It all comes down to performance (4.00 / 4)

  Despite a massively sympathetic media, the Republicans lost the last two election cycles because the public (correctly) saw the disconnect between the happy talk surrounding the Bush administration's policies and their own personal realities. The Democrats were perceived as the antidote to that -- and campaigned accordingly.

  How well the Democrats maintain their majorities is entirely dependent on how they deliver on public expectations to undo Republican governance. While it is likely true that the base is more "set" than it was in the early 1990's, it is equally likely true that the base, disillusioned with all the caving to the theoretically-powerless GOP, will stay home in 2010 and the Republicans would then win a turnout-based election.

  So, yes, the Democrats can find a way to blow this. They're certainly trying their best.

   

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

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by: Master Jack @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:02:39 AM CDT

To elaborate on party favorability (4.00 / 3)

In early 1994, both parties had positive net favorability.  Democratic favorability dropped to near zero as the election approached, while Republicans remained high.

Today, Democratic net favorability is at 'normal' levels for the past two decades - similar to early 1994 - while Republican net favorability is at record lows.  I have no idea what could possibly turn views of Republicans around so far, so fast to get them into positive territory by next fall.  But that is what would be necessary for 2010 to look like 1994 from a favorability perspective.  

Republicans could still make gains if Democratic net favorability falls down to the same levels as Republicans, of course, and nobody goes out to vote, but that would be different from 1994.

(Chris - while you were away I had a diary about this here.)

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by: dreaminonempty @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:04:16 AM CDT

The b-word is killing the Dems (4.00 / 6)

 When one's opposition is a political party that's despised by a large segment of the voters, and whose base of support extends little beyond southern white males, why on earth would one make a fetish out of "reaching out" in a "bipartisan" way to them?

 Democratic favorability hinges on public policy accomplishments -- most notably health care and the economy. And the Dems are doing their best to fumble both -- by coddling the leadership of the party most Americans have rejected.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

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by: Master Jack @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:09:55 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I live in Germany, and... (0.00 / 0)

there is a "big coalition" in power right now, which means coalition between the two biggest parties ( a coalition I completely dislike btw. ), but  even though those two parties are governing Germany together there is much harder "fighting" between these parties than there is between dems and repubs and that's just sad. I mean I realize voters say they want bipartisanship, but that's not really true. What they really want is good policy, nobody today cares at all how medicare was made, they are just happy it exists. Anyway i'm digressing, what I meant to point out was how weak dems are when you compare them to their european counterparts.

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by: Mudderway @ Wed Aug 12, 2009 at 18:13:09 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Don't Forget Ideology (4.00 / 6)

Don't forget your various posts over the years on the insider-outsider ideological divide, which also characterized Perot voters.  According to the book  Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence, the NAFTA vote opened the door for the GOP, but it took a carefully-crafted ideological appeal from the GOP to secure Perot-voter support.

As I wrote in my pre-election day diary last November, "The Orwellian "Center": Rewriting 1992-1994":

Indeed, the biggest issue in terms of the larger political dynamic at the time was NAFTA--which Clinton passed in sharp opposition to his party's base and Congressional majority.  In Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence, Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter J. Stone argue persuasively Clinton's embrace of NAFTA, and the humiliating treatment of Ross Perot that accompanied it, opened the way for Republicans to court the Perot vote and ride it to victory in the Congressional elections of 1994.  The NAFTA vote was most instructive on this point:

In the House, Dems opposed NAFTA, 156-102, while Republicans supported it, 132-43.  In the Senate, Democrats opposed NAFTA narrowly, 28-27, while Republicans embraced it, 34-10.  These votes were in late November, 1993.  They signalled the exact opposite of what the current Orwellian narrative claims about Clinton's first term.

Gingrich responded by crafting the "Contract with America" specifically with Perot voters in mind.  It had none of the religious right agenda in it.  Although most Americans never heard of the "Contract"--and most who had heard of it knew little about it--it served a useful function in terms of message discipline, and impacting Versailles narratives.   Yet, little of it got passed into law, and congressional Republicans moved decisively toward the social conservative direction--something most Perot voters weren't particularly keen on.

