One of the enduring discussion-points in the ongoing debate over Old and New Media is the online convergence of both in the web versions of major newspapers. That’s why it’s interesting that today one of the earliest Major Progressive Bloggers, who has also done a lot to foster discussion among MSM journalists, bloggers, and policy wonks, made his debut with the online version of the Washington Post.
That would be Ezra Klein, who at the ripe old age of 25 has achieved what many professional journalists aspire for fruitlessly though entire careers: a bylined perch at WaPo.
Ezra’s new WaPo blog is here, and he will reportedly be making appearances on the op-ed page as well.
For those who are not familiar with Ezra’s work, he’s among the wonkiest of bloggers, with particular expertise in health care policy and everything related to food. While he’s a partisan and not at all immune to the blogospheric tendency to suspect “moderation,” he’s also relentlessly civil, and not afraid to apologize or reverse himself on the rare occasions when he’s shown to be wrong.
I have to admit that I have a personal affection for Ezra that dates back to the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago in 2007, when he went to the trouble of escorting me through several sessions where my long association with the DLC might have gotten me seriously dissed (Joan McCarter of DailyKos did so as well). Ezra also included me in the now-famous JournoList, that much-misunderstood water cooler of the progressive center.
But you don’t need to know Ezra Klein to understand that the man can think and write impressively well, on deadline, and with all due preparation for reader comment and adverse reactions. He’s the perfect “convergence” figure between the blogosphere and the MSM, and his fate at WaPo may tell us a lot about the fate of this convergence generally.
And hey, if Ezra’s new gig doesn’t do that well, it’s quite a while before he’s even pushing thirty.

In his May 18 ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress (CAP) website, Ruy Teixeira expounds on an extremely encouraging development for progressive Democrats, the dawning of the “millennial generation” — those born between 1978 and 2000 — as a political force. As Teixeira explains:

Between now and 2018, the number of Millennials of voting age will be increasing by about 4 and a half million a year and Millennial eligible voters by about 4 million a year. And in 2020, the first presidential election where all Millennials will have reached voting age, this generation will be 103 million strong, of which about 90 million will be eligible voters. Those 90 million Millennial eligible voters will represent just under 40 percent of America’s eligible voters.
Last November’s election was the first in which the 18- to 29-year-old age group was drawn exclusively from the Millennial generation, and they gave Obama a whopping 34-point margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. This compares to only a 9-point margin for Kerry in 2004. Behind this striking result is a deeper story of a generation with progressive views in all areas and big expectations for change that will fundamentally reshape our electorate.

Teixeira references another new CAP study “The Political Ideology of the Millennial Generation,” by John Halpin and Karl Agne, which indicates

Overall, Millennials expressed far more agreement with the progressive than conservative arguments. Indeed, of the 21 values and beliefs garnering majority support in the survey, only four can be classified as conservative. Moreover, six of the top seven statements in terms of level of agreement were progressive statements. These statements included such items as the need for government investment in education, infrastructure, and science; the need for a transition to clean energy; the need for America to play a leading role in addressing climate change; the need to improve America’s image around the world; and the need for universal health coverage..,.When asked in the 2008 National Election Study whether we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems or whether the free market can handle these problems without government being involved, Millennials, by a margin of 78 to 22 percent, demonstrated an overwhelming preference for strong government.

On May 13th, David Madland and Teixeira had a more in-depth post, “New Progressive America: The Millennial Generation,” on the political attitudes of this important demographic group. First, the demographic explosion:

We can start with the sheer size of this generation. Between now and 2018, the number of Millennials of voting age will increase by about four and a half million a year, and Millennial eligible voters will increase by about 4 million a year. In 2020—the first presidential election where all Millennials will have reached voting age—this generation will be 103 million strong, of which about 90 million will be eligible voters. Those 90 million Millennial eligible voters will represent just under 40 percent of America’s eligible voters.
The diversity of this generation is as impressive as its size. Right now, Millennial adults are 60 percent white and 40 percent minority (18 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 5 percent Asian, and 3 percent other). And the proportion of minority Millennial adults will rise to 41 percent in 2012, 43 percent in 2016, and 44 percent in 2020 (21 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 6 percent Asian, and 3 percent other). This shift should make the Millennial generation even more firmly progressive as it fully enters the electorate, since minorities are the most strongly progressive segment among Millennials.

