Posts Tagged ‘
GOP ’
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The 111th Congress is still a few days from concluding, but with Saturday’s Senate vote repealing the military’s Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell policy, it can boast a record of progressive accomplishment that may give pause to liberal critics of the Obama administration. Ratification of the START treaty just before Christmas would be a nice capper before the difficult period begins with the Republican takeover of the House and the official burial of any filibuster-proof Democratic Senate Majority.
Since this is my last memo for 2010, it’s as good time as any to examine the political mood of the country going into 2011.
It’s worth noting that there’s really no consensus interpretation of what ultimately happened in the midterm elections. Democrats remain divided between those who view the November setback as primarily a structural phenomenon attributable to a bad economy and inevitable shifts in the turnout patterns, and those who believe strategic and tactical errors by the President and congressional leaders invited the defeat. Liberal activist criticism of Obama for his conciliatory public attitude towards Republicans, conservative Democrats, and “big business,” while familiar to anyone who remembers the Clinton years, reached a sharp new point near the end of the year, nearly producing a revolt in the House against the Obama-McConnell tax deal.
But it’s unclear whether this hostility among opinion-leaders is widely shared in the actual “base” of Democratic voters. The latest Gallup tracking poll does show Obama’s job approval rating among self-identified liberal Democrats dipping below 80 percent for the first time, but 79 percent approval is still a pretty high number. Anyone fantasizing about a left-bent primary challenge to the president should look at last week’s Magellan poll of NH, which showed Obama trouncing any potential rival there, even though it should be one of his weakest states.
Republicans, meanwhile, have largely taken a triumphalist view of the midterms as indicating a conscious conservative “turn” in the electorate that has rejected Obama, Pelosi and their “socialist” policies. The major topic of dissension among conservative commentators is whether the risk to be most avoided is an ideological rigidity that prevents Republicans from taking advantage of Democratic missteps, or instead a return to the “big government conservatism” and ideological laxity that, in their view, doomed the Bush administration.
Since the air is often full of warnings to party leaders from both sides of the spectrum against compromise with the satanic opposition, it’s interesting to look a little more deeply at Democratic and Republican attitudes on the subject of bipartisanship. A recent analysis by Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal reaches the striking conclusion that poll numbers showing high public support for “compromise” can be misleading:
For many partisans, “compromise” is really a disguised expression of partisanship. They want to see the leaders of both parties working together, but mostly in support of their preferred policies. A larger number of Democrats — a third to half — are open to their leaders compromising with the Republicans, and that difference helps tilt the overall numbers in favor of compromise.
In other words, support for “compromise” is lower than it looks, but for all the progressive angst about Obama betraying his base, he appears to have more maneuverability when it comes to compromise than does his Republican counterparts. Certainly the base-dominated 2012 presidential nominating process is likely to exert a strong rightward influence on the GOP.
Five key things to look for early next year:
- Most obviously, the economy: Is it recovering in a way that will be tangible to voters in 2012? Will Republicans at the federal and/or state levels take actions that essentially sabotage recovery by depressing consumer demand?
- Redistricting: How aggressively will Republicans pursue their midterm advantage in the states, and how much leeway will courts give them in legislative gerrymandering?
- The deficit debate: Will it develop in a way that encourages cooperation at the risk of premature austerity policies, or that sharpens partisan differences?
- Afghanistan: The one thing that could turn liberal grumbling about Obama into serious intraparty opposition would be the perception that he’s dragging his feet on withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
- Republicans: Will the GOP finally secure visible leadership that helps rather than hurt the party’s political prospects? Can they do better than McConnell and Boehner, Gingrich and Palin?
The dynamics of the 2012 election cycle will depend on all five of these factors, aside from the nuts and bolts of money and organization and candidate personalities. Whether the two parties—or barring that, the president alone via executive action—can accomplish much while jockeying for future position is another question entirely.
Tags: 111th Congress, Afghanistan, austerity, big business, big government, bipartisanship, Boehner, Bush, Clinton, compromise, conservatives, consumer demand, DADT, Deficits and debt, federal, Gallup, gerrymandering, Gingrich, GOP, ideological rigidity, liberal, Magellan, Mark Blumenthal, McConnell, midterm elections, moderate, NH, Obama Administration, Obama-McConnell, Palin, Pollster.com, progressive, redistricting, socialist, START, tax deal
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Monday, December 13th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
It’s no secret that the relentless polarization of U.S. politics has left independent and moderate voters politically homeless. Today a bipartisan group of activists gathers in New York to launch an effort to organize this “radical center” and amplify its voice in Washington.
No Labels is the brainchild of Nancy Jacobson, a veteran Democratic activist and fundraiser. Its organizers include veteran political players from both parties of a distinctly pragmatic, non-doctrinaire bent (including yours truly). It aims to build an online network of Americans – imagine a MoveOn.Org for centrists – who are fed up with the nation’s dysfunctional political system and want to do something about it.
That won’t be easy, even with the Internet’s unprecedented power to connect virtual communities of like-minded people. Unlike arch partisans and members of interest groups, independents and moderates are notoriously hard to mobilize. They tend not to be impelled by passionate causes, and to pay fleeting attention to politics. “Liberals and conservatives have passion. Moderates and independents have lives,” observes political analyst Charlie Cook.
There’s little doubt, however, that voters across the broad middle of the spectrum have become more disenchanted with politics and government. The midterm election was the third straight in which independents turned against the incumbent party. This restiveness is grounded in what they see as the Obama administration’s failure to deliver, especially on the economy. Independents don’t trust the Republicans either, and the last thing these voters want is an intensification of Washington’s zero-sum political game.
According to a new poll by Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor, only 10 percent of Independents welcome the GOP victory as a chance to roll back government. Seventy percent said neither party’s agenda alone can solve the nation’s problems. This poll confirms other recent surveys in finding a strong preference for bipartisan cooperation over confrontation. President Obama’s tax-cut deal shows he’s gotten the message.
So No Labels is tapping into something real. On the other hand, it so far is defined more by what it’s against – incivility, partisan cant, rigid dogmas, special interest power and, above all, a paralysis in government’s ability to solve problems – than by what it’s for. Can a movement organized by political insiders tap and channel grassroots anger in politically consequential ways? Can it coalesce behind a positive agenda for governing? We’ll see.
For now, it’s enough to say that the problems No Labels seeks to solve are real enough. There’s no question we need a broad civic mobilization to bring intense pressure to bear on our political leaders to work together to solve the nation’s problems. Independents and moderates may be an inchoate political force, but there are lots of them. If No Labels can get even a fraction of them mobilized for political action, Washington will take notice.