What happened, in essence, was that Clinton's ill-advised move to the corporate center created a huge populist opening for the GOP to accomplish a political realignment, by adopting Perot's reformist agenda--only they didn't really believe in it.  The reformist swing vote is still out there--as Chris noted back in his post-2004 election analysis, and Obama has tapped into as part of the story of how he won the nomination--as I diaried in May--and is positioned to win it all tomorrow.  This reformist vote is not particularly ideological in left/right terms, but it does have an inherent potential progressive affinity, as Chris argued back in 2004.

In a sense, the Teabaggers & now the town hall thugs are trying to recapture the outsider mantle that drew Perot voters to the GOP. But they have nothing remotely approaching the disciplined coherence the GOP had in 1994.  They are much closer to Pat Buchanan's voters that year than they are to Ross Perots.

Still, Obama's virtual abandonment of his populist veneer after the election does expose the Democrats to considerable risk.  The GOP may not be positioned to take advantage of it, but the Dems risk becoming increasingly compromised, ineffective and incoherent so that the GOP may finally be able to really threaten them in 2012 or 2014.

If "health care reform" passes with mandated insurance, and either no public option, or a virtually crippled one, then the seeds will be planted for a Perotists resurgence, which the GOP will be very keen to exploit.  And since it kicks in 2013, it's the 2014 election I would be most worried about.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:07:34 AM CDT

Key difference (4.00 / 2)

NAFTA (which should be seen more in the context of a long-term ruling class strategy against worker gains) was specifically within the "Triangulation" strategy paradigm:

As a Democrat, you choose an issue strongly supported by Republicans, and you push it through Congress with a majority of Republicans, a minority of (typically) conservative Democrats, against a majority of Democrats.

And the point, besides the legislation itself, is to undermine the liberal and labor Democrats whom you and your DLC allies think are the weakness of the Democratic Party.

I don't think that the general paradigm of needing to base the Democratic Party on Southern and conservative Democrats.  It's not that that has completely gone away, but the numbers have so clearly changed, and the overwhelming strength of the Democrats everywhere but the South, makes the original paradigm a bit outmoded.

That doesn't mean that many Democratic leaders won't be fighting to be the party of choice for upper class and corporate interests.  It's just a different scenario.

(By the way, we should also never forget the harm NAFTA has wrought upon the workers of Mexico which then pushed up Mexican economic out-migration to the U.S., including the destruction of their basic crops production by subsistence farmers, and the destabilization which is leading Mexico to the Colombian narco-paramilitary / military corruption model.)

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by: El Cid @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:22:10 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

"Triangulation" Wasn't Invented Yet (4.00 / 1)

Clinton didn't abopt a "triangulation" strategy until after the Dems lost Congress in 1994.

And, in fact, Clinton was being attacked by DLC purists at this time, precisely for not being "centrist" and anti-liberal enough.  Thus, NAFTA was not then typical of an overall strategy.  Rather, Clinton had pledged to support NAFTA during the election, but only with labor and environmental side-agreements, which were promoted as making the agreement "safe".

Of course it was all BS, though Clinton may have actually believed it when the promises were first made.  (I haven't gone back to check on what's now known about this, so others please correct me if I'm wrong.)  By the time he was ramming it through Congress, however, he was firmly in the clutches of Bob Rubin, and had already backed off of the primary commitment for domestic spending investments, so it was fairly transparently a sham.

Thus, while I agree with you regarding the effect of this sort of move, I don't think we can say this was Clinton's conscious intent.  After all--quite to the contrary of conventional wisdom--Clinton ran the most overtly economic populist campaign of any Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson, if not FDR.  Yes, he wanted to move away from the "liberal" label--but not so much to the right as to a different axis.

Finally, what you say about Mexico is 100% spot on.  It's never talked about, because it contradicts the basic premises of American politics about how these different issues are configured and inter-related (or not).

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 11:28:30 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Rubin became Treasury Secretary after NAFTA passed (0.00 / 0)

Lloyd Bentsen was Secretary from 93-95.  And the last Democratic Senator from Texas to get elected.  

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller

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by: debcoop @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 12:03:44 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I disagree on this. (4.00 / 1)

Yes, I agree that the verbiage of "triangulation" was adopted later.

But the strategy of the President and DLC using the NAFTA wedge as a tactic to weaken and undermine liberal and labor Democrats were clear, known, and discussed at the time.