Most encouraging, the progressive attitudes among the Millennial Generation are not confined to young people of color:

…White Millennials are far more progressive than the population as a whole in every area, on cultural, economic, domestic policy issues, and more. In 2008, they supported Obama by 54-44, a 21-point shift toward the progressive candidate compared to 2004. Not only did Obama win white Millennials overall, but he also won both white Millennial college graduate and noncollege voters (by 16 and 6 points respectively). The latter result includes a 12-point (54-42) margin for Obama among the overwhelmingly working-class 25- to 29-year-old white noncollege group, a stunning 40-point swing relative to Kerry’s 35-63 drubbing among the same group in 2004. This suggests that as relatively progressive white working-class Millennials replace older white working-class voters in the electorate, the white working class as a whole could become less conservative and more open to progressive ideas and candidates.

Teixeira and Madland go on to outline the progressive views of Millennials on key issues, like health care, abortion, same sex marriage, foreign policy and Iraq, unions, government’s role in the economy and clean energy. The authors conclude that the Millennial Generation “will fundamentally reshape our electorate…We are on course for a new progressive America, and the rise of the Millennial generation is one main force behind this transformation.”

Note: this item is cross-posted from FiveThirtyEight.com
As I noted on Friday, there’s been quite a brouhaha over new polls from Pew and from Gallup that suggest a sudden shift towards anti-abortion sentiment in America. The timing of these polls, on the very eve of anti-abortion protests against President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame, and in the run-up to a probable culture war over the President’s Supreme Court appointment, has guaranteed a lot of hype. Most of it has focused on Gallup’s findings, since (1) the Pew poll, while showing a shift from the “mushy middle” position leaning pro-choice to the one leaning pro-life, still documented a pro-choice majority, while (2) Gallup trumpeted this headline: “More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time.” Them’s fightin’ words.
Even as anti-abortionists celebrated that headline, some informed criticism of the Gallup findings has pretty clearly shown them to be an almost certain outlier, and highly misleading to boot.
First up, the partisan composition of the Gallup poll sample drew some attention–not surprisingly, since Gallup itself suggested that the “big shift” on abortion was occurring almost entirely among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
Charles Franklin at pollster.com made this discovery and observation:

The latest Gallup (5/7-10/09) poll has party identification tied at 32-32 and caused an immediate howl of “outlier!” in the comments at Pollster.com. In this case, the howl is justified. Compared to all recent Gallup polls (so we compare apples to apples) this latest stands out quite a bit from the rest.

Franklin also deals with the theory that polls which ask lots of questions on “values” issues tend to push the party ID numbers. In polling parlance, this is known as the “question order” effect. In the current case, a significant “question order” effect would imply that the abortion numbers are valid, while the party ID numbers may be emphemeral. But looking at similar Gallup surveys in the past, Franklin deduces that it’s never been a factor before, and thus there’s no reason to believe it’s a factor now.
Thus Franklin concludes:

It is easier to be confident about the outlier status of this poll than to account for why it is so clearly out of line with previous Gallup results. At least we can address the outlier status empirically and with some statistical confidence. They “why” of that status must remain the always true maxim: “Outliers Happen.”