Tags: Allstate, bipartisanradical center, centrists, Charlie Cook, civic mobilizqtion, conservatives, GOP, independent, liberals, midterm election, moderate, Nancy Jacobson, National Journal Heartland Monitor, No Labels, non-doctrinaire, Obama Administration, polarization, pragmatic, republicans, Tax Cut
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Saturday, December 4th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
President Obama’s deficit commission fell short today of the 14 votes necessary to submit its debt reduction plan to Congress for a vote. Don’t believe for a moment, however, that the commission has failed. On the contrary, co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have forged a bipartisan majority for a plan that creates the basic template for any credible effort to restore fiscal responsibility in Washington.
In pushing back against special interests and partisan polarizers, the commission has done this country a tremendous service. Whatever happens next, its members have been responsive to the solid majority of Americans who say they want to the two parties to work together to solve the nation’s toughest problems.
As the bipartisan duo of Bill Galston and David Frum noted in today’s Washington Post, a post-election Pew poll found that 55 percent of the public wants Republican leaders in Washington to work with President Obama “even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters,” and even more want Obama to do the same. Independents, whose defection from Obama’s winning 2008 coalition largely accounted for the GOP’s midterm sweep, likewise express a strong preference for compromise.
To a surprising degree, that problem-solving spirit seems to have infected the deficit commission, which has been deliberating since February. Republicans don’t come any more conservative than Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, but even he is now drawing fire from anti-tax absolutists for daring to support the commission blueprint. GOP Senators Mike Crapo of Idaho and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire also endorsed the plan, while several Members from both parties in the more partisan House oppose the plan.
On the Democratic side, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois broke ranks with liberals to back the plan, while centrist Sen. Max Baucus of Montana raised eyebrows in opposing it. Sounding a parochial note, Baucus criticized the commission’s sensible plan to raise gas taxes by 15 percent, saying it would “paint a big red target on rural America.”
Mostly, however, reactions to the commission’s plan have divided along predictable lines, with support concentrated in the political center and opposition hardening as you move toward either end of the spectrum. Arch-conservatives decry its emphasis on cutting tax expenditures (though we’re proud that the commission adopts a long-standing PPI proposal for a “cut-and-invest” commission to go after these loopholes and subsidies), a trillion dollar drain on federal revenues. Nor are they mollified by its significant cuts in income and corporate tax rates, or its 3-to1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases.
The left, meanwhile, is in full cry over the commission’s allegedly draconian cuts in Social Security benefits. In fact, the proposal boosts the minimum Social Security benefit for low earners, makes the benefit formula more progressive, and very gradually increases the retirement age to 69 (normal) and 64 (early) by 2075. Only today’s toddlers will be affected, and their average life expectancy probably will exceed 80 years by then. The lefty blogosphere and cable shows nonetheless have worked themselves into a hyperbolic lather about President’s Obama mean ole “catfood commission.”
This is ludicrous. The commission’s plan doesn’t actually solve America’s fiscal crisis, it merely slows spending growth to sustainable levels, and stabilizes the national debt at 60 percent of GDP by 2013. That ratio doesn’t return to 40 percent – where it was before the financial crisis hit – for 25 years. In truth the plan does not impose a pitiless austerity on America. Nor would it jeopardize economic recovery, since its changes won’t kick in until unemployment starts falling to normal levels.
Liberals are on firmer ground in arguing that the plan sets unrealistically severe limits on federal spending. It aims to get federal spending down (and revenues up) to 21 percent of GDP by 2035. Whether that is enough to meet the needs of a much grayer America, where over 20 percent of the population will be over 65, is open to doubt.
But the commission’s plan doesn’t have to be perfect. It only has to be plausible, and it more than meets that test. Although it won’t be guaranteed a vote in this Congress, there’s nothing to prevent its supporters from introducing it into the next Congress. Given the countless hours of negotiations that have shaped it, the extent to which it has absorbed the best ideas from previous fiscal reform blueprints, and its rare, bipartisan backing, the proposal could become the point of departure for next year’s debate.
That will be especially true if President Obama embraces the plan, or something very close to it. He has largely stood aloof from the commission’s deliberations, but he urgently needs to regain the political initiative after the midterm debacle. House Republicans no doubt will devise an alternative, likely drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan, a commission member who opposes its plan, that emphasizes spending cuts almost exclusively. It may also include a push to repeal Obamacare. In any case, the GOP approach won’t get much Democratic support, especially now that the ranks of moderate Democrats have been drastically thinned.
In short, President Obama has an opportunity to seize the pragmatic center in the coming debate about putting America on a fiscally sustainable course. And he can thank his Commission for dealing him a very strong hand.
Tags: anti-tax absolutists, Arch-conservatives, Bill Galston, bipartisan majority, compromise, cut and invest, David Frum, debt and deficit, Debt Commission, Democrats, Dick Durbin, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, federal revenues, fiscal crisis, Fiscal Responsibility, GOP, Idaho, Illinois, Judd Gregg, Max Baucus, Mike Crapo, minimum Social Security benefit, Montana, New Hampshire, Obamacare, Oklahoma, partisan polarizers, Paul Ryan, Pew, pragmatic center., retirement age, Social Security benefits, special interests, spending cuts, Tom Coburn, Washington Post
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Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
A rash of party-switching by former Democratic state legislatures in the South has drawn attention to the parlous condition of the Donkey Party in that region following a terrible midterm election. Jonathan Martin of Politico captured the zeitgeist with a much-discussed piece entitled, “Democratic South Finally Falls,” a testament not only to Republican gains in the region but to the advent of such endlessly predicted but long-delayed developments as the GOP conquest of the Alabama state legislature.
How bad was election night 2010 for southern Democrats? Well, there were a total of 14 Senate and gubernatorial races in the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, and Republicans won all of them except for the Arkansas governor’s race. Exactly one-third of the 66 House pickups for the GOP occurred in the same eleven states (along with one-third of the three Democratic pickups). Republicans gained control of four state legislative chambers (the House and Senate in both Alabama and North Carolina), then picked up control of the Louisiana House due to a party switch. Today Democrats control the Arkansas and Mississippi House and Senate; the Senate in Louisiana and Virginia; and nothing else. And the Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia bastions will be at risk in 2011.
Were there regional bright spots for Democrats? Sure, in individual races. But it’s hard to call, say, North Carolina a bright spot because endangered House Democrats Larry Kissel and Mike McIntyre survived, since the state legislature was lost for the first time since Reconstruction. Similarly, two of three targeted House Democrats in Georgia won, but Republicans swept all the statewide races for the first time ever, and are approaching a veto-proof supermajority in both state legislative chambers.
