There is a nice photo of Coretta Scott King standing behind Ronald Reagan as he grudgingly signs the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday bill in the Rose Garden back in 1983. The most appropriate caption for the photo would be “Checkmate!,” since Reagan did not want to sign the bill and was no fan of Dr. King, or the reforms his leadership secured.
Republican apologists for Reagan are quick to note his signing of the King holiday legislation as indicative of his commitment to equality. But Reagan’s dismal track record on issues of racial injustice is not likely to be recounted in much detail during the GOP convention in Summer ’08. For that, you can read Alec Dubro’s TomPaine.com article “Reagan White As Snow,” which lays out the former President’s sorry record of opposition to civil rights. Dubro quotes a nut graph from Sydney Blumenthal’s article in The Guardian.”

Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (calling it “humiliating to the South”), and ran for governor of California in 1966 promising to wipe the Fair Housing Act off the books. “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house,” he said, “he has a right to do so.” After the Republican convention in 1980, Reagan traveled to the county fair in Neshoba, Mississippi, where, in 1964, three Freedom Riders had been slain by the Ku Klux Klan. Before an all-white crowd of tens of thousands, Reagan declared: “I believe in states’ rights.”

Dubro adds:

But it was in foreign affairs that he showed that he could rise above mere opportunism and flaunt his racism for all the world to see. He was the best friend that South Africa’s apartheid government had in the developed world.
Reagan consistently opposed taking any stand against the Pretoria regime, no matter what their sins. His administration created a policy called “constructive engagement,” which meant no sanctions.
When the pressure for sanctions grew too great, even within the Republican Party, Reagan refused to relent, claiming the sanctions would hurt black workers. In 1986, Reagan vetoed a congressional sanctions vote, this time claiming that it would help the communist ANC. Moreover, “the U.S., he added, ‘must stay and build, not cut and run’.” When Congress overrode the veto, Reagan made sure that the law was barely carried out.

All of this would be history, except for the GOP’s effort to use Reagan as their poster-boy for Republican philosophy and values, since the current Republican President’s approval ratings are abysmal. As Dubro notes:

…Reagan showed that he was an implacable foe of racial integration of any sort, domestic or foreign, and would use any tactic to block its implementation. If any of the Republican candidates for president are ignorant of Reagan’s wretched conduct, it’s because they refuse to look.

For more good links on Reagan-glorification as a GOP tactic, see our recent post, “Reagan Myth to Cast ’08 Shadow.” And do not miss Frank Rich’s recent column on Reagan’s legacy and the GOP.

Miriam Jordan’s WSJ article “Univision Gives Citizenship Drive An Unusual Lift” no doubt comes as unwelcome news in GOP circles.
Jordan reports that Univision Communications, Inc., America’s largest Spanish language broadcasting network, is sponsoring an energized nation-wide campaign to help millions of green card-holders become citizens. In the greater Los Angeles area alone, citizenship applications have more than doubled in the first three months of the campaign, which began in January, compared to the same period in ’06. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has extended the terms of 40 immigration adjudicators to process the upsurge in citizenship applications.
The campaign is rapidly spreading eastward, and is underway in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Miami. It usually takes six or seven months to complete the naturalization process. In 2008, the second stage of the campaign will focus on getting the new citizens registered to vote. The impact could be decisive, as Jordan explains:

Latinos have had a lower voter-participation rate than others — in 2004, 47% of those eligible voted, compared with 67% of whites and 60% of blacks, according to Pew Hispanic Center tabulations. However, Latino immigrants who become citizens report higher rates of political participation than native-born Latinos, according to Pew.
If the citizenship campaign culminates in two million to three million new Hispanic voters, “that could turn the tide in several states,” including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, says Sergio Bendixen, a pollster who specializes in ethnic markets. In 2004, Republicans won by a small margin in those states.”

An energetic naturalization campaign has long been needed to help resolve America’s immigration problems. Now that one has been launched, Democrats can reasonably expect a significant advantage with these new voters. A 60-40 break favoring Dems among the new voters would not be unreasonable, given recent voting trends. Naturalization applicants currently pay a $400 fee, which does not augur well for America’s commitment to equal opportunity. No surprise that Republicans want to raise the fee, and we can expect other obstructionist tactics leading up to the election.

