Allow me to be the umpteenth blogger to recommend for your reading pleasure the remarks that President Obama made yesterday to the House Democratic Caucus retreat.
I do not share the widespread view that these remarks represent some sort of late realization by Obama that bipartisanship is a waste of time, or that he made a mistake not just seeking to ram a Democratic-drafted stimulus package through Congress. In the pertinent passage in his speech, he is simply separating the sheep from the goats–the phony “bipartisan debate” that involves Republicans denouncing the very idea of economic stimulus and/or denouncing refundable tax cuts as “welfare,” from a genuine give-and-take”

I don’t think any of us have cornered the market on wisdom, or that do I believe that good ideas are the province of any party. The American people know that our challenges are great. They’re not expecting Democratic solutions or Republican solutions — they want American solutions. And I’ve said that same thing to the public, and I’ve said that, in a gesture of friendship and goodwill, to those who have disagreed with me on aspects of this plan.
But what I have also said is — don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis. (Applause.) You know, all of us here — imperfect. And everything we do and everything I do is subject to improvement. Michelle reminds me every day how imperfect I am. (Laughter.) So I welcome this debate. But come on, we’re not — we are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. (Applause.)
We can’t embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face; that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or falling schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees. I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV — if you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction. (Applause.) That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver. (Applause.)
So the American people are watching. They did not send us here to get bogged down with the same old delay, the same old distractions, the same talking points, the same cable chatter.

I do agree with those who say that this is the sort of speech the President needs to be making to a broader audience, including the country as a whole.

Carl Hulse has a New York Times report on the emergence of a bipartisan “Gang of 20,” Senate moderates led by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Ben Nelson, while David Brooks casts a hopeful eye in his column on the Gang of 20 as a possible harbinger of a new way of doing political business on the Hill. Democratic Leadership Council President Bruce Reed sees the Gang of 20 as a “promising post-partisan caucus” in his Slate article today and sees Obama gathering strength as a result of the struggles of the last week.
The Southern Political Report‘s Tom Baxter takes a look at the schitzy way the stimulus debate is being addressed by the region’s Republican governors.
At The Blog for Our Future (CAF), Charles McMillion nukes “The ‘FDR Failed’ Myth” being bandied about by Republican spinmeisters to discredit arguments for government spending.
David Corn’s MoJo Blog makes the case that President “Obama needs to Get Outside the Beltway.”
Alan Abramowitz joins the fray over the political ramification of the economic meltdown for the November election at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, with a strong data-based argument that the meltdown was not the pivotal factor.
At Daily Kos Meteor Blades takes a sobering look at the new unemployment figures, while Angry Bear‘s Spencer has a post arguing that we are experiencing “the worst employment drop in the post WW II era.”
With FiveThirtyEight.com‘s Nate Silver on the case, we’ll have no more whining about Democratic party unity, at least with respect to the stimulus package.
And for your Friday amusement, Firedoglake‘s Christy Hardin Smith has collected a “boo yah sampling of smackdowns” from “across the internets.”

