It's like we're in a Saturday morning kids scifi show... the goodguy robot (in this case MSNBC) is telling us that the Repubs are getting ready to attack the Senate's vote on a Health Care Plan any way they can.
To start with, more than one of the Repub Senators (led by Lamar Alexander - R, TN) have called for new "Town Hall" meetings, like the ones the House members had in August - and it looks like the groups of lobbyists are ready to bus the same people in.
At the absolute latest, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe will join the Senate Democratic caucus by Tuesday, June 12, 2012. She may not actually register as a Democrat, but she will start caucusing with Democrats by that date--or even earlier. Here is why:
Snowe is up for re-election in 2012.
The Maine primary is held on the second Tuesday in June. So, in 2012, this means June 12th.
Snowe is losing to a generic conservative primary challenger 59%-31%, among likely Republican voters.
Maine has a closed primary system, meaning that only registered Republicans can vote in Maine Republican primaries. Same day registration is allowed, but that won't change the outcome in such a lopsided campaign.
It is a rock-solid guarantee that conservatives will primary Snowe from the right in 2012. Not only is she pro-choice, but her lifetime Progressive Punch score on critical votes is identical to Arlen Specter's (27%). If they are not going to primary challenge Snowe, they are not going to primary challenge anyone. And we all know they will keep running primary challenges.
In 2012, all major Republican Presidential candidates will endorse Snowe's inevitable primary challenger. This is both because that challenger will comfortably lead Snowe in the primary, but also based on the pattern we just witnessed in NY-23. It didn't take long for all leading Republicans to fall into Hoffman's camp once he proved more viable, and more popular among the Republican base, than the moderate Scozzafava.
Republican Presidential candidates looking to appease the base will make sure that he entire Republican establishment lines up behind Snowe's primary challenger.
In the past, Harry Reid has approached Olympia Snowe about joining the Senate Democratic caucus. He confirmed this to me over the phone more than three years ago, right after the 2006 elections.
Without establishment support in her own party, trailing badly in the polls, and with an offer to join the Democratic caucus, Snowe will bolt the Republican Party and join the Democratic Senate caucus by June 12th, 2012, at the very latest.
So, sometime in the next 945 days, Senate Democrats will pick up another seat.
Might be a time to start preparing a primary challenger to Olympia Snowe of our own in 2012.
It will be weeks, if not months, before the analysis of 2009's off year election results fade from the forefront of political commentary, particularly among conservatives. While the White House spin machine is content with downplaying the results as purely a function of local issues, conservatives have attempted to paint these contests as a referendum on the Obama Administration, or more bizarrely, the next step in "the American people taking back their country". Most seasoned political observers know that off year, special and mid-term elections are characterized by low voter turnout and that party activists play a much greater role in determining the outcome. Viewed through that prism, the 2009 contests fall clearly into the pattern of typical off year elections. Thus, the primary question is this: If the 2009 elections exhibit all of the characteristics of other off year elections, how can they logically be seen as a referendum on the Obama presidency or the opening volley in some great populist uprising. After all, if the American people are so disgusted with the Obama Administration, would the rising chorus of conservative opposition not propel them to action and would we not observe a significant up tick in voter turnout?
Analyzing the Gubernatorial races first, it is impossible to deny that local issues dominated. Democratic strategist Steve McMahon pointed out that property taxes and the increase in insurance rates, both of which are state level issues, are a big part of why Jon Corzine was not re-elected. While not directly involved, scandals played a role in Corzine's demise as well, culminating in last summer's roundup of a cast of characters from politicians to rabbis. Corzine's affiliation with the investment firm Goldman Sachs and his aloof political style did nothing to endear him to the people of New Jersey. As one NPR reporter put it: "Corzine never mastered the art of retail politics." Political columnist A.P. Stoddard pointed on November the 3rd that if Corzine lost it would not be Barack Obama's fault as in New Jersey; Obama had an approval rating in the vicinity of sixty percent in contrast to Corzine's thirty nine percent. In the end, Corzine wound up losing by four percentage points to Chris Christie.