Democrats now have an extraordinary opportunity to win the support of a large and rapidly-growing majority of Americans concerned about energy independence and global warming. Large majorities now favor strong action to address these crises, according to a strategy memo written by Al Quinlan, Stan Greenberg, and the Center for American Progress’s John Podesta.
The memo is based in part on a survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for the Center for American Progress, conducted 3/19-22. Among the findings of the poll:

More than 3/4 of people believe the effects of global warming are already here.
Americans want immediate action on global warming – 60 percent believe that increasing pollution has set global warming into motion and “we must take action now or it will be too late to stop it.”
Unlike other issues before Congress and the President there is no strong partisan divide on stopping global warming.

Further, concern about energy and global warming “now rivals health care as the top domestic issue that requires immediate action.”
The strategy memo also drew from the findings of a GQR research report, noting that that 64 percent of Americans favored immediate action “to make our country less dependent on oil and move to cleaner, alternative energy sources” and 65 percent agreed that our energy policy “is seriously off on the wrong track.”
According to the strategy memo, the most compelling messages and themes to use when talking about these issues include:

Messaging must be inspirational and build off the strong belief that America can do anything once we make the commitment. Americans are ready for their leaders to summon the willpower to act now.
Freedom, independence and self sufficiency are the essence of what the public believes is our ultimate energy goal. When asked in focus groups, people cited independence and self sufficiency as the most important objectives in an energy plan.
We should take the offensive, not defensive, in the economic debate and advance a message that production of clean, alternative energy will help to restore America as a leader in the world economy, create future jobs, higher incomes and put us back in the forefront of world economic advancement.

Global warming, skyrocketing gas prices and the horrible mess in Iraq are all linked to our deepening addiction to oil. The American people clearly get it and want reforms to secure energy independence from imported oil in particular and to reduce our dependency on oil in general. Only one political party has the potential to provide the needed leadership — and the hour for action has now arrived.

In These Times Senior Editor David Moberg has an article for Democrats seeking a sharper perspective on free trade vs. fair trade policy choices. Moberg’s article “Making Trade Work for Everyone: Voters aren’t happy with the reality of free trade—and Democrats are starting to listen” makes the case that trade is shaping up as a major issue in upcomming elections:

The November elections—when 37 House and Senate seats changed from “free trade” to “fair trade”—created a Democratic majority that needed to stake out a new position on trade. Globalization and offshoring of jobs ranked among the electorate’s top issues, according to polls by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Agenda. Results in key races indicate that Democrats could have picked up even more seats with a stronger message on global economic issues, according to an analysis by Chris Slevin and Todd Tucker of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, an organization critical of corporate-backed free trade.

Moberg offers some numbers to back his claim:

In a March Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Americans agreed, by a margin of 46 percent to 28 percent, that trade deals have harmed the United States. And late last year, a Pew Research Center poll found that nearly 44 percent of the people surveyed thought free trade had lowered wages, compared to 11 percent who thought it had raised wages.

Moberg addresses a range of current trade-related concerns and reform proposals, including: making worker rights in nations we trade with a priority; job training; broader health care coverage; pension reform; unemployment insurance; currency revaluation; and a “strategic pause” in negotiating new trade agrements. For Dems wanting to get up to speed on trade issues, Moberg’s article is a keeper.

One tactic Republicans never tire of deploying is impugning the patriotism of Democrats who want to end/de-fund U.S. military occupation of Iraq. As Bush recently said in just one version of a frequently-uttered GOP meme:

…Members of the House and the Senate passed a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.

One of the more effective responses for Dems is to call the roll of military brass who also believe Bush’s Iraq misadventure is a disaster. It is a lengthening list, and The Nation‘s John Nichols has a round-up of the latest quotes of America’s more thoughtful military leaders here. A couple of samples from Nichols’ post:

The President vetoed our troops and the American people,” says retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste. “His stubborn commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq is incomprehensible. He committed our great military to a failed strategy in violation of basic principles of war. His failure to mobilize the nation to defeat world wide Islamic extremism is tragic. We deserve more from our commander-in-chief and his administration.

