Election 2010

Rick Smith Show: The Right Has No Mandate

Isaiah J. Poole — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:08:29 -0500

On The Rick Smith Show November 5, we discuss the significance of the Democracy Corps/Campaign for America's Future poll that shows that conservatives did not receive a vote of confidence for their agenda from the voters on Election Day. Citing the poll results, Smith says, "Now we start the resistance. Now we stand up, we organize, we fight back. The right is telling us that they've got this great mandate... The reality is not what they think is."

This interview is one of the "OurFuture Friday" segments heard weekly on The Rick Smith Show.

Election Day Poll: Voters Weren't Backing Extreme Right Agenda

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:37:08 -0400

A poll released today by the Campaign for America's Future and Democracy Corps proves what we've been saying this week about the message voters were sending to the White House and Congress. Conservative leaders in both parties are flat wrong to claim they have a mandate for the dramatic government retrenchment that top congressional Republicans are calling for.

What a majority of Americans want is for the government to step up to the plate, repair the economy and set the stage for creating new jobs—not by stepping back and lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy but with policies that revive American manufacturing, fix bad trade deals, and invests in the basics we need for a thriving domestic economy and a growing middle class.

"We were rather surprised in many ways at the fact that the voters in large numbers are still looking for larger answers to an economy that is not working for therm in a situation that they find for the country very worrisome," Robert Borosage said during a presentation of the poll earlier today.

"People are not looking for a cramped vision," pollster Stan Greenberg said. "Folks are not looking for a period of austerity. They are looking for a period of growth and for America not being in decline but being on the rise."

The survey covers interviews with 1,000 people who voted in 2008 on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3, including 114 who decided not to vote in the 2010 election, to determine the issues driving both voters and nonvoters on Election Day.

Some noteworthy poll findings:

Fifty-eight percent of respondents who voted said they were trying to send a message about how dissatisfied they are with things in Washington. But they were not necessarily embracing the Republican party and its policies: Both political parties received equally poor favorability ratings, as did the Tea Party movement. Twenty-six percent of voters said they were trying to send a message to "both parties" with their vote, while only 20 percent cited President Obama and 15 percent said Democrats in Congress.
"Too much bickering in Washington" was the top complaint of voters in the poll (39 percent), followed by "too much spending, taxes and deficits" (35 percent).
A majority opposed the Republican plan to cut $100 billion from domestic spending programs while extending the Bush tax cuts to those earning more than $250,000, while 51 percent said they agreed that those top-end tax cuts should expire and with proposals offered by Democrats to reduce the deficit over time. That's particularly bad news for House Republican leader John Boehner and Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who are making perpetuating the Bush top-end tax cuts plus deep domestic spending cuts the centerpiece of their legislative agenda.
Likewise, 69 percent said that "politicians should keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare" as they attempt to address the national deficit.
Fifty-eight percent of voters said they were much or somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate that promised "to change Washington for the middle class. That means eliminating the special deals and tax breaks won by corporate lobbyists for Wall Street, paid for by American taxpayers and workers' outsourced jobs. Republicans have pledged to protect those breaks. We should cut taxes for the middle class and small business to create jobs."
Compared to a candidate who attacked Democrats for the economic stimulus and health care reform, 57 percent of voters said they were much or somewhat more likely to support a candidate with a "made-in-America" campaign message that points out that Republicans have "pledged to support free trade deals and protect tax breaks for companies that send American jobs to India and China."
Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement that "America is falling behind" in the global economy and that "we need a clear strategy to make things in America, make our economy competitive, and revive America's middle class."
Significant majorities in the poll also supported new investments in infrastructure through a national infrastructure bank, and a five-year strategy for reviving manufacturing in America

Many of the poll results show that progressives have a lot of work to do to convince a broad majority of voters that they can once again trust government to act in their interests. But progressives have an opportunity to make that case and to get voters to embrace their vision for how the economy can work for everyone. It can't be stressed enough: the Democrats got a "shellacking," to use President Obama's word, on Tuesday not because America has fallen in love with so-called "Tea Party" policies, but because Democrats failed to offer their own compelling vision for restoring the economy.

The White House and Democrats in Congress would do well to study this poll. The election would clearly have turned out differently if Democrats had presented a more populist, more progressive and more coherent message about the road ahead.

Election 2010 Poll

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:03:17 -0400

Read full poll results »

For this survey, Democracy Corps and the Campaign for America's Future surveyed 1,000 people who voted in 2008 on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3, including 114 who decided not to vote in the 2010 election, to determine the issues driving both voters and nonvoters on Election Day.

The survey shows that voter fears about the economy drove this election, as well as deep anger at the failure of government to make it work for middle class families, even as Wall Street got bailed out.

Election 2010 Poll Slide Presentation

View more presentations from OurFuture.org.

Highlights from the poll include:

Fifty-eight percent of respondents who voted said they were trying to send a message about how dissatisfied they are with things in Washington. But they were not necessarily embracing the Republican party and its policies: Both political parties received equally poor favorability ratings, as did the Tea Party movement. Twenty-six percent of voters said they were trying to send a message to "both parties" with their vote, while only 20 percent cited President Obama and 15 percent said Democrats in Congress.

LISTEN

Progressive talk show host Rick Smith discusses the Democracy Corps/Campaign for America's Future poll with OurFuture.org editor Isaiah J. Poole.