In Virginia, the issues that Republican Bob McDonnell focused on were improving the state's economy, job creation and solving longstanding statewide transportation problems. Of these, only job creation could conceivably be linked back to the Obama Administration. While many voters are skeptical as to just how many jobs the Administration's stimulus has created, most people still believe that Obama inherited a difficult situation, the blame for which cannot be laid at the door of his White House. In contrast to McDonnell, the Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds was a relative unknown who struggled with name recognition till the very end.
What is notable about both races is that the Republican winners eschewed the currently fashionable conservative think tank groupthink, which prescribes a political philosophy that hews to the hard right. As you will recall, following the defeat in the 2008 election cycle, most of the outspoken conservative commentators and theorists claimed that when the G.O.P. moved to the center it lost elections and that future electoral victory could only come by moving further to the right, the further, the better. Neither of the winners in New Jersey or Virginia dwelled on aspects of the "Culture Wars" nor did they resort to the now hackneyed rant about "a slide toward European Socialism." Moreover, both Christie and McDonnell ran upbeat, politically moderate campaigns, devoid of the shrill histrionics that have come to dominate rightwing talk radio or the "political commentators" currently practicing their craft on Fox News. In contrast both Corzine and Deeds ran very negative campaigns to which the voting public now turns an increasingly deaf ear.
Another big issue that can't be ignored is voter turnout. Political writer Paul Loeb summarizes voter turnout as follows: "In exit polls, Virginia voters under 30 dropped from 21% of the 2008 electorate to 10% this year and from 17% to 9% in New Jersey. Minority voting saw a similar decline. In both states, over half the Obama voters of a year ago simply stayed home, more than a million people in both Virginia and New Jersey. With this collapse of the Democratic base, even relatively modest Republican turnout could carry the day, and did." That said if this off year election is characterized by such low turn out levels, how could conservatives make an argument that there is such a dramatic rejection of the Obama agenda? Were the races in New Jersey and Virginia truly a referendum on Obama? If exit polls are any indication, they apparently were not. Edison Research provided a view as to whether or not Obama was a factor in people's decision to vote by way of these exit poll results:
New Jersey:
Support for Obama - 19%
Oppose Obama - 20%
Obama not a factor - 60%
Virginia:
Support for Obama - 18%
Oppose Obama - 24%
Obama not a factor - 55%
Thus in both races over 70% of those who answered exit polls said that Barack Obama did not play a role in their getting out to vote in what were essentially local elections. So much for the idea that the results of this past election constitute a rejection of Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have only moved up since the August Town Hall Follies. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. is polling its lowest approval rating since polling began and only twenty percent of Americans identify with the Republican Party.
Let's now turn to New York's 23rd Election District, where a Republican has held the Congressional seat since 1871. It is in the 23rd, a district that has all of the demographics that favor Republicans, that the newly energized national Conservative movement chose to show just how effective it can be in both defeating a Democrat, upending a moderate Republican and turning the tide on Barack Obama. Prior to the election the district was besieged with conservatives from all over the country including volunteers from prominent conservative grass roots organizations like, The National Organization for Marriage, FreedomWorks, of Tea Party fame, and the Club For Growth, which spent one million dollars backing the conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. Such conservative luminaries like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who predicted a conservative victory, tried in vain to nationalize the election. The cause of Mr. Hoffman was championed by both the Wall Street Journal's editorial board and by the NeoConservative organ, the Weekly Standard. In the face of this unprecedented conservative effort, Bill Owens won by endorsing the Obama Agenda, in an economically depressed region where unemployment has been north of ten percent for some time. This is the second time since the election of Barack Obama, that a Democrat endorsing Obama's agenda has beaten a Republican with national conservative support in a district that demographically favored the G.O.P. The other instance is the special election for Kirsten Gillibrand's vacated Congressional seat earlier this year.
What the outcome of the election in New York's 23rd Congressional District shows is that beyond the world of right wing talk shows, the blogosphere, tea parties and grass roots activism, the appeal of the radical right may be much more limited than had been previously assumed. Could it be that the "August Town Hall Follies" with their tenor of rejection, vitriol and political dramatics have convinced few that conservatives have anything meaningful to offer an electorate that is essentially moderate, but that has been trending to the left over the previous two election cycles? It certainly leaves one to wonder just how effective Sarah Palin can be as a national political figure, seeing as she has yet to have any significant outcome on any race in which she has been involved. After all, isn't she the darling of the base, the one individual that can really turn out a crowd?
