OK... while many are watching the NCAA Basketball games, I'll be watching the big sports action of the weekend: The Health Care bill in the House of Representatives.
CSPAN is showing BOTH the debates in the House and the Reconciliation Bill debate in the House Rules Committee (on CSPAN 2). The major players will all be out there, making the points or stalling to try and get the bill bogged down. Whatever happens today will determine what gets voted on tomorrow.
It seems that many of those who are regular guests of this space are committed to a worldview based on some degree of reason and rationality.
That's a handy thing if the "Covert Alarm Locator Apparatus" in your Isaac Daniel® Compass Global 1000 GPS sneakers should happen to fail and you need to find your way back to where the rest of us are; sadly, not all voters are equipped with such a helpful worldview.
Luckily for them, there are lots of conservative "mouth organs" ready to fill the "information gap".
They send out lots of emails every day, spreading their Word, and as a public service I receive several of them; this to help keep track of just what's out there, exactly.
If you ever wondered why otherwise normal people believe some of the craziest things about "Obama's Secret Death Care And National Virgin Sacrifice Program", have a look at some of the things I get every single day, and it might all make a bit more sense.
From 2006-2008, the DCCC made $14,421,187 in independent expenditures on behalf of elven members of the House of Representatives who are currently either "hard no" votes, or confirmed Stupak bloc, on the health reform bill. Those eleven members of Congress are Adler (NJ-03), Arcuri (NY-24), Bright (AL-02), Childers (MS-01), Donnelly (IN-02), Driehaus (OH-01), Griffith (AL-05), Kissell (NC-08), Kratovil (MD-01), Minnick (ID-01), and Shuler (NC-11).
Additionally, the DCCC spent $21,328,946 on eleven members who are currently undecided: Altmire (PA-04), Carney (PA-10), Dahlkemper (PA-03), Ellsworth (IN-08), Kosmas (FL-24), Hill (IN-09), Kanjorksi (PA-11), Mitchell (AZ-05), Perriello (VA-05), Space (OH-18) and Teague (NM-02).
The DCCC also spent a pile of money on the special elections featuring Travis Childers, Bill Foster, Scott Murphy and Bill Owens in 2008-2009, although I could not find exact figures on how much they spent. A safe assumption is that another $10,000,000 was spent in those campaigns, upping the overall total to around $45,000,000 on Democrats who are opposed, or undecided, on the health reform bill.
Furthermore, the DCCC spent $6,703,898 on just Dahlkemper, Donnelly, Driehaus and Ellsworth, all of whom are either Stupak bloc or "Stupak curious."
And to top it off, the DCCC is still actively raising money for nine "no" votes, (Adler, Arcuri, Bright, Childers, Driehuas, Kratovil, McMahon, Minnick, and Nye) along with a slew of undecideds (Carney, Dahlkemper, Foster, Hill, Kosmas, Mitchell, Scott Murphy, Owens, Perriello, Space and Teague).
The DCCC is the easily the largest source of funds for the Democrats who are holding up the health reform bill. And, they show no signs of turning off the spigot for 2010.
There is a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about how Progressives in Congress are bad negotiators. I'd have to say that serving as the Democratic Party serving as the primary source of funding source for the opposition to its legislative agenda takes bad negotiation up a couple orders of magnitude.
Oh yeah--and two committee chairs, Peterson and Skelton, oppose the health reform bill, too. Sweet.
In my previous post, I noted that almost all the counties President Barack Obama won have become more Democratic since 1992, while almost all the counties Senator John McCain won have become more Republican since 1992.
In fact, comparing maps of the 2008 presidential election and the county changes from 1992 indicates a striking correlation.
Here is the 2008 presidential election:
Here are the changes from the 1992 presidential election:
I will attempt to analyze what this means below the fold.
Americans don't know what to think about climate change anymore. A few years ago, the public more or less trusted the science that said human activity was raising global temperatures, but now that Congress and the Obama administration have hemmed and hawed about climate issues, we're not longer so sure.
