The National Journal‘s Charlie Cook pulls the plug on the party lights in his post “Reality check for the Democrats: Fragile majority seems to be acknowledging its limitations” at MSNBC‘s Politics page. Cook says GOP pundits who expected the Dems under Speaker Pelosi to press a full-speed-ahead leftist agenda are disappointed by the House Dems'”moderate and measured” leadership. Noting that approval ratings of congress in opinion polls have improved only slightly, Cook explains:

Public antipathy toward Congress is deeply engrained; trying to turn it around is akin to changing the direction of an aircraft carrier — it only happens very slowly. Democrats had the luxury of attacking a much-maligned institution in 2006; in 2008 they must defend it and justify its performance.
…As tempting as it must be for Democrats to embark on a bold and ambitious policy agenda, particularly after having been mired in the minority for a dozen years, the simple truth is that between the reality of narrow majorities and their decision to abide by pay-as-you-go spending and tax rules, their options are few and limited to relatively small-ticket items.

According to Cook, the average post-election approval rating for Congress in the most recent polls is 34.4 percent, which is an improvement over pre-election figures averaging about 27 percent. With just over a third of respondents holding a favorable impression of Congress, however, it may be that the public wants bolder action on leading priorities such as disengaging from Iraq and better health care security.
Cook describes the House Dems’ 15-seat majority as “narrow,” but it’s extravagant compared to the 1-seat margin that allows Dems to run the Senate. A 15-seat lead should be enough to hold the House in ’08, barring any major disasters. Winning some breathing space in the Senate is the more urgent challenge — and the key to bolder Democratic leadership in Congress.

MyDD’s Chris Bowers takes the latest Gallup Poll figures for “partisan self-identification” (PSI) for a spin, and it’s a sweet ride for Dems. Bowers quotes from a Gallup News Service article by Jeffrey M. Jones:

An average of all national Gallup polling in 2006, consisting of interviews with more than 30,000 adult Americans, finds 34% of Americans identifying as Democrats, 30% as Republicans, and 34% as independents…In 2006, 50% of Americans identified as Democrats or were independents who said they leaned toward the Democratic Party. Forty percent identified as Republicans or leaned to the Republican Party…This is the first time since 1991 that a party’s support reached the 50% level.

Bowers explains further:

…the rate of change in favor of Democrats appears to be increasing…The percentage of Democratic self-identifiers, not including Democratic-leaning independents, rose by 2-2.5% during the final nine months of 2006. This might suggest that Democrats are in fact on the verge of a very real realignment….Over the past three years, Republicans have lost their advantage in 14 states, and Democrats have gained a statistically significant advantage in 19 states.

Bowers stops short of a regional analysis, but a look at PSI in the southern states suggests that advocates of the ‘skip ‘n diss the south’ strategy may have some ‘splainin’ to do. Here’s how Gallup rates ’06 PSI in a dozen southern states (competitive = within m.o.e.):

AL competitive; ARK Dem; FL Dem; GA competitive; LA competitive; MS competitive; NC Dem; SC Rep; TN competitive; TX Rep; VA Dem; WVA Dem.

Of course the ’06 PSI figures are connected more to the way respondents felt about the mid-terms, than how they might vote in a presidential election. However, five Dem, Two GOP and five competitive doesn’t look all that red. Dem PSI increased over ’05 in FL, VA and NC and declined only in LA, probably as a result of Dem Katrina evacuees leaving the state. Purple, with blue tint rising would be more like it.

Terence Samuel takes on the question of the hour in his article in The American Prospect “The Fight We’re In: What’s the best way for Democrats to force Bush to end the war?” Samuel limns the current debate in the U.S. Senate this way:

The controlling intelligence, based on the political calculus of the moment, holds that the strategic approach is to leverage the president’s grim poll numbers and the unpopularity of the war into a non-binding resolution rejecting the surge, which in turn would further isolate the president, perhaps forcing him see the light and change the course of the war. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed such a measure, and next week we are likely see heated debate in the full Senate. (Republicans have threatened to filibuster it.)
But even given open skepticism about whether such a strategy could work on a president who is almost theological in his beliefs about the rightness of his chosen course, Democrats have bet almost all their chips on the congressional repudiation strategy.

Meanwhile, Novak reports that a the effort to craft a Biden-Warner sponsored resolution supported by a super-majority has collapsed on Warner’s decision to go it alone. Samuel quotes Senator Carl Levin’s rationale for the non-binding resolution:

Don’t underestimate the power of such a vote, says Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, the new chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “You are further isolating the president,” says Levin. “The president is on one side and the American people are on the other.” The calculation is that squeezing the president politically is a wiser course than ending the war by cutting off the money to pay for it. Most congressional Democrats just don’t want to go there.

