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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Like a master stage magician’s best “sleight of hand” trick, Ruffini makes MAGA extremism in the GOP disappear right before our eyes.

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A Democratic Political Strategy for Reaching Working Class Voters That Starts from the Actual “Class Consciousness” of Modern Working Americans.

by Andrew Levison

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The recently published book, Rust Belt Union Blues, by Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol represents a profoundly important contribution to the debate over Democratic strategy.

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Why Don’t Working People Recognize and Appreciate Democratic Programs and Policies

The mythology of “Franklin Roosevelt’s Hundred Days” and the Modern Debate Over “Deliverism.”

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The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy

The American Establishment’s Betrayal of Democracy The Fundamental but Generally Unacknowledged Cause of the Current Threat to America’s Democratic Institutions.

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Immigration “Chaos” Could Sink Democrats in 2024…

And the Democratic Narrative Simply Doesn’t Work. Here’s An Alternative That Does.

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The Daily Strategist

March 29, 2024

Dems Making Inroads in Mountain West, VA

John Maggs takes an in-depth look at Democratic prospects in Virginia and the Mountain West in his National Journal Cover Story. Maggs provides insightful demographic and political profiles of AZ, NV, CO and NM, as well as VA, and discusses key regional issues enroute to his conclusion, which will gladden the spirits of Dems: “the electoral map is looking bluer than it has in more than a decade.”


Senate Candidates Up for Adoption

If there is no close U.S. Senate race in your state next year, read Nicholas Beaudrot’s piece at Ezra Klein’s blog and act accordingly. Beaudrot sees increasing the Democrat’s razor-thin majority a priority second only to winning the White House. It’s a good list, subject. of course to changes, in the months ahead. But remember, as the folks at Emily’s List say, “Early Money Is Like Yeast,” so your early contribution to any of these candidates is especially welcome now. The comments following Beaudrot’s post are helpful in making a decision as well.


Huckabee Profile

With former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee auditioning for Dark Horse On the Move status in the Republican presidential contest, you might want to check out a solid profile of the man by D.T. Max for The New Republic. He notes Huckabee’s strengths (solid evangelical conservative credentials, a congenial personality, a populist economic rap, and the obligatory Personal Story, in his case about a successful weight loss program, written up by the candidate himself in a bestselling self-help book), and weaknesses (the lack of any kind of foreign policy experience, and past conservative ire at his tax record in Arkansas).
Speaking of taxes, in case Huckabee does somehow emerge as a serious candidate, Democrats should pay especial attention to Huckabee’s signature support for a reactionary national sales tax proposal, one of those ideas that tend to excite conservatives and repel everyone else.


New, Unhelpful Iraq Polling

Tonight a new Washington Post/ABC poll came out that heavily focused on Iraq policies. But as is often the case, the poll creates nearly as much confusion as it dispels.
Check out these three sections of the poll analysis:

Overall, 55 percent of Americans want congressional Democrats to do more to challenge the president’s Iraq war policies, while only a third think the Democrats have already gone too far….
At the same time, there is no consensus about the pace of any U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. In July, nearly six in 10 said they wanted to decrease the number of troops there, but now a slim majority, 52 percent, thinks Bush’s plan for removing some troops by next summer is either the right pace for withdrawal (38 percent) or too hasty (12 percent would like a slower reduction and 2 percent want no force reduction); fewer, 43 percent, want a quicker exit….
Only about a quarter of all adults want Congress to fully fund the administration’s $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year, while two-thirds want the proposed allocation reduced, with 43 percent wanting it reduced sharply. (Three percent say Congress should approve no money at all.) Two-thirds of independents want Congress to reduce the funds allocated for the war effort, as do 83 percent of Democrats; 45 percent of Republicans agree.