What's worse, the "side" agreements were dishonest and disingenuine from the start, and labor and environmental groups from the U.S. and Mexico got that from the beginning.  It was sheer deceit and they knew it, primarily because the main chapters of the treaty didn't allow for any such modification.  As a person working with all such groups on both sides of the border, it was obvious, clear, demonstrable, and disheartening at the time.

This was in no way some sort of accidental policy nor was it the result simply of a campaign commitment.  So what that Clinton ran an economically populist campaign?  That mattered zero when it came time to push through the Salinas-designed NAFTA.

Clinton, Gore, and the rest of the Democratic leadership knew very well from the very beginning that this would lead to a coalition against labor and liberal Democrats, this was never an unknown, and they quite consciously thought it a useful method of party control.  I give Clinton quite a lot of credit for being a clever strategist, and this includes when he did things we didn't like.

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by: El Cid @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 13:27:24 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

And yet the Snooty Left (0.00 / 0)

would risk a Dark Age rather than reach out to the run-of-the-mill libertarian.

The lunatic Teabaggers are not Perot Voters. The Perot voter believes in Eisenhower America / small r republicanism.

And that's not a bad thing.

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by: Paul Goodman @ Sat Aug 08, 2009 at 07:49:57 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Financial Bailout? (4.00 / 7)

When I read this: "Democratic support for NAFTA might have made both parties seem just as bad on economics to Perot voters. With equivalence on economic matters, Perot supporters may well have turned to Republicans because they tended to be populist, American-exceptionalist, cultural supremacists."

My first thought was not about bailouts, it was about Healthcare Reform. By not confronting the insurance companies, big pharma, and heathcare providers, the Democratic Party members are looking "equivalent" to GOP, Inc.

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

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by: SpitBall @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:08:17 AM CDT

If the economy doesn't recover (4.00 / 1)

but the TARP banks see their stock prices continue to explode (BOA, for example, has gone from 5 to 15) and there is no health care reform, you might be very right.

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by: fladem @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:15:45 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

What's the crossover (4.00 / 2)

between white working class voters and Perotistas?

Obama lost white working class voters by 18 points and among low and moderate income whites his approval ratings is crashing.

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by: david mizner @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:12:19 AM CDT

IIRC (4.00 / 2)

'94 was the product of two things:
1. Regional re-alignment
2. General Democratic dispair that lead to poor Democratic turnout.

Number 1 is not a significant factor, but if the economy does not recover I very much worry about #2.  

The other parallel I have been researching is 1982.  In August of '81 Reagan's approval was 60, and unemployment was 7.4%.  By January of '82 his average approval rating was 48.6, and unemployment had risen to 8.6%.  In November of '82 Reagan's approval rating was 42, and unemployment was 10.2%.  Reagan's approval rating did not seriously recover until September of 1983, when his approval was 48.5 and unemployment was down to 8.8%.  In February of 1984 his approval was 55, and unemployment was 7.7%.

If today's unemployment is a signal of a turn in the economy, you could argue that Obama is about a year ahead of Reagan.  That would imply that Obama's approval rating might be pretty good in November of 2010 as it begins to recover as Reagan's did when unemployment declined.

That is a big if, obviously.  

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by: fladem @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:13:05 AM CDT

What's missing, what's there (4.00 / 2)

One huge element that turned 1994 from a disaster to a route was the incentive, almost the mandate, for veteran House members and Senators to retire.  Congress critters had traditionally used unspent campaign funds as a retirement nest egg.  Republican "reformers" had railed against this and somehow had gotten a provision passed into law that made 1994 the cut-off point.  Retire by 1994 and a member could ride into the sunset with the cold hard cash.  Wait to 1996 and it was use it ot lose it.  Nearly 40% of the Republican gains came from taking over retiree seats.

A smaller factor was the House Banking scandal.  No, not a bail out or anything really significant but a large number of overdrafts on the personal accounts of House members.

Add in the NAFTA Perot factor and a little delayed effects of some highly partisan gerrymanders mostly via Republican judges at the federal level and voila.

The added factor is how much of the recession is blamed on the Democrats.  We should be Hooverizing Bush and the Republicans instead of courting them.  No investigations.  Democrats being jailed investigated for corruption when the Bushies are turned free. I really don't get it.  Bi-partisan means half a dozen mostly unneeded votes in the Senate and six to twelve votes in the House.  These votes add nothing but merely a facade at great cost to please the Broderites of Versailles.  If there was more of a distinct difference, the incentive of Blue Dogs to hanf with Republicans would be scaled down.  Who wants to be identified with Hoover in a 1934 election?  Who should want to be identified with Bush in 2010?