Democrats had unusually strong gubernatorial candidates facing Republicans with problems in four southern states: South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. All these Democrats lost.
Now it’s important to understand that the demographic turnout patterns that made the midterms so hospitable to Republicans nationally were especially strong in parts of the South, where the pro-Republican trend among older white voters in 2008 was especially pronounced, and the predictable falloff in African-American voting after a historic cycle was especially damaging to Democrats. That means Democrats will likely rebound (relatively speaking) in 2012 in the South as elsewhere. Indeed, post-midterm PPP polls of Virginia and North Carolina, the two southern states carried by Obama in 2008, show the president in pretty good shape in both for 2012.
What really happened in 2010 of enduring significance is that the post-Civil Rights Act era of ticket-splitting in the South, which enabled Democrats to do much better in state and local election than at the presidential level, is finally drawing to a close, with one important qualifier: as Republicans become the natural governing party of the South, they will also be vulnerable to unhappiness with the status quo, which could produce Democratic victories, particularly in states with an irreducibly strong Democratic base. Generally, though, congressional districts with a long history of going GOP in presidential races and Democratic in House races, like South Carolina’s 5th district or Mississippi’s 4th, aren’t likely coming back to the Democratic column now that their long-time incumbents have lost. In addition, as the party-switching in state legislatures demonstrates, Democrats will no longer benefit from being perceived as the party of convenience for ambitious politicos with flexible ideological views.
The upside for southern Democrats is that the long-term demographic trends favoring them in the region—growing minority populations, continued in-migration of less conservative voters, and the increased importance of “knowledge jobs”—haven’t gone away. And without question, southern Democrats are continuing to converge with their national counterparts in ideology as conservative white rural voters complete their migration out of the Democratic coalition. Overall, southerners will still be more moderate than Democrats from areas with a strong labor movement or a tradition of cultural progressivism, but much of the argument that southern Blue Dogs are muddling the message or obstructing the legislation of the national party has become moot.
Tags: 2012 presidential election, African-American, Alabama, Arkansas, Blue Dogs, cultural progressivism, Democratic pickups, Democratic South Finally Falls, Democratic state legislatures, Democrats, demographic trends, Donkey Party, Florida, Georgia, GOP, GOP pickups, Jonathan Martin, Larry Kissel, Louisiana, Mid-Term Elections, Mike McIntyre., Mississippi, North Carolina, Obama, Old Confederacy, party-switching, Politico, post-Civil Rights Act, PPP polls, Reconstruction, South, state and local election, Texas, Virginia, zeitgeist
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Monday, November 22nd, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He formerly served as the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
Brookings Institution congressional scholar Thomas Mann is hardly known as a partisan bomb-thrower. A frequent co-author of books and articles on Congress and American politics with the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, Mann is a model of sober and intelligent commentary, calling things as he sees them.
That reputation makes his recent comments on the state of our politics particularly noteworthy. In an interview with Time’s Jay Newton-Small, here’s what Mann had to say:
There is simply no basis for meaningful bipartisan leadership meetings today. Republicans are determined to defeat Obama in 2012; they have no interest in negotiating with him in order to provide him any sort of victory. This is a partisan war and the Republicans are playing to win. The only question is how long it will take Obama to accept this reality and act accordingly.
To hear, say, bloggers vent this way would be expected; to hear Mann, a scholar ensconced in the establishment, speak so plainly underscores the enormity of the problem. Our politics is broken and Mann, correctly, identifies Republican cynicism as its primary cause. Today’s GOP has become slave to the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, and Sarah Palins. Where are the Olympia Snowes, the Susan Collinses, the George Voinoviches? Why aren’t they banding together with the moderates and liberals on the other side of the aisle to demand a restoration of reasonable discourse? Are the imperatives of electoral politics so strong as to short-circuit any attempt at good-faith governance? (The question, perhaps, answers itself.)
In a follow-up exchange with Greg Sargent, Mann offered a more specific vision of what Obama should do:
With no expectations of passing important new legislation or of garnering anything from Republicans in Congress but political bait, he should pursue his substantive agenda where he can act on his own and use Congress as a place to submit a genuinely serious set of proposals to deal with the country’s more serious challenges (with no expectation that any will pass) and couple them with high visibility straight talk to the American people about the course he is proposing.
If the last two years are any indication, the next two will bring only further distress and disappointment for that vanishing few in Washington who still believe in that old dream of deliberative democracy. But gridlock need not be inaction, and Mann’s advice is spot-on. For the President to regain control of his presidency, he needs to engage in that thing he seems to have been averse to thus far: politics. Use the bully pulpit. Engage in a bit of gamesmanship. Promote his vision of the good society – and make explicit why the conservative vision is the wrong one for the country. Shifting the dynamic between a feral House and a technocratic White House is one of two prerequisites (the other being an improved economy) if we are to preserve any hope of advancing progressive priorities in the time that remains in his first term.
Tags: American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, and Sarah Palin, bipartisan leadership, Brookings Institution, Democrats, gamesmanship, George Voinovich, Glenn Beck, GOP, Greg Sargent, Jay Newton-Small, liberals, modreates, Obama, Olympia Snowe, republicans, Rush Limbaugh, Susan Collins, Thomas Mann, Time
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Friday, November 19th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
No sooner had Congress convened this week for a post-election, lame duck session than a partisan squabble erupted in the Senate that threatens to scuttle a major nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.
The contretemps began when Jon Kyl, the Senate Republican Whip, said he doubted the Senate could take up ratification of the NEW START arms accord until next year. This may seem like an innocuous comment on scheduling, but delay could well spell death for the treaty. This year, President Obama needs eight GOP Senators to meet the 67-vote threshold for ratifying treaties; next year, he would need 14.
Kyl’s remarks were especially galling to treaty backers since he had earlier called New START “relatively benign” so long as the United States also takes steps to assure the reliability of its nuclear arsenal. Obama duly committed enormous sums to upgrade national weapons laboratories and modernize again nuclear warheads, including budgeting an additional $4 billion specifically to placate Kyl. In his statement, however, Kyl referred cryptically to “complex and unresolved issues” that still need to be worked out.
The administration nonetheless has said it will press for a vote this year. Failure to ratify the pact would be a major embarrassment for Obama, who promised the Russians the deal would be concluded this year. But even more, it would be a triumph of blind partisan animus over America’s national security interests, and our government’s to carry out a coherent and effective diplomacy with the rest of the world.
