Progressives Are Angry At Obama But He's Lesser Of Two Evils! Obama Or GOP's Tea Party?

Where ya gonna go?

Ed Kilgore has a thoughtful piece in Salon about why liberal elites are so angry and why they have so little influence on the White House. It's the numbers, basically. president Obama still has the support of the vast majority of the Democratic party and the activist liberal base is unlikely to sit out the election. (And even if we did, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference.)

He brings up something in this that I think is an overlooked piece of this puzzle and one which I tried to write about in 2008 but the environment was so hostile that I gave it up:

Next time there is an open Democratic presidential nomination contest, the organized left will almost certain to make far greater ideological demands on candidates, and make a far less speculative choice of a favorite, than it did in 2008.

It will be unlikely that we'll ever have the kind of leverage we had in 2008, with two candidates neck and neck for the nomination up to the very end and a totally pathetic opposition, unfortunately. But if liberals had resisted the urge to turn that primary into a season of American Idol, there might have been a chance to shape the administration in ways that would be difficult for him/her to escape.

Spilled milk. And for a variety of reasons 2012 is not a hospitable election for a primary challenge, regardless of how disappointed liberals are in the president. But the activist base and elite liberals are the tip of the spear.

Being honest about what we see still has a purpose: to keep liberalism alive, motivate the base for other elections, build the progressive movement. And the activist base and liberal elites will have a hand in determining the president's legacy. Once he's done catering to these alleged Independents who want nothing more than to slash government to the bone, he's going to start thinking about that.




There’s Still More To Life Than The President

Via Nicholas Beaudrot, Digby laments that progressives didn’t extract more cheap talk from Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton:

It will be unlikely that we’ll ever have the kind of leverage we had in 2008, with two candidates neck and neck for the nomination up to the very end and a totally pathetic opposition, unfortunately. But if liberals had resisted the urge to turn that primary into a season of American Idol, there might have been a chance to shape the administration in ways that would be difficult for him/her to escape.

I really think it’s remarkable how fixated people are on the president and the presidency. Let’s just concede, for the sake of argument, that Barack Obama is history’s greatest monster. But let’s just imagine that the Senate voted by majority rule and that the median House member and the median Senate member both had the same stated policy preferences as Barack Obama, history’s greatest monster.

Relative to the status quo, under my scenario we would have had:

— A public option in the Affordable Care Act.
— A nationwide carbon pricing plan.
— A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
— A nationwide “card check” unionization law.
— A larger stimulus in 2009, plus additional stimulus in 2010.

That’s a lot! And it’s what would have happened even if Barack Obama was exactly as rotten and unprogressive as the actually existing Barack Obama. All it would take to get to that world would be to make the people occupying the legislative pivot points as rotten as horrible as President Obama, a bar that left-wing critics of Obama keep assuring me is a low bar.

So how come we can’t do it? It’s important for people not to let their frustrations with things Obama has done, is doing, or will do confuse them about the historical record.

The overwhelming story of American politics in 2009 and 2010 was of Congress refusing to enact progressive measures that, had they passed Congress, would have been signed into law.

If progressives failed during the leadup to the 111th Congress, the failure that really mattered was the failure to elect a more progressive Congress, not the failure to elect a more progressive president.

And it’s going to be difficult to get further policy change unless people correctly understand what the sticking points are. The right has an impressive ability to focus on the full spectrum of things that matter, pouring millions of dollars into state legislative races while I think the left remains morbidly obsessed with the desire to hear different presidential speeches.






Republicans take 4 of 6 in recall elections, hold Senate

Democrats won two state Senate seats in Tuesday's historic recall elections, but failed to capture a third seat that would have given them control of the chamber.

By keeping a majority in the Senate, Republicans retained their monopoly on state government because they also hold the Assembly and governor's office. Tuesday's elections narrowed their majority - at least for now - from 19-14 to a razor-thin 17-16.

Republicans may be able to gain back some of the losses next week, when two Democrats face recall elections.

Democrats had hoped to block the Republican agenda by taking control of the Senate in the recall elections, but the GOP should be able to continue to advance its agenda.

"I think it's a huge victory for us," said John Hogan, director of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate. "Voters gave us a mandate last fall. . . . They backed us up again (Tuesday). Voters told us loud and clear, 'Stay the course. Things are working.'"

But Democrats claimed victory for the two seats they captured from Republicans.

"We went on their turf and we won on Republican turf," said Mike Tate, chairman of the state Democratic Party. "We will not stop, we will not rest . . . until we recall (Gov.) Scott Walker."

Republican Sens. Dan Kapanke (R-La Crosse) and Randy Hopper (R-Empire) were both defeated by their Democratic challengers, Rep. Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse) and Democrat Jessica King of Oshkosh.

"I look forward to going to Madison to stand up for the working families, seniors and students of Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, Blackwolf, Waupun and all across the 18th district," King said in a statement. "Their voices will be once again heard."

Three other Republicans held onto their seats, despite aggressive campaigns put up by their Democratic foes and outside groups backed by unions. Surviving the recalls were Republican Sens. Alberta Darling of River Hills, Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls, Luther Olsen of Ripon and Rob Cowles of Allouez.

Darling was declared the winner over Rep. Sandy Pasch (D-Whitefish Bay) late Tuesday.

