns out that a public option provides a political inoculation against backlash to a mandate. That’s because people have no stomach for being herded into the arms of private insurance industry like sheep to the slaughter. They want to know that if the government is going to require them to get health insurance, that it also provides the choice of a not-for-profit public plan — that they are not left at the mercy of private insurance CEO’s.
It is fine for each Democrat in the Senate to vigorously advocate his or her own position on health care. But once the majority of the Senate has made up its mind, no Democrat should be allowed to side with the Republicans to block the majority will — to block the Congress and the President from taking action. Not only would that be terrible for the country — it threatens the majority status of the Democratic Party.
If a Democratic Senator votes to prevent his party from having an up or down vote on its top domestic priority, he is endangering the political lives of his swing district colleagues. That would be unforgivable.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on amazon.com.

Pronin2 of Daily Kos discusses Rachel Maddow’s excellent interview of Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) (clip included in post), in which Wyden and Maddow add a sobering note to the overheated debate about the public option — that, according to CBO analysis, it would only be available to about 10 percent of the workforce under Reid’s compromise. Wyden argues that 10 percent is really not a large enough portion of consumers to hold down health care premiums, and it could be even smalller with the states’ opt-out. Says Wyden:

The bottom line is that the public option can’t really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market, because private insurance companies aren’t going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can’t take their business elsewhere.

He also says that the opinion polls showing a healthy majority in favor of the public option would likely be very different if they said something like “Would you support a public option open to a small number of people, not all?”
Wyden will be introducing an amendment to make the public option available to all consumers. Senator Jeff Merkley, also of Oregon, will introduce an amendment to broaden public option converage to include employees of small businesses.
Looking at it from another angle, it really is amazing that in the 21st century as many as 40 U.S. Senators, including even Olympia Snowe, would prefer to see tens of millions of Americans have no health security whatsoever, rather than support a public option — that’s a choice, not a requirement — for just 10 percent of consumers. It’s a sad measure of the moral decline of the Republican Party from the days when at least a few reasonable conservatives walked among them.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced the broad outlines of the Senate’s health care reform compromise bill, which includes a public option with no ‘trigger mechanism,’ but which does have an “opt-out” provision for the states. The compromise reflects Reid’s math that his chances for 60 votes are better if he doesn’t try to win the support of Senator Olympia Snowe, whose “trigger mechanism” would have lost the vote of WV Democrat Jay Rockefeller and perhaps others. According to The New York Times report,

Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine…issued a statement saying that she would not support for Mr. Reid’s plan. “I am deeply disappointed with the majority leaders’ decision to include a public option as the focus of the legislation,” she said. Ms. Snowe expressed her long-standing position that a government-run plan should only be “triggered” in states where the health care legislation otherwise fails to provide affordable insurance to enough people.

It’s likely that Snowe’s inflexibility contributed to Reid’s decision — that if he announced in favor of a “trigger mechanism,” she would hang tough for a standard that would make any possibility of a real public option very doubtful, according to many experts. it appears unlikely that she would have been open to a face-saving “hair trigger’ version in which the ‘public option’ would kick in quickly, if insurers fail to offer affordable coverage. In the end, Reid must have concluded that she was more interested in killing the public option, period, than in achieving a compromise that would be acceptable to most Democrats. No doubt Reid also felt a responsibility to voters, who opinion polls indicate favor a real public option by a healthy margin. Making Snowe happy would likely have cost Democrats — and Reid — considerable public support. It appears she overplayed her hand.
According to the L.A. Times report by Noam M. Levey, Reid’s plan has 58 votes, and he feels that he has a good chance to win the two more he needs for victory on a cloture vote. Levey did not identify the two Senators Reid needs to win, But the NYT article says that Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska have “expressed doubts” about the plan.
The plan reportedly also provides for taxing of the so-called “Cadillac” health care plans, although there are no details about definitions yet available. Hopefully Reid won’t draw the line low enough to incur the opposition of unions. Democratic support for Reid’s compromise will turn to some extent on the Congressional Budget Office cost analysis.

Every piece of online technology — from YouTube to Facebook to Twitter — comes with a set of legal disclaimers outlining the application’s “terms of use.”
Twitter, in particular, is very clear about using their service to impersonate another individual. Parodies are OK, but only if a reasonable person can recognize that your Tweets are satire.
Which is why the Republican Party of Connecticut got in so much trouble last week :

Twitter, Inc., shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic state representatives. The Republican scheme was to send out posts under the Democrats’ names.