More is at stake than the rather modest arms reductions (under the treaty, both sides would cap their nuclear warheads at 1,550, down from the previous ceiling of 2,200). Senate rejection of the treaty could unravel the administration’s efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to disruptive states, as well as its “reset” of relations with Russia, which it believes has begun to pay dividends on Afghanistan, Iran, and other important fronts.
It’s one thing for Washington partisans to squabble over domestic issues, like extending the Bush tax cuts. It’s quite another to let their fights spill over in the international arena, and undermine America’s ability to lead abroad. In the not-so-distant past – namely, the presidency of George H.W. Bush – arms accords passed the Senate on nearly unanimous votes. If Senate Republicans kill NEW START, it will be another dismal sign that our deeply polarized politics no longer stops at the water’s edge.
This piece is cross-posted at No Labels
Tags: Afghanistan, America's national security interests, Bush, GOP, Homeland security, Iran, Jon Kyl, Lame Duck, Nuclear Arms, Post-Election, President Obama, Russia, Senate Republican Whip, START
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Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
With the congressional lame duck session underway, ruminations on the midterm elections will yield to real-life events, but the furious partisan spin will if anything intensify. Republicans will seek to stall action on major legislative items until they swear in their new members in January, but must take some sort of position on the public debt limit, overdue appropriations, expiring tax cuts, unemployment benefits, the START treaty, and other items Democrat will bring to the House and Senate floors. Recently most of the intra-Republican maneuvering has involved conservative efforts to force the GOP Senate leadership to embrace a ban on so-called “earmarks,” which appears to have succeeded.
It’s the tax cut issue that could be the most complicated and contentious. The White House’s position (shared by progressive Democrats) has long been that expiring Bush income tax cuts should only be made permanent for middle-class taxpayers (defined, actually, as 98 percent of taxpayers), while Republicans are holding out for a straight and permanent extension. Polling backs the Democratic position, but the business community is poised to shriek about the negative economic impact of hiking taxes on anyone in a recession, and the small business lobby will claim any personal income tax hike for the top bracket will hurt its constituency badly. Blue Dog opposition to a partial extension helped delay resolution of the matter until after the midterms, and now Republicans are pressing for a temporary if not permanent extension of all the tax cuts. The impact on the deficit of any extension is another factor in the debate, though most Republican self-described deficit hawks have long internalized the conservative argument that failure to extend a tax cut is a tax increase and thus should be off the table.
An unwelcome distraction for Democrats is the ethics committee proceedings involving Rep. Charles Rangel of NY, who was found guilty by the panel today of 11 rules violations.
Outside Washington, there is continuing drama in a few unresolved 2010 races. The main event is in Minnesota, where Republicans appear to be digging in for a long legal battle to prevent the inauguration of apparent gubernatorial winner Mark Dayton. What they hope to produce is a situation where the newly elected legislature (both chambers were won by the GOP) takes office and works with holdover Gov. Tim Pawlenty (who under state law remains in office until a successor is sworn in) to rapidly enact conservative legislation. This patent offense to fair play and voter intent is rationalized by Republicans through the inevitable claim that Dayton benefitted from vote fraud, and Pawlenty, who is almost certainly running for president, will undoubtedly welcome the national attention he’d get for thumbing his nose at Democrats. GOPers also think of this scenario as payback for the 2009 legal battle by Democrats on behalf of Sen. Al Franken.
Aside from Pawlenty’s maneuvers, 2012 speculation has been fed by a batch of twelve Public Policy Polling surveys of 2010 Republican voters (in AK, FL, KY, ME, MN, NV, NC, OH, TX, WA, WV, WI) measuring their early presidential preferences among Mitch Daniels, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence Mitt Romney. In all twelve, Romney, Huckabee, Palin and Gingrich are in double digits; Pawlenty breaks double digits in his home state of MN (with 19 percent). Palin leads in ME, OH, TX, WA, WV, and WI; Huckabee leads in AK and KY; Romney in FL and NV; Gingrich in NC; and TimPaw in MN.
Nate Silver of 538 posted an argument that dark horse candidates are very unlikely to break through against the Big Four of Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin and Romney, while Jonathan Bernstein responded: “Early good polling based on name recognition for weak candidates really is meaningless — see Rudy Giuliani ’08, among many others.”
Photo credit : Thomas Hawk
Tags: 2012 Horserace, AK, Al Franken, Big Four of Gingrich, Blue Dog, business community, Charles Rangel, conservative legislation, Deficits and debt, earmarks, ethics committee, expiring tax cuts, FL, GOP, income tax hike, Jonathan Bernstein, KY, Lame Ducks, Mark Dayton, ME, middle-class taxpayers, midterm elections, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence Mitt Romney, Minnesota, Mitch Daniels, MN, Nate Silver, NC, Newt Gingrich, NV, NY, OH, overdue appropriations, partisan spin, Pawlenty, public debt limit, Public Policy Polling, republicans, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, small business lobby, START treaty, Tim Pawlenty, TX, unemployment benefits, unresolved 2010 races, WA, WI, WV
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
President Obama is in Seoul today for what promises to be a contentious meeting of the world’s leading economic powers. He probably won’t mollify China, Germany and other critics of the Federal Reserve’s plan to pump more money into the U.S. economy. But the President does have a chance to further his goal of doubling U.S. exports by bringing home an improved trade agreement with South Korea.
In addition to attending the G-20 summit, Obama is slated to meet with South Korean officials to finalize a bilateral free trade pact negotiated by President Bush. Congress has not ratified the treaty, which is snagged by concerns about U.S. auto exports to South Korea, as well as lawmakers’ eroding faith in the benefits of free trade. The president said in June that he had instructed the U.S. Trade Representative to have all the outstanding issues “lined up properly” before he arrived for this week’s visit, so he could close the deal with Korea and present the agreement to Congress again in the coming months.
South Korea isn’t just a major trade partner, it’s also a key strategic ally and a counterweight to China’s growing heft in the Asia-Pacific. Since its tariffs traditionally have been much higher than ours, there’s little doubt that the agreement would spur U.S. exports and help offset weak economic demand at home. It requires South Korea to lower its high taxes on U.S. farm goods and open markets for insurance and other services to American firms. As the treaty has languished in Congress, however, Seoul has been busy on other fronts, deepening economic ties with China and finalizing an important trade pact with the EU last month.
Although President Obama sounded an ambivalent note at best on trade during the 2008 presidential campaign, he understands that expanding U.S. exports is crucial both to creating jobs and shrinking America’s outsized trade deficits. Now that he’s made the Korean deal a top priority, we’ll find out if the newly Tea Party-infused GOP will be more amenable to passing the treaty than Congressional Democrats were.