Or this, from another former Major General, Paul Eaton:

This administration and the previously Republican-controlled legislature have been the most caustic agents against America’s Armed Forces in memory. Less than a year ago, the Republicans imposed great hardship on the Army and Marine Corps by their failure to pass a necessary funding language. This time, the President of the United States is holding our Soldiers hostage to his ego.

There’s more from our military leaders in Nichols’ article. Nichols sums it up:

Add the public statements of the retired generals together with the behind-the-scenes expressions of frustration from current commanders and they form the most powerful tool that Congressional Democrats have in what will ultimately be a negotiation not with Bush but with the American people–a negotiation that, the president well understands, is about the question of which side is playing politics and which side is listening to military commanders and supporting the troops.

Democrats would do well to keep a file on the growing list of military leaders and former leaders who have the integrity to tell the truth about Bush’s Iraq policy, and Dems should be ready to cite their names and message points. Republicans will be less quick to impugn their patriotism.

The first presidential primary debates of both parties made it clear that only one party embraces a commitment to government policies to help people living in poverty. Fortunately for Dems, an increasing percentage of Americans are embracing this commitment as well, according to analysis of recent polls conducted by Ruy Teixeira. As Teixeira reports in his Center for American Progress post “Public Opinion Snapshot: Americans Extend Helping Hand to the Poor“:

Politicians tend to avoid the subject of poverty on the theory that voters aren’t very interested in helping the poor. Yet public opinion data consistently shows that the public is very willing to extend a helping hand to the least fortunate in society.
…A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in January of this year, for example, shows that 69 percent agree that “the government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep” and an identical 69 percent agree that “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.” These figures are up 10 and 12 points respectively relative to their recent low point in 1994.
Americans are also willing to consider a wide range of options for helping the poor…an NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard poll from 2001…shows, four proposals garnered 80 percent support or higher: expanding subsidized day care, increasing the minimum wage, spending more for medical care for poor people, and increasing the tax credit for low-income workers. Yet every option offered, even increasing cash assistance for families, received majority support.

Teixeira’s post includes a set of graphics showing strong support for a host of anti-poverty measures, and includes a link to the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty policy report “From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half” — highly recommended for Democrats interested in anti-poverty reforms.

There was a lot to be disturbed about in the first GOP debate, other than the fact that three out of ten — nearly a third of the GOP presidential candidate field — apparently believe the earth is only 7,000 years old. Scarecrow’s “Republican Candidates in Denial” at Firedoglake nails it well:

After the “debate,” MSNBC’s panelists tried to hype the disagreements, but they missed the fact that these men share a common mindset detached from where the rest of the country is….They do not see a nation angry at them about the war nor shamed by a government that sanctions torture. With their Reaganesqe optimism, they do not see families struggling with health care costs, job security, retirement security, and college tuition. They don’t seem to worry whether the government is doing enough to protect us from unsafe working conditions, unsafe products, unsafe foods and drugs. They apparently don’t see global warming as a national security or economic threat. American democracy is not threatened; the Constitution is not under siege, and Americans don’t hate the Bush regime for what it has done to our liberties (Paul excepted). Attacks on the rights of women, gays, and immigrants and anyone who looks like the “enemy” are non-issues.

Digby gooses a few chuckles out of the whole sorry show with his riff on Fineman’s comments about how manly the GOP field looks and the softball questions lobbed their way. Pollster.com‘s Mark Blumenthal has a way cool “tag clouds” graphic provided by Upstream Analysis President Janet Harris, revealing the GOP candidates’ respective buzzword choices here. Political Animal Kevin Drum has a flashy pie chart here showing who “won,” according to SurveyUSA poll results.
Poll results notwithstanding, it does not appear that any of the GOP candidates are notably charismatic, eloquent or quick-witted. But we sorta knew that going in.

Ed Kilgore’s New Donkey post contributes to the discussion about Jonathan Chait’s New Republic article, adding,

…Chait’s piece, despite a few questionable assertions, is a very good introduction to the whole topic of the netroots’ role in Democratic politics….The criticism most consistently aimed at Chait is that he overemphasizes the role of a handful of high-profile bloggers in coordinating the netroots “message.” I think that’s a bit unfair, since the whole piece was about the netroots as a self-conscious political movement…Chait might have dwelled a bit more on the inherent tension between the medium’s decentralized nature and various effort to make it a unified political force; it’s a tension you see every day in the comments threads of most “activist” sites.