So: According to this poll, a majority of Americans think Congress is failing to challenge Bush on Iraq; that Bush’s own troop “withdrawal plan” is about right or too fast; and that Bush’s war supplemental appropriations bill should be pared.
The funding numbers are particularly confusing. The actual decision on the table for Democrats in Congress isn’t about money numbers, but about whether they should take a hard-line position against any appropriations that don’t include a binding withdrawal deadline. Ultimately, that means a willingness to embrace a no-appropriations stance that this poll suggests only three percent of Americans support. (In July, a New York Times/CBS poll showed 61 percent of Americans wanted to make war appropriations contingent on a withdrawal timetable, another example of how wording nuances dramatically change opinions).
At OpenLeft, Chris Bowers, as shrewd a poll reader as anyone in the blogosphere, decides to interpret the numbers on Iraq funding in this latest poll as showing “Americans want to defund the war.” Well, that depends on a definition of “defund” that includes any reduction in funding.
Pollsters need to figure out ways to (a) test the Iraq issues actually facing Congress; (b) include in questions a few basic facts about troop withdrawals (i.e., that Bush is only talking about withdrawing “surged” troops) and funding levels (i.e., how much money buys what strategy); and (c) test some dynamic scenarios involding actions by Congress and reactions by Bush (i.e., a protracted funding fight).
Until that happens, new polls on Iraq will provide grist for spin, but not for any honest assessment of where the public is at present.


The Threat

An interesting story that developed over the weekend, reported by Michael Scherer at Salon, was a gathering of Christian Right leaders in Salt Lake City that issued a semi-public threat to take a dive or even back a third party in 2008 if Rudy Giuliani is the GOP nominee for president.
The meeting, attended by James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer, among others, was a sidebar to a conference of the Council for National Policy, a Christian-Right dominated group of shadowy but but undoubtedly powerful provenance (Dick Cheney was the star speaker at this particular conference). According to Scherer, the attendees discussed all sorts of strategies for coping with Rudy’s front-runner status, including one of recruiting a new GOP candidate, or going third-party (the head of the right-wing fringe group, the U.S. Constitution Party, was also in the house).
My guess is that the meeting was intended as a big shot across the bow of GOP leaders to get them to take Christian Right opposition to Giuliani very seriously. You’d have to also figure that there was some discussion of the existing non-Rudy field, but any conclusions they might have reached on a consensus choice to block the New Yorker didn’t get leaked.
I wonder if the poohbahs in Salt Lake City had seen the new Newsweek poll that showed Mike Huckabee climbing up into double digits among likely Iowa Caucus-goers, just behind Giuliani and Thompson.
The same poll also showed Barack Obama moving into the lead among likely Democratic Iowa Caucus-goers, with Clinton second and Edwards third.


Democracy Ill-Served by Poll-Worshiping Media

I have no dog in this race just yet — I could easily vote for any Democratic presidential candidate over anybody in the GOP field, not only as a yellow-dog Dem, but also because we have an exceptionally strong field this time around. But it just seems wrong that the front-runners in opinion polls continue to hog so much more media face time and ink.
Don Frederick and Andrew Malcolm report in today’s L.A. Times, for example, that Hillary Clinton racked up 17 minutes and 37 seconds of speaking time in the Dartmouth debates, some 4 minutes more than Obama. They report also that Obama lead in speaking time in some of the earlier debates, even though Clinton lead in the polls. But all of the other candidates are way behind the two front-runners in debate speaking time.
I haven’t seen any studies of the amount of ink and TV face time the candidates get. But, just looking at the daily newpapers and evening news, I would not be shocked if such a study showed Clinton and Obama getting 80-90 percent of the total coverage. I would guess the political blogosphere does a little better, but not much.
That’s an awful lot of political power being given to pollsters, who, after all, were elected by nobody. True, most of the pollsters strive to be fair and rigorous in their methods. And, yes, it is the average of many polls that really drives the amount of debate time and media coverage the candidates get. And I totally understand why the media lavishes coverage on poll front-runners. They have to sell newspapers and toothpaste to stay in business.
In so doing however, they create a cycle of privilege. “Top tier” candidates get more coverage because they are doing well in the polls. Then they perform well in the polls because they get more coverage. Other well-qualified candidates can’t get arrested. Public discourse suffers. Interesting ideas don’t get a fair hearing. Promising young leaders decide not to run for office against less-qualified but more mediagenic candidates.
I don’t know if this can be fixed. But surely we can do better. Would it be too much to ask that traditional and new media make an effort to be more inclusive in their coverage?


Would Edwards Handcuff Democrats?