Forty-eight percent of Americans-more of us than ever before-believe that reports of global warming are "generally exaggerated," according to a new Gallup poll. Climate science hasn't changed, so it's not crazy to look at these numbers and think that conservatives' incessant critiques of climate change may be working.
A perfect political storm
These shifts in opinion started around 2008. Aaron Wiener at the Washington Independent argues that the politics of climate change are driving American opinions about the reality of global warming. The percentage of Americans willing to put the blame for climate change on humans is about equal to the percentage of Americans still behind President Barack Obama's agenda, he notes.
"What was once a broad moral and scientific issue is now a centerpiece of the Democrats' legislative agenda," he writes.
Republicans have taken a political stand on climate change, too, one that reinforces the message that we can afford to ignore global warming. At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum links the Gallup numbers to confusion about Copenhagen and to negative "Climategate" stories about a few climate scientists' unprofessional emails.
But taking a wider view, Drum points out another big problem: "The Republican Party has largely decided that climate change simply doesn't exist. It's a hoax," he says.
Green xenophobia
It's also politically convenient for a party that throws a tantrum every time the president produces a policy idea. But in another corner of the right's world, conservatives are eager to defend the country's environment against the burden of immigration.
Jamilah King reports for ColorLines that Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), which is linked to a conservative anti-immigrant group, is warning that immigration "is pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit."
King refutes this notion, citing reports that population and pollution are not directly linked. "In fact, newly arrived immigrants are probably among the most ecologically friendly folks around," she writes. "They're more likely to use public transportation and less likely to waste food."
Impacts of climate change
Conservatives who'd prefer that immigrants stay on the other side of the border would do better to worry about Republicans' studied blindness to climate change. Without action, global warming could send waves of people north, as places like Mexico grow warmer and can no longer support the same amount of agriculture.
Inter Press Service lays out some of the detrimental effects of climate change on poorer countries, particularly on the female half of the population. Women are more vulnerable to the natural disasters that accompany global warming, and the tasks that they take on, like collecting water and firewood, will grow harder as water becomes more scarce.
Overall, Thalif Deen reports, "The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men."
Slow Senate progress
The Senate is trying to move forward on climate change legislation. A key group of Senators met this week at the White House with President Obama, but coming out, the legislators had only "vague observations" to share about progress, according to Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard.
Part of the problem with the Senate's process is that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have already said that they'll likely discard the sort of cap-and-trade provisions that the House bill used to regulate carbon emissions. From an environmental point of view, the Senate is getting close to doing nothing at all.
"It's really clear that whatever attains 60 votes in the US Senate at this stage in the game is at best an extremely incremental step forward," Gillian Caldwell, campaign director at the environmental group 1Sky, told Sheppard.
The new progressive energy
The Senate seems more eager, along with President Obama, to embrace nuclear energy as a climate solution.
"I happen to be one of the Senators who's concerned about waste," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said at a recent summit, reports TPMDC. "But most progressives in the Senate believe nuclear power is part of the solution at this time."
"If we don't expand nuclear power, there are going to be more coal plants and more oil plants," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) added. "Nuclear power has been accepted as part of the solution [to climate change] among progressives."
Considering the political will the Senate has been able to muster behind climate legislation, one might as well believe that reports of global warming are "greatly exaggerated." After all, you'd think that if there was a potentially catastrophic threat looming in the future, our elective representatives might want to, you know, do something about that.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Glenn Greenwald has written up yet another damning critique of Democrats' dishonest attempts to claim public support for a public option while doing everything they can to kill it.
I'll quote three paragraphs, the first ones, in Greenwald's column. It's revealing how the distraction and circus that is the furor over eliminating the filibuster provided cover for senators looking for any excuse they can muster to prevent real health care reform, and for Democratic partisans falling for it hook, line, and sinker.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats: all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.
But all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.
All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent. Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment of the public option through reconciliation; that number is now above 40, and is rapidly approaching 50. In other words, there is a serious possibility that the Senate might enact a public option if there is a vote on it, because it's very difficult for these Senators to vote "No" after pretending all year long -- on the record -- that they supported it. In fact, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim yesterday wrote: "the votes appear to exist to include a public option. It's only a matter of will."
