A new Pew poll shows moderate Republicans already growing dissillusioned with congressional GOP leadership, but the GOP is in no mood to compromise, while Dems are evenly split, and everyone seems to think--against mountains of evidence to the contrary--that Obama sticks to his guns. The good news here is that there's tremendous political opportunity here for Obama. The bad news is his history of taking political opportunity for himself--and the party and the country be damned.
As HousesofProgress noted in Quick Hits, a new Pew poll shows a significant 7-point drop in approval for Republican congresional leaders since the November elections--barely two months--while Obama's numbers have barely moved at all. And that's before his almost universally praised (except for here) Tucson speech. Most notably, where Republican leaders have genuinely hemoraged support is among their own moderates, a full 21-point plunge, from levels of support that were equal to conservative Republicans at election time, to levels in the 50s today.
How significant is this shift? Well, strictly speaking, you can't use anything as a proxy for anything else, but the 14% swing in GOP leadership's approval rating (7% lower approval, plus 7% higher disapproval) would pretty much wipe out the GOP mid-term wave. The GOP's propaganda machine--including Fox News, Karl Rove, the Chamber of Commerce, the Koch Brothers & other Tea Party powerhouses--did a masterful job of winding up their base, spreading their propaganda, setting the debate agenda, and demoralizing their opponents. But once the machine had been turned off, and the dust had settled, the baseline reality is that--even with unheard-of unemployment levels--the Democrats probably would have held the House and close to 59 Senate seats if it were merely a matter of people's baseline political views, as suggested by this poll. Of course this is neither an excuse nor a consolation--but is an indication that baseline political reality is not what Versailles would have you believe.
The striking difference in how moderate Republicans feel today is the first piece of the puzzle in terms of what may be to come. Of course Versailles never pays attention to such things when crafting its narratives, but reality has a a way of influencing events anyway, even when all participants struggle to deny it. Other important factors were revealed by another set of questions asked--about whether Republicans or Obama should compromise. And here there is little surprising, but it's still good to have actual data, in place of supposition. Tea Party Republicans are 3-1 opposed to working with Obama, while everyone else in the country is roughly split 50-50 between working together and opposing. Non-Tea-Party Republicans favor working together by 5 points, while liberals and moderate-conservative Dems both fall within 3 points of an even split.
With the Tea Party as the odd men out, refusing to compromise for the good of the country, the stage is clearly set for some sort of repetition of what happened after the failed Gingrich revolution of the 1990s--if, Obama were so inclined, that is. But there is no such indication from Obama's past performance. Obama has repeatedly--and unsuccessfully--tried to avoid confrontation with Republicans by compromising before, during and after virtually every fight. His only real success has been convincing people otherwise, as Pew reports:
One area of relative consensus is that Obama sticks to his convictions. By an overwhelming 77% to 16% margin, Obama is seen as "someone who stands up for what he believes in." This view is shared by 89% of Democrats (including nearly identical percentages of liberals and non-liberals), 79% of independents and 67% of Republicans.
It helps, of course, if you speak primarily in vague generalities that contadict one another, as vague generalities invariably do. This allows you to continuously reinterpret your position as political convenience dictates--and this Obama has proved quite adept at doing.
The question of standing by his convictions was one of a small handful that weren't asked before. All of the questions about Obama's performance that were repeated from Jan 2010 showed a mere 3% shift or less. Table on the flip.
In Quick Hits, The Big Hurt calls attention to a question in a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll.
First, from CBS comes a graph of the topline results:
Then, from vanityfair.com comes the breakdown by income:
To balance the federal budget, which of the
following would be the first step you would take?
TOTAL <$50K* $50K-$100K >$100K
Increase taxes on
the wealthy 61% 67% 58% 46%
Cut defense spending 20 20 22 20
Cut Medicare 4 2 5 10
Cut Social Security 3 1 5 6
* Mislabeled >50K in the original.
The results are hardly surprising, as polls have gotten similar results in the past. Indeed, the General Social Survey has long showed that very few people want to cut Medicare or Social Security, while a great number want to increase spending--but this is not the case for military spending. Even after 9/11, most people remained more supportive of Medicare and Social Security spending than they were of military spending. (See tables & charts & brief discussion on the flip.)
But look a little more closely at the internals. Overall, cutting military spending is five times more popular than cutting Medicare. Among those making less than 50K, it's ten times more popular. But among those making over 100K, it's only twice as popular. Once you get into the stratospheric income levels of K-Street lobbyists and others in the influence biz, it's a good bet that the difference vanishes entirely--and that's even before anyone gets paid to advocate for anything.
