Given the political and policy magnitude of the budget resolutions that cleared the House and Senate yesterday, it’s not surprising that the spin is full on to interpret it. But we’re already seeing some interpretations that appear to be at war with themselves.
Today’s article on the vote in Politico (by David Rogers) carries the somber title: “Budgets Fall Short of Obama Mandates.” But by the second graph, Rogers (who, of course, didn’t write the headline) was saying this:

No Republican in either chamber backed the president, but the 233-196 House vote surpassed the size of budget victories for either party over the last decade. And Democrats lost only two of their members on the 55-43 vote in the Senate.

So: what was it? A historic triumph or a horrible setback?
Dig down into the story, and you’re informed that one problem for Obama is that the Senate did not issue reconciliation instructions, which means the key climate change and health care components of the budget blueprint will be vulnerable to Senate filibusters. But that’s not news. It’s been obvious that Obama’s carbon cap-and-trade initiative wouldn’t benefit from reconciliation treatment ever since eight Senate Democrats signed a letter opposing such a step. Meanwhile, the general expectation is that the House approach of tentatively including health care reform in a reconciliation package (if only as a lever to force Republicans to the table) will be accepted by the Senate in the conference committee negotiations just ahead.
The one real surprise in the Senate deliberations was an amendment increasing the exclusion from the federal estate tax, and lowering the top rate on estates from 45% to 35%. But Obama was already proposing a more modest increase in the exclusion, and the close (51-48) vote itself was only symbolic; the tax-writing committees in both Houses would have to act on it separately. In any event, those with good medium-range memory will recall how recently Congress enacted a complete repeal of what Republicans call “the death tax;” as part of the GOP’s budget gimmickry, however, the repeal was set to sunset on the theory that Congress would not dare reinstate it. So we’ve actually made quite a bit of progress on the estate tax since 2001, even in the unlikely event that the Senate amendment is fully implemented.
All in all, yesterday’s votes were about the best the administration could expect. The “party of No” held its ranks; Democratic defections were low; and Democrats have some momentum going forward–no matter how the headlines read.

The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, relying on the equal protection and due process clauses of the Iowa Constitution. This makes the midwestern state the fourth state where gay marriage has become legal, though one, of course, California, later reversed the step by a ballot initiative. Vermont could soon become the fifth state, depending on whether the legislature overrides an expected veto by Republican Gov. Jim Douglas of same-sex marriage legislation cleared just yesterday.
In Iowa, conservatives are already demanding a state constitutional amendment to overturn the court ruling. But Iowa’s unusual system requires that constitutional amendments have to be approved by two different legislatures (which meet for two years) before going to voters for approval. The 2009 session is nearly over, and no one believes a constitutional gay marriage ban can be acted upon until 2010. So that means 2012 is the earliest point at which Iowa voters could be considering a ban. And if nothing happens in next year’s state legislative session, a vote to overturn today’s decision couldn’t happen until 2014.
Given the pace of change of public opinion in favor of same-sex marriage, I’d say couples wanting to tie the knot in Iowa don’t have to rush to the altar.

A new survey of LVs by DCorps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, conducted 3/25-29, on the eve on Congress’ pending vote on President Obama’s budget, shows rising optimism among the electorate, continued popularity of President Obama, and “broad support for his priorities and approach to the budget, particularly when framed as a part of a long-term economic program.” (Analysis here, Crosstabs here, Survey PDF here)
The survey notes that 38 percent of LVs, “the highest level we have recorded in over three years,” now say the nation “is going in the right direction” and those rating “the state of the economy as cool” dropped 6 percent. Moreover, according to the survey overview:

The Republican Party remains marginal as the gap in feelings toward the two parties continues to be steady and large. Meanwhile, Obama continues to sustain his remarkable popularity; his 61 percent favorability rating and 58 percent approval ratings are both near their all-time highs. More important, the president earns extraordinary ratings on a range of key attributes, with 72 percent saying he is a strong leader and 74 percent saying he is willing to work with both parties, for instance. These scores are down only slightly from the halcyon days immediately following his inauguration.
…Six-in-ten voters agree with Obama’s argument that we can only fix the economy and create long-term prosperity with a broad agenda that includes investments in health care and energy (versus just 36 percent who agree with critics that say Obama should put those issues on hold until the financial crisis is past). And by nearly two-to-one they agree that Obama is right to seek solutions on a range of issues, not just the economy. Similarly strong majorities support Obama’s position that we can best balance the budget in the long term by making investments that will lead to economic growth (rather than by limiting spending) and reject the Republican assertion that Obama is trying to implement a radical liberal agenda after campaigning as a moderate.