So Gallup has published an outlier. But even if you disagree, what does the poll actually show, given the big broad strokes of “pro-choice” and “pro-life” opinions?
At the always-valuable academic site The Monkey Cage, John Sides takes a look at attitudes on abortion policy as indicated in the exceptionally long-range National Election Studies and General Social Survey. The former reinforces Nate Silver’s post from last week emphasizing the stable pro-choice majority of abortion polling for a long, long time. And the latter underlines my own argument that all the top-line findings on abortion attitudes disguise high levels of support for exceptions to abortion restrictions that closely track the pro-choice position and the constitutional status quo.
In particular, GSS shows an exceptionally durable 80%-plus level of support for a “health exception,” which happens to be the actual flash-point separating pro-life activists from the rest of the population. In other words, lots of “pro-life” Americans consistently, and over decades, favor an exception that pro-life activists adamantly consider a complete repudiation of the pro-life point of view.
So even if the Gallup folks are right (and they almost certainly aren’t), that there’s now a “pro-life” majority among Americans, it’s meaningless in terms of support for a change in abortion policy. That may not get any headlines, but it’s worth knowing.

Sometimes in politics people choose a tactical maneuver that makes a lot of short-term sense, and then get so obsessed with executing it that they forget long-range strategic objectives altogether. This could be the case with the current conservative focus on what Speaker Nancy Pelosi was told back in 2002 about the Bush administration’s torture policies, and what she’s saying about it all today.
You can certainly understand why the initial focus on Pelosi developed: it helped reinforce the idea that contemporary demands for a full accounting of torture policies and practices represent an ex post facto scrutiny of administration behavior that was less controversial–or at least more bipartisan–at the time of adoption, while shifting attention from Bush, Cheney, Yoo and company to a leading Democrat. But lord-a-mercy, to read conservative blogs during the last couple of weeks, you’d think Pelosi was the central figure in the whole torture scandal, not a marginal figure who didn’t much have any power to influence administration policy back in 2002. One leading conservative site, Redstate.com, published seven posts on the subject on a single day last week.
So where’s it all going, assuming that conservatives haven’t deluded themselves into thinking that Pelosi’s actually going to be forced to resign?
Matt Yglesias poses this question in a Daily Beast column today, and concludes that conservative torture-fans may be defeating their own purpose here:

[I]n their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we’re going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives’ insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can’t give in to moderate Democrats’ opposition to such a move without looking like she’s cravenly attempting to save her own skin.
There’s no sign that Pelosi or anyone else is backing off the truth-commission idea. And, indeed, by suggesting that Pelosi could be a target of an investigation, conservatives have helped cleanse the idea of the odor of victor’s justice.

Sounds about right to me. I know these media frenzies tend to assume a life of their own, but still, you have to wonder if conservatives are really thinking through where a continuing obsession with the Bush torture policies–regardless of their specific target–will take them.