In the past I have argued that Democratic losses in 2010 will move the Congressional Democratic caucuses to the left. This is because, according to my argument, most of the Democrats who will lose in 2010 will be in the right-wing of the party. Thus, the remaining group of Democrats will be, on average, more left-wing than the current group of Democrats.
However, at least as far as the Senate is concerned, it turns out that isn't the case. Despite prominent center-right Senators such as Blanche Lincoln, Arlen Specter, and Evan Bayh set to leave the Senate by either retirement or the ballot, the Democratic Senate caucus will not see any significant ideological shift in 2011.
For this analysis, I measured the current 59 members of the Senate Democratic caucus according to three oft-cited ideological voting scorecards: Progressive Punch (crucial votes), and DW-Nominate and National Journal. I recalibrated all of those scored along a 0.0 to 100.0 scale, with 0.0 being the most conservative and 100.0 being voting the most progressive. Only scores for 2009-2010 were used.
According to this analysis, the current 59 members of the Senate Democratic caucus have a mean progressive score of 74.7. Debbie Stabenow stands at the median of the caucus, with a score of 78.1.
Removing the Senators who are retiring (Bayh, Burris, Dodd, Dorgan, Kaufman) and the Senators who are currently trailing in their bid for re-election (Bennet, Lincoln, Reid, Specter), the caucus mean would become 75.5. Patty Murray would become the median, at 78.3.
Here is the chart I used, with departing members in red:
The slaughter of the moderates would thus move the Democratic Senate caucus less than 1% to the left. The size of the shift would be the equivalent of the difference between Debbie Stabenow and Patty Murray, whatever that is.
Further, if Barbara Boxer were to lose re-election, which is entirely possible, the Democratic Senate caucus would actually shift slightly to the right on the mean, and remain with Debbie Stabenow on the median.
So, if you are hoping that a Democratic wipeout in 2010 will move the party to the left, think again, at least when it comes to the Senate. Setting fire to the forest will just result in having the exact same forest, only with fewer trees. The Democrats who remain in the Senate will be, on average, virtual ideological twins to the ones who left.
I will try to whip up an equivalent analysis of the Democratic House caucus, post-2010, tomorrow.
In the extended entry, I provide a quick rundown of the Democratic establishment response to Bill Halter's primary challenge to Blanche Lincoln. It's pretty awesome.
LANGUAGE WARNING: Today's story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.
It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against "blue dog" Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.
Now we're not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we're finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone's mind for the past year or so.
The Senate has adjourned for the weekend without passing an extension of unemployment and COBRA benefits. The immediate reason for this is Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning:
Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, is single-handedly blocking Senate action needed to prevent an estimated 1.2 million American workers from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month.
As Democratic senators asked again and again for unanimous consent for a vote on a 30-day extension Thursday night, Bunning refused to go along.
And when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough shit."
This is horrifying. 1.2 million people are about to lose their unemployment benefits because of Senate rules.
Democrats can blame Bunning, but why did they adjourn? Further, why do so many continue to defend procedural rules that make something like this possible?
Democrats are going to get blamed for this, too. People who lose their unemployment benefits are not going to think "oh, this happened because one Senator refused to agree to a unanimous consent on a motion to proceed, so I'll blame that Senator." No. That isn't going to happen.
Democrats are in charge, and they are going to get blamed for this. Democratic attempts to blame this on Senate procedure will ring utterly hollow. Not only do people not understand, or care about, those rules, but it simply sounds wimpy and pathetic for the people running the United States Government to throw their hands up in the air and say "our procedural rules prevented us from doing anything to solve this huge problem. Sorry."
Democrats did not have to adjourn. They could have kept fighting Bunning. Further, they all agreed to the rules under which the Senate operates, and most of them are still defending those rules. Blaming Senate procedure is not going to extend anyone's unemployment or COBRA benefits, and its not going to win many hearts around the country.