Some have suggested that Medicare should be means-tested in order to save money. But these polls show that there's already a sharp income-based difference in levels of support as things stand today. Add in means-testing, so that those making over 100K get nothing out of Medicare themselves--or even just substantially less--and the levels of support would certainly erode even further, thus making it even easier for Congress to act against the wishes of the broad majority of the American people.
On the flip: A set of tables & charts, showing just how upside-down the Versailles consensus is from what the American people want.
Women bring something different to the table; a perspective that is distinct from men’s. Both experiences are equally important, and both need to be incorporated in to decision-making and represented in power-circles if we hope to embrace all viewpoints and make progress as a society. Yet advancement for women and for gender equality seems to have stagnated, and considering how far we are from equality, stagnation is tantamount to decline. When it comes to the percentage of women in national legislatures, the United States ranks 90th in the world, with women holding 90 of the 535 (16.8%) of the seats in the 111th US Congress. These numbers did not improve in the latest election. Recent public opinion research shows that a gender gap persists in perceptions of gender inequality, and sexist messaging not only undermines a female candidate, it significantly reduces her favorability among voters.
Gender Equality
A summer Harris Interactive Poll on gender equality finds that most people believe women still have a long way to go before they are considered truly equal in the United States, but it isn’t a high priority for many. Ninety years after women were given the right to vote, 63% of Americans believe the United States still has much work ahead to achieve gender equality, with a substantial gender gap – 52% of men compared to 74% of women – in agreement with this statement. Over half of men (55%), but less than a third of women (32%) agree that “things are fine the way they are between men and women.” Three quarters of respondents agree that the current state of gender equality is not perfect, but that there are more important issues to resolve first, with no difference between men and women on this statement.
There is a gender gap on several equality issues, such as:
As an emerging demographic group in the United States, and as a growing percentage of the electorate, the political concerns of Latinos – and trends in their voting behavior – need to be well understood and acknowledged by policymakers and elected officials. Historically, Latinos tend to strongly support Democratic candidates, believing that Democrats are more concerned with the issues that are important to this key constituency. Latinos differ from the general population on many major issues, and there is divergence among Latinos - between the native-born and foreign-born - especially pertaining to immigration. Understanding the Latino vote in the 2010 election is crucial, as this constituency is a must-win for the presidential election in 2012.
[H]ere's a chart from this week's edition of Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies. It turns out that over 90% of Americans would prefer to live in Sweden, rather than the US, so far as wealth distribution is concerned:
The chart was based on a paper, "Building a Better America - One Wealth Quintile at a Time" by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and is Forthcoming in Perspectives on Psychological Science. The abstract begins as follows:
Disagreements about the optimal level of wealth inequality underlie policy debates ranging from taxation to welfare. We attempt to insert the desires of "regular" Americans into these debates, by asking a nationally representative online panel to estimate the current distribution of wealth in the United States and to "build a better America" by constructing distributions with their ideal level of inequality.
This is, in fact, as the authors go on to explain, an attempt to essentially operationalize philosopher John Rawls "veil of ignorance" from his Theory of Justice. And the results are truly eye-opening:
First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups - even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy - desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.
What this tells us, in essence, is that our political system is far out of whack in creating the sort of nation that the vast majority of Americans want to live in. The Constitution says in its preamble that it exists in part to "promote the general welfare", and this is what almost all Americans believe that the general welfare looks like. Something is deeply and seriously wrong, and it's not just a matter of liberal opinion. This is cold, hard data.
It's also worth noting the vast gap between the outcomes of the "marketplace" (which is, of course, nothing like the simple, idealized competetive market of early capitalist economics) which are assumed to reflect the totality of individual preferences and the explicityly expressed preferences found in this poll. This is but another indicator of the profound disconnect in the field of economics.
This month, Congress is tasked with deciding how to address the Bush Tax Cuts (passed in 2001) that are due to expire in December. Public opinion seems to be in favor of keeping the tax cuts for the middle class, although there is less consensus around whether high-income households earning more than $250,000 a year should enjoy the same tax cuts. With the economy at top of mind, and deficit reduction hotly debated by pundits, the tax cut debate could shape up to be important for the midterm election.
Having reached it's 75th birthday, Social Security cuts are now being considered by the federal deficit commission. Survey data shows, however, that this action is wildly unpopular with a majority of Americans, as Social Security has historically held high levels of public support, and continues to do so. People have doubts about the program's solvency in the long-term, and this is an issue that needs to be addressed in a meaningful way. Americans are against using the Social Security fund to reduce the federal budget deficit, showing that, despite difficult economic times, the social contract and programs that contribute to the common good are salient.