The agreement would lower tariffs on auto imports on both sides. South Korea’s are higher — 8 percent compared to 2.5 percent here. (The United States also would gradually lower a 25 percent tariff on imported pickup trucks.) Nonetheless, U.S. auto makers, especially Ford, have argued that the treaty would not bring down cultural and non-tariff barriers that have confined their sales to a sliver of South Korea’s lucrative auto market.
They have a point. Seoul exports more than 400,000 vehicles (mostly Hyundais and Kias) to the United States each year, while manufacturing an additional 200,000 cars at U.S. plants. According the U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. auto makers sent a paltry 5,878 vehicles to South Korea in 2009. Ford’s Stephen Biegun notes that more than 70 percent of the cars made in South Korea are exported, while imports account for less than 10 percent of sales, well below the average of 40 percent in other economically advanced countries.
As an auto industry representative explained in testimony before Congress, Korea has an extensive web of non-tariff barriers that make it harder for foreign car makers to penetrate the Korean market. Some of these are technical regulations like emissions standards and even license plate size. Establishing a clear link between such policies and the small U.S. market share in Korea isn’t always easy. But there’s no doubt that some of Korea’s policies reflect a well-entrenched hostility toward imports. For example, until recently anyone in Korea who bought a foreign car would automatically have their income taxes audited—a policy that chilled demand even after it was officially ended.
Ford, America’s healthiest car maker, sees itself as the chief victim of South Korea’s import-unfriendly policies. That’s because General Motors, through its Daewoo subsidy, makes cars in South Korea, selling more than 100,000 locally and exporting hundreds of thousands more elsewhere (including to the United States).
What can President Obama do to resolve the impasse over autos and get the U.S.-South Korea agreement through the Senate? He can’t reopen negotiations, but he can use the presidential jawbone to win binding side agreements with Seoul to remove non-tariff barriers to U.S. auto exports. He could, in short, bring pressure on South Korea to fully liberalize its auto markets and embrace the reciprocal obligations that come with free trade. Much like his powerful message in New Delhi that “India has emerged,” the president needs to make the case that South Korea has also fully emerged as a mature economy, and it can no longer justify the kind of protectionist and mercantilist trade policies that are more typical of poorer developing countries.
A more aggressive stance would show that the President is serious about doubling U.S. exports. But there’s a complicating factor: the global spread of auto production, design and supply chains. That makes it hard to say just how “American” any given car really is, or how many U.S. jobs are engaged in making cars.
Nonetheless, as long as the answer is “greater than zero,” the President has an obligation to ensure that major U.S. trade partners offer as much access to their domestic markets as we do to ours. And the Korean pact presents him with an opportunity both to restore U.S. global leadership on trade liberalization and to integrate America more deeply into the world’s fastest-growing markets in East Asia.
Photo credit: South Korea
Tags: American firms, Asia-Pacific, auto imports, auto industry, bilateral free trade pact, China, Congress, Daewoo subsidy, East Asia, emissions standards, EU, FED, Federal Reserve, Ford, G-20, General Motors, Germany, GOP, Hyundais, insurance, Kias, Korean market, license plate size., mercantilist, New Delhi, non-tariff barriers, Obama, open markets, President Bush, protectionist, Senate, Seoul, South Korea, Stephen Biegun, Tea Party, technical regulations, Trade, trade deficits, trade liberalization, U.S. auto exports, U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. economy, U.S. exports, U.S. farm goods, U.S. global leadership, U.S. plants, U.S. Trade Representative, world's leading economic powers, world’s fastest-growing markets
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Friday, November 5th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
So Election Day is over (except, of course, in Alaska, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Illinois, which have statewide races in some doubt, and in eight states with a total of nine unresolved House races).
You probably know the basics. Democrats held onto control of the Senate, their margin reduced from 59-41 to 53-47, and Republicans won the House, having gained at this point 60 seats, 21 more than they needed for a majority. Governorships flipped from 26D/24R to 29R/20D/1Chafeecrat. Republicans took over control of 19 state legislative chambers, just in time for redistricting.
Republicans won the national House popular vote by a 52-45 margin, roughly the same margin by which Barack Obama defeated John McCain in 2008. But it clearly was not the same electorate; exit polls reported that voters split evenly in their 2008 preferences. Many observers explain that by an “enthusiasm gap” between the two parties, but much of it is a matter of normal mid-term voting patterns, producing an older and whiter electorate that happens to favor Republicans at the present time.
House losses by Democrats were, to a remarkable extent, concentrated among districts that are either pro-Republican or highly marginal according to recent presidential elections. There were virtually no true upsets. A significant share of Tuesday’s casualties involved long-serving members from southern and border states who finally succumbed to ever-increasingly hostile territory (e.g., John Spratt of SC, Jim Marshall of GA, Gene Taylor of MS, Chet Edwards of TX, Ike Skelton of MO; two similar Members from TN retired). A much larger group, particularly from the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic states, were Class of 2006 and (especially) 2008 who got to Congress via close races and were extremely vulnerable to adverse trends in turnout and the overall political climate.
Trying to link these losses to any specific issues or controversies is probably futile, with the possible exception of climate change; support for legislation on this subject undoubtedly hurt Democrats in coal-producing states, most notably veteran VA Rep. Rick Boucher. But generally, the results reflected a general partisan shift, which in turn reflected a general (if predictable) change in turnout from a presidential to a mid-term profile.
The Senate results were not terribly surprising, either. What looked to some like a slight pro-Democratic trend in some of those races (notably PA and WI, where Democrats did better than expected, and in NV and CO, where Democrats won after Republicans led in late polls) were probably more the product of Republican bias in state-based polls, particularly those conducted by Rasmussen. The Alaska situation, obviously, is very unusual; Lisa Murkowski’s apparent lead guarantees a count of write-in votes, but though a loss for Joe Miller would be deeply embarrassing to Sarah Palin and to the Tea Party Movement, it would not change the partisan balance in the Senate.
The net-five-gain in governorships by Republicans disguises a much more complicated picture in which Republicans took control of eleven Democratic governorships (ME, PA, TN, OH, MI, WI, IA, KS, OK, NM,); Democrats took control of five Republican governorships (CT, VT, MN, CA and HI); and independent Linc Chafee won a formerly Republican governorship in RI. With all this churn, however, only two incumbent governors lost: Chet Culver of IA and Ted Strickland of OH.
The carnage created by Republican gains in state legislatures will take a while to sort out, but as Hotline noted:
The GOP holds the redistricting trifecta in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Utah, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Ohio – plus, as noted earlier, Nebraska and North Carolina [where the Democratic governor cannot veto redistricting plans].