There are lots of valuable ways in which Twitter can be used in political communication, and there’s no doubt that we’ve only just begun to see the new directions to which campaigns and candidates take this service as they innovate.
But reading and understanding terms of use has to be a basic threshold for utilizing any Internet tool. That’s just as true for individuals as it is for political parties.
Which makes the Republican response to the Twitter take-down all the more ridiculous:

“That’s unfortunate,” was state Republican Chairman Chris Healy’s response when told of Twitter, Inc.’s decision. “I’m not quite sure what the issue is, other than that the Democrats were successful in stopping free speech.”

Again, Twitter’s rule about impersonation is simple and short enough to be written as a Tweet:

You may not impersonate others through the Twitter service in a manner that does or is intended to mislead, confuse, or deceive others.

When you’re unclear about an issue as transparent and indefensible as this, perhaps it’s best if you step away from the Internet.
[Crossposted from DLCC.org]

On Saturday, Tom Jensen — a pollster for Public Policy Polling — offered up an important data point from the company’s last national survey:

Barack Obama’s approval rating with people who didn’t vote for him is 14%.
Barack Obama’s disapproval rating with people who voted for him is 6%.
So he’s won over twice as many people as he’s lost since he got elected. Who in the national media is going to write that story?

We aren’t the national media, but it’s a point well taken.

Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters for America wrote an important commentary on Huffpo several days ago that analyzed the argument between the administration and the Fox quasi-News Network.

Fox News Channel is twisting American politics in an unprecedented way, and too many members of the press still aren’t getting it…The White House has exposed Fox News for what it is: not a news organization, but a partisan political entity…
… [however] many mainstream reporters and commentators, and even some progressive ones, have spent their time effectively circling the wagons around Fox by focusing their attention not on the network, but on the Administration’s comments about it. The entire matter has largely been treated as a political game — should the White House have so bluntly criticized the press, or will the tactic backfire? …
…All of this completely misses the point…By legitimizing Fox News as a news organization, reporters and commentators are enabling the network to continue conducting a massive conservative political campaign under the guise of journalism…

Burns then continues:

…the story goes well beyond the conservative bias Fox News has historically reflected. Like all major political entities, Fox News is now coordinating grassroots (or, more accurately, astroturf) political activities, lobbying for or against legislation, and fundraising for conservative causes. The network called April’s protests “Fox News Tea Parties.” It encouraged people to attend town halls last summer …[at the 9/12 protests] a video soon emerged of one of the station’s producers coaching marchers before a live “report” from the scene.

Let’s be clear, the issue is not Fox’s right to broadcast conservative, anti-administration opinion. There is no question that they can. The issue is whether a TV network that organizes street demonstrations against a President deserves to be viewed with the same respect and treated in exactly the same way as TV networks that uphold traditional standards of journalism.
Since virtually all the mainstream media commentators have – to their shame — studiously avoided directly confronting this basic question, perhaps the distinction between a news organization and a partisan political organization escapes them. For their benefit, let’s clarify the distinction.

1. Any TV program that displays the telephone numbers or website addresses of organizations organizing street demonstrations (whether for or against a presidential administration) or which displays or announces the gathering points for such demonstrations is not operating as a news or even as an opinion program. It is operating as a partisan political organization.
2. Any TV show that includes what communications specialists term a direct “call to action” i.e. “Join the demonstration”, “attend the rally”, “contribute money” is not operating as a news or even an opinion program. It is operating as a partisan political organization.
3. Any program that encourages and allows guests to state phone numbers, website addresses or meeting points for either pro or anti-administration street demonstrations is not operating as a news or even an opinion program. It is operating as a partisan political organization.