Don't get me wrong; there is a wake up call for the Democrats in the results of the 2009 elections and in 2010 there is no guarantee that they won't lose more seats, the incumbent party usually does. If it happened to Ronald Reagan, it can certainly happen to Barack Obama. Obama has clearly lost support among independents and people are rightly concerned about the upward growth in federal spending. At the same time, Americans know that this is no ordinary time and that the situation we currently find ourselves in is not the work of the Obama Administration. But those jumping to the conclusion that 2009 is all that meaningful should heed the words of Purdue University Professor of Political Science, Bert Rockman: "I see no particular harbingers for 2010. While people are deeply unhappy about current conditions, they are also keenly suspicious of Republicans." But the bigger takeaway from all of this is that as far as 2009 is concerned, rumors of Barack Obama's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Based on the facts cited above, claims that a great anti-Obama populist revolution is underway cannot be substantiated. More to the point, the great citizen's revolt to "take back their country" seems only to be alive and well in the delusional fantasyland of tea parties, birthers and far right conservatives who can't seem to abide a climate of much needed political change.
We've been waiting for Obama to make his decision on what to do with troops going into Afghanistan to attack Al Qaida (who aren't in Afghanistan any more) after the rerun of the election which was proven to be fraudulent and allowed Karzai to win.
Whew.
I'm really sick of our playing games in the world. With Karzai's brother accused of being a top Heroin Chief, with General McChrystal calling for more troops (while being criticized for his dealings with the Pat Tillman controversy), with a Civil War going on amid the Afghans that WE CANNOT CORRECT (just ask the Russians)... we are perceived as Occupiers and we should get out.
Rand Paul is in a reasonably close primary for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Kentucky. According to the two polls on the campaign, he trails Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson by an average of 13%. With the money bombs that the Paulites will send his way, with the teabaggers looking to become a force in Republican primaries, and with the general anti-establishment mood in the air right now, he could really win that nomination.
Given this, as a progressive, I have to wonder if there is a good reason why I shouldn't be contributing to Rand Paul's campaign for Kentucky Senate. My quick analysis suggests that such a contribution would be for the good of the cause.
First, if Rand Paul wins the Republican nomination for Kentucky Senate, current polling indicates that it would improve the chances of the Democratic nominee to win the campaign. In every poll, Paul performs worse than Grayson against both potential Democratic candidates.
Second, if Rand is anything like his father--and he certainly seems to be--then even if he were to win the general election, he would defect and vote with Democrats more often than any Republican Senator outside the state of Maine. On the votes that matter, Rand Paul's father, Ron, votes with progressives more often than any other Republican in Congress-- except for Rodney Alexander who was a Democrat until mid-2004 (Ralph Hall, third among Republicans who vote with progressives, was a Democrat until 1995). With a lifetime progressive crucial votes ranking of 23.50%, Paul even leaves supposed Republican moderates like Mike Castle (15.40%) and Mark Kirk (10.30%) in the dust. Paul towers over life-long Republicans when it comes to voting with Democrats.
Grayson, by contrast, would just be another drone in the Republican Borg collective, who we could count on for exactly zero votes of any importance. Paul would legitimately be much, much better than Grayson.
Hell, even the Democrats who might win would probably only be reliable on 50-70% of the most important votes, which is only about twice as many as we would get from Rand Paul. Further, we wouldn't have spend massive amounts of DSCC money, or water down legislation even before it reached the floor, to appeal to / defend Rand Paul's seat. We would get his 25% progressive voting record for free.
Not that I am saying I would work for Rand Paul in the general election. Just that I am saying I don't see why I shouldn't become a Rand Paul activist in the Republican primary. This is a Republican primary where the two main potential outcomes have a clear difference in quality for progressives. Whether or not he goes on to win the general election, Rand Paul securing the Republican nomination for Senate in Kentucky is a win-win for progressives. Why shouldn't I be working to make that happen?
I will have a post up a little later looking at the merits of the Nobel Committee's decision to award President Obama with the Peace Prize. For now, however, I want to focus on the messaging of the award. It is pretty great:
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.(...)
Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.(...)