Democrats called for the recalls after Walker launched his plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for public workers, and Tuesday's races were seen as a preview of a plan to force a recall of Walker next year.



Tuesday's recalls were launched in March, during the turmoil in Madison over Walker's plan, ultimately successful, to curtail collective bargaining by most public employees. Democrats tried to recall Republicans for that vote, while Republicans tried to recall Democrats for leaving the state for three weeks to block a vote on the issue.

Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) was the first to face a recall election, and he easily survived the challenge last month.

Attention now turns to next week's recall elections, against Democratic Sens. Jim Holperin of Conover and Bob Wirch of Pleasant Prairie.

"It's encouraging to see, even though a couple Republicans lost their seats, the recall process holds as a check for those who disrespect their office and not simply do their job and take a vote," said a statement from Holperin's challenger, Kim Simac. "Next week we will recall a senator who was actually derelict in his duty by failing to represent his district when he fled to Illinois."

Turnout levels in Tuesday's elections were substantial, approaching those of last fall's governor's race - a striking testimony to the extreme passions, money and attention these contests have attracted this summer.

In one contest, for the 10th district seat won Tuesday by GOP incumbent Harsdorf, the total vote exceeded that of the race for governor last fall.

Voters were mobilized by massive get-out-the-vote efforts on both sides, and by expensive television and radio advertising campaigns that flooded the airwaves in all six districts. At least five of the elections broke the $3 million spending record, set in 2000, for money spent by all parties in a Senate race.

Expensive campaigns
So far more than $35 million has been spent on the recall races, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks political money. The spending on the nine races dwarfs the $19.3 million spent in last year's 115 legislative races, and approaches the $37.4 million spent in the race for governor.

The flow of money came as unions saw the recall elections as the best way to halt Walker's agenda and to send a message to other states considering changing their collective bargaining laws. Political observers are watching Wisconsin to see what the results say about the mood of the electorate leading up to next year's elections for president and Congress.

Unions played a huge role for Democrats by spending vast sums of money on advertising, and supplying manpower in all the Senate districts. Conservative groups have parried with their own influx of cash.

But the Democrats' argument in the recalls morphed over time from concerns over collective bargaining to objections to a number of GOP initiatives - most notably cuts to education and tax breaks for the wealthy - and the complaint that the changes were pushed through without enough public discussion.

Republicans countered that argument by insisting that voters - who just last November flipped both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office from blue to red - had sent them to Madison to balance the budget and get control of state spending. "Elections have consequences," was the often-repeated slogan.

The wave of recall elections is unparalleled in the nation's history. Before this year, there had been just four recall elections of Wisconsin lawmakers. Two incumbents were recalled, while two survived the efforts. One of those who won his recall election was Holperin, who was in the Assembly in 1990 when a recall effort was launched because of his stance on Indian fishing rights.

Democrats cried foul over returns that came in late from Waukesha County in the Darling-Pasch matchup. Tate, the party official, alleged Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was "sitting on ballots" and "tampering with the results." Later, though, he said he would not pursue questions of irregularities.

Nickolaus enraged Democrats in April when she discovered votes from Brookfield that helped Supreme Court Justice David Prosser win re-election.

Here's how the races played out:

32nd District: From the beginning of the state Senate recalls that have preoccupied Wisconsin politics for the past five months, Kapanke, 63, had been identified as the Republican most likely to be thrown out of office, and he was Tuesday.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said Shilling's victory was a rebuke to Republicans.

"The people of the 32nd Senate District sent Gov. Walker and his legislative Republicans rubber-stamps a clear message today: they've had enough of the GOP's extreme agenda that favors wealthy special interests and large out-of-state corporations at the expense of Wisconsin's working, middle class families," read a statement Barca issued.

Kapanke's district has been trending increasingly Democratic, including a win by President Barack Obama with 61% of the vote in 2008. .

18th District: Hopper had been considered, with Kapanke, the other most vulnerable of the six Republicans to being defeated.

Voters in his public-employee-heavy district quickly gathered 22,500 signatures to force the recall.

His opponent, lawyer King, had lost by just 163 votes when they faced off for the open seat in 2008. On top of that, Hopper has had to deal with questions about an ugly divorce, where he lives and a state job for his 26-year-old girlfriend.

But Hopper, 45, a radio station owner, said his two years in office had proved that he and Walker have Wisconsin on the right track to fiscal health, and he was confident about his chances.

"It will be close," he said in recent weeks, "but I've always said, 'more important to do my job than keep my job.' "

That turned out to be true. With just three precincts still out, and those in King's home county of Winnebago, she was up by more than 1,100 votes, and the Associated Press called the race for her.

King, 36, a former Oshkosh alderman and deputy mayor, had predicted that the momentum of dissatisfied workers would put her in office.

14th District: Olsen's district came to be considered the Democrats' best chance to pick up a third Republican seat to give them control of the Senate. But Olsen, 60, held on to squeak by his opponent, Rep. Fred Clark (D-Baraboo).

Clark, 52, was the first Democrat Olsen's ever faced in the 16 ½ years he's been in office - an indication of how Republican his district has been over the years.

Still, spending in the race was second only to that in Darling's 8th District, according to the Democracy Campaign, which estimated last week that $5.5 million was spent in total, both by candidates and outside parties.

The largely rural central Wisconsin district stretches from Wisconsin Dells to Waupaca County. It is traditionally considered GOP turf, with Olsen's home of Ripon laying claim as the birthplace of the Republican Party.