Anybody trying to follow what’s happening in the Senate on the stimulus package today is having a bad case of vertigo. The big news yesterday seemed to be that Senate Dems didn’t have the votes to enact the stimulus legislation that was reported out of its committees, and that was roughly similar to what the House enacted. As a result, a self-designated group of “centrists”–apparently five GOPers and up to 15 Democrats–had convened under the leadership of Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) to agree on modifications of the package that would reduce its cost and/or eliminate objectionable “pork.”
Now today, even as details of the Nelson-Collins “agreed-to-cuts” leaks out (TPM seems to have the first copy), Harry Reid has dramatically announced that he has the votes to cut off debate and enact a bill. The question, of course, is “what bill?”, though comments by other Democratic senators suggest that they are not including the Nelson-Collins cuts, much less the sort of larger cuts that Collins undoubtedly wants. And that in turn implies that all or nearly all of the Dems involved in the Nelson-Collins negotiations have been, or can be, convinced to vote for the bigger package (inflated to over $900 billion yesterday when the Senate approved an Isakson amendment to give big tax incentives to home-buyers), and that a couple of Republicans other than Collins (Snowe? Voinovich? Specter?) are on board as well.
If the Nelson-Collins cuts–again, a tentative list, not an agreement, since Collins is insisting on much larger cuts–is somehow in play, it’s worth looking at them in some detail. And the first thing that jumps out at you is that $39 billion of the $79 billion in proposed cuts comes from elimination of a State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.
There have already been some blog posts erroneously describing these proposed cuts as relating purely to “education.” That’s because the Department of Education administers this proposed fund. $15 billion on the chopping block is in the form of “state incentive grants” that are indeed about education (apparently aimed at rewarding states that make progress towards their education goals), but the bigger chunk, $24 billion, is the sole unrestricted money for the states in the entire stimulus package, aimed at discouraging states from laying off workers and cutting programs in a way that would undermine the very purpose of the federal legislation. To be sure, there are other funds in the stimulus package aimed at shoring up specific state-administered programs, particularly Medicaid, but the $24 billion the “centrists” are lopping off is the only truly flexible money.
I would guess that lobbyists for state and local government have figured this out and are raising holy hell about it by now. But the fact that so little is known about the composition of the Nelson-Collins group (as Chris Bowers rightly and angrily points out), and no one outside the Senate seems to know whether these negotiated cuts are in or out of what Reid intends to push on the Senate floor, is a sign of how incredibly confusing the legislative dance has become at this crucial moment.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

In the course of about 48 hours, the conventional wisdom about the likely fate of the economic stimulus packagage has undergone a remarkable change from guarded optimism to quasi-panic. In a semi-ironic reference to the rapidly shifting winds, Mike Madden did a post at Salon yesterday entitled: “Stimulus Bill Not Dead Yet.”
The genesis of this sudden shift in perceptions is variable: the Daschle “scandal” has supposedly hurt or distracted Obama; conservatives have been all over the media with a relentless barrage of attacks on the supposed “pork” in the stimulus bill; there’s been public handwriting by Senate Democrats about their failure to nail down 60 votes; two self-styled “centrist” groups of senators from each party are kicking around major modifications to the bill that seem to get larger every minute.
Most of all, Republicans are excitedly high-fiving each other over the trends lines in Rasmussen polling on the stimulus package (see Nate Silver’s warning about the methodology!), showing things moving their way.
Perhaps it’s inevitable because of the quasi-mythical status of Team Obama as it took office, which created high expectations of instant political mastery, but still, I’ve never quite seen so much of a mood-shift based on, well, a mood-shift. Obama’s not perceived as doing well because people are saying that Obama’s not perceived as doing well. This is the sort of self-proliferating cycle of negative perceptions that can develop a ferocious energy, but can also dissipate rapidly in the fact of real-life events.
And that explains the president’s real challenge over the next few days: bringing the stimulus debate back to earth, instead of letting it be determined by who is perceived as doing a better job of spinning it.

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line reports today that Team Obama has decided to “use his massive campaign email list and communications operations to get around the filter of the big news orgs in order to personally sell his agenda directly to the American people.”
This deployment, according to Sargent, was partially motivated by the obsession of the MSM with the Daschle story, which has “blotted out” Obama’s efforts to sell the stimulus package via network interviews.
An email has gone out to the Obama organization’s 13-million-strong email list with video clips and a plea that recipients convene house parties to view Obama’s case for the stimulus package.
This will be an interesting and important experiment, not just in terms of the effectiveness of the Obama organization, but as an effort to bypass media “filters.” Given the negative MSM coverage of the Daschle and related “stories” about disqualified appointees, and continuing conservative efforts to label the stimulus package as pork-laden, it’s an appropriate and potentially critical step to mobilize generally positive public opinion in favor of the legislation as it struggles through the Senate.