Florida voters did approve a constitutional amendment imposing fairly strict conditions on redistricting to prevent gerrymanders; the state was already operating under a heavily pro-GOP plan. California voters also approved an initiative placing congressional redistricting under a very independent commission composed partly of citizens chosen by lottery; this change could help Republicans or at least produce more competitive districts.
In other non-candidate ballot developments, California voters rejected two nationally significant initiatives, one (Prop 19) that would have legalized small-scale consumption and cultivation of marijuana, and another (Prop 23) that would have suspended the state’s unique carbon emissions control system. In news of equal importance to locals, voters did approve a constitutional amendment getting rid of the two-thirds vote requirement for passage of a budget in the California legislature, which has all but paralyzed California government for years. In Iowa, voters rejected “retention” of three state Supreme Court justices who supported the unanimous decision to legalize same-sex marriage. This was major goal of that state’s powerful social conservative faction.
We’ll get more into post-election interpretations, along with prescriptions for what both parties should do now, next week.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, Alabama, Alaska, Barack Obama, CA, carbon emissions control system, Chet Edwards, Climate change, CO, coal-producing states, Connecticut, CT, cultivation of marijuana, Democrats, Election Day is over, enthusiasm gap, Florida, GA, Gene Taylor, Georgia, GOP, governorships, het Culver, HI, House, IA, Ike Skelton, Illinois, independent, Indiana, Jim Marshall, Joe Miller, John McCain, John Spratt, Kansas, KS, legalize same-sex marriage, Linc Chafee, Lisa Murkowski, ME, MI, Michigan, mid-Atlantic states, mid-term voting patterns, Midwest, Minnesota, MN, MO;, MS, Nebraska North Carolina, nine unresolved House races, NM, NV, OH, Ohio, OK, Oklahoma, older electorate, PA, Pennsylvania, Prop 19, Prop 23, Rasmussen, republicans, Results, Rick Boucher, Sarah Palin, SC, Senate, social conservative faction, South Carolina, statewide races, Supreme Court, Tea Party Movement, Ted Strickland, Tennessee, Texas, TN, Tuesday’s casualties, TX, Utah, VA, voters split, VT, whiter electorate, WI, Wisconsin
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Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Scott Winship
Scott Winship is research manager of the Pew Economic Mobility Project and a recent graduate of Harvard's doctoral program in social policy. The views he expresses do not represent those of Pew.
by Scott Winship
On the eve of the Iowa caucus in late 2007, Mark Schmitt, editor of The American Prospect, wrote an influential essay titled, “The ‘Theory of Change’ Primary”. The thesis of the piece was that Barack Obama’s frequent paeans to bipartisanship were not to be understood as the naivety of a political Pollyanna who would be rudely awakened upon taking the reins of power. Rather, Schmitt argued, appeals to bipartisanship were a tactic that President Obama would use to make Republicans an offer they couldn’t refuse: join with your colleagues across the aisle to enact the progressive policies the country demands, or reject bipartisanship and bear the wrath of voters in 2010.
Obama’s theory of change—as interpreted by Schmitt—has not worked out so well. Half the country supports repealing the healthcare reform bill, half say Democrats are too liberal, and half think that “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”. While the lackluster economy clearly played a major role in ushering in the sweeping gains made by the GOP on Tuesday, progressives need to recognize that Democratic losses were not simply due to bad luck. Progressives overreached, which may or may not have been worth yesterday’s shellacking but which certainly calls for a change in strategy over the next two years. By taking seriously the theory-of-change strategy and recognizing that the 50-50 Nation continues to govern national politics, progressives can come back in 2012.
There are limits to blaming the economy for Democratic losses. Most strikingly, the exit polls last night revealed that Republicans won a majority of the national House vote even among the one in three voters who said something other than the economy was the most important issue facing the country. No, the theory-of-change strategy failed because the priorities Democrats pursued and the specific solutions they offered were not popular enough that Republicans felt any pressure to go along.
Nowhere was this truer than for health care reform, where controversies over government intervention into medical decisions, deficits, Medicare cuts, illegal immigration, and abortion gradually eroded the fragile support for reform among moderates. Democrats, oversimplifying polling that showed support for “health care reform”, convinced themselves that the time, budgetary resources, and energy spent on pushing through their particular vision of reform would trump the anemic jobs picture in the midterm elections. (And simmer down, public option advocates—there is absolutely no evidence that the purer original reform proposals would have produced a better outcome politically.)
Abandoning the “it’s-the-economy-stupid dodge” will be crucial for progressives moving forward, because in the most important respect the Administration finds itself right where it was in January of 2009. The country is mired in an economic downturn, with few positive signs on the horizon. Progressives can passively wait and see and allow the 2012 election to depend on what happens to the economy between now and then. Alternatively, by taking seriously the theory-of-change strategy, the President and Congressional Democrats can improve their chances of success next time and minimize the damage should the economy remain lousy.
Taking the theory-of-change strategy seriously means discarding the naively hopeful view that the 2008 election was a mandate for progressivism. As I wrote the night of that election, that view profoundly ignored the evidence from 2008 and political history since the Clinton years. The 50-50 Nation lives, and the Administration will have to stake out positions that are both popular and on which Republican-led gridlock will be met with disapproval from moderate voters. Such positions will often be met with howls of protest from the left, but if Democrats are smart, they will look to President Clinton’s success after 1994 as a model for how to get another bite at the apple in two years.
For instance, the easiest way to continue providing some stimulus to the economy is going to be via tax cuts. Rather than continuing to push for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers, Democrats should instead advocate for ex-budget director Peter Orszag’s proposed two-year extension of tax cuts for everyone. Such a stance would be both pro-stimulus and anti-deficit. Both positions are important, for while the economy is the overwhelming priority of voters, the broad question of the size, scope, and effectiveness of government is second, and this is where Democrats’ weakness really lies.
Democrats could also take a moderate position on foreclosures and the barrier to growth that underwater mortgages present. Rather than bailing out distressed homeowners—which polls show commands only weak support, due to perceptions of irresponsibility on the part of homeowners who took out mortgages they could not afford—Democrats could propose incentives for lenders and loan servicers to refinance the mortgages of distressed borrowers. For instance, Ben Bernanke has suggested allowing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure “shared equity” mortgages, whereby lenders would offer lower interest rates in return for an agreed-upon stake in the home’s equity upon purchase or refinancing. Democrats could also offer tax breaks or loans to make up the difference between the selling price of a home and a (bigger) mortgage payoff. This would help homeowners seeking to move for better economic opportunities who are not in danger of foreclosure or delinquency.