But others disagree. As Vermont Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders says:

At some point we are going to say, ‘We are not going to give you money to fight an endless war.

Sanders may be a minority in so saying, but he is not alone. John Nichols quotes Senator Russ Feingold thusly in his article in The Nation “Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War“:

Congress holds the power of the purse and if the President continues to advance his failed Iraq policy, we have the responsibility to use that power to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq…I will soon be introducing legislation to use the power of the purse to end what is clearly one of the greatest mistakes in the history of our nation’s foreign policy.

Sanders and Feingold get some support from a recent Newsweek poll, conducted 1/24-25. Asked “Since the Iraq war began, do you think Congress has been assertive enough in challenging the Bush Administration’s conduct of the war, or has not been assertive enough?,” 64 percent responded that Congress has not been assertive enough, compared with 27 percent who thought it had. But asked whether Democrats should try to block funding for the surge in a Newsweek poll conducted 1/17-18, respondents were equally divided at 46 percent.
It’s hard to imagine a tougher call Senate Dems will have to make between now and the next election. The consensus that finally emerges may well determine whether they hold their Senate majority in ’08.

Internet use for political information has doubled since 2002, according to a new Pew Research study (PDF here) conducted 11/8 to 12/4. As Lynn Rainey and John Horrigran report in their article “The Internet Is Creating a New Class of Web-Savvy Political Activists“:

The number of Americans who got most of their information about the 2006 campaign on the internet doubled from the most recent mid-term election in 2002 and rivaled the number from the 2004 presidential election…15% of all American adults say the internet was their primary source for campaign news during the election, up from 7% in the mid-term election of 2002 and close to the 18% of Americans who said they relied on the internet during the presidential campaign cycle in 2004.

In addition, 31 percent of respondents — representing 60 million people — said they used the internet to get political information in 2006. The study also identifies the type of websites being most frequently visited by political internet users, reporting, for example, that 20 percent read political blogs. Interestingly, the survey of 2,562 adults included 200 respondents who had cell phones only.
For more on political internet users, see Emerging Democratric Majority’s January 20 post.

Congressional Quarterly has a round-up of ratings for 08 Senate races — their earliest ever. Of the 33 U.S. Senate seats up in the ’08 cycle, 21 are held by Republicans, compared to 12 seats for Dems. The article rates each seat as “safe” Republican/Democrat” (8/6), Democrat/Republican “favored,” (4/7) “leans” Democrat/Republican (1/5) and “no clear favorite” (1 each). In other words, the early money says the Senate will remain very close, with a possible net-pick up of 1 for the Dems. Some of those submitting comments to the article disagree, but not by much. The delicate balance that gives Dems their majority remains a continuing concern.

Sillylittletwit’s article “2008 and State Legislatures” at the Daily Kos has a useful list for targeting state legislative houses Dems can win. The list ranks 23 legislatures according to “percentage gain required for outright Democratic majority”:

1 Montana House: 2.0
2 Oklahoma Senate: 2.1
3= Tennessee Senate: 3.0
3= Wisconsin House: 3.0
5 Ohio House: 4.0
6 Texas House: 4.7
7 Nevada Senate: 4.8
8 North Dakota Senate: 6.4
9 New York Senate: 6.5
10= Arizona House: 6.7
10= Missouri House: 6.7
12 Oklahoma House: 6.9
13 Delaware House: 7.3
14 Michigan Senate: 7.9
15 Kentucky Senate: 8.0
16 South Dakota Senate: 8.6
17 South Carolina Senate: 8.7
18 Georgia House: 9.4
19 South Carolina House: 9.7
20= Alaska House: 10.0
20= Alaska Senate: 10.0
20= Pennsylvania Senate: 10.0
20= Virginia Senate: 10.0

An extra investment in candidates who can help to win some of these state houses could give Dems decisive leverage, not only in the legislatures, but also in upcomming congressional redistricting battles.

