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.
I get out of the gym at the Shepherd University Wellness Center and go downstairs to the Cafe where I get my post-exercise coffee and plop down in front of the lobby television. Today on C-Span 3 they were showing an all Republican Health Care panel, supposedly exposing all the things wrong with the countries that have single-payer (read "socialized medicine") health plans.
And, of course, the Congress- men and - women were quoting and basing their arguments on stuff from the "highly non-partisan" Lewin Group.
Karl Rove's plans for a Permanent Republican Majority were based in part on this realization: if the Republican Party wants to regularly win national elections in the future, it must appeal to Latino voters. McCain only attracted around 30%, but maybe things have improved since then:
Click to enlarge.
This shows the percent of Latino respondents in the Daily Kos poll who have a favorable view of the Republican party. Prior to Sotomayor's nomination, that was around 12% - lousy by any measure. Somehow, since Sotomayor's nomination, Republicans have managed to lose half of what little support they had - they're now down to 7%.
And guess what? Latino voters aren't the only ones paying attention. More below.
On Monday, Latino online advocacy group Presente Action -- with the support of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee -- started airing radio ads in key congressional districts holding Republican politicians accountable for not denouncing Limbaugh's racist attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
As Chris mentioned yesterday, this was the fruition of a great idea that began with him.
Well, Limbaugh responded on the air. If you have a strong racist-dar and you felt a weird tingly feeling yesterday, that's probably why.
Limbaugh mentioned DenunciaRush.com (where folks are chipping in to keep the ads on the air) four times. In the course of his response, he said, "Sotomayor's comments are much worse than Macaca" and "She reflects the racial anger, attitude that Obama has."
Rush Limbaugh has no shame -- launching more racist attacks on Judge Sotomayor during a historic week when her credentials are on full display and our community is beaming with pride. Our elected leaders cannot remain silent in the face of these inflammatory comments polluting the public discourse. We demand that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee denounce Limbaugh's latest remarks immediately.
Politico's Glenn Thrush has already reported on this statement, and it'll be interesting to see if any reporters ask Senate Judiciary Republicans directly whether they denounce Limbaugh's latest racism.