Clark's Assembly district is in the southwestern corner of Olsen's Senate district, and until 2008 had been in Republican hands.

Clark and Olsen often told voters during the campaign that they like each other, turning the race into one that pitted a nice guy against a nice guy. In more than a dozen interviews with voters in Portage and Ripon, few were critical of the candidates personally. The voters had clear views on where the two stood and said they planned to vote even though the election was occurring at the height of summer.

8th District: In by far the most expensive recall race, Darling, 67, was the victor in a tight race with Pasch. Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, had called this seat the "crown jewel" of the recalls, because Darling, as co-chairwoman of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee, had helped push through Walker's budget initiatives.

Darling raised well over $1 million for the race, the all-time record for a state Senate candidate in Wisconsin, and the nonprofit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign last week estimated $7.9 million had been spent by both candidates, plus all outside groups - nearly triple the $3 million record for spending on a state Senate race.

Besides Darling's key legislative role, the campaign was made more expensive by the higher advertising rates in the Milwaukee television market. Pasch, 57, was first elected to the Legislature in 2008.

2nd Senate District: Cowles easily defeated Nancy Nusbaum, the former De Pere mayor and Brown County executive. From the first, Cowles had been considered the GOP senator safest from being defeated. He was the final senator to have recall signatures filed against him, and a recent report by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimated just $750,000 was spent by all parties on both sides of the race - the smallest amount on any of nine Senate districts with recalls.

Nusbaum, 65, argued that Cowles had changed his political spots to fall into line with Walker's conservative agenda, switching from the moderate image Cowles, 61, had cultivated over 28 years in the Legislature. Cowles said he had not changed and was running on his record as a fiscal conservative who had worked in a bipartisan way on such issues as renewable energy and energy conservation.

10th District: Republican Harsdorf easily beat Democratic challenger Shelly Moore.

Early on, Harsdorf had been considered somewhat vulnerable, but lately she'd been seen as well ahead of Moore, who was making her first run for office.

During the campaign, Moore, 37, of River Falls accused Harsdorf, 55, of betraying working families, public employees, students and seniors. Moore is an English teacher at Ellsworth High School and a member of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union.



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Sources: AP, ABC News, CBS News, C-Span, Digsby Blog, Donkeylicious, MSNBC, Reuters, Think Progress, Wisconsin Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel, Newsweek, Salon, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

S & P's John Chambers Pushed Fake Debt Crisis Further To The Right! Demanded Cuts!

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The S&P debt warning: Wall Street extortionists demand savage cuts

Five days after the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a voluminous report detailing the criminal activities of the banks and credit rating firms that precipitated the 2008 Wall Street crash and global recession, one of the named culprits, Standard & Poor's Credit Ratings Services, issued an ultimatum to the White House and Congress demanding an agreement on savage austerity measures ahead of the 2012 elections.

In lowering its outlook from "stable" to "negative" on the top AAA rating for US Treasury bonds, S&P spoke Monday for the entire financial mafia that is headquartered on Wall Street. The ratings firm declared in a press release that failure to reach an agreement in the coming months to reduce the federal deficit by at least $4 trillion over the next decade "could lead us to lower the rating."

This amounts to a threat to crash the US and global economy and undermine the status of the dollar as the world reserve currency. The move is part of an internationally orchestrated drive by the major banks and speculators to push through devastating attacks on the living standards of the American working class.

They are applying to the United States the extortionate methods used previously to stoke up speculative attacks on the sovereign debt of a number of European countries, including Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. S&P and its major ratings rivals Moody's and Fitch have issued strategically timed credit warnings and downgrades to create a crisis atmosphere, which governments have then utilized to override popular opposition and impose mass layoffs and wage cuts and shred social programs.

John Chambers, chairman of the sovereign ratings committee at S&P, virtually admitted as much, according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. The Journal wrote: “If the US reaches a British-style resolution, S&P will restore the US outlook to stable, Mr. Chambers said.”

In May of 2009, S&P lowered Britain’s credit outlook. It reversed the action 17 months later after the newly elected Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government announced a program of draconian cuts that will shatter the country’s social safety net.

Readers can make their own judgment as to S&P’s standing to be issuing such ultimatums. The Senate report on the Wall Street crash describes the corrupt process by which S&P routinely slapped AAA ratings on worthless securities marketed by the banks as follows: “Credit rating agencies were paid by Wall Street firms that sought their ratings and profited from the financial products being rated… The ratings agencies weakened their standards as each competed to provide the most favorable rating to win business and greater market share. The result was a race to the bottom.”

Senator Carl Levin, the chairman of the subcommittee, described what the investigation uncovered as “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest and wrongdoing.”

By rights, the top S&P executives who presided over this fraud and pocketed multi-million-dollar salaries in the process should be sitting in prison. Instead, still at their posts and having suffered no consequences, they are using the disaster of their own making to gut bedrock social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security upon which tens of millions of people depend.

The statement issued by S&P on Monday described both the Republican fiscal year 2012 budget plan and that outlined by President Obama last week as a basis for cutting the federal deficit by $4 trillion. However, the two sides had to come to an agreement before the national election in 2012, the company insisted.