Sure, Jim Bunning is currently the biggest asshole in the country right now. However, if you think that procedure is a problem, then start working to change the procedure. If you think that unemployment benefits need to be extended, then don't adjourn for the weekend when those benefits are slated to run out.
This is the third part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Pennsylvania. Part four can be found here.
Philadelphia's Suburbs
There used to be a time when Republicans could count on Philadelphia's suburbs to counter Democratic margins from the city. This is Philadelphia, circa 1988:
Not anymore. Philadelphia, 2008:
Philadelphia's suburbs stretch across four counties: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery. Their Democratic shift threatens to turn Pennsylvania blue for the foreseeable future.
The theory is that if Democrats make a show out of reaching out to Republicans, but Republicans slap Democrats down every time and obstruct for the sake of obstructing, then Democrats will gain politically.
The reality is that Republicans gain in the polls if Democrats fail to pass legislation that improves people's lives, no matter the political theater of obstruction.
But let's take a slightly different angle on the charge that Obama is "naïve" about power and partisanship. Suppose you were as non-naïve about it as I am -- but your job wasn't writing about politics, it was running for president? What should you do? In that case, your responsibility is not merely to describe the situation exactly, but to find a way to subvert it. In other words, perhaps we are being too literal in believing that "hope" and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic, a method of subverting and breaking the unified conservative power structure. Claiming the mantle of bipartisanship and national unity, and defining the problem to be solved (e.g. universal health care) puts one in a position of strength, and Republicans would defect from that position at their own risk. The public, and younger voters in particular, seem to want an end to partisanship and conflictual politics, and an administration that came in with that premise (an option not available to Senator Clinton), would have a tremendous advantage, at least for a moment.
Whether it was part of some eleven-dimensional chess plan or not, thirteen months not the Obama administration, this appears to be pretty much what Democrats have done. Democrats have bent over backward to at least try and make it appear as though they are reaching out to Republicans. And, following the script, Republicans have done a good job of obstructing Democrats for the sake of obstructing Democrats.
The problem for Democrats is that their plan resulted in a massive improvement in the Republican electoral situation, rather than improving their own:
Key electoral indicators, Election Day 2008 and now
Over the last fifteen and a half months, Democrats have lost 4-5% in net partisan self-identification, around 9% in the National House ballot, and around 15% in net party favorability. And, Mitch McConnell is still saying Republicans will obstruct legislation that they will ultimately vote for:
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on "Fox News Sunday" that Republicans "may well" support the jobs bill, though that doesn't necessarily mean the GOP will help Democrats on Monday's procedural vote.
Republicans are paying no political price for their obstruction. Quite to the contrary, they are actually reaping a political reward from it. The Democratic plan of delaying legislation in order to make a big, public show of reaching out to Republicans was a miserable failure.
This is demonstrative not of bad execution of the Democratic plan to reach out to Republicans and make them look like obstructionists, but rather of a faulty theory behind that plan. The problem isn't that Democrats haven't done enough to reach out to Republicans, or to get out the message about Republican obstruction. The problem is that the public doesn't care about political process, which makes attempts to publically reach out to Republicans useless political theater that does nothing except delay important legislation. The public wants their lives to improve, and doesn't care about process stories or the 24-hour news cycle.
This is the second part of a series analyzing the swing state Pennsylvania. The next part can be found here.
Like Florida, and unlike Ohio, Pennsylvania's political geography can be divided into three. The industrial southwest is reddening, the populous southeast is bluing, and Pennsyltucky remains, as James Carville memorably described it, "Alabama without the blacks." (Actually, Pennsyltucky is a fair bit less conservative.)
The following section will concentrate on Philadelphia, the region upon which Democrats draw the most votes.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/ Imagining what the Founding Fathers would think about our nation today always constitutes an interesting exercise. America's strength and enduring democracy probably would have delighted many of them. On the other hand, its political parties and many foreign alliances might have raised an eyebrow or two.