Dems are riding high on the wake of raves for Sen. Jim Webb’s response on behalf of the Dems to The Lame Duck’s lamest ever SOTU address. Lest we get too high, however, on the heady wine of the political moment, MyDD‘s Matt Stoller takes away the punch bowl for a minute in his post “The State of the Progressive Movement.” Reflect for a moment on his sobering assessment:

On the eve of the State of the Union, I figured it was time to broach a little something about the state of the progressive movement. The state is fun, but honestly, it’s pretty unhealthy.
Here’s why.
Though the internet left has raised many millions for candidates, the dirty little secret of progressive activism is that there is literally no support for any of the people who make internet politics work. Many effective activists don’t have health care, and scrap along with whatever they can. The right has a well-developed infrastructure, and that’s why they tend to win. They take care of their people. We don’t, and so our people quit, or leave, or become consultants, etc…We think that supporting the local bloggers that deliver us better and higher quality information than the traditional media and operative class is critical to gaining and holding progressive power.

Amen to that, and plaudits to Stoller and Chris Bowers, who are actually doing something about it through their organization, Blogpac, which is helping activists in financial need, like Lane Hudson, who recently lost his job, reportedly for publicizing the Mark Foley scandal. Blogpac is also credited with pioneering creative internet projects like “Use it or Lose it” and Googlebombing to get coverage for important but neglected election stories. Show ’em some love by clicking here and doing the right thing.

“How to Speak Republican,” Katharine Mieszkowski’s Salon interview with Frank Luntz, offers a revealing look at how the GOP’s top wordsmith sees their midterm debacle. Asked what he thought were the GOP’s “linguistic mistakes” in the ’06 campaign, Luntz says:

Earmarks became a public issue and they were silent on it. The bridge to nowhere was a complete disaster for the GOP. Not articulating the sense of accountability with Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham and [Bob] Ney. I think that the language that was tied to the policies of 1994 represented politics at its best, and language tied to the politics of 2006 represented politics at its worst.

Asked for some examples of failed language, Luntz responds:

You tell me. What was the Republican message for 2006? I’ve asked congressmen, senators. I even asked the people responsible for creating the message for 2006. What was the message for the Republican Party in 2006? Not a single person can give me an answer. None of them. No one at the Republican National Committee, no Republican senator, no Republican House member, no operative, none of the Democrats, can answer it either. Nobody knows. That’s the failure. So when you say to me, “Give me an example,” I can’t. There’s no message to criticize because there was no message. It was nothing.

Luntz credits Gingrich for giving the Dems their winning slogan “Had enough?” but says they won more because they got a free ride, thanks to GOP ineptitude. He takes predictable pot shots at the netroots, but sees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as generally effective communicators. A stickler for oppo research, Luntz says he reads all of George Lakoff’s books and spends “half my time” reading Democratic blogs and studying congress in action on the floor. Luntz also has a new book “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” which probably merits a read by political language junkies of both parties.
Yet, after giving Luntz credit for identifying some key GOP failures in the midterms, absent here is any sense that maybe voters rightly concluded that the occupation of Iraq was a bad idea, based on lies and poorly executed. It’s all about communication. Instead of “surge,” Luntz believes President Bush would have done better using the euphemisms “reassessment” or “realignment.” Thoughtful political communication is important. But at a certain point, using evasive language to describe bad policy is putting lipstick on a pig.

Just to add a little factual background perspective to the interesting fray on the Netroots and progressives underway at TPM Cafe (featuring TDS’s Scott Winship), we recommend The Audience for Political Blogs” New Research on Blog Readership a study published by Joseph Graf at the web pages of The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Among the factoids Graf serves up:

The Regular, daily audience for political blogs is fairly small. We estimate in the millions of readers, not tens of millions.
Nine percent of the survey sample looked at political blogs “almost every day”
Nearly two-thirds, 66 percent, of daily readers of political blogs get most of their national and international news from the internet.
The audience for political blogs is highly concentrated among “dozens of blogs, not thousands.”
One-third of those who read political blogs every day consider themselves “strong liberals.”
The higher traffic political blogs are disproportionately liberal.

Interesting, but no shockers here. The survey had its limitations — respondents in the sample were 7,683 California registered voters who chose to take an online survey, and it didn’t include any insights about developing trends. It would appear that television is still the medium of choice for political information for the time being, given the declining levels of print readership. With the expected merging of television and internet access in millions of homes, it could be a very different picture before too long.
There is mounting evidence that political blogs are finding a more avid audience among opinion leaders and those employed in political work. Henry Copeland reports on recent studies indicating that about 90 percent of “congressional offices” read blogs, and 64 percent of congressional staff readers believe “blogs are more useful than mainstream media for identifying future national political problems and debates.” He notes also that “52% of journalists believe blogs have ‘some to a great deal’ of influence on the way media covers stories.”

Kagro X has a succinct guide to 11 legislative proposals challenging the Bush/McCain “surge” over at Daily Kos. His wrap-up provides a helpful sense of the range of interesting responses being considered by Dems.