This demand underscores the anti-democratic character of the so-called budget debate. It is an elaborate charade, behind which stands the dictatorship of the banks. The deal to eviscerate what is left of the social reforms of the 20th century has to be sealed before the elections to make sure that the vote in no way becomes a referendum on austerity and the electorate has absolutely no say in the matter.

The mass opposition to the measures being proposed by both parties is well known to Wall Street and its political servants in Washington. On Monday, the same day as the S&P announcement, McClatchy Newspapers published the results of a McClatchy-Marist poll showing that voters by a margin of 2-to-1 support raising taxes on incomes above $250,000, with 64 percent in favor and 33 percent opposed. They oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid by 80-18 percent.

S&P intervened at the behest of the banks to shift the phony budget debate even further to the right and create the conditions for even deeper cuts than those being currently proposed. Interviewed Monday on Bloomberg Television, David Beers, S&P’s global head of sovereign finance ratings, said the $4 trillion deficit-cutting target was “not enough to ultimately halt the rising trajectory of US debt.” It was, he said, merely “a useful starting point.”

The establishment media immediately signaled that it had gotten the message. The Los Angeles Times editorialized that “Congress and the White House can’t afford to ignore this warning shot.” The Financial Times of London published an editorial that declared, “S&P’s warning shot should galvanise America’s leaders.”

Democratic leaders rushed to reassure Wall Street that they were on board. Speaking at a community college in Virginia Tuesday, Obama said, “I believe that Democrats and Republicans can come together to get this done.”

Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representative, said Monday, “Today’s revised outlook shows the urgent, bipartisan action needed to put our nation on a serious path to reduce deficits.”

Erskine Bowles, a former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton and co-chair of last year’s bipartisan fiscal commission, was even more emphatic. Speaking to the Financial Times, he said S&P had been “absolutely right” in lowering its outlook on US debt. “If anything, they understate the extent of the problem,” he said.

Only a mass, independent movement of implacable opposition by the working class can defeat this criminal conspiracy. The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party urge workers and young people to reject the entire framework of the so-called budget debate. There must be uncompromising opposition to any cuts in jobs, wages or social programs and services. The working class bears no responsibility for the crisis of the capitalist system.

We propose an alternate policy. As a down payment, to begin to recoup the wealth plundered by the financial elite, we propose a 50 percent tax surcharge on all household wealth over $5 million.

This should be supplemented by raising the income tax on households taking in more than $500,000 a year to 90 percent.

These measures will not only generate hundreds of billions of dollars for jobs, schools, health care, housing and pensions, they will attack the profligate squandering of resources and contribute mightily to the moral as well as the economic health of society.

These initial steps lead inexorably to the nationalization of the banks and major corporations and their transformation into public utilities under the democratic control of the working population. This is a socialist program. It requires that the working class break politically from the two parties of big business and build a mass movement to fight for a workers’ government.

Sources: CNN, MSNBC, World Wide Socialist

Bill Daley's Pragmatic Approach Moves Obama Further Right; Ignores Progressives (Decision 2012)

Obama won't win back white voters by being 'President Pushover'

With these sorts of gains with white voters old and young, high unemployment, and continued Republican obstructionism designed to prevent President Obama from enacting policy that would surely boost his image, there are growing concerns about his chances of re-election.

And naturally, conspiracies abound as to why Obama is losing support among white voters. Leah Christian, a senior researcher at the Pew Center told Reuters that researchers had not detected evidence that Obama's race had anything to do with Republicans picking up more support among white voters.

It's unrealistic to believe that the bulk of white voters have magically shifted their party affiliation over President Obama's long known racial identity. That belief is as insulting to white voters collectively as it is to all of our better senses. That sort of surface level thinking deviates from what is a truth for voters black, white, and Oscar the Grouch green: President Obama has disappointed a lot of people.

I know, I know: I read his lengthy list of first year accomplishments. I'm well aware of the fact that even when he did have a Democratic majority in Congress, there were a couple of useless Blue Dog Democrats impeding domestic policies more advantageous to the country. At the same time, though, I also know there is a stark contrast between the ways Obama campaigned and the way he governs.

President Obama is a savvy legislator, pragmatic in thought and typically eager to utter the word "compromise" -- perhaps sometimes too much. While the reality may be that compromise is a necessary evil, it tends to sometimes make Obama appear as a weak negotiator because he does so quite often. Or a Paul Krugman recently referred to him as,

His perception problem combined with a 9.2 percent unemployment rate have bred frustration and apathy among voters, hence President Obama's approval rating floundering at 43 percent for the week of July 18-24, tying the lowest weekly average of his administration.

Fortunately, Obama has begun to become more forceful in his rhetoric and negotiation techniques. He will need to continue this for 2012 because his fate won't rest on race but the economy, stupid -- and how the public feels he responded to it.


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Sources: Fox News, Meet The Press, MSNBC, The Grio, The Young Turks, Think Progress, Youtube, Google Maps

Is Tea Party Right Arm Of GOP? Political Terrorism (Decision 2012)

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This is no way to run a government

Just because a drag race doesn't end with someone getting killed, it doesn't mean that drag racing is a safe thing to do.

Even though it looks like Congress will raise the debt ceiling, this is no way to run a government.

Many pundits have pointed to the crisis over the debt ceiling as further evidence that Washington is dysfunctional. They say the inability of President Obama and congressional Democrats and Republicans to reach a deal is another example of how partisan polarization, political incivility and 24-hour media have left our nation's leaders unable to make deals. In their minds, we should not be surprised about what has happened. This was virtually inevitable.