Welfare reform is up for reauthorization, and President Obama is in a strong position to preemptively lay out proposals that promote individual responsibility but that also fund the block grant more generously in response to data showing that the program’s growth has not nearly kept pace with the rise in joblessness. Furthermore, he could advocate responsible fatherhood provisions and other family-oriented policies, consistent with his past championing of such initiatives.
On immigration, Democrats should abandon their proposals advocating a general pathway to citizenship—a hopeless cause that will always be seen as rewarding law-breaking—and embrace the DREAM Act, coupled with tougher enforcement. The DREAM Act gives undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as minors the chance to earn residency if they serve in the military or complete some college. It addresses a fairly sympathetic group—the sons and daughters brought over the border by their parents, who never chose to break the law but who now face severe restrictions on their ability to get ahead through higher education because of their lack of documentation.
Finally, on deficit reduction, Democrats should use the housing crisis as an opportunity to begin a conversation around the distortions introduced into the economy by tax subsidies (such as the mortgage interest deduction’s complicity in the mortgage and financial crisis). Larry Summers has suggested that a global cap could be placed on the amount of itemized deductions a taxpayer could take, which would be progressive while avoiding fights over this tax provision or that one. The President can ask whether the federal government should really be subsidizing the purchase of second homes and vacation homes.
Democrats used the first two years of Obama’s first term to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make big changes in domestic policy. Progressives may differ in their evaluation of whether the cost has been and will be worth it, but what is clear is that if 2012 is to turn out differently than 2010, they will have to scale back their ambitions in the next two years.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, 2012 election, 50-50 Nation, abortion, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, big government, bipartisanship, budgetary resources, Bush, businesses, citizenship, Clinton, DREAM Act, economic downturn, Federal Housing Administration, GOP, House of Representatives, illegal immigration, Immigration, individuals, Iowa caucus, Larry Summers, liberal, Mark Schmitt, medical decisions, medicare cuts, moderates, Obama, Peter Orszag, Pollyanna, progressive policies, repealingm health care reform, stimulus, tax cuts, The American Prospect, The Theory of Change primary, Theory of Change, unemployment, upper-income taxpayers, welfare reform
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Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
In the next few days, we’re going to be hearing a lot about how the Democrats lost “independents,” who, after breaking for Democrats in both 2006 and 2008, broke hard this time for Republicans, and for the third straight cycle, voted against the party in power.
And while it’s clear that “independents”, who now make up 37 percent of the electorate (as compared to 34 percent for registered Democrats and 29 percent for registered Republicans) hold the balance of power in American politics, understanding how to win them or even who they are and what they want is less clear.
In short, the best way to win back “independents” is this: Obama and the Dems need a little bit of patience, a lot of attention to pragmatic problem-solving, and the ability to resist the temptation to hunker down and move to the left.
But before getting to details of the political prescriptions, any discussion about the mood independents needs to begin with the observation that “independents” is a much more varied category than almost all pundits make it out to be. Many independents are actually shadow partisans, and a good number even see themselves are too far left or right for the two parties.
According to Gallup, only 43 percent of independents indentify themselves as “moderate,” while 35 percent say they are “conservative “and 18 percent say they are “liberal”. By comparison, 39 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of Republicans identify themselves as “moderate.” In other words, independents are hardly more “moderate” than Democrats.
In a recent survey, Pew broke independents down into five categories: “Shadow Republicans” (26 percent of independents); “Disaffected Republicans” (16 percent); “Shadow Democrats” (21 percent); “Doubting Democrats” (20 percent); and “Disengaged” (17 percent). As the names suggest, the shadow partisans vote somewhat predictably as partisans, while the Disaffected/Doubting class are slightly less reliably partisan, and the “Disengaged”, while most likely to be true independents, are also the least likely to vote – only 21 percent told Pew they were planning to vote this November.
So one way to think of independents is in terms of various degrees of independence. At the core are the true, true independents, who political scientists estimate to be about 10 percent of the electorate. These tend to be the most disaffected, disengaged voters, and lacking the ideological litmus tests of partisans, they also tend to be the most subject to the atmospherics and moods of how the country is doing and how even their own life is going rather than caring whether so-and-so voted the “right way” on some particular issue.
This probably goes a long way in explaining why they abandoned Democrats. Given the struggling economy, there is a desire to do something different, regardless of whether or not it makes sense – what Shankar Vedantam recently described as “action bias.” But it also means that they could turn just as quickly against Republicans, as they have in the past.
The lack of ideological attachment also suggests that while vague sloganeering against “big government” may make a good rallying cry, in all likelihood, few of these performance-based voters care all that passionately about the size of government. Rather, they are latching onto the most available explanation for the current sorry state of affairs. In their gut, they sense something is not working, but don’t have well-formed theories about what, exactly, it is that is not working. And, of course, they’d be hard-pressed to lay out exactly what they’d cut. They are not ideological crusaders. They are just generally cranky.
Expanding to the weak partisans – the so-called “Disaffected Republicans” and “Doubting Dems” – widens the category to bring in both the Republicans who probably dropped from the GOP column in 2006 and 2008 and either voted Dem or stayed home, and the Dems who are presumably crossing over or staying home this time (only 23 percent of the so-called “Doubting Democrats” told Pew that Obama’s policies have made economic conditions better, as compared to 50 percent for partisan or shadow Democrats). The weak partisans are more cynical and more anti-politician than their shadow partisan counterparts, and are accordingly probably more susceptible to the “throw the bums out” mood than their shadow partisans, who maintain a more interest in candidate positions and ideology.
Obviously, there is a mood of unusual restlessness in this country. This election marks the first time in almost 60 years that THREE consecutive elections resulted in House pick-ups of 20 or more seats for one party or the other (Dems picked up 31 seats in 2006, and 21 in 2008). One has to go back to 1952, when Republicans picked up 22 seats, marking the then-fifth consecutive House election of 20+ seat swings.
It’s also worth noting that 74 percent of independents now support the idea of a third party, up from 56 percent in 2003, and almost two-thirds (64 percent) of independents think that, “both parties care more about special interests than average Americans.” (Of course, it’s not just independents who want a third party – it’s also 47 percent of registered Republicans and 45 percent of registered Democrats, and overall, 58 percent of Americans who feel the two-party system is not providing adequate representation.)
So how can Democrats win back and re-mobilize these perpetually disaffected and disengaged types who broke for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008, and then either turned Republican in 2010 or just stayed home?
Partially, they just have to be patient and mature, since two big things are likely to happen in the next two years that will benefit them:
- The economy is likely to improve, and Obama and the Dems should be able to take credit for this if they manage their communications strategy correctly, which will help with the performance-based calculus of these voters.