Kilgore, who had an earlier post on the topic at TPM Cafe, has more to say about the article as it relates to the differing agendas of the DLC and the Netroots. His article features links to posts by Eric Alterman, Matt Yglesias and MyDD‘s Chris Bowers, which help to round out the discussion. Bowers’ critique includes this point:

…while Chait is correct that the activist blogosphere is generally focused on achieving politically positive results, he seems to miss the fact that that in order to achieve politically positive results, it is necessary to engage in political strategy that is based on solid ideas. In other words, the activist blogosphere has long been concerned with improving the political tactics and strategies of Democrats and progressives, and we won’t be very effective at that if we intentionally float misinformed ideas on political tactics and strategy. Misinformed, poorly researched, and ill-conceived strategy is not helpful in creating positive political outcomes. We need solid tactics based on solid research and analysis in order to succeed in politics. In that sense, we in the activist blogosphere are very concerned with ideas, logic and truth, but we are more focused on ideas, logical conclusions, and truth as they relate to improving political strategy rather than with debating policy specifics. That isn’t propaganda–it is simply a difference between hacks and wonks.

Alterman and Yglesias’s TNR responses offer their takes on Chait’s article. Says Alterman:

Chait’s range, linguistic felicitousness, and self-confidence are quite impressive. I found myself nodding in agreement through most of the piece at points I hadn’t realized before as Chait’s argument crystallized my thinking in ways that only the best opinion journalism can do…On the other hand–and this is also endemic to the best and worst of almost all opinion pieces but particularly at TNR–Chait’s piece is actually empirically empty. Either we trust Chait or we don’t. I didn’t notice a single point of evidence in the analysis that could not be argued away….The main argument I want to have with Chait concerns what he deems to be the netroots’ purposeful intellectual insularity with regard to the idealized platonic cosmopolitanism of establishment journalists and policy wonks. If history is any guide, it just ain’t so…One could make a sound empirical argument–based on virtually every major event in the Bush presidency–that the MSM narrative was a convenient invention of self-interested parties while the analysis that permeated the netroots has been largely borne out (so far) by history.

Alterman recommends Chris Bowers Democratic Strategist article for a fuller consideration of the role of the Netroots as a political force. Yglesias takes Chait to task for mischaracterizing his views, and continues:

I have about a million things to say about Jonathan Chait’s alternatively brilliant and infuriating essay on the netroots…Meanwhile, Chait’s characterization of the netroots’ beef with The New Republic and the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) seems deliberately obtuse. “What makes such internal enemies so dangerous,” writes Chait, “is that they engage in self-criticism.” In particular, Chait–in a bit of unsubstantiated overstatement–thinks that the netroots considers “any criticism of any part of the Democratic Party or its activist base from the right” to be “treasonous.” Rather, the primary issue is that netroots activists and TNR have major, persistent, principled disagreements about foreign policy. Secondarily, a certain proportion of TNR’s published material evinces a kind of sneering dislike for liberal politicians and activists, even as TNR writers happily market themselves as liberal (but independent-minded!) pundits when such a label suits them. (Until its recent sale to CanWest, it was owned by men who seem to hate most liberals and liberalism as an ideology, which were strange attributes for a liberal publication.)…Chait provides an admirable reconstruction of the intellectual origins of the netroots movement, its love/hate relationship with the conservative movement, and the logic of its objections to the “centrist” political strategies that seemed so appealing in the 1990s–by far the best account by a true outsider that I’m aware of.

All in all, quite an interesting fray — and “The Left’s New Machine” is just getting started.