His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
Shorter Nobel Committee: we really hated unilateral Republican foreign policy. In fact, we hated it so much, we are going to give President Obama the award pretty much for just not being a Republican. Just having the United States talk to other countries is good enough for us.
Seriously--it is hard to read this award as anything but the Nobel Committee giving the middle finger to American exceptionalism as the driving force behind American international relations.
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.
.
Wow! That is just about the most aggressive, hard-hitting rhetoric I have ever read from a Democratic Party committee. It is like Alan Grayson wrote this response.
So, say what you will about the merits of the award--which I will discuss a bit later on--but the messaging is phenomenal. The world gives the finger to Republicans, Republicans can once again cheer against America, and Democrats actually get aggressive in their response messaging. That's not nothin'.
Update: Just to be clear, I like that the DNC is willing to be so aggressive, not that they are calling everyone who disagrees with the award Taliban sympathizers.
As Ian Welsh points out, what passes for a public option in the bills now being considered (a "public option" that isn't even guaranteed to pass, nor should it in its current state) is not scaring Big Insurance or Big Pharmaceutical companies. Why is this? In an earlier blog entry, Welsh describes the reasons why (I've boldfaced the most relevant points):
Because it has no built in customer base, which increases its upfront expenses for advertising and a sales-force significantly. People who have company healthcare plans can't join.
Doctors, hospitals and so on are not required to accept it, and providers will not accept it if it provides below market rates unless it also provides large numbers of patients, which it can do because it isn't pre-populated and isn't a good buy for insureds unless it can provide a low premium, which requires it to pay low rates.
It must make a profit in order to return the money up-fronted to it, and it has only 10 years to do that, but it has to start from scratch, as noted above.
The most that can be said in favor of the weak "public option" is that it MIGHT be used as the dumping ground for the poorest patients, who for various reasons aren't qualified to receive Medicaid - and even then, it's unlikely that such patients will be granted access to adequate health care under the program.
When we talk about the political spectrum, we usually talk about it as though it is a line with a left and a right, like this:
But that's inadequate to describe a lot of the political dynamics that are playing out. There's another axis perpendicular to the first that's become very important recently, which I have been referring to in conversations as the cause-effect axis:
Bipartisanship at the federal level is impossible in any meaningful way right now because there are almost no elected Republicans in the upper right quadrant.
On Wednesday, Open Left launched a petition (the petition link is now inactive) urging Harry Reid to keep the public option in the health care bill that goes to the Senate floor. As I reported yesterday, we gathered 15,688 signatures in 24 hours. On Monday, CREDO Action will deliver the signatures to Harry Reid.
Yesterday morning, just after midnight, the Republican National Committee launched their "Stop The Side Show" petition. More than 24 hours later, they only have 11,776 signatures-barely two-thirds of what you guys did. You single-handedly bested the RNC!
That's pretty cool, although I have heard a rumor that some of the people signing the RNC petition have actually claimed 2,000,000 signatures. They even have photos of those two million people to prove it.
This entry builds on what Something the Dog Said and rossl wrote in their own entries. Before I get to the meat of my own text, I just want to summarize what each of the previous entries state. Starting any political party, or building an existing one, is going to be a lot of hard work and progressives are going to face an uphill battle regardless of what we do. If we're going to break away from the Democrats, however, it's worth the effort; there are parties such as the Progressives (currently in Vermont and Washington) and the Greens, among others, that have made substantial progress at local and state levels.
That's the short version of what Something's and rossl's entries have to say. I highly recommend reading them both in full. Now, on to my own contribution to this subject. Because I want to provide a real-world context to the topic at hand, I'm going to pick an existing political party (The Progressives), though feel free to substitute your own. I'm going to lay out some first steps that can be taken to get the ball rolling.
One more thing before I begin: know WHY you are forming a new political party, know what your goals are, and have realistic expectations about what you hope to accomplish. Don't hold any illusions. Unless either the Democrats or the Republicans implode, chances are you're not going to replace one of them on the national stage. At most, and if you do things right, you'll force the Democrats to shift back to the left. That's it. If a new political party does rise to prominence, great, but that is only icing on the proverbial cake. All you'll want to do is force one of the major parties to experience an ideological shift to the political left. Expect at least a generation to pass before you get this result. It was twenty years between the 1912 election, when Theodore Roosevelt led the Progressive Party and split the presidential election three ways (thus handing it to Democrat Woodrow Wilson) and that of 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the New Dealers to power. It was another generation before the Republicans built their party back up to the point where they could begin taking back political power in government. Finally, don't let the progressive movement become subservient to your party - make the party subservient to the progressive movement. David Sirota explains why far better than I can, so I'll let his words do it.