Note: this item is cross-posted from FiveThirtyEight.com

When Pew released a poll earlier this week suggesting that there had been a significant shift in public opinion on abortion in recent months, Nate Silver did a fine post exploring the long-term trends on the subject, and expressing considerable doubt that Pew had discovered anything of great moment.
Well, today Gallup released another survey that seems to parallel the Pew findings, such as they are. And since (1) Nate’s on vacation, and (2) the two polls together are sure to get tons of play in conjunction with the anti-abortion protests at Notre Dame, not to mention Supreme Court speculation, I’ll do a brief post raising a few questions to help tide us over for a while, with particular emphasis on the key questions that pollsters rarely ask on this subject.
First of all, the headline-grabbing finding by Gallup involves its efforts to split Americans into two camps self-identifying as either “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” Aside from all the issues with how these two terms are perceived, this methodology also forces asunder and thus distorts the views of the vast “mushy middle” on abortion policy, which Gallup itself measures at 53%, in a secondary question that divides respondents into three camps (“illegal in all circumstances,” “legal in any circumstances,” and “legal only in some circumstances.”)
Second of all, the purported shift that Gallup reports, showing “more Americans ‘pro-life’ than ‘pro-choice’ for the first time,” is explained in Gallup’s analysis as a phenomenon produced almost solely by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (e.g., roughly those voters willing to actually vote Republican). Given what’s been happening to support for Republicans in recent months, this finding raises some questions about the sampling techniques, but could also reflect a shift in the perceived threat to the abortion status quo once George W. Bush left office. After eight years of constant excitement among right-to-lifers about getting that fifth vote on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, that prospect is now pretty distant. And instead, Americans have been exposed to a constant wailing of alarms about Obama being “the most pro-abortion president in history,” determined, somehow, to expand abortion rights. That Republicans and Republican-leaning independents might polarize on the subject isn’t terribly surprising or necessarily significant.
But more important than any of these reservations about the Pew and Gallup surveys on abortion is a perpetual problem with public opinion research generally on this topic: it rarely deals with the nuances that matter most in setting public policy or assessing the actual political impact of each party’s positioning.
The nuance that I’ve written about recently deals with the simple fact that Americans seem to care quite a bit why a woman seeks an abortion. And once they are aware of a plausible rationale, anti-abortion attitudes appear to relax.
The best example comes from 2003, at the very height of one of the congressional battles over so-called “partial-birth” abortions. The very same ABC poll that showed 62% of Americans favoring a ban on these much-demonized procedures also showed that 61% favored a “health of the mother” exception, even in these cases.
It’s an article of faith among right-to-lifers, of course, that a “health exception” makes a mockery of any abortion restrictions. And that’s why in a famous moment in one of the presidential debates last year, John McCain sneered and held up “quote marks” when referring to a “health exception.” The public reaction was not positive, indicating that abstract hostility towards abortion may well disguise a more sympathetic attitude when it comes to actual women making actual decisions about a pregnancy. To put it another way, who cares if there’s a shift towards self-reported “pro-life” sentiments, if consistent majorities basically approve of the constitutional and legal status quo?
In any event, it’s maddening that so few polls on abortion get into these sorts of questions. Until they do, we are all entitled to dismiss the big headlines, and rely on hard data like election results to determine which basic direction in abortion policy Americans tend to support. Based on that data, the anti-abortion cause is not doing very well.

By now you may have heard about the verbal self-immolation being undertaken by Arkansas state senator Kim Hendren, the sole announced 2010 Republican opponent for U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln. First off, he went on a rant in front of a GOP audience in Little Rock against U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, referring to the senior senator from New York as “that Jew.” Allowing as how he shouldn’t have done that, he explained that what he really wanted to convey was his distaste for people (presumably of all faiths) who didn’t share the values he learned from watching the Andy Griffith Show back in the day (an admittedly goyish show).
Now we learn from veteran Arkansas reporter John Brummett that Hendren (whose nickname should become “Digger”) called him up to explain further, and reflected on his feelings about Jews:

He said he remembered saying “the Jew” or “that Jew,” and didn’t know why in the world it came out, but that he did go on seconds later to say there was a Jewish person he did admire, and that would be Jesus. And then he told me that, for that matter, he rather liked Joe Lieberman.

Well, it’s nice that Kendren can think of an admirable Jew every couple thousand years or so, but it’s a pretty odd couple when you think about it, unless you are of the fixed opinion that Jesus was in John McCain’s corner in 2008 (a disturbing thought for believers in both the divinity of Jesus and divine omnipotence). It reminds me of an anecdote from Lieberman’s ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign, when he attended an African-American church in South Carolina one Sunday. The choir was rocking, and the choir leader was working the congregation pretty well, coming up to various worshipers, thrusting a microphone into their faces, and asking: “Do you love Jesus!” Then finally, he got to the candidate, and asked: “Senator Lieberman! Do you love Jesus?” Lieberman just smiled.
In any event, it’s a good example of how Democrats like Blanche Lincoln can survive in the Deep South.