While placing battles in historical perspective, it is also important to recognize when we are seeing something new. The "Washington is dysfunctional" argument has confused chronic institutional problems with the partisan strategy that has been used by the GOP.

The trigger to this crisis, which threatens the health of the nation's economy, was an aggressive move by tea party Republicans -- hesitantly supported by the House leadership -- to hold routine debt ceiling legislation hostage until they received exactly the spending cuts they demanded. Lacking the votes they need for a clean vote on them through the budget process, they have instead forced everyone's hand. Obama has little leverage to do anything but agree to their cuts.

In 1994, Republicans who were elected also arrived to Washington sounding like renegades. They insisted that they would do whatever was necessary to change the status quo, and they refused to compromise with Democrats for the sake of appearing reasonable. South Carolina Congressman Lindsey Graham said, "Ain't nothing was off limits, buddy. You could feed us, wash us and comb us, but we'd still bite."

Most famously, in 1995 and 1996, they were willing to shut down the federal government in their pursuit of deep spending cuts. Eventually, most of the class of 1994 mellowed, realizing that governance required compromise, as did political survival.

What we are seeing with tea party Republicans is something even more dramatic. The new Republicans have been the driving force behind the decision to prevent a routine vote on the debt ceiling -- a routine vote with potentially devastating financial consequences -- to obtain massive cuts in federal spending.

When Obama and many Democrats moved toward their position, they were also unwilling to compromise on how to reduce the deficit. When the president proposed that revenue-raising measures should be part of the package, they refused to budge. House Speaker John Boehner barely received the number of votes he needed for his legislation late last week.

To be sure, this is not the first time the political parties have used the debt ceiling to make a point. In 1966, for example, every House Republican but one (former Speaker Joseph Martin) voted against raising the debt ceiling because, they charged, President Lyndon Johnson was lying about the size of the deficit.

"I think the president probably in a couple of months will come up and say that to win the war in Vietnam, we need a tax increase," warned Missouri Republican Thomas Curtis. "I would much prefer to increase taxes to place a further burden on the national debt." More recently, some Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, spoke against raising the debt ceiling to protest President George W. Bush's policies.

The difference is that this time around, tea party Republicans have been willing to follow through on the threat, and they have control of the House. This is what has made the situation so dangerous. Previous opposition to raising the debt ceiling has been primarily symbolic.

Usually, the politicians making the argument knew the vote would happen anyway, or they were prepared to change their mind in the end. Tea party Republicans are not kidding. They forced their own leadership to bring the nation to the brink of disaster. They are not doing this through the normal budget process, and they are taking no prisoners.

More than ever, it is incumbent on the Republican leadership to push back against its own members who use these tactics. Even Boehner has seemed to be aware of the economic and political dangers that loom. One can see throughout this debate that he was at pains trying to contain the right wing of his party.

The consequences of default would be potentially disastrous for all Americans, red and blue, and recovery would take a long time. There are other ways Republicans can push for their objectives. In the future, they must do so.

Sources: CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, Youtube

Dems Lose Voters As Tea Party Demands Attention (GOP 2012 Strategy)

Why Voters Tune Out Democrats

BARACK OBAMA can’t catch a break from the American public on the economy, even though he prevented a depression and saved global capitalism.

Perhaps the president finds solace in knowing he’s not alone. During this period of economic crisis and uncertainty, voters are generally turning to conservative and right-wing political parties, most notably in Europe and in Canada.

It’s perplexing. When unemployment is high, and the rich are getting richer, you would think that voters of average means would flock to progressives, who are supposed to have their interests in mind — and who historically have delivered for them.

During the last half-century or so, when a Democratic president has led the country, people have tended to experience lower unemployment, less inequality and rising income compared with periods of Republican governance. There is a reason, however, that many voters in the developed world are turning away from Democrats, Socialists, liberals and progressives.

My vantage point on voter behavior comes through my company, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and its work for center-left parties globally, starting with Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. For the last decade, I have worked in partnership with James Carville conducting monthly polls digging into America’s mood and studying how progressives can develop successful electoral strategies. (I am also married to a Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut, Rosa L. DeLauro.)

In analyzing these polls in the United States, I see clearly that voters feel ever more estranged from government — and that they associate Democrats with government. If Democrats are going to be encumbered by that link, they need to change voters’ feelings about government. They can recite their good plans as a mantra and raise their voices as if they had not been heard, but voters will not listen to them if government is disreputable.

Oddly, many voters prefer the policies of Democrats to the policies of Republicans. They just don’t trust the Democrats to carry out those promises.

When we conducted our election-night national survey after last year’s Republican sweep, voters strongly chose new investment over a new national austerity. They thought Democrats were more likely to champion the middle class. And as has become clear in the months since, the public does not share conservatives’ views on rejecting tax cuts and cutting retirement programs. Numerous recent polls have shown that the public sides with the president and Democrats on raising taxes to get to a balanced budget.

But in smaller, more probing focus groups, voters show they are fairly cynical about Democratic politicians’ stands. They tune out the politicians’ fine speeches and plans and express sentiments like these: “It’s just words.” “There’s just such a control of government by the wealthy that whatever happens, it’s not working for all the people; it’s working for a few of the people.” “We don’t have a representative government anymore.”