According to a recent survey by CNN, 55% believe there will inevitably be cuts to benefits eventually, showing a substantial increase from 32% in 2005. In addition, 60% believe the Social Security system will not be able to pay them benefits when they retire, and 62% opine that it is somewhat or very unlikely that the Social Security system will last another 70 years.
The sheer amount of perseverance shown by New Orleans residents in the face of disasters – first Hurricane Katrina, then the great economic recession, and now the Gulf of Mexico’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill – demonstrates how unique and precious this city is to the greater United States. No other US city has known such repeated devastation, or has demonstrated such noble resistance to defeat, such an immense capacity to endure. Although the city and its residents have not been broken by the continued assaults, many are still picking up the pieces.
In the midst of recovery, NOLA residents are hopeful but scars from the hurricane are still visible, according to a new survey by Kaiser Family Foundation, “New Orleans Five Years After the Storm.” Read more in the August Public Opinion Monthly.
Beck says his 8-28 rally will "reclaim the civil rights movement." On the May 26 edition of his radio show, Beck claimed that the civil rights movement "has been so distorted and so turned upside down. It is -- it's an abomination what has happened." He said that his rally would "be an iconic event" and that "this is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement." Beck also stated that though, at the rally, "we're not going to talk about the issues of illegal immigration or anything that's happening in Washington," the attendees of the rally "will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place.
Well, not exactly. In fact, you guys were on the other side. And not just way long time ago. You've always been there and you still are. I'll have more words on this later. But I want to start off the day with cold hard numbers showing quite clearly the persistence of conservative opposition to the civil rights movement. To do so, I'm going to depend on the most reliable indicator of conservatism on the group level, and that is opposition to domestic spending. To establish that point--as well as its connection to hostility to civil rights--I'll need to provide some background data first.
Operational Conservatism & Racial Animus
It's long been established that the core of conservatism in the US is opposition to social spending, aka "operational" or "pragmatic" conservatism--and that this is correlated to opposition to black political power. These were two of many important findings in Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril's landmark 1967 book, The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion, based on surveys done by Gallup in 1964. I wrote about this back in early 2006 at my old blog, Patterns that Connect, in a post, "Conservatism As Identity Politics--Pt2: Hard Core Data ". (It was cross-posted at MyDD, but the charts are no longer there). Free and Cantril used three measures of libgeral/conservative ideology--self-identification, a set of questions devoted to ideology as they understood, and a set of five questions dealing with federal aid to education, Medicare, the Federal housing program, the urban renewal program, and the government's responsibility to do away with poverty.
The ideological spectrum was based on the following (from the book):
Ideological Spectrum (Statements presented with respondents asked to agree or disagree):
1. The Federal Government is interfering too much in state and local matters.
2. The government has gone too far in regulating business and interfering with the free enterprise system.
3. Social problems here in this country could be solved more effectively if the government would only keep its hands off and let people in local communities handle their own problems in their own ways.
4. Generally speaking, any able-bodied person who really wants to work in this country can find a job and earn a living.
5. We should rely more in individual initiative and ability and not so much on governmental welfare programs.
This scale over-estimated ideological conservatives (for one thing, all the conservative answers were "yes" and we now know that other things being equal, people will answer "yes" rather than "no"), but there's little doubt that it did reflect something real, even if exaggerated: plenty of people with conservative sentiments none-the-less support the welfare state. This was neatly shown by comparing all three specturms:
And further clarified by this graphic comparison of the ideological and operational spectrums, which shows that almost all ideological liberals are operational liberals, while even a substantial plurality of ideological conservatives are operational liberals:
The number of Americans who believe -- wrongly -- that President Obama is a Muslim has increased significantly since his inauguration and now accounts for nearly 20 percent of the nation's population.
Those results, from a new Pew Research Center survey, were drawn from interviews done before the president's comments about the construction of an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, and they suggest that there could be serious political danger for the White House as the debate continues.
The president's religion, like his place of birth, has been the subject of Internet-spread rumors and falsehoods since before he began his presidential campaign, and the poll indicates that those rumors have gained currency since Obama took office. The number of people who now correctly identify Obama as a Christian has dropped to 34 percent, down from nearly half when he took office.
....
More than a third of conservative Republicans now say Obama is a Muslim, nearly double the percentage saying so early last year. Independents, too, are now more apt to see the president as a Muslim: Among independents, 18 percent say he is a Muslim, up eight percentage points.