Most of the media coverage of money in presidential politics is really just a subset of the horse-race discussion: who’s got the most jack to spend where, and what does that say about their “viability?”
But now and then, you get a money issue with strategic implications, and that seems to be the case with John Edwards’ announcement yesterday that he was opting into public financing for his nomination campaign.
From a horse-race perspective, Edwards’ decision seems entirely logical: he can’t keep up with Clinton’s and Obama’s massive fundraising; he’ll probably have enough money with public matching funds to get through the big February 5 primaries if everything breaks right for him; and most importantly, public financing will give him a timely cash infusion going into Iowa in January, a contest he needs badly to win.
But here’s the party-wide strategic problem: by accepting public financing, Edwards will lock himself into a total primary spending “cap” that won’t expire until the Democratic convention. The concern I’m hearing today in insider circles is that if Edwards wins the nomination, he might well put the ticket at a large financial disadvantage to the GOP, whose nominee (unless it’s McCain or some other darkhorse who soon accepts public financing) will be able to run unopposed ads pounding him as a godless ambulance-chasing troop-hater through the spring and much of the summer. In other words, he’d handcuff the party.
Markos Moulitsas did a post yesterday airiing these fears (and calling the Edwards decision “stupid’); he then went on to update the post by reporting the Edwards campaign’s calm response to the handcuffing argument (e.g., the “cap” has a lot of exclusions, and non-campaign 527 organizations would be able to respond to any GOP barrage of ads). Then today Kos did another post basically arguing with the Edwards money strategy, and concluding that it puts a Democratic win in 2008 at an unacceptable risk.
I’m not suggesting that the real, live voters who will determine the Democratic nomination are following this exchange, or will care about it (though the blast from Kos is obviously not helpful to a campaign that’s worked very hard to make Edwards the preferred netroots candidate). But the underlying issue does throw some sand into the overarching argument that Edwards’ campaign has been making: he’s the best on the issues from a progressive point of view, and he also happens to be the most electable candidate as well. Given the well-documented interest of Iowa Democrats in particular about “electibility,” anything that raises doubts about Edwards on that score is bound to hurt. We’ll know pretty soon if such doubts have actually been raised, or if this is just another obscure insider bean-counting fight about unimaginably large sacks of cash.


CQ Study: South Is ‘GOP Firewall’

Today’s edition of CQPolitics has a sobering article entitled “CQ Ratings Show South Remains GOP Firewall Against House Election Disaster.” According to the staff-written post, “Democrats’ opportunities for more Southern gains in 2008 are very limited.” The CQ study sees NC-8 and FL-13 being the Dems’ best shot at House pick-ups, with slim pickings beyond those two seats and Dems struggling to hold several of their southern seats.
Puzzling that Dems can’t do better in Southern House races, especially considering that Democrats currently hold majorities of both houses of the state legislatures in LA, MS, AL, AR, NC and WV, and one House each in TN and KY. One possible explanation: As Ed Kilgore has pointed out, “nearly half the region’s House seats are in three super-gerrymandered states, Texas, Florida and Georgia.”


The Argument(s)

Week before last, Matt Compton posted a review here of Matt Bai’s influential book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle To Remake Democratic Politics.
For those who enjoyed Matt’s review, or have read the book, or have simply heard the buzz about it, I recommend you go over to TPMCafe, where there’s an extensive discussion of it, including Bai himself, Mark Schmitt, Joan McCarter (a.k.a. McJoan), Garance Franke-Ruta, Nathan Newman, The Reapers (Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger) and yours truly.
To my surprise, much of the discussion (largely driven by the ever-thoughtful Mark Schmitt) has been not about the internal “argument” among Democrats on the direction of the party, but about the external “argument” Democrats need to present concerning the big challenges facing the country. It’s perhaps the most extensive discussion of a book I’ve seen at TPMCafe, and it’s still expanding. Check it out.


Crisis of the Christian Right, Part II

For those of you interested in where the Christian Right winds up in the 2008 presidential campaign, there’s an article by Jonathan Martin up at The Politico that provides an excellent overview.
While Martin frames his piece as a discussion of Fred Thompson’s lost opportunity to become the consensus candidate of the Christian Right (mainly because of his unwillingness to support a constitutional nationwide ban on gay marriages), the sense you get is that this community of would-be kingmakers is in real disarray, united in their opposition to Rudy Giuliani but unable to agree on an alternative. The case for Thompson’s candidacy made by big-time Christian Right activist Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention is revealingly defensive, and, well, about as enthusiastic as Big Fred himself.
There’s not much doubt that a viable Mike Huckabee campaign would be the answer to these folks’ prayers. But it’s not clear they are willing or able to do anything tangible to make that a reality. We’ll know more about the Arkansan’s prospects next week, when the third-quarter fundraising numbers start leaking out. If Huckabee continues to struggle in the money department, then he probably won’t have a prayer of answering the Christian Right altar call.