In fact, if one reads George Washington's farewell address, its quite amazing how much of his advice was not followed. "Avoid...overgrown military establishments" (nope); "steer clear of permanent alliances" (nope); "preserving the Union" (the Civil War ruined that one); "avoiding...the accumulation of debt" (funny, that); "party dissension...is itself a frightful despotism" (stopped following that advice even before his death).
Because this is a politics blog, however, the question here is what political party Washington would have belonged to.
Some of the chatter around Evan Bayh's exit has speculated that he is gearing up for a right-wing primary challenge to President Obama in 2012. Bayh did organize a new Senate caucus that has stalled most of President Obama's agenda, and he has $13 million in the bank.
However, it can be safely said that, unless Obama's approval rating declines sharply among Democrats, there is no such room for a right-wing primary challenge. Here is President Obama's approval rating by partisan and ideological self-identification, sorted by the percentage of each group in the 2008 Presidential primary electorate:
Obama job approval by partisan and ideological self-identification, within the Democratic primary electorate
Ideology and Party
% of Dem primary electorate
Presidential Job Approval
Liberal Dem
38%
87%
Moderate Dem
31%
82%
Conservative Dem
9%
75%
Liberal Ind
9%
67%
Moderate Ind
7%
55%
Conservative Ind
3%
27%
Lib-Mod Rep
2%
31%
Conservative Rep
1%
12%
(Source for primary electorate composition: here Source for job approval by partisan and ideological self-ID: here and here)
This amount to an overall approval of 77% among the Democratic primary electorate. Further, only 5% of the primary electorate are self-identified conservatives who not approve of President Obama's job performance, and 10% are self-identified moderates who do not approve of President Obama's job performance.
That gives a right-wing primary challenge to President Obama only 15% of the presidential primary electorate to work with, which is less than one-fifth the percentage of the electorate that approves of President Obama's job performance. Further, it is likely that the self-identified liberals within the presidential primary electorate who do not approve of President Obama's job performance would break significantly against any such right-wing primary challenger. This makes it difficult for such a challenger to even win any delegates, much less actually mount a credible threat to President Obama's re-nomination.
President Obama is going to win the Democratic nomination in 2012, and win it easily. There won't be any other viable Democratic candidates for President until the 2016 primary season starts in late 2014.
Evan Bayh's surprise retirement announcement comes only four days before the filing deadline for the Indiana primary. Since Indiana requires Senate candidates to submit 500 signatures from each of the state's nine congressional districts (by tomorrow!), there is no feasible way for a new candidate to announce and gather the necessary signatures before the filing deadline.
So, this means that the only option left for Democrats in Indiana is for the state party to select a candidate. As such, there will be no primary election:
R.J. Gerard, communications director for the Indiana Democratic Party confirmed to TPMDC that the state Democratic Party would be able to select a new candidate to run in November's general election if no one files petitions with 4,500 signatures (500 within each of the state's nine House districts) to run in the primary.
"I would imagine that it would be the plan, depending on what happens between now and Friday," Gerard said. Gerard did not know whether any discussions are going on with potential new candidates.
This means the Indiana Democrats would avoid holding a primary to choose who will be their nominee in the fall.
Who might the state party choose? The Indiana bench, at least at the Congressional level, is weak.
They could go with Andre Carson, but would Indiana really be the first state to put a Muslim in the Senate? Doesn't feel like a red state in 2010 is when that barrier will be broken.
So, among Indiana Congressman, this basically leaves Joe Donnelly by default. This would not be very exciting, given that Donnelly is one of the most conservative members of the Democratic House caucus. His lifetime Progressive Punch score on crucial votes is only 33.78%, ranking him 245 out of the 255 current Democratic members of the House.
Anyway, given the anti-Washington mood, it is probably a good idea for the Indiana state party to look outside of the Congressional delegation. Hopefully, they can find a Mayor or State Senator in the mold of Eric Massa or Alan Grayson. Anti-financial institution and anti-bailout rhetoric is probably the best chance Democrats have in red districts this year. Also, Massa and Grayson also happen to be the only two members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus from lean-Republican districts. They have the only proven model for Progs in Republican districts.