So it's the day of the big speech, Mr. President, and we got trouble with a capital "T" right here in Health Care City.
What are you gonna do? Do we follow the traditional Democratic Party legislative process of passing...something...at any cost, assuming the entire time that the Left and the Netroots will "go along with the program", or is there a risk that the calculus doesn't work as well today as it did in 1994 and 1996?
Well, lucky for you, I'm a fake consultant, and I know a few things about your "target market", so before you answer that question...we need to talk.
If you've read my previous entries, wherein I tried to get participants to help build a solid platform for progressives to rally around (still a work in progress in need of ideas, submissions, edits, and so on), you probably know that this entry is going to be about joining a "third" party. This shouldn't be surprising; reading my comments on the subject makes my position quite obvious. But unlike many people who talk about a "third" political party more as a vague concept than working reality, I am writing today about one that already exists in at least two states.
The first part of this series discussed how Perot voters formed roughly two-thirds of the Republican gains in the national House popular vote from 1992 to 1994. While certainly there were multiple factors, including the 1994 health care debacle, polls strongly suggest that NAFTA was their primary source of Perot voter dissatisfaction with Democrats. While the bailout could potentially serve a similar function in 2010, we live in a more polarized era with nowhere near the same percentage of the electorate up for grabs as 1992-1994. As Such, a similar swing in 2010 is unlikely.
In the second part, we looked at how dissatisfaction with President Clinton among the American left was substantial, and led to low liberal and labor turnout in 1994. So far, the American left is significantly more satisfied with President Obama and the current incarnation of the Democratic Party. However, there are still worrying signs that Democrats will experience significant drop-offs in turnout in 2010.
This article looks at the third main piece of the puzzle for Republicans in 1994: southern whites. That year, for the first time, Republicans extended their strong performances among southern whites from the presidential level to the congressional level. Not only was this an essential in helping Republicans find enough seats to take over Congress in 1994, but it also gave their "revolution" enough stability to last for twelve years.
In terms of seats, 1994 was not dominated by the South While the current incarnation of the Republican Party is heavily associated with the South, at least in terms of seats won, the Republican wave in 1994 was not disproportionately southern.
In 1994, the eleven states that once formed the Confederacy represented 28.7% (125 of 435) of the seats in the House. That year, 29.6% of the Republican net gain in House seats (16 of 54), came from those eleven states. In the Senate, only three of the nine Republican pickups were from former Confederate states. Fueled by southern whites in the South, and Perot voters everywhere else, 1994 was a national victory for Republicans, not a regional one.
Much more, including a cool historical graph, in the extended entry.
Republicans understand opposition politics: when you're in the opposition, you don't smile bipartisanly, you gnaw at the ankles of the ruling party. Nothing they do is right, everything they do is wrong.
Generally Ian is spot on, and he's right in terms of the burnt earth style of Republican opposition to Obama/Democrats but I'm going to quibble on this one because I've detected a dog that is not barking, and I think the silence of this particular hound says a lot about the utter sham and fraud that is movement conservativism. Namely, where is the conservative/Republican opposition to the Democratic proposal to enforce individual mandates to purchase health insurance?
With all of this hateful and violent rhetoric going on, I haven't seen one Republican leader asking for people to cool their rhetoric, or heard them condemn any of these tactics. My question for Republican party, and their allies at conservative media companies that employ the kind of people making these remarks: what exactly would have to be said for you to distance yourself from these people? How far would someone have to go before you got uncomfortable with it? What would have to said before Fox News considered firing someone?
If Glenn Beck actually directly called for the assassination of someone, would it bother you guys? If Rush Limbaugh just screamed a racial insult referring to the President of the United States into his microphone, would it make you pause at all? If Lou Dobbs went so far as to call for the murder of random Hispanics in the street, would CNN consider firing him? If Michael Savage actually encouraged a caller to his show to go blow up a federal building like Timothy McVeigh did, would any republicans suggest he pull his rhetoric back a bit?