But there is a cautionary note:

Obama’s budget, when presented alone, has stable majority support, however, that support lacks intensity and does not necessarily move voters to reward Members of Congress who support it. And Republican attacks, particularly those centered on linking the budget to AIG and bailouts, do have an effect, causing a slight shift in support away from the budget. The concern for progressives is that Obama’s plan might be seen as just a budget and be conflated with the unpopular bailouts of the financial and auto industries.

When the budget is presented in context as “part of a plan for long-term economic growth and prosperity” on the other hand, public support becomes “significantly stronger and more enthusiastic,” resulting in “a small net increase in voters’ intention to vote to reelect their Member, even after facing Republican attacks.”

It’s been pretty quiet on the same-sex marriage front since California voters approved Proposition 8 last November. But that could all change tomorrow, when the Iowa Supreme Court is expected to rule on a constitutional challenge to the state’s statutory same-sex marriage ban.
As explained by Jason Hancock at the Washington Independent’s blog, this is a straightforward equal protection/due process challenge based on the state constitution. It’s not that different from the challenge that temporarily succeeded in Massachussets a while back.
What makes the Iowa situation significant is that it’s in, well, Iowa, far from the coastal areas where same-sex marriage disputes have most often raged. If the plaintiffs win in Iowa, you can expect conservatives to mount a constitutional amendment effort, but that’s failed repeatedly in the state.
Expect tomorrow’s ruling, whichever way it goes, to reverberate for quite some time.

Kevin Sullivan has an interesting RealClearPolitics.com review “Stan Greenberg & The Art of War” of TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg’s “Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders.” Sullivan writes,

…Greenberg helped build the disciplined, message-oriented campaign that catapulted Bill Clinton into the White House in 1992. Offering clear choices and a deliverable platform to the electorate, Greenberg and his colleagues created a blueprint for running and winning tough campaigns for left-leaning candidates.

But Sullivan believes that Greenberg’s “most salient examples” flow from his work with Nelson Mandela, Ehud Barak and Tony Blair. “Greenberg soon found himself advising candidates at the highest level of national politics, based on his success at turning a long-shot southern governor into the President of the United States.” Regarding Mandela:

…Sought out by Nelson Mandela’s advisors and staff, Greenberg helped turn the successful reform movement of the African National Congress into a governable body with clear goals for all South Africans. Along with his colleagues, Greenberg helped to develop the “People’s Forum;” events akin to town hall forums that allowed the people to speak out and be closer to the iconic Mandela. These forums also aided the ANC in creating a feasible economic platform that met the needs of South Africans. “Apartheid is a trap,” wrote Greenberg, as the campaign team struggled with a way to create a message that didn’t box Mandela in as a dated reformer. Focusing instead on jobs and education, Greenberg helped the ANC translate ideals into action.

Sullivan sees the merit of Greenberg’s book thusly:

At times, “Dispatches” reads like a campaign manual: a peek inside focus groups, behind closed doors, and inside the pages of strategy drafts and campaign plans. The campaign, as Greenberg explains it, is a chaotic collection of interests, ideals and good intentions. These can all be respectively good things, Greenberg argues, but it’s ultimately the “tyranny of message” that helps organize and coordinate good campaigns. The book, therefore, is as much about leadership and the allocation of resources as it is about polling and survey research. If leadership, as Vice President Cheney argues, is about making tough decisions, than it is Greenberg’s contention that those tough decisions require the information, organization and clarity of message to pierce the clutter and resonate with the public.

And he sums it up:

…”Dispatches from the War Room” serves as a good manual for prospective candidates and campaigners alike. Intent on making the case for public opinion, Greenberg provides substantive examples for why this kind of consultation is important for making the tough – and even the not so tough – decisions that go along with democratic leadership. Organizing ideals into action, Greenberg offers young activists and consultants an inspired how-to on smart campaign strategy; a sort of Rules for Radicals Turned Realists. Anyone can simply take a poll, but not everyone can use that poll to inspire and lead. There’s a difference, and it’s a difference Stan Greenberg successfully advocates in this work.

A good plug for a good book, and one which deserves a thorough read by Democratic candidiates and campaign managers, especially those looking for victory in ’10.