This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government — the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974. But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?

In earlier periods, confidence in the economy and rising personal incomes put limits on voter discontent. Today, a dispiriting economy combined with a well-developed critique of government leaves government not just distrusted but illegitimate.

GOVERNMENT operates by the wrong values and rules, for the wrong people and purposes, the Americans I’ve surveyed believe. Government rushes to help the irresponsible and does little for the responsible. Wall Street lobbyists govern, not Main Street voters. Vexingly, this promotes both national and middle-class decline yet cannot be moved by conventional democratic politics. Lost jobs, soaring spending and crippling debt make America ever weaker, unable to meet its basic obligations to educate and protect its citizens. Yet politicians take care of themselves and party interests, while government grows remote and unresponsive, leaving people feeling powerless.

If they are to win trust, and votes, Democrats must show they are as determined as the Tea Party movement to change the rules of the game. In our surveys and media work for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, we found that only if people thought a candidate was going to change government in fundamental ways — starting with welfare and reinventing government — would they give permission to spend their money.

The same is true today. In our recent Web survey of 2,000 respondents, voters respond strongly to Democratic messages on the economy only when a party leader declares, “We have to start by changing Washington. ... The middle class won’t catch a break until we confront the power of money and the lobbyists.”

Why is that?

You do not have to look very far. If there is an article of faith among contemporary center-left leaders, it is that investment in education will pay dividends with increased productivity and increased income. And yet the evidence is piling up that the economy is not working for the middle class. Productivity and education increase but wages do not follow.

When presented with vivid descriptions of income inequality in America, people are deflated, rather than empowered to bring change. In surveys, they tell me that they think the politicians and the chief executives are “piggybacking off each other.” They think that the game is rigged and that the wealthy and big industries get policies that reinforce their advantage. And they do not think their voices matter.



That government and the elite appear blithely to promote globalization and economic integration, while the working population loses income, makes the frustration more intense.

Our research shows that the growth of self-identified conservatives began in the fall of 2008 with the Wall Street bailout, well before Mr. Obama embarked on his recovery and spending program. The public watched the elite and leaders of both parties rush to the rescue. The government saved irresponsible executives who bankrupted their own companies, hurt many people and threatened the welfare of the country. When Mr. Obama championed the bailout of the auto companies and allowed senior executives at bailed-out companies to take bonuses, voters concluded that he was part of the operating elite consensus. If you owned a small business that was in trouble or a home or pension that lost much of its value, you were on your own. As people across the country told me, the average citizen doesn’t “get money for free.” Their conclusion: Government works for the irresponsible, not the responsible.

Everything they witness affirms the public’s developing view of how government really works. They see a nexus of money and power, greased by special interest lobbyists and large campaign donations, that makes these outcomes irresistible. They do not believe the fundamentals have really changed in Mr. Obama’s Washington.

What should Democrats do?

The Democrats have to start detoxifying politics by proposing to severely limit or bar individual and corporate campaign contributions, which would mean a fight with the Supreme Court. They must make the case for public financing of campaigns and force the broadcast and cable networks to provide free time for candidate ads. And they must become the strongest advocates for transparency in campaign donations and in the lobbying of elected officials.

IF they want to win the trust of the public, Democrats should propose taxing lobbyist expenses and excessive chief executive bonuses and put a small fee on the sale of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments. By radically simplifying the tax code to allow only a few deductions, the Democrats would generate new revenue and remove the loopholes that allow special interests to win favorable treatment. The ordinary citizen, according to our surveys and focus groups, feels there is no way to play that game and views simplifying the tax code as an important reform.

To show that government can protect the nation’s interests, Democrats should advocate policies that would control the borders and address problems of undocumented workers.

Dealing with this is even more important in Europe, where anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic parties are surging at the expense of the mainstream left and right parties in France, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, site of the recent slaughter for which an extreme right-winger has claimed responsibility.

In the face of such madness, it is tempting to view the issue as illegitimate, but mainstream parties do so at great cost. Our work in Austria and Britain shows that it is possible for progressives to champion immigration policies that protect the labor market and promote and require integration, beginning with language and schooling.

In the United States, those who advocate comprehensive immigration reform are demonstrating that they consider responsibility a primary value. My surveys show that voters want comprehensive immigration reform rather than half measures. They would like to see strong enforcement at the border and in the workplace, and the expulsion of troublesome undocumented immigrants. While favoring toughness, they also want to find ways to put undocumented workers on a path to citizenship.

These measures, if pushed by Democrats, would show that government operated by the right values. Just as Mr. Clinton’s welfare reform in 1996 required efforts to make work pay and expand child care, immigration reform can show how progressives punish irresponsibility and reward responsibility.

Finally, progressives have to be serious about reducing the country’s long-term deficits, constraining special interest spending and tax breaks and making government accountable to the ordinary citizen. The deficit matters to people and has real meaning and consequences. A government that spends and borrows without the kind of limits that would govern an ordinary family is going to have big troubles. Voters I’ve studied say things like, if “we keep spending like this, we’re going to be bankrupt and there won’t be anything for anybody,” especially “our children.” The final straw is the government’s decision to continue spending and to put the country deeper into debt and more dependent on China.