Well, it’s been an interesting week for optics of the two parties. Even as the Republican National Committee gets ready to formally label the Democratic Party as the “Socialist Democrat Party,” key elements of the business community have been sitting down to work with the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats on two of the agenda items which Republicans have pointed to as especially lurid examples of Marxist thought, universal health care and carbon emissions reduction.
There’s controversy aplenty among progressives as to how genuine business compromise overtures actually are, and whether the price they will demand for cooperation is excessive. But the bigger picture is that the business community is deeply undercutting Republican efforts to paint Democrats as hellbent on “socializing medicine” through universal health care or destroying the economy through tree-hugging paganism.
As Ron Brownstein notes in his National Journal column today:

These maneuvers on health care and energy could signal a crucial shift in Washington’s tectonic plates of power. Although disagreements remain on both fronts, each move suggests that key business interests have decided to cut deals with a dominant Democratic Party rather than bet on a weakened Republican Party that is hoping to ride uncompromising opposition to Obama back to power….
That could leave congressional Republicans alone at the station. To the extent that Obama can shear off support from businesses usually allied with the GOP, he will make it more difficult for Republicans to portray his agenda as a lurch to the left.

Now logic might dictate that Republicans begin blasting business leaders as Kerensky-like dupes who are selling the Socialist Democrats the rope needed to hang them in the march to a dictatorship of the proletariat, but I doubt they really want to draw attention to the number of regular Wall Street Journal readers who’d rather deal with the Obama administration and its congressional allies than with the “party of no.”
As for us Socialist Democrats, business community cooperation could, at least in theory, help overcome GOP burnt-ground tactics in Congress. As Brownstein concludes:

[T]hese early steps show that Obama’s instinct for inclusion could allow him to expand his political coalition even while advancing two of his party’s top priorities. That’s how lasting majorities are built.

For those interested in the role of the pollster in developing political strategy, Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com has some video clip interviews from the annual gathering of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the world’s largest association of polling professionals. The first of three installments has four video clips. For a good overview, scroll down and start with his interview of the conference Chair Michael Link, Chief Methodologist/VP for Methodological Research at The Nielsen Company, who describes some of the hot buzz topics being discussed at the meeting.
Blumenthal also provides two clips with one of the most experienced living pollsters, Lou Harris, who describes his work with JFK and how JFK responded to polling (He was amazed when Harris accurately predicted the exact percentage of his 1958 U.S. Senate re-election win, 71 percent of the vote). Harris, the first presidential pollster who “served on a super-straegy committee,” also discusses his concerns about the polling profession and the moral responsibility of pollsters, among other topics.
Blumenthal interviews Temple University Proff Christopher Wlezien about the comparative accuracy of polls and political prediction markets. He also links to a new paper by Wlezien and Robert Erikson “Markets vs. Polls as Predictors: An Historical Assessment of US Presidential Elections,” presented at the meeting. (hint: don’t bet the ranch on markets just yet).