With Al Franken–remember him?–winning a key legal battle in his effort to replace Norm Coleman as a U.S.Senator from Minnesota, it’s as good a time as any to be reminded of why this close election has taken so long to resolve.
At TNR, Jason Zengerle lays the blame in part on Minnesota lawmakers who required that all legal rememdies be exhausted before the front-runner in a close race could be certified, and partly on Democratic senators, who in reaction to the Blago-Burris situation, made official certification by a state election chief a condition precedent for seating a colleague.
Meanwhile, the saga is not necessarily coming to a close just yet. The certification of Franken’s election that should ensue in just a few days has to be signed by MN Governor Tim Pawlenty. Some Republicans in and beyond the Senate are urging him to refuse to sign it until Coleman has pursued a whole new series of lawsuits in federal court. They don’t think Colemen can actually prevail; the whole point is to deny Democrats a 49th senator on crucial votes like the budget, for as long a possible.
Normally a governor, particularly one who may ask voters for a third term in 2010, wouldn’t think of denying his state half its Senate representation on national partisan grounds. But Pawlenty is reportedly considering a race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and probably remembers the rock-star status in conservative “base” circles attained by Florida’s Katherine Harris, who didn’t mind stretching election laws in a partisan cause.
The bottom line is that Norm Coleman’s Senate career is over. The only question is how long it takes for Al Franken finally to replace him.

Underneath the daily headlines from Washington, conservatives are waging guerilla warfare against a number of President Obama’s appointees, and it’s getting pretty ugly. At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick has the rundown on efforts to block the nominations of Harold Koh as legal advisor to the State Deparment, and of Dawn Johnson as director of the Justice Deparment’s Office of Legal Counsel. In both cases, made-up or distorted allegations by the nominees have migrated from right-wing blogs to talk radio and eventually to congressional Republicans.
It happens quickly and seamlessly, says Lithwick:

There is no rest stop on the misinformation superhighway. Some senators apparently cannot be bothered to fact-check the claims they have read in the blogosphere. And that makes the rest of us responsible for fact-checking them as needed and for getting angry when good people are smeared for views they do not hold. One needn’t read all of the thousands of pages Koh has written over his career to find an opinion or argument with which you disagree. But the fact that his critics must fabricate Koh’s opinions in order to take issue with them suggests that they haven’t read any of them.

Lithwick’s theory is that conservatives are going nuts on these mid-level legal appointments as a sort of warm-up for how they intend to proceed once Obama makes major judicial appointments, particularly to the U.S. Supreme Court. “If what Koh and Johnsen have been facing is a practice-sliming from the far right, we should be very, very afraid for whoever it is that someday merits their scrutiny at the high court.”

If traditional print media are watching a disaster unfold, then it’s safe to say that conservative media are feeling the first tremors of their own looming crisis.
Sure, Rush Limbaugh — newly re-elevated by his fight with the Obama White House — claims that his numbers are better than ever.
But:

The dirty little secret of conservative talk radio is that the average age of listeners is 67 and rising.

It’s no different on television — the average age for viewers of Fox News is also somewhere in the mid-60s.
On top of everything else (falling advertiser revenues, the GOP’s identity crisis), conservative media institutions have an age problem which they have no idea how to fix.
Last year, David Kuo (the former head of the Bush White House office on faith-based initiatives) and Joe Carter (a Huckabee staffer and blogger) — with backing from William Bennett — decided to start an online magazine. They hoped to find a way for political conservatives to engage popular society in a way that was culturally relevant. If they succeeded, one obvious benefit would be making their brand of conservatism more appealing to younger generations.
Their model would be a conservative version of Slate — a little bit edgy but appreciative of books, TV, and movies.
They hired smart, young writers like Conor Friedersdorf , a journalist and graduate student at NYU; James Poulos, a PhD candidate in government at Georgetown; and Peter Suderman, a blogger and Libertarian.
They called their project Culture11 and quietly launched the site in beta during the late summer.
As Charles Homans reports in the current issue of Washington Monthly:

For a site that took as its starting point a retreat from the political arena, Culture11 actually had a lot to say about the election, and it was generally more eclectic and off-message than what other political publications had on offer as November approached. This had a lot to do with the fact that Culture11’s editorial brain trust was made up of people who had little concern for—or at least needed a breather from—the self-immolating Hindenburg of movement conservatism.

In many ways, it was the act of being off-message that made Culture11 interesting, and sometimes, very smart. But of course their willingness to flaunt conservative orthodoxy so deep into an election year guaranteed that the new magazine created plenty of critics among ostensible ideological allies.
It occasionally even created friction inside its own newsroom:

In December, when a pseudonymous contributor to Ladyblog, Culture11’s “conservative feminist” forum, posted an entry titled “In Defense of the ‘Hook-up Culture,’ ” Carter yanked it off the blog. (“I didn’t like the content,” he later said. “We wanted dissent within the conservative perspective, but to me that fell out of line.”) The move prompted an in-house uproar and an apologetic response from Kuo, reinstating the post but also averring that “Culture11 is a conservative site. We see the world through a culturally conservative lens. As such the post isn’t something that anyone here particularly agreed with. We don’t believe the hookup lifestyle is good for anyone.” (“I think our disagreements were healthy disagreements,” he told me later.)