It is important to note that this has absolutely nothing to do with the distinction Fox has tried to make between its “news” and “opinion” shows — nor does it have anything at all to do with any spurious comparisons between Fox and MSNBC. The partisan political activities described above were frequently repeated during regular Fox News programs as well as during its opinion programs like Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly. In contrast, not one other television network – not ABC, NCB, CBS, CNN – not even MSNBC – has ever engaged in on-screen promotion and organizing of street demonstrations against a presidential administration.
Is this obvious distinction between the behavior of a normal TV network and a partisan political organization really too complicated for virtually every mainstream political commentator to understand? Don’t forget, these are commentators who pride themselves on their vast political sophistication and expertise. Is this distinction really so complex that not a single one was capable of recognizing the issue and discussing it in their commentaries on the subject?
The answer, sadly, is both more prosaic and more depressing. Mainstream media professionals – regardless of their personal political or ideological views – have a very strong parochial occupational identity as “professional” journalists or commentators. They all see themselves, metaphorically speaking, as seated together in a White House press conference locked in a semi-adversarial relationship with the administration they are covering. As a result, when they are confronted with a presidential challenge to the ethics and professionalism of a media organization – no matter how justified that challenge might be – they instinctively react with a defensive antagonism toward any criticism of their profession.
But for the American people, on the other hand, the issue is quite different. Major TV networks that act like partisan political parties are something new in American history and when unelected television network executives exploit their massive power to organize street demonstrations against an elected president, the codes of civic behavior that underlie America’s unique political stability are deeply undermined.
As a result, Democrats need to directly challenge the mainstream commentators as follows:

Wake up. This is not about you. It’s not about “the administration versus the press”. The issue the administration has raised is whether a TV network that is actively organizing street demonstrations against a President deserves to be viewed and treated in the same way as networks that uphold traditional journalistic standards.
To us, the answer is clear – they shouldn’t be. Do you really think they should?

Let’s see if there is even one mainstream political commentator in America who has the guts to honestly answer this simple question.

The following commentary by Mike Lux is cross-posted from the Huffington Post.
The intensity is ratcheting ever higher as we move toward the final stages of the health care fight. It’s been a good week for reformers overall. Pelosi and Reid are both whipping for strong bills, including a very strong public option (in the House) or a respectable public option (in the Senate). Progress is being made on other key components of the package including the affordability issue. Even traditional media sources like the Washington Post and the New York Times are waking up to the fact that even though they have been declaring health care reform on life support and the public option dead for six months, something decent might actually pass.
The only down moment of the week has been the confusion caused by the White House on the Senate strategy. This whole muddled are-they-or-aren’t-they backing Harry Reid or backing Snowe’s trigger-designed-not-to-trigger mess was just a poorly handled distraction. I mean, look, anyone who has been in DC longer than a week knows that if you have a meeting at the White House with more than five people in it, that certain folks with their own agenda will start leaking stuff to the media, so whatever the intent of all that was, it was bound to undermine Reid and our overall momentum. The White House is now on the record denying that was their intent, and folks there have sworn to me they are backing Reid to the hilt, so I believe them and that’s all good, but it was still a mess.
I think we’re still moving forward, though. The next few days will tell us what kind of deals can be cut, but no matter what, I think the strategy for progressives remains the same as it has been from the beginning of this fight:
1. House progressives have to stay strong and united in pushing for a strong public option and more affordability for the middle class. Health care reform will not pass without the votes of the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and they need to continue to say a big “Hell no” to triggers that are written to never trigger and co-ops that are designed to never compete with the insurers. If House progressives absolutely refuse to fold, the final bill will have a solid public option and decent affordability for the middle class.
2. The 30 core progressives on health care in the Senate need to stay strong and stay together as well. They need to keep pushing Reid and the White House to reject the Snowe trigger that will never trigger, and they need to twist the arms of their last couple of colleagues who are holding out. The idea that one or two Senators are going to stop the entire rest of the Democratic party from delivering on the biggest issue in front of Congress in 50 years is an outrage, and those Senators should be told in no uncertain terms that nothing they want will ever again see the light of day if they support the Republican filibuster on this issue.
3. Everyone in the broader progressive community needs to be 100% clear that the Snowe trigger written to never trigger is deader than a doorknob. To call this a compromise is actually pretty funny. Fundamental to health care reform is real competition and a check on the market power of the insurance industry. Without that, private insurers will continue to raise their rates and otherwise screw people over at will. The trigger as written by Snowe has a Catch-22 in it that makes sure it would never be triggered in real life, so it would provide no competition or check on insurance power whatsoever. Come on now: if you are going to ask progressives to compromise, don’t give us something that is no compromise. Most progressives understand we need to compromise some, and in fact we already have compromised an enormous amount, but we aren’t going to let you give us nothing.
I think we are still on track to win this fight and get a very decent health care bill, and in fact the momentum is building. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid deserve an enormous amount of credit for continuing to push forward on a strong bill in spite of all the obstacles being thrown in their way. Progressives need to stick together and not allow themselves to get rolled on phony compromises. If they do, we are going to be able to celebrate a huge victory before the year is out.