Those happy talkers who see the end to the recession because unenployment edged down 0.1% are only fooling themselves.  The feel is a lot gloomier and this will hardly do even though Goldman Sachs is proclaiming the birth of a new bull market.  We need to reduce real (not stated ) unemployment by half with at least 2/3 of that coming before 2012.  A jobless recovery, as often stated here, is no recovery at all.

Real unemployment has not reached Depression levels.  It has reached the levels of the Panic of 1893 and the Panic of 1837, the two long-term near-Depressions in our history.  FDR did things and people saw immediate improvement.  Cleveland? hah. The election of 1894 (the one after) saw the biggest turnaround in House history.  The ruling Dems lost 125 seats in a 357 member House.  The Panic of 1837 saw the birth of the Whigs with the election of William Henry Harrison.  (no more anti-Jacksonians) Even the recession-driven election of 1958 saw Eisenhower's Republicans getting pummeled, especially in the worst Senate losses ever.  Wikipedia includes the four new seats from Alaska and Hawaii (two were in 1959?) and shows Democrats gaining 16 seats in the bigger Senate.

Republicans don't have a plan and have a very recent history of screwing up.  But bi-partisan Justice Dept. handling favoring Republicans is stupid beyond belief.
It probably will cost us the Jersey Governorship this year.  Instead of building the crooked, compromised, bigoted Chris Christie up, Holder, etc. should have been tearing the sanctimonious tub of goo down (deliberate reference to ex-Dodger Terry Forrester for Paul Rosenberg).

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by: David Kowalski @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:59:57 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I think the House Banking was very important (0.00 / 0)

It was easy to understand.  It was corruption and it played the same role in undoing the idea of Democrats' honesty as the Jack Abramoff scandal played in undoing the Republicans  

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller

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by: debcoop @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 12:06:25 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

No worries about alternative parties (0.00 / 0)

If, indeed, Ross Perot can be considered a "party", which is a stretch.

There will be no repeat of the Perot candidacy. The M$Ps have seen to it. No more alternative candidates in the debates, and if possible, no more alternative candidates on the ballots.

No need to worry. Alternatives have been de-fanged by the M$Ps and their tight grip on our political system is far stroner than in the early '90's.

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

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by: SpitBall @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 10:50:38 AM CDT

I'm more concerned (4.00 / 3)

about the disengaged Democratic base voters staying home in 2010 like they did in 1994. Right now that seems not only possible but likely.

I'm nervous about a September 1 special election in a competitive Iowa House district. The Republicans have turned over responsibility for running the campaign to anti-tax and anti-gay marriage interest groups. They have enthusiastic anger on their side to drive turnout, and I am not sure whether Democrats will show up. The district leans slightly D in voter registration but is largely rural and therefore not "liberal."

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

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by: desmoinesdem @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 11:37:34 AM CDT

No earthquakes in 2010, but progressively lower turnouts going forward (4.00 / 2)

Until the Thugs can put up candidates who don't come off as mentally ill, all they can really do is try to stop the hemorrhaging and hold on to their strong points. This is why I still don't expect anyone to seriously challenge Obama in 2012, not that that makes any real difference in policy terms.

At this point, I don't see any real partisan competition here. What I do see is ideological competition between the current governing coalition of Rightie Dems and Thugs, against anyone else who doesn't like their classist, authoritarian agenda. That means liberals and progressives, mostly, but will also include non-Objectivist libertarians as well.

The Democratic leadership, in fetishizing buy-partisanship, has basically saved the GOP from destruction. By offering them so much influence over the WH and legislation, the GOP can still raise lots of corporate cash, which sustains them. If they were shut out more often, their fundraising would also diminish with that loss of clout.

In this sense, I look at the Dem leadership's relationship with the GOP as a sort of Good Cop-Bad Cop foil to use against liberals and progressives. It doesn't matter that the GOP will always vote against anything put before them, since they can have great destructive effect on legislation in any case. It's a perverse set of incentives they are operating under and all those incentives are routinely offered up on a platter by leadership and the WH.