It seems that there is a natural limit to what even the most open-minded conservatives can tolerate.
Late last month, after weeks of working the phones and crunching the budget, David Kuo came to the conclusion that Culture11 no longer had a future — at least not in its current form. He called his staff and told them that his board of directors had decided to lay them off. Today, the archives are active and William Bennett still updates his blog, but for all intents and purposes, the site is dead.
While it lasted, Culture11 was an interesting experiment. But even at its best, the writers and contributors were a band of insurgents with minimal establishment support and divergent goals and ideological viewpoints.
Was it all doomed from the start?
Maybe.
One of the overriding themes of the modern conservative movement has been its distaste (and occassional hatred) for popular culture (whatever it was at the time). Just as the old lions wrung their hands at Elvis and comic books, so do latter-day conservatives decry Jay-Z and video games.
Culture11 attempted to exist outside that bubble — written by people who listened to Lil’ Wayne, watched movies where people sometimes took off their clothes, and owned iPhones. But even they couldn’t help but feel superior when it came time to discuss their peers. More telling still was the occasional bit of self-loathing they let slip when it came time to look in the mirror.
Look no farther than Friedersdorf’s piece on the music played at his best friend’s wedding:

Our parents unselfconsciously played “Under My Thumb” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” during family car trips—we turned out fine! Even gangsta’ rap albums we sneaked in our youth hardly caused us to roll down the street “smoking indo, sippin’ on gin and juice.”
Yet we feel uneasy putting our iPods on shuffle if anyone under 15 is around. What explains this attitude shift? Were the prudes right? Is gangsta’ rap uniquely degraded?

Even while acknowledging hip hop’s cultural value, Friedersdorf concludes the piece hoping for a future where the music enjoyed by his children is less profane. Not exactly a message with a lot of Millennial resonance.
As Culture11 floundered, another group of conservatives led by Andrew Breitbart (of Drudge fame) unveiled their own website with superficially the same cultural-commentary mission — Big Hollywood. The new site was greeted with fairly significant praises in right-wing circles, and it gained traction just as quickly as Culture11 lost its footing.
Desipte the theoretical similarity, the two sites could not be more different. Big Hollywood exists to poke fun at the entertainment industry’s excess while Culture11 made a sincere investment in attempting to create intellectually honest criticism. Even the way each site was designed speaks to their differences. Culture11 embraced clean lines and rounded corners — if the editors of Slate unveiled a redesign with the same look and feel tomorrow, not one reader would bat an eye. Big Hollywood looks like The Drudge Report or the homepage for Fox News.
What better evidence exists that the two sites were meant for different audiences?
Big Hollywood is more chum for the conservative base. Yes, it’s an online outlet, and yes, that means that its publishing schedule is a little different. But its message and even its methods are intended for the Rush listener or the O’Reilly watchers. Which means an audience in its 60s.
Culture11 was an attempt to embrace free-form online modes of expression, find a solution to the youth problem, and force conservatives to think differently about popular culture. Given the difficulty of chewing a bite that size, perhaps its failure was no surprise.
But if conservatives are not prepared to grapple with all three problems now, they’ll be forced to confront the future soon. Demographics is destiny, as they say, and right now, the trends are all going the wrong way.

Robert Dallek has put a must-read post for political strategy junkies up on the New York Times Opinion section, “Can Obama Be a Majority of One?” Dallek, author of acclamed books about Democratic presidencies, discusses which of LBJ’s impressively successful legislative reform tactics might work for President Obama. On Johnson’s sober expectations:

Despite his majorities, Johnson took nothing for granted. He predicted “a hard fight every inch of the way.” He told one adviser: “I’ve watched the Congress from either the inside or the outside … for more than 40 years, and I’ve never seen a Congress that didn’t eventually take the measure of the president it was dealing with.”

LBJ had a toughness of spirit in dealing with congress, but it was tempered with matchless parliamentary know-how and lengthy mental dossiers on hundreds of members of congress that informed his deployment of carrots and sticks:

…He directed aides to treat every member of Congress as if he or she was the center of the political universe. They were instructed to return a representative’s or senator’s call in “10 minutes or else.” Johnson himself devoted countless hours talking to them on the telephone.
Conservative Democrats and Republicans were not neglected. When Representative Silvio Conte, a Republican from Massachusetts, cast a vote for a Johnson initiative, the president called to thank him “on behalf of the nation for your vote.” “It’s the only time since I have been in Congress that a president called me,” Conte said. “I will never forget it”
Every bill Johnson sent to the Hill was presented as a collaboration and was identified with a particular representative or senator. And no cooperative legislator would go un-rewarded…Uncooperative legislators paid a price for their independence. When Senator Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, justified a vote against a Johnson bill by saying that columnist Walter Lippmann shared his view, Johnson scolded him: “Frank, next time you want a dam in Idaho, you call Walter Lippmann and let him put it through.”