As you probably know by now, President Obama is due to deliver the commencement address and pick up an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame on Sunday. And protests over the appearance–and much earlier, over the invitation–have become a big cause celebre for conservative Catholics, including a sizable chunk of the Church hierarchy.
The issue, of course, is whether a Catholic university should be honoring or even listening to a pro-choice president, given the Church’s position on abortion, and more to the point, given the conviction of anti-abortion activists that Obama is presiding over a twenty-first century version of the Holocaust.
But the annoying thing about the controversy is the planted axiom in much of the coverage that Catholics are having to decide whether their anti-abortion beliefs should trump every other moral and political issue, or simple respect to a President of the United States. We are often told that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama, and support the decision to invite him to speak at Notre Dame. The impression often left is that Catholics have forgotten about the primacy of “life” issues, and have let themselves be lured into error by concerns over, say, their jobs or health care needs or global warming, or their opposition to Bush foreign policies.
But it’s important to understand that this isn’t just a matter of priorities for millions of American Catholics: they are actually no more likely to hold anti-abortion views than the rest of the U.S. population. According to a new Quinnipiac poll, 13 percent of Catholics think abortion should be legal in all cases, while 37 percent think it should be legal in most cases; voters as a whole break down at 15% and 37%. Only 16% of Catholics (as compared with 14% of Americans as a whole) think abortion should be illegal in all cases.
Now it’s entirely possible to be in favor of legalized abortion while still deploring the practice. But it seems Catholics are no more likely to be “morally opposed” to abortion than other Americans. According to a recent Gallup survey, 40% of Catholics (as compared to 41% of non-Catholics) consider abortion “morally acceptable.” And that’s not so strange, since the same survey shows 71% of Catholics finding divorce “morally acceptable” (the number is 66% among non-Catholics), with similarly positive moral acceptance levels for pre-marital sex (67%, compared to 57% of non-Catholics), having a child out of wedlock (61%; 52% among non-Catholics) and homosexual relations (54%; 45% of non-Catholics). None of these positions, of course, are in line with contemporary Church doctrine.
What this should make clear is that the brouhaha over Obama’s Notre Dame appearance is less about Obama versus Catholics than Catholics versus Catholics. One of the leading agitators against Obama’s appearance, First Things editor Joseph Bottum, has written a long piece arguing that the controversy is part of an epic struggle to force “elitist” Catholic colleges back into line with both the hierarchy and grassroots Catholic anti-abortion sentiment (Damon Linker ripostes that “it is Bottum and his theoconservative allies who stand on the margins of American Catholic life”).
Further, the intra-Catholic struggle is an old story in this country, dating back at least to the “Americanist Heresy” furor of the late nineteenth century, which also centered on conservative claims that Catholic academicians were too accomodating to secular American culture. Interestingly enough, as Linker points out, an especially sharp rebuke to Bottum’s essay came from Catholic traditionalist Patrick Deneen, who lashes politically conservative Catholics for undermining the faith and encouraging an emphasis on “individual choice” through their enthusiasm for capitalism.
The more you look at it all, Barack Obama is to a large extent a bystander in the battles over his appearance at Notre Dame, no matter how it’s spun in the news media or by Republicans. Some Catholic conservatives may indeed think of him as a baby-killing libertine, but that’s how they’ve viewed most Democratic politicians for some time now. What they’re really upset about is how many of their co-religionists–whom they constantly mock as “non-observant,” lapsed or “cafeteria Catholics”–reject Church doctrine on abortion and other gender and sexuality issues, and won’t submit. And for all the explicit and implicit suggestions that “liberal” Catholics aren’t “real” Catholics, I doubt the hard-core traditionalists are really quite prepared to invite half the American Church to walk away.

We’ve all been interested in the relatively high approval ratings President Obama has maintained during his first few months in office, which seem to have resulted from a combination of actual approval of his policies, appreciation of his leadership style, and the mistrust earned by Republican critics, this last factor deepened by Republican extremism. Another measurement of public sentiment, a rising “right track” number, is a bit harder to analyze, since it probably reflects optimism about the future more than approbation of current conditions.
The big question, of course, is whether that optimism is based on expectations of immediate improvements in the economic situation, and if so, how much progress the Obama administration needs to show, and how quickly.
John Judis of TNR has an interesting analysis of these dynamics out today, leading to a prediction that the President’s approval ratings are likely to drop significantly in the autumn unless the “green shoots” of economic revival grow faster than appears probable at present.
I personally think his prediction is debatable, precisely because it’s unclear how much patience with Obama’s agenda is harbored by those independents (and even a significant minority of Republicans) in the population who spell the difference between high and middling approval ratings. It’s also unclear how much fresh controversy will be generated by the budget fight, and particularly the health care and climate change debates, where Obama’s opponents don’t seem to have obtained much political traction so far.
Having said that, the point made by Judis that should cause the most concern to Democrats involves Congress more than the public at large:

Obama’s real test of leadership may not turn out to have been his first 100 days, but those 100 or 200 days that begin sometime late next fall. If unemployment is still rising, will he still be able to convince Congress, which will have become grey-haired over growing deficits, to pass another equally large stimulus program? If the bank bailout doesn’t merely get a “C,” but fails, will he be able to resist pressure from the American Bankers Association and take the next step of nationalizing failing banks?

The general consensus of economists that a second stimulus bill may prove necessary, and the certainty that some action other than additional subsidies would be the next step to deal with the financial crisis, both create large dilemmas for the administration if economic conditions don’t begin to improve. As Judis concludes: “One can only wait and hope.”