TDS co-editor Ruy Teixeira has a new post up at the Center for American Progress website, “Public Opinion Snapshot: Public Strongly Supports Economic Recovery Plan.” Teixeira’s analysis of data from a Diageo/Hotline poll conducted 1/21-24 debunks the GOP myth that voters prefer tax cuts to government spending as a strategy for addressing the current economic crisis:

Conservatives showed remarkable unanimity this week in opposing President Obama’s stimulus plan. Their reasons? Too much spending, too few tax cuts, too big an effect on the deficit. In taking this position, they’re trying to pose as the true friends of U.S. taxpayers.
There’s only one problem: The taxpayers themselves actually support the plan and seem unfazed by the very things the conservatives are complaining so loudly about.
A recent Diageo/Hotline poll asked half of the sample whether they supported an $825 billion plan “even if it means increasing the federal budget deficit in order to do so.” That query elicited a 20-point margin (54-34) in favor
This shows that the public favors the recovery and reinvestment plan even with the price tag and even when it is stipulated that the plan will increase the deficit…

Even better, Teixeira adds:

But what about the thing that really gets conservatives upset—the fact that there’s twice as much new spending as tax cuts? Well, the Diageo/Hotline poll asked the other half of the sample the same question as above, but specified how the money was divided between spending and tax cuts. The result? Support for the stimulus ballooned to a roughly 40-point margin (66-27).
The conservatives aren’t just reading from a different page of the book than the public—they appear to be reading from a completely different book. Some things evidently haven’t changed since George W. Bush left town.

Clearly, conservative members of congress, and even some moderates who want more tax cuts and less spending, should no longer entertain the delusion that they are guided by public support.

The sudden fall of Tom Daschle has left the Obama administration scrambling, and Democrats and the media speculating, about not one but two replacements. While Daschle is usually described as the designated Secretary of Heath and Human Services, he was also appointed to head up the White House Office of Health Care Reform, the coordinating point for a future Obama universal health care initiative.
Jon Cohn of TNR’s The Treatment, and Ezra Klein of TAP, are as usual the go-to bloggers on health care policy generally and this issue specifically. Cohn seems to think Dashle’s designated deputy in the White House, Jeanne Lambrew, ought to get the nod to head the heath care reform office. Klein lists a number of pols who might be considered–a pretty lofty group for what might be a non-cabinet gig–and agrees the Lambrew is fine if Obama wants to go with a wonk. A pol, of course, might be a dual appointment like Daschle. For these very public figures, expect some hasty but intense vetting, not just of tax records but of associations with lobbyists.
Both these issues–not just the tax problem–were the focus of the New York Times editorial yesterday that reportedly represented the coup de grace for Daschle.

Print Version
Editor’s Note by Ed Kilgore: This analysis, written by Andrew Levison, is one of a series of TDS Strategy Memos and TDS Strategy White Papers that The Democratic Strategist will be publishing on a regular basis in the future. As our Editors have said: “ For some time we have felt that the Democratic community has needed an additional format for the discussion of political strategy, one that is longer than standard newspaper and magazine political commentary, is based on empirical data and is directly focused on the analysis of political strategy. We see TDS Strategy memos and Strategy White Papers as filling that role.”
Since Obama took office, two basic notions about his political philosophy have become instant clichés – that he is a “pragmatist” and also an advocate of “bipartisanship.” An extraordinary number of articles and debates have appeared applying these two characterizations to his actions.
Within this broad discussion, Ed Kilgore has made a convincing argument that in Obama’s specific formulation, neither of these two concepts necessarily implies an abandonment of the liberal-progressive goals Obama expressed during the campaign. Kilgore notes that, while Franklin Roosevelt ultimately achieved very profound progressive reforms, he was actually much more accurately described as a “pragmatist” than an “ideologue.” Equally, Kilgore argues that Obama’s bipartisanship is more accurately understood as a “grassroots” bipartisanship he seeks to generate among ordinary Americans rather than the traditional and elite “behind closed doors” deal-making bipartisanship of the senate cloakroom and corridors of power.
But, at this very broad level, political strategy becomes difficult to distinguish from political philosophy. There is also a more concrete and specific level of political strategy that also has to be considered – the level where a president’s specific politico-legislative strategy is designed. On this middle level it can be argued that Obama actually has a more coherent and well thought out approach than either his critics or other interpreters recognize.
To see this, it is necessary to identify a particular blind spot in the perspective of most American political commentators. Modern political science (exemplified in the leading American academic journals) and modern political campaign management (exemplified in “professional” political publications like National Journal, Congressional Quarterly and Campaigns and Elections magazine) actually present a very simplified model of the world, one in which politics is discussed as if it were a separate and isolated realm of life with its own unique rules. In this simplified world, most discussions of politics are based on two seemingly self-evident statements:

1. American elections are won with 50.1 percent of the vote.
2. All votes, regardless of their origin, are, in political terms, equal.

On the surface, these two ideas appear to be not only true but almost tautological. In a great deal of American political commentary, however, they are subtly inflated into two much broader premises that are most emphatically not tautological — and that are, in fact, arguably wrong.

1. That winning support above 50.1 percent is of relatively small or even negligible marginal benefit or importance. Put differently, it is essentially icing on a cake.
2. That any particular political coalition that can be assembled to provide an electoral majority of 50.1% is of exactly equal value and utility to any alternative political coalition that can also produce an electoral majority of 50.1%. No particular majority coalition is inherently any “better” than any other.

These assumptions are rarely stated explicitly, but they are implicit in much of the progressive concern about Obama’s political strategy – the widely expressed fear that he is essentially “leaving achievable progressive victories on the table” because of his commitment to pragmatism and bipartisanship. Having won 53% of the vote and with 59 Democratic senators, it is often argued that he is clearly in a position to seek more progressive, radical or dramatic changes than those which he is actually seeking. To many liberal and progressive commentators, it seems almost self-evident that Obama could demand and get “more” of a progressive agenda enacted if he behaved in a more aggressively hyper-partisan fashion as George Bush did after the 2004 election. Thomas Frank clearly expressed this liberal-progressive view — and frustration — by saying that “Obama should act as if he won.”
But there is good evidence (which we shall see below) that Obama’s political strategy is actually based on an essentially sociological rather than political science perspective. It rests specifically on one key sociological insight — that the political strategy required to enact significant progressive social reforms is substantially more complex and difficult than is the strategy required to simply resist social change.
When significant social reforms threaten to directly affect major social institutions, enacting such reforms requires two things beyond simply wining an electoral victory:

1. The opposition of the key social institution or institutions affected –which in most cases include either the armed forces, big business or the church – must be neutralized or at least very significantly muted.
2. A certain baseline level of sociological support (or at least relative neutrality) must be obtained among a series of pivotal social groups. Sociologically and demographically speaking these groups – religious voters, military voters or business voters — are often predominantly working class, red state voters.

As a result, the coalition necessary to achieve major social reforms will require more than a knife-edge 50.1% majority. Translated into national levels of public support or approval, a commanding majority of as much as 60% may actually be necessary.

Read more…

I think I’d go a step farther than J.P. Green’s cautious optimism about the Gregg appointment in the post just below.
President Obama’s appointment of Gregg to head the Department of Commerce is a fairly remarkable feat of political deal making, and the compromise that appears to have been worked out speaks well for everyone involved:
Obama appoints another Republican to his Cabinet, Gregg gives up his seat in the Senate to work for a president he didn’t support, Democratic New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch has indicated that he will reach across the aisle appoint a long-time Republican to fill the position, and if, as rumored, that appointment is Bonnie Newman then she will agree to serve out the term and then step aside so that the people of New Hampshire have an open field to choose from in 2010.
Politically, for Democrats there’s a lot to like. It’s a tangible effort that Obama and company can point to when asked what they’ve done to change the tone in Washington. For New Hampshire, Gregg might represent the most conservative vote the GOP could hope for. Even if Lynch doesn’t appoint a Democrat, whoever serves out Gregg’s term will likely spend a lot of time voting with the Obama administration. And in 2010, we’ve got an open seat to contest instead of an incumbent to beat.
If you need further convincing, look at the extent to which this move has Republicans annoyed.
Patrick Ruffini is a smart, young, tech-savvy GOP activist who, together with Soren Dayton and Jon Henke, created The Next Right last year to be a gathering point for activists looking to build a new Republican Party. I don’t read as many conservative blogs as I did during the 2008 campaign cycle, but I continue to check out The Next Right every day because it offers a lot of insight into the thinking of those who represent the future of the GOP.
In a post yesterday under the headline, “Republicans Should Drive a Hard Bargain on Gregg,” Ruffini suggests that the GOP should make every effort to stop this appointment unless certain conservative conditions are met:

First, we must frame this as an astonishing partisan power grab. President Bush had the opportunity to nominate Louisiana Democrat John Breaux as Energy Secretary in 2001, thus flipping the seat, but didn’t — leaving the Senate at 50-50 and vulnerable to a Democratic takeover, which as we all know, actually happened.
Second, we need to insist not only that Gov. Lynch appoint a Republican, but that he appoint a Republican from a list of three candidates prepared by Republican leaders in the legislature and the New Hampshire Republican Party — preferably a strong Republican who would run in 2010. Gregg was about as conservative as you get for New England, and any replacement selected by a Democrat is almost guaranteed to be worse.

Neither one of these suggestions makes much sense.
Republicans can try to frame the appointment as a power grab, but my guess is that most Americans are going to see Obama picking a Republican for his administration and a Democratic governor choosing a Republican to fill the seat, even though he’s under no legal obligation to do so. On this point, the GOP is welcome to take Ruffini’s advice, but it is almost certain to be a tough sell.
Ruffini’s second suggestion, if anything, is worse. Aside from Sen. Gregg himself (who could always change his mind), Republicans have no power to insist on any conditions for this appointment. They don’t control the legislature or the governor’s mansion. There is no law on the books in New Hampshire dictating that partisan considerations be made for an appointments. And they don’t have the votes to block Gregg’s confirmation in the Senate (keep in mind, without Gregg, they only hold 40 seats in the chamber).
And by the way, the Bush-Breaux analogy that Ruffini raises is totally off: Bush didn’t appoint Breaux as Energy Secretary because Breaux wasn’t interested in the job, not because Bush was a principled bipartisan man who feared upsetting the partisan balance of the Senate.
If activists like Ruffini want to reinvent the GOP, they have every right to insist that Republicans be focused on conservative principles, and they should demand accountability from their elected officials and party leaders. But Republicans are in the minority at every level of government. That requires that they be a bit more careful about choosing their battles.

Pass the crow, please, re my Friday post on the Gregg appointment. Excuse me for thinking a Democratic Governor would surely appoint a Democratic Senator to replace Judd Gregg, if and when he is confirmed as Secretary of Commerce. The deal was apparently never that simple.
I’m not quite buying the noise that the Gregg nomination is all about the quiet joys of bipartisanship. I doubt that President Obama would put a third Republican in his cabinet without a little quid pro quo somewhere down the line. The explanation that makes the most sense at this point is that the Senator replacing Gregg will support Obama on some key legislation, such as the stimulus package (if it’s not a done deal before then) and/or EFCA and health care reform — not way off the range of possibilities for a centrist/liberal New England Republican. Sort of a sometimes 60th vote to prevent or stop filibustering. That way Gregg gets to save face with his GOP buds, and Obama gets at least some of what he wants from Gregg’s replacement.
The whole thing is a little dicey, in that it requires a lot of trust in, not one, but two Republicans, under the best of scenarios. In his post at OpenLeft, David Sirota calls Gregg a “radical free-trader,” and makes a convincing case that Gregg’s track record on trade issues is worrisome. And there may be another twist or two before all of the fallout settles. I don’t much like the precedent of a Democratic governor caving in and appointing a Republican, which doesn’t help with party-building. But no telling what other behind-the-scenes options Obama had. It’s not the queen gambit I was hoping for. For now, however, it seems reasonable to trust in Team Obama, since they have been pretty shrewd political chess players so far.