President Obama understood this essential lesson when he decided to unveil his own plan for long-term deficit reduction. The fog of the debt-limit debate has obscured that commitment, and his determination to raise taxes on the most fortunate to reduce our indebtedness and fund his priorities. Polls show that the public is with him, scornful of the Republican demand for no tax increases. Rather than treating deficit reduction as an “eat your peas moment,” progressives should embrace the liberal think tanks’ bold deficit plans, which would raise taxes more and defend progressive priorities.

That would be in the spirit of President Clinton’s first economic plan, which used a 50-50 mix of tax increases and spending cuts to cut the deficit. That laid the groundwork for a restoration in trust in government later in the 1990s.

Recently, it has been the conservatives, the Tea Party members and the anti-immigrant groups who understand the anger with government, and rush in to exploit it. Perhaps now, with the debacle in Washington, liberals will become instinctively angry with this illegitimate government and build their politics from there.

Sources: CNN, Fora TV, Fox News, NY Times, Youtube

Obama's Tilt To Far Right Alienates His Left Wing Base

Rightward Tilt Leaves Obama With Party Rift

However the debt limit showdown ends, one thing is clear: under pressure from Congressional Republicans, President Obama has moved rightward on budget policy, deepening a rift within his party heading into the next election.

Entering a campaign that is shaping up as an epic clash over the parties’ divergent views on the size and role of the federal government, Republicans have changed the terms of the national debate. Mr. Obama, seeking to appeal to the broad swath of independent voters, has adopted the Republicans’ language and in some cases their policies, while signaling a willingness to break with liberals on some issues.

That has some progressive members of Congress and liberal groups arguing that by not fighting for more stimulus spending, Mr. Obama could be left with an economy still producing so few jobs by Election Day that his re-election could be threatened. Besides turning off independents, Mr. Obama risks alienating Democratic voters already disappointed by his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and his failure to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, end the Bush-era tax cuts and enact a government-run health insurance system.

“The activist liberal base will support Obama because they’re terrified of the right wing,” said Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future.

But he said, “I believe that the voting base of the Democratic Party — young people, single women, African-Americans, Latinos — are going to be so discouraged by this economy and so dismayed unless the president starts to champion a jobs program and take on the Republican Congress that the ability of labor to turn out its vote, the ability of activists to mobilize that vote, is going to be dramatically reduced.”

While Mr. Obama and Republicans have been unable to agree on a debt reduction plan for spending cuts and revenue increases to cut $4 trillion in the first decade, on Saturday they were negotiating a deal with fewer spending cuts that would ensure the government’s debt ceiling would be increased into 2013 to avoid another deadlock in the heat of campaign season.

No matter how the immediate issue is resolved, Mr. Obama, in his failed effort for greater deficit reduction, has put on the table far more in reductions for future years’ spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, than he did in new revenue from the wealthy and corporations. He proposed fewer cuts in military spending and more in health care than a bipartisan Senate group that includes one of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans.

To win approval of the essential increase in the nation’s $14.3 trillion borrowing ceiling, Mr. Obama sought more in deficit reduction than Republicans did, and with fewer changes to the entitlement programs, because he was willing to raise additional revenue starting in 2013 and they were not. And despite unemployment lingering at its highest level in decades, Mr. Obama has not fought this year for a big jobs program with billions of dollars for public-works projects, which liberals in his party have clamored for. Instead, he wants to extend a temporary payroll tax cut for everyone, since Republicans will support tax cuts, despite studies showing that spending programs are generally the more effective stimulus.

Even before last November’s election gave the Republicans control of the House, Mr. Obama had said he would pivot to deficit reduction after two years of stimulus measures intended first to rescue the economy and then to spur a recovery from the near collapse of the financial system. With Republicans’ gains in the midterm elections, that pivot became a lurch. Yet Congressional Republicans say Mr. Obama seeks a debt limit increase as “a blank check” to keep spending.

“The Republicans won, and they don’t know how to accept victory,” said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

In his budget proposal in January, Mr. Obama declined to suggest a plan along the lines proposed by a majority of his bipartisan fiscal commission, which in December recommended $4 trillion in savings over 10 years through cuts in military and domestic programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and a tax code overhaul to lower rates while also raising more revenue.

Even though Mr. Obama was widely criticized, administration officials said at the time that to have embraced that approach then would have put him too far to the right — where he ultimately wanted to end up in any compromise with Republicans, not where he wanted to start.

But by this month, in ultimately unsuccessful talks with Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama tentatively agreed to a plan that was farther to the right than that of the majority of the fiscal commission and a bipartisan group of senators, the so-called Gang of Six. It also included a slow rise in the Medicare eligibility age to 67 from 65, and, after 2015, a change in the formula for Social Security cost-of-living adjustments long sought by economists.

“He’s accommodated himself to the new reality in Washington,” said Tom Davis, a former House Republican leader from Virginia. “That’s what leaders do.”

But Congressional Democrats and liberal groups objected.

“The president’s proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare has the potential to sap the energy of the Democratic base — among older voters because of Medicare and Medicaid and younger voters because of the lack of jobs,” said Damon A. Silvers, policy director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “And second, all these fiscal austerity proposals on the table will make the economy worse.”

Mr. Obama’s situation has parallels with the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton shifted to the center after Republicans took Congress and battled them on deficit reduction and a welfare overhaul. Many Democrats were angered by his concessions, by a sense of being left out of negotiations and by a fear of alienating Democratic voters. Mr. Clinton was re-elected in 1996.