- Republicans are likely to over-reach politically and spend too much time blocking administration initiatives, and holding investigations that lead nowhere. This may play well with the base, but it is unlikely to impress the non-ideological independents who are more interested in whether something is being done to help them pay their mortgage or get a job. If Obama and the Dems can offer a problem-solving oriented contrast to the ideological rampage of angry Republicans, they will benefit from looking like the adults in the room, just as they did in the 2008 election.
Will this be enough by itself to win back the sliver of disaffected independents who hold the keys to the balance of power? Maybe so, but maybe not.
To the extent that Obama and the Democrats want to win back the lost independents, they need to do their best to show them that they are reasonable, interested in making government work, and capable of making government work.
There will be great pressure, no doubt, from those who want Obama to draw a clear distinction with Republicans by pushing a more clearly left agenda. While this may excite the 20 percent or so of the electorate who are true liberals, it will all but ensure the kind of partisan gridlock that makes disaffected independents disaffected in the first place, further turning them off from politics (and making base voters even more important, which would be stupid, since the Republican base is bigger).
These swing independents don’t care much about ideology. They don’t pay attention to it, and they don’t vote on it. They care whether things are getting better and whether the folks in Washington look like they are trying to make things work.
There are plenty of sensible, centrist initiatives on important issues like energy, education, taxes, and infrastructure that we at PPI will be exploring over the next several months. We believe these solutions are both good policies and good politics for the same reason – because they are moderate approaches that can work, and in the process show some enough of the disaffected, non-ideological independents that Democrats are the party who is actually serious about governing.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, action bias, American politics, anti-politician, balance of power, big government, bipartisanship, conservative, Democrats, Disaffected Republicans, Disengaged, doubting Democrats, economy recovery, Education, energy, Gallup, GOP, hard-core independant, ideological attachment, ideological cursaders, ideological litmus, independents, Infrastructure, left agenda, liberal, moderates, performance-based voters, Pew, pragmatism, pundits, republicans, Shadow Democrats, shadow partisans, shadow Republicans, Shankar Vedantam, swing independents, Taxes, third party, Third way, two-party system, weak partisans
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Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
The Republicans’ midterm triumph obviously is a demoralizing blow to President Obama, but it’s also a second chance. Unlike the scores of Democratic lawmakers who lost their seats, he has an opportunity to win back voters in the volatile center whose oscillations are keeping both parties on a short political leash.
How? By reclaiming the “postpartisan” reformer mantle that appealed so powerfully to these voters during his 2008 presidential campaign, and by crafting a more compelling plan to unleash U.S. economic dynamism.
Lest we forget, Obama ran as an outsider who promised to confront the dysfunctional political culture of Washington. While he’s redeemed other key campaign pledges, like ending torture, winding down the Iraq war, and passing comprehensive health care reform, he’s done little to change the way Washington works.
While independents overwhelmingly (by 15 points) backed Republicans, exit polls suggest they didn’t vote for the Tea Party’s radically libertarian philosophy, or for more political gridlock. In fact, they are defined in large part by their hostility to polarization and strident partisanship in Washington, and by their preference for performance over ideology.
Obama can begin to reestablish his standing with these voters by proposing structural fixes to our broken political system. And he can put the anti-government party on the spot by challenging Republicans to join him in reforming, rather than disabling, government.
Don’t mistake this for the familiar argument that Obama should “return to the center.” His challenge is not to reposition himself ideologically, it’s to break an ideological and partisan deadlock that’s paralyzing our government. For example, Obama could press for the federal clean elections law championed by Sen. Dick Durban that would finance Congressional campaigns with small donations matched by public contributions. He could try to work out a deal with Republicans to limit filibusters, which may now become a weapon in the hands of Senate Democrats (after all, he still has the veto). Or he could propose a lifetime ban on lobbying by ex-Members of Congress and their staffs.
And yes, fixing a broken political system entails working harder to find common ground with Republicans and restoring a civil tone in Washington, as Obama promised today in his post-election press conference today. With Republicans firmly in control of the House of Representatives, he doesn’t have any choice but to search for consensus and compromise – not unless he wants to put his presidency on hold for the next two years.
The flip side, of course, is that House Republicans can no longer claim powerlessness as an excuse for indulging in a politics of pure obstructionism. It’s doubtful they’ll be able to get away with serving up the usual ideological platitudes about limited government and fiscal probity. Now they’ll either have to share responsibility for governing with Obama, or come up with their own ideas for solving the nation’s urgent problems.
That could get ugly, at least at first. Fresh off their big victory, Republicans seem to be brimming with Tea Party hubris. Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner vowed this morning to make repealing “Obamacare” a top priority when the next Congress convenes in January. It’s tempting to say “bring it on,” because this would be a monumental mistake, an ideological overreach akin to Newt Gingrich’s attempts to shut down the federal government after the 1994 midterm. It would embroil the country again in another deeply divisive cage-match over health care reform, even as independents are yelling “focus on the economy” at the top of their lungs.
By developing a new blueprint to spur economic innovation and entrepreneurship, Obama can seize the political initiative, force Republicans to react to him, and quite possibly highlight significant fissures in GOP ranks. On deficit reduction, tax cuts, education, and immigration reform, Obama faces a similar challenge: bring the debate down from the GOP’s ideological nebulae to the concrete policy choices facing the country. He needs to keep pressure on the anti-government party to govern.
In the coming duel with House Republicans, Obama holds many high cards. He commands the bully pulpit, and with it, the opportunity to set the political agenda. He can use the veto to temper and force changes in GOP initiatives, as Bill Clinton did in vetoing welfare reform twice before getting a more progressive version. And if they won’t even come out to play, Obama can run against a “do-nothing” Congress just as Harry Truman did in 1948.
As many former presidents could attest, political life is full of second acts. President Obama’s is just beginning.
Tags: 1994 midterm, anti-government party, Bill Clinton, campaign pledges, civil tone, comprehensive health care reform, compromise, Congressional campaigns, consensus, deficit reduction, Dick Durban, do-nothing Congress, Education, exit polls, federal government, filibusters, GOP, harry Truman, House of Representatives, House Republicans, immigration reform, John Boehner, libertarian philosophy, like ending torture, new blueprint to spur economic innovation and entrepreneurship, Newt Gingrich, Obama, Obamacare, obstructionism, political agenda, political culture, post-election press conference, postpartisan, Republicans’ midterm triumph, return to the center, Second Chance, tax cuts, Tea Party, U.S. economic dynamism, veto, welfare reform, winding down the Iraq war
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