It also makes for nice kabuki, to keep the interested masses distracted. This, by the way, is why the healthcare debate was lost many months ago, before it even started in public. That's why Dems pre-compromise on even the most important bills. Bills that will have a profound effect on people's lives. Or at least that's how it looks to me at the moment.

While on the surface, we still have something resembling partisan competition among the polity, in DC we really have a sub rosa one-party state comprised of right-wing Dems and the GOP. Not literally, of course, but functionally for certain.

So as the next few election cycles go, I expect turnout to decline a great deal. If the Thugs stand to make any gains, it will be largely due to Dems and Indies staying home in a despondent daze. At this point, the GOP will probably be happy not to bleed out anymore. The Democratic Party will support Blue Dogs, while leaving progressives out to dry. That doesn't mean we still won't make some gains at the Blue Dogs expense, but I think it will become much harder to do under the current regime.

We're becoming a Perfect Dictatorship, just like Mexico (and other countries as well). We have all the trappings of a democracy (elections, debates, "free speech"), but in the end, it's always the same kleptocratic, oligarchic crew in power. Different faces at times, but the agenda stays the same.

As Neil Innes wrote in the satirical song, Don't Vote, "No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in."

I don't think it's hopeless, but unless we can change our own party, the GOP doesn't matter all that much. It's our own leadership who's busiest working against us now, using the GOP as a fig leaf to excuse their own abominable behaviors.

People will start getting this more and more over time, particularly as their standard of living continues to sublimate. Even if only intuitively, they will stay home on election day, unless they have someone they really want to vote for.


"In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State" -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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by: Emocrat @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 13:09:58 PM CDT

Doesn't measure up to Good Cop-Bad Cop standards (0.00 / 0)

We have Bad Cops and the I-can't-find-my-gun- Cops.  

That's why crazy old ladies get more air time than Health Care.

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

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by: worldlymother @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 13:49:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'm inclined to stay home or write in someone (0.00 / 0)

I'm an ex-Dem, having changed my registration to unaffiliated last year after anything resembling a progressive idea or candidate was fumigated out of the primary process by the Dem leadership. My overriding inclination last fall was to stay home or write in Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders but I did grudgingly mark my optical scanner form for Obama/Biden.

I can't really say I'm disappointed with Obama and the Dems because I never expected that much from them. But that doesn't really motivate me to go to the polls and give the Dems my vote (I hope they're not even thinking about money or time donations from me any more).

In 2010 rather than resign myself to whomever the Dems nominate I think I will either stay home or try to come up with suitable write in candidates instead of accepting candidates whose chief qualification seems to be that they're less worse than the Republican (I'm talking about you Chris Dodd!).

My congressperson (Rosa DeLauro) is fairly liberal but that hasn't stopped her from stumping for more MIC pork for the F-22 or wavering on the public option. Since she usually has about as much meaningful opposition as the 1927 Yankees she won't miss my vote should I find something better to do on Election Day.

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by: roadrider @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 15:04:35 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yes they can! (0.00 / 0)

Because I was one of those Perot voters.

While I went for the tough fiscal love Perot was promoting  - and haven't changed much since then, there is one other area that escapes the pollsters eyes that will come back to bite Dems - I predict.

The sorry ass weak-kneed performance of Harry Reid and other Democratic Senators in addition to those pussy-whipped Dogs in the House is infuriatingly shameful.

People who may hold there nose to vote for Dems in Presidential years will stab themselves in the leg with a fork before leaving the bar to vote for most of the incumbents in the midterms.

My Az01 for instance, unless it gets a Dean/progressive challenger to this traitor Kirkpatrick -we will not support her.

Anger is on both sides and for several reasons- we're just more diplomatic about how to solve problems.

 

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

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by: worldlymother @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 13:40:49 PM CDT

Independent voters (0.00 / 0)

How simular would you say the 'independent' voter is to the 'Perot' voter? And comparing to the 'Reagan Dems'

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by: del @ Fri Aug 07, 2009 at 14:18:11 PM CDT

A simple question: (0.00 / 0)

Have the Democrats done things that would enjoin supporting them?

Science? Yes.
Diplomacy? Yes.

Military Affairs? No.
Economic Policy? No.
Environmental policy? No.

This is a mixed-bag.

I would rather it was a sure thing. Don't you?

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by: Paul Goodman @ Sat Aug 08, 2009 at 07:45:07 AM CDT