But Mr. Obama is likely to face the voters with a weaker economy and higher unemployment than during Mr. Clinton’s era. Still, his advisers express confidence that voters will reward Mr. Obama either for winning a bipartisan deal, if that were to happen, or for at least having a more balanced approach that does not remake Medicare and Medicaid and asks for more revenue from the wealthy. And they suggest another potential parallel with the Clinton years of divided government: that Republicans risk a voter backlash with their uncompromising stands.

“Democrats created Social Security and Medicare, and we have fought for decades against Republican attempts to end these programs,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Mr. Obama’s communications director. “And President Obama believes that now is the time for Democrats to be the ones to step up and save Social Security and Medicare.”

Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, said polling data showed that at this point in his term, Mr. Obama, compared with past Democratic presidents, was doing as well or better with Democratic voters. “Whatever qualms or questions they may have about this policy or that policy, at the end of the day the one thing they’re absolutely certain of — they’re going to hate these Republican candidates,” Mr. Mellman said. “So I’m not honestly all that worried about a solid or enthusiastic base.”


Sources: CNN, NY Times

GOP's Right Wing No-Tax Agenda Destroying America: Creates More Poverty (Decision 2012)

How Republicans Screwed the Pooch

There it sits, lonely and forlorn on my shelf. A leather-bound copy of the 1999 Budget of the United States of America. A gift from President Clinton to the folks on his team, it was the first balanced budget in decades.

But it wasn't supposed to be the last. Indeed, experts projected surpluses as far as the eye could see. $5.7 trillion in surpluses, to be exact. The surpluses were so strong that deep into the future—in 2009—the entire national debt was going to be zero. For the first time since Andy Jackson was president, the United States of America would not owe a dime.

It didn't quite work out that way, did it? As Washington seems paralyzed, our economy stagnates, and America's full faith and credit is on the brink, it is useful to recall how we got here. This was not an act of nature. There was no unforeseen earthquake, no tsunami, no hurricane that wiped out our surplus. It was instead a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican president who squandered the surplus. In full possession of the federal government for the first time since Eisenhower, the GOP—with, to be fair, some help from some very foolish Democrats—systematically dismantled the economic and fiscal policies that produced the strongest economy and largest budget surplus in our history.

Specifically, they did four things: cut taxes (with a heavy tilt toward the rich), waged two wars on the national credit card (one of which was against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no serious threat to America), passed a prescription drug benefit with no pay-for (the first entitlement in American history without a revenue source), and deregulated Wall Street (which helped turn the American economy into a casino and touched off the Great Recession).

I recap all that not to further depress you, Dear Reader. But it is striking how absent that history has been from the coverage of our current crisis. I can understand why the GOP doesn't want to remind folks of how they screwed the pooch. Indeed, they have a competing myth—that Washington went on a spending binge; radical young President Barack Obama went crazy with the national credit card. That, of course, is nonsense. But too few Democrats—and almost no media commentators—have countered the mendacious right-wing storyline.

Just as bad as ignoring how we got here, we risk missing the story of precisely where the GOP wants to take us. In the coverage of the game (Will Boehner find the votes? Will the Tea Party really drive us off a cliff? Will Eric Cantor lead a revolt?) we sometimes neglect the substance of the proposals. Just what kind of country do the Republicans seek to build? Instead of seeing it as a bargaining chip, perhaps we should treat the GOP proposal as a serious governing document.

Bob Greenstein, the widely respected president of the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, has done just that. His conclusion:
The Boehner-GOP plan is "tantamount to a form of ‘class warfare.’ If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history."

Think about that. As the economy teeters on the precipice of a double-dip recession, as millions of Americans search in vain for a job, as tens of millions of homeowners are underwater, as poverty soars and the middle class is hammered, the Speaker of the House is pushing a proposal that—let me repeat Greenstein's analysis—“could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship in modern U.S. history.” Deep cuts in every domestic priority—from education for disabled children to food safety to homeland security to clean air and water. Followed by painful cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But not a dollar in new revenue. Not one corporate loophole closed, not one billionaire asked to pay one penny in higher taxes.

Oh, and if they don't get their way they will cripple the Treasury's ability to pay the debt—the debt, I hasten to add, that their policies created.

It has become a trope of the right to accuse Obama and the Democrats of trying to remake America in the image of Europe. That, of course, is silly as well as insulting to the people who gave us the Magna Carta and the Enlightenment, not to mention spaghetti. But in whose image would the radical Republicans remake us? Certainly not in the image of the Founding Fathers. The Republicans are already seeking to make Swiss cheese out of Mr. Madison's masterpiece, littering the Constitution with amendments on budgeting, the line-item veto, gay marriage, abortion, school prayer, restricting birth-right citizenship, and more.

Seems to me the GOP seeks a banana republic: a toxic blend of right-wing populism, anti-intellectualism, debt defaults, and an end to the ladder of economic opportunity. They would divide us into a few Haves and a lot of Have-Nots. And they would slowly crush the heart of progressive America—the rising middle class created by Democratic economic policies of education and empowerment. All while preserving, protecting, and defending a tiny oligarchy of millionaires and billionaires.

The right wing should ditch the tricorn hats and replace them with mirrored sunglasses. They truly are Banana Republicans.

Sources: Daily Beast, The Young Turks, Youtube