On President Obama’s more limited options:

Three months into his presidency, it’s apparent that Mr. Obama is not likely to match the 207 significant pieces of Johnson legislation; but not because he’s unmindful of L.B.J.’s methods. Like Johnson, the current president has been showering considerable attention on members of Congress, courting them by traveling to the Hill and asking their input into his big ticket items — the budget, health insurance, educational, and environmental reforms…
But Mr. Obama faces a more difficult challenge than Johnson’s. Unlike L.B.J., he lacks long-time ties to Congressional leaders, which may be one reason his stimulus plan barely made it out of the Senate and many Democrats, including Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, are balking at the president’s proposed budget. In addition, the sort of mutual back-scratching Johnson relied on is out of vogue. Trading pork-barrel grants for Congressional votes is no longer seen as acceptable politics but as unsavory opportunism. Also, Mr. Obama has far thinner majorities than Johnson had and fewer moderate Republicans to woo. Finally, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and deficits running as far into the future as the eye can see are problems that did not burden Johnson’s reach for a Great Society.

On a more positive note, however:

Yet all is not lost. President Obama has a degree of popular support that rivals the approval F.D.R., Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan enjoyed. And the public’s continuing eagerness for change gives him an advantage over Congress that may yet translate into major economic and social reforms.

Add to this Obama’s email rollodex, the progressive blogosphere support and the edge provided by a highly competent staff, and Obama’s political assets for winning legialtive reforms are formidable.
It would be hard to match LBJ’s mastery of political hardball and softball, and Obama may face a test sooner than later, if congressional Democratic leaders decide to go with the controversial “fast track” budget reconciliation process to pass President Obama’s health care reform and global warming legislation. Resorting to the filibuster-preventing tactic makes some Democrats who still hold fast to fading hopes for a more bipartisan approach a little queasy. But it has been used 19 times in recent years in which both houses of Congress were controlled by one party, according to Majority Leader Harry Reid, who says ” I don’t know why everyone is up in arms about it.”
Indeed. When was the last time an incoming GOP President sincerely reached out to embrace Democrats in genuine bipartisan goodwill? And it’s equally hard to cite an example of Republicans reaching out to help President Obama achieve bipartisan reform. It is early in Obama’s term for protracted trench warfare, but if that’s what it takes to get decent health care coverage for Americans and a sane environmental policy, then we need to bring it on.

The black-and-white details are available just yet, but if the outline provided in today’s Wall Street Journal by House Budget Committee ranking Republican Paul Ryan is accurate, the much ballyhooed GOP alternative budget resolution will be a compilation of very tired and very bad ideas.
On the tired side, you have the brilliant breakthrough concept of a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending (exempting veterans affairs). This is, of course, the oldest of budget gimmicks, central to the fiscal strategy of the first President Bush. It treats all federal programs as of identical worth, and achieves savings by counting on inflation to bleed the actual value of federal expenditures.
Equally tired, if not quite as old, is the concept of reducing taxes on corporations and high earners, which the Ryan budget would achieve at an estimated five-year cost of $4 trillion. The gimmickry here is the creation of a two-track income tax system that would allow taxpayers to choose current rates and deductions, or instead, a flat schedule that would have a top marginal rate of 25%. Corporate tax rates would simply be reduced.
Slightly more novel are the “entitlement reform” features of the House GOP budget. Best I can tell from Ryan’s vague description, Medicare would be voucherized for future beneficiaries (those not currently over 55 years of age), which is to say, it would be eliminated as a defined set of benefits and instead turned into cash for the purchase of private insurance, presumably at a fixes rate that would erode purchasing power over time. The federal share of Medicaid would be capped, which simply means that states would be put in the position of either picking up a larger share of the total costs or cutting services or eligibility. Guess which way they will go.
Best of all, the climate change crisis would be address by expanded oil and gas exploration, with a nod to alternative energies through a commitment to deposit lease or sales revenues into a “clean energy” fund.
It’s a pretty amazing package, reflecting the worst ideas from two decades of bad ideas for evading national challenges and shifting resources to the already privileged. And when we have the details, it could get worse.