The scary thing to me about what's going on right now in this country is not the violence, because this country has always had violent extremists, and we've survived as a country and democracy. What concerns me, though, is that the Republicans seem to have crossed some kind of line to where they actually tolerate and even defend all this violence. They have stopped doing that now, and are even egging the violence on now in some cases. I fear the answer to my question- what would it take for you to condemn the hatefulness- because the answer seems to be that there is nothing that could happen that would make them say "Stop!" And that's a very scary thing for a democracy.
Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate with all Democrats (minus the ailing Ted Kennedy) supporting her as well as nine Republicans. There has been on ongoing assumption that Republicans are united on everything as demonstrated by the House's unanimous anti-stimulus vote earlier this year. So why did Sotomayor pick up nine Republican votes? Several reasons.
1. Four Republicans who are not seeking reelection voted to confirm her: Judd Gregg, Kit Bond, Mel Martinez and George Voinovich. If you don't have to worry about the crazy right fringe and fundraising you might actually cast a vote based on what you think is right.
2. The Maine Senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, voted for her. They represent a very blue state (Obama +17) and would have a hard time explaining the vote, especially to women and, perhaps, minorities (although not a large Hispanic population there).
3. Dick Lugar voted for her. He has always been more moderate and is close with Obama.
4. That leaves two Senators which may seem surprising: Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Surprising until you consider this news item: South Carolina has the fastest growing Hispanic population in the nation followed by the number two state, Tennessee. Strength in numbers.
Similar dynamics will come into play for health care reform, climate change legislation, etc. The retiring Senators, even without compromises, may be less influenced by campaign contributions and right-wing pressure. The Maine Senators probably want to be reelected and that could be difficult in an Obama+17 state if one or the other cast the deciding vote against a major bill. And local considerations could also lead to a Senator or representative to break from the pack.
The point is, once again, write the best health care bill possible (and the other issues) and put it up for a vote. Don't assume unanimity on the GOP side: make them cast the difficult vote.
UPDATE: And good luck to Republican Senator John Kyl on getting reelected in 2012. More than a third of the state of Arizona will be Hispanic then, Obama will be running for reelection and Kyl only took 53% in 2006 when the Hispanic population was still in the 20s percentage-wise. He voted against Sotomayor and basically called her a liar who's answers lacked substance.
President Obama's approval ratings are, as was probably inevitable in this type of economic climate, declining. The Democratic advantage in the generic congressional ballot is eroding (I see no reason to exclude Rasmussen from that average). Job ratings for congressional Democrats are also going down. Fewer Americans are self-identifying as Democrats, too.
At the same time, Republicans are not showing an increase in support. Fewer Americans are also self-identifying as Republicans, and the GOP has made up no ground in partisan self-identification. Republicans have not increased their numbers in the generic congressional ballot, even though they are closer to Democrats than before. The Republican Party is viewed as, or more, unfavorably than it was in late 2008. Further, congressional Republicans have not seen any increase in their job approval during 2009.
Overall, what we are seeing so far is not a shift toward Republicans from Democrats, but rather an increase in the number of people who dislike both parties and have become "undecided" as a result. As such, if 2010 was a presidential election year, I would say this environment was ripe for a Perot-style, third-party challenge to once again break into the double-digits of popular support. The best bet for such a challenge would be an anti-Wall Street General, given the extremely low popularity of Wall Street and the high favorability maintained by the military.
For such a challenge to reach 15%-20% national support, the American exceptionalist, Perot line of anti-trade, anti-immigrant, anti-war, and now, in our own era, pro-coal is probably the best bet. It wouldn't win, but it would temporarily shake a lot of voters loose. Such voters would mainly come from the Republican coalition.
However, 2010 is not a presidential election. As such, given the consistently poor performance of third-parties in congressional elections, it is highly unlikely that increasing dissatisfaction with both parties will lead to a third-party breakthrough in the midterms. Here are the national popular vote totals for all third parties, combined, in House elections since 1978 (more in the extended entry):
Tom Edsall discusses how whites are the primary demographic target of conservative attacks on President Obama:
With Republican party leaders so constrained by ideological blinders that none of their positions is likely to produce gains among non-white minorities, especially Hispanics, the GOP is finding it has no real alternative but to revert to a "white voter" strategy.