Update--another Democrat already in the race: There is an existing candidate, Tamyra d'Ippolito. She has 23 followers on Twitter, 2 donations on Act Blue, and a pretty bare bones campaign website. She hasn't collected the signatures to get on the ballot yet, and I doubt that she will given what appears to be a very small organization. But, if she did somehow get on the ballot, the Democratic Party would probably have to defeat her in a write-in campaign. Otherwise, she would be the nominee, and Republicans would cruise in the general election.
Kind of makes me wonder if Republicans will start helping her get on the ballot now..
Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D) is the early name Dem strategists are throwing around. He easily beat ex-Rep. John Hostettler (R) in '06 to capture a centrist district, and he has cut a moderate swath in his 2 terms in the House.
Its true that Ellsworth defeated Hostettler. However, Hostettler is not a strong candidate. If Hostettler were to win the Republican primary, the seat would be very winnable for Democrats.
There are three problems with Ellsworth: he is in D.C., his House seat would be taken over by a Republican, and he is just as right-wing as Donnelly.
They need to pick someone from outside of D.C. who is willing to go after financial institutions. That is the model right now.
I was recently pursing through old political commentary, when I came upon these gems. The context: this was immediately after President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; pundits were thoroughly analyzing the event. The predictable reactions from both parties, however, were most humorous.
Michael Steele immediately shot out a press release criticizing Obama:
The real question Americans are asking is, 'What has President Obama actually accomplished?' It is unfortunate that the president's star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain - President Obama won't be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.
Wow. That was quite harsh. It's generally considered polite to congratulate a guy when he's won an award. And when that guy is our president, disingenuously criticizing him at every turn doesn't exactly do our country any good.
The Democratic National Committee's way of pointing this out, however, is just hilarious:
The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize - an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride - unless of course you are the Republican Party.
The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It's no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore - it's an embarrassing label to claim.
When I read that "The Republican party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists," I chuckled for a good long while. The rest of the statement actually makes a good argument, but that sentence's hyperbole is just ridiculously funny.
The Republican Party has nearly erased their once massive favorability deficit on the Democratic Party.
According to the four most recent public polls conducted on party favorability (see ABC, Fox, CNN and Pew), the Republican Party is now viewed nearly as favorably as the Democratic Party:
Favorability ratings, two major parties, January-February ABC, CNN, Fox and Pew polls
Favorable
Unfavorable
Net
Democratic Party
46.5%
46.0%
0.5%
Republican Party
44.0%
47.3%
-3.3%
Across these four polls, the Democratic lead in party favorability is now only 3.3%. Over the summer, from June through August, the situation was very different in these same four polls:
Favorability ratings, two major parties, June-August ABC, CNN, Fox and Pew polls
Favorable
Unfavorable
Net
Democratic Party
51.0%
40.3%
10.7%
Republican Party
38.3%
52.3%
-14.0%
Over the past six months, the Democratic favorability advantage across these four polls has dropped 21%, from 24.75% to 3.75%. That is a pretty steep decline for six months.
What's worse, the change has come not only from declining Democratic Party favorable ratings, but from improving Republican Party favorable ratings. This is not just seeing the two parties as equally bad, but a real improvement for Republicans. Whatever the cause, a significant percentage of the country seems to have either forgotten or forgiven the problems created under Republican governance.
This is the first part of an analysis of the swing state Pennsylvania. Part two can be found here.
In the dying days of his campaign John McCain mounted a quixotic attempt to win Pennsylvania. Despite his efforts, Obama cruised to a double-digit victory; from May to November 4th, only one poll showed McCain leading.
Two years previously, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum - a Republican politician who had ambitions of becoming president - ran for re-election. A hard-line, nationally known conservative, he was overwhelmingly defeated by challenger Robert Casey.
These two instances provide a sense of Pennsylvania's political climate; the state, while not exactly liberal, naturally leans towards Democratic candidates. The average Republican must overcome a formidable Democratic machine to win Pennsylvania.