More than anything, what suggests to me is the severe danger that comes from lying to the American people. The Bush Administration did it all the time. Obama promised to clean things up. But he didn't. He lied about that. He thought that if he just played nice, the Republicans would play nice, too. So there was no need to "look backward", and examine all the sordid, mean, and nasty--not to say lethal and illegal--things the GOP had done.
Well, he was wrong. Because there was no catharsis, the bile just kept on building up. And my fear is that now things are just about to get really nasty.
While this is obviously good news in itself, it also begs the question, since there are similar trends with respect to civil rights and women's rights, but we're still dominated by rightwing nonsense political discourse and can't get much of anything done despite having a significant Democratic trifecta, (a) What the fuck does it mean anyway? and (b) Why doesn't it mean more?
But first, a glance at some trend data showing what I was talking about regarding civil rights. While the most intense part of the struggle occured before the advent of the General Social Survey in 1972, there was still some very important shifts in attitude that the GSS managed to capture. And not the least of these was the shift that left Rand Paul's defense of private discrimination in the dust-bin of history. Lest anyone still buy his "I would have marched with Martin Luther King" shtick, here's how actual attitudes toward the "right to discriminate" were gradually turned from the overwhelming white majority position to a margin view:
"We are all in it together" was the sentiment portrayed in last week's opinion polls on the extension of the unemployment benefits. The passing of the bill last week Tuesday was a decision supported by the majority of Americans across the board, regardless of income, race or political orientation.
• According to the CBS News poll, 52% of respondents said Congress should extend unemployment benefits for people currently out of work, even if it meant increasing the budget deficit.
• According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll 62 percent of respondents said Congress should approve another extension.
Some opinions that have been overlooked by the media in the last couple of weeks:
• According to an AP/Gfk poll (PDF), 49% of Americans believe that police crackdowns on undocumented or illegal immigrants unfairly target Hispanics
•The same poll found that 79% of Americans believe that it is somewhat, very or extremely likely that police in Arizona will wind up stopping and questioning Hispanics who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants as they try to enforce this law and 65% considers this a serious problem
(1) Throughout the Bush era, a majority always opposed torture, it was only after Obama took office that a majority expressed support.
(2) Torture supporters vastly over-estimated the number of people who agreed with them, while torture opponents had a far more realistic sense of how public opinion lined up:
Sides summarizes the introductory paragraphs thus [emphasis added]:
Many journalists and politicians believe that during the Bush administration, a majority of Americans supported torture if they were assured that it would prevent a terrorist attack....But this view was a misperception...we show here that a majority of Americans were opposed to torture throughout the Bush presidency...even when respondents were asked about an imminent terrorist attack, even when enhanced interrogation techniques were not called torture, and even when Americans were assured that torture would work to get crucial information. Opposition to torture remained stable and consistent during the entire Bush presidency. Even soldiers serving in Iraq opposed the use of torture in these conditions...a public majority in favor of torture did not appear until, interestingly, six months into the Obama administration.
The Obama presidency, of course, is just when this this madness should have ended. We did, after all, hear from:
(A) FBI interrogator Ali Soufan who testified about the failure of torture to get important information from Abu Zubaydah, which he was able to get rather quickly using established rapport-building FBI techniques.
(B) Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who gave an impressive speech, in which he conclued that "measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its dimensions."
"What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida."
And yet, this was when a majority finally came to support torture!
Americans are known, for better of for worse, for their strong support of “capitalism” and hesitancy towards “socialism.” A recent poll by Pew Research Center confirmed this notion, although perhaps not with the intensity one would expect. When asked what their first reaction to the word “socialism” was, 59% gave a negative response and only 29% responded positively. Their reaction to the word capitalism was exactly the opposite, 52% gave a positive response, and 37% responded negatively.
STATE BLOGS
As 
The striking difference in how moderate Republicans feel today is the first piece of the puzzle in terms of what may be to come. Of course Versailles never pays attention to such things when crafting its narratives, but reality has a a way of influencing events anyway, even when all participants struggle to deny it. Other important factors were revealed by another set of questions asked--about whether Republicans or Obama should compromise. And here there is little surprising, but it's still good to have actual data, in place of supposition. Tea Party Republicans are 3-1 opposed to working with Obama, while everyone else in the country is roughly split 50-50 between working together and opposing. Non-Tea-Party Republicans favor working together by 5 points, while liberals and moderate-conservative Dems both fall within 3 points of an even split.