To some extent, it's working. The party's opposition to President Obama's agenda -- particularly his cap-and-trade energy proposal and health care reform plan -- is resonating strongly with disaffected white Democratic voters. Republican grievances about Obama, combined with race-baiting commentary from the far-right ideologues who have become some of the most dominant voices of the modern GOP, have led to a precipitous drop in the president's approval ratings among whites.
There is much to agree with here. This is especially the case if one narrows Edsall's formulation of "white voters" to "white Christian voters," given that white non-Christians vote for Democrats by 3-1 margins that are nearly identical to non-whites.
Republicans have suffered such severe electoral losses in recent years, and become so dominated by right-wing leaders and institutions, there are few moderating voices left to suggest a less hard-line message. Further, while the electorate has become significantly more ethnically diverse (26% non-white in 2008, compared to 15% non-white in 1988), and more religiously diverse (76% of Americans self-identified as Christian in 2008, down from 86% in 1990), according to Pew the Republican Party is composed of the same percentage of white Christians as it was at the start of the decade. Republicans are thus becoming relatively less diverse compared to the rest of the country, and therefore lacks a critical mass of voices that could make them appealing to a wider range of demographic groups.
Perhaps even more basically, the ideology that dominates the Republican Party is drenched in a language of cultural supremacy (anti-immigrant, "Christian Nation," anti-Islam, Birthers, etc.) that is fundamentally at odds with even the presence of more diverse groups in the United States. Intuitively, the conservative movement isn't trying to broaden its demographic base, despite population trends indicating it would be a wise move. Their ideology is largely predicated on fighting against those very trends, not in accepting them and moving on.
However, could such a strategy actually work for Republicans in national elections in either the short-term or long-term? Can they realistically increase their share of the vote among self-identified white-Christians to the point where their deficits among non-whites and non-Christians are, ala the 70's and 80's, once again irrelevant? To put it a different way, would it be possible for the Republican Party to get the entire country voting like large sections of the South, where 70% or more of self-identified white Christians choose the GOP?
As I explain in the extended entry, while a longshot, this proposition is not entirely impossible.
Over the past nine months, Republicans have close the Democratic margin in the national generic ballot by 6.3%:
House Generic Ballot Polling, Pre-2008 Election vs. Current
Democrats
Republicans
Pre-2008 Election*
48.6%
39.9%
Current**
42.6%
40.2%
*Simple mean of final poll from eight polling firms who conducted generic ballots from October 25th forward. Seven of those can be found here, and the eighth is the final Rasmussen generic ballot from the 2008 election.
**Current Pollster.com generic House ballot regression line.
The first thing that needs to be understood when looking at these numbers is that the generic House ballot really is an accurate snapshot of national voter opinion. For example, Democrats won the 2008 national House vote by 8.88%, extremely close to the 8.7% margin predicted by the final polls. 2008 was not a fluke, either. A quick look at final generic ballot averages and final national results show that the generic ballot is a useful indicator of national popular preference at any given time:
While six elections is a small sample size, the overall mean error rate is a low 1.8%, and the median is an even lower 1.5%. Even in the event of a large error rate of 3.7%, as experienced in 2006, a 6.3% swing toward Republicans is still quite significant.
The second thing to note about these numbers is that while the margin has narrowed significantly, Republicans have not gained any new supporters. Rather, all of the movement has come from Democratic losses. The continuing deterioration of the economy (and yes, a slower rate of decline is still a decline) is pushing voters out of the Democratic camp, but those same voters are not embracing Republicans.
The bottom line is that there are a lot of voters up for grabs right now, many more than we are used to seeing in our polarized era. Thinning pocketbooks can alter political allegiances in significant ways.
The Republican party's strategy seems to be to Just Say No as loud as they can.
It doesn't seem to be working, of course, as we've seen in poll after poll. But let's look at the last 20 years of favorability ratings for the parties for some perspective:
Click to enlarge. Dotted lines show elections.
These are net favorability ratings - percent favorable minus percent unfavorable. While Republicans have been bouncing off of record lows for the past three years, in 2009 they've managed to sink well below their prior record. More on the flip.