Today it’s all about Jonathan Chait’s just posted New Republic article, “The Left’s New Machine: How the Netroots Became the Most Important Mass Movement in U.S. Politics,” which will probably become one of the most frequently-cited resources on the political internet. Many of the political blogs have something to say about it, including these samples:

I guess most of all, and this is why I can’t call Chait’s piece particularly insightful, we don’t gloss over substance or fake civility. More than any other forum with the exception of town halls, the internet allows us to learn what our politicians are going to do. Where else are you going to find arguments about a cap and trade versus a carbon tax? Where else are you going to be able to read about net neutrality resolutions in California, or offshore drilling in Virginia? The local blogs are incredibly substantive in their states, and I like to think that we go into depth into subject areas on MyDD and the rest of the blogs as well.(Matt Stoller, MyDD)
Not the most amazingly insightful piece written, but interesting anyhow. The most important part, and the cons and msm will never get this, is the lack of idealogical rigidity. There’s a coalition of conservative, moderate, and very liberal people who just want to see the Democratic party stop acting like a whipping boy for the press and the right…I still hate the word “netroots” but it is what it is. (Oliver Willis)
If progressives want to win, Chait concludes, they need to learn to fight on the Right’s turf..From a purely pragmatic point of view, Chait has a point. It doesn’t matter how deeply you understand the issues; if you can’t win the political war, you will never be able to implement those ideas. But do you really believe that we have to make an either/or choice between being “chiefly interested” in winning or ideas? (Maggie Mahar at TPM Cafe)
The word propaganda is a loaded term in modern American parlance and he must know that. I don’t actually think that advocacy journalism (or activist blogging) is dishonest, which is what Chait is suggesting, however vaguely…Liberal bloggers advocate for their political causes, people, party, ideas, etc and they make the best argument they can. The people who read us, the politicians, the electorate (to the extent that any of these arguments flow out of the sphere into the mainstream) are the judges. That is not propaganda as we understand it in 2007. I would say it’s not even PR or advertising, both of which suggest some sort of message coordination of which I have also seen little evidence… (Digby’s Hullabalo)
It’s not a bad piece, though Chait obviously struggles to come to a firm conclusion about what the netroots is really all about. This is a predicament I can sympathize with, since I’ve been blogging for five years myself and I still have a hard time putting my finger on it. Is it about ideology? Sort of, but not really. Party loyalty? Yes, though not for everyone. Iron-fisted organizational discipline? Sure, except when it’s not. In some way, the netroots is all about defining what it means to be a “good Democrat,” but beyond that it’s a helluva slippery phenomenon, one of those “I know it when I see it” kind of things.(Kevin Drum’s Political Animal)

Chait has clearly struck a nerve, and there will surely be more responses to his controversial piece posted on the blogs over the next couple of days. Don’t forget to sample the comment strings.

Gallup has a freebie that merits a gander from Democratic strategists and candidates. The poll, conducted 3/26-29, addresses “Americans’ perceptions about the relative political influence of various groups in the United States.” Gallup reporter Jeffrey Jones kicks off his wrap-up analysis this way:

Of the 14 groups tested in the poll, military veterans are thought to be the most in need of increased government attention. On the other hand, the public is most likely to believe political leaders pay too much attention to big corporations and Hollywood movie executives.

What’s a little fishy here is that one wonders what percentage of Americans can even name three Hollywood executives, or two for that matter. Maybe respondents conflated execs with actors. If there’s a moral here for political strategists, maybe it’s accept their dough graciously, but don’t let Hollywood execs do your campaigning.
But Dems should take very seriously how the public views treatment of military vets. As Jones explains:

Eighty-one percent of Americans say government leaders pay too little attention to the needs of military veterans…The poll was conducted shortly after news reports about poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center focused attention on the plight of wounded soldiers returning from Iraq. This news may have helped to push veterans past the poor (77%), small-business owners (68%), and senior citizens (66%) as the group most widely viewed as lacking in government attentiveness.

This is a clear advantage for Dems, given the shoddy treatment vets have received under Bush and at the hands of Republican office-holders in general. Those who have voted in any way to cut or restrict veterans’ benefits should be forced to explain their votes again and again.
A look at the five largest numbers in the survey may be more instructive. Following the 81 percent who believe vets are most in need of more government attention: 77 percent cite the poor as receiving too little attention; 76 percent say big corporations get too much attention; 74 percent say Hollywood execs get too much attention; and 68 percent say small business owners get too little attention.
In terms of political ramifications, the respondents were adults, not registered or likely voters. And it’s hard to imagine that many voters will reason, “I’m not going to vote for so-and-so because he/she gives too much attention to Hollywood execs,” regardless of policies, character and other priorities. But the other percentages relate to needed policy reforms supported by Dems, not Republicans — and are too large to ignore.