"Too much bickering in Washington" was the top complaint of voters in the poll (39 percent), followed by "too much spending, taxes and deficits" (35 percent).
Fifty-eight percent of voters said they were much or somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate that promised "to change Washington for the middle class. That means eliminating the special deals and tax breaks won by corporate lobbyists for Wall Street, paid for by American taxpayers and workers' outsourced jobs. Republicans have pledged to protect those breaks. We should cut taxes for the middle class and small business to create jobs."
Compared to a candidate who attacked Democrats for the economic stimulus and health care reform, 57 percent of voters said they were much or somewhat more likely to support a candidate with a "made-in-America" campaign message that points out that Republicans have "pledged to support free trade deals and protect tax breaks for companies that send American jobs to India and China."
Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement that "America is falling behind" in the global economy and that "we need a clear strategy to make things in America, make our economy competitive, and revive America's middle class."
Sixty-nine percent said that "politicians should keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare" as they attempt to address the national deficit.
A majority opposed the Republican plan to cut $100 billion from domestic spending programs while extending the Bush tax cuts to those earning more than $250,000, while 51 percent said they agreed that those top-end tax cuts should expire and with proposals offered by Democrats to reduce the deficit over time.
Significant majorities in the poll supported new investments in infrastructure through a national infrastructure bank, a five-year strategy for reviving manufacturing in America

Read full poll results »

More election analysis from OurFuture.org is on our Election 2010 page.

A Progressive Prescription for the Post-Election Hangover

Darcy Burner — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:25:21 -0400

As you’ve no doubt noticed, election day was brutal for Congressional Democrats--especially in the House, where it appears we’ll lose roughly 60 seats and the majority. Now that most of us have uncurled ourselves from fetal position, there are a few things to note as we plan for what we do next:

First, the brutality was not evenly spread. Progressives fared pretty well, while Blue Dogs and New Democrats bore the brunt of the losses. The Congressional Progressive Caucus lost only three of their 76 House members: Reps. John Hall of New York, Phil Hare of Illinois, and Alan Grayson of Florida. By contrast, it looks as though the Blue Dog Coalition will lose 30 of its 55 members and the New Democrats will lose 27 of their 69 members. This will make progressives a much larger portion of the Democratic Caucus, with almost 40% of the Democrats in the House and roughly three times as many members as the remaining Blue Dogs.

It’s clear that the economy-- specifically unemployment-- was the major factor. With the unemployment rate hovering just under 10% and no light at the end of the tunnel, neither the Administration nor Congressional Democrats managed to clearly describe their plan for putting Americans back to work. Republicans were even more incoherent, but they could run against the failure, arguing Democrats had run up deficits without creating jobs.

In addition, the turnout and voting patterns strongly suggest that a degree of demoralization among the Democratic base played a significant role in the outcomes. Younger voters stayed home—not merely compared to 2008, but with a significant drop-off from 2006 numbers when the last Congressional midterm election was held. The same is true for blacks and Latinos. Women shifted sharply towards Republicans, from favoring Democrats by 14 points in 2008 to splitting evenly on Tuesday.

Suffice it to say for the moment that flagrantly throwing women, gays, organized labor, and Latinos under the bus, breaking campaign promises around which significant elements of your base have organized, abandoning the lofty rhetoric of the campaign to cut backroom deals with the people whose greed and bad faith created the messes we’re in, and actively and repeatedly insulting the people who communicate most often with your key supporters is probably not the optimal strategy for resounding political success. (But hey, bygones, right?)

So what do progressives do now?

Without a governing majority in the House, it becomes far harder for progressives to act as a swing block to win key legislative concessions. Sufficient power has been centralized in House leadership at this point to allow them to keep legislation off the floor at will, to move or not move bills according to their priorities, and to control what’s in any bill and what amendments are allowed to be offered. Since that House leadership will as of January be Republicans, there’s a good chance they will only move the things they believe are Republican priorities and for which Republicans will vote as a cohesive bloc; progressive votes won’t be needed.

Progressives have more tools at their disposal than just votes, however. We’re going to need to fully engage in order to try to keep bad things from happening, build progressive capacity, and set the stage for 2012 and beyond. A few suggestions that ought to keep us busy for the next two years:

Fully understand and use the levers of power of the system in which we’re operating.

Rather than complaining about how unfairly the Republicans are doing things, we need to put the pieces in place that will help us build and win. Some examples of this are:

1. Fix funding mechanisms for progressive infrastructure.
As delightful as it is begging rich people for money all of the time, it’s not a sustainable model--and it has some pretty serious drawbacks when income inequality is a big problem. Instead we need to focus on creating virtuous cycles where our success leads to increased capacity and reliable funding streams.

Strengthening organized labor is a key example of this: if labor can more readily organize workers, those newly-organized workers not only tend to have higher Democratic voting records, but labor then also has more capacity to fund progressive infrastructure. Developing and supporting entities like CREDO, where funding comes as an inherent part of the business cycle, is another way to address this problem.

2. Make it easier for our Congressional allies to do the progressive things we want them to do.
Right now there are serious capacity problems in Congress that make what we want very hard for even the best-intentioned members and staff to do. Staffers are profoundly overworked. The majority of all staff time goes to simply trying to keep up with the barrage of constituent communications. There’s very little time left to do strategically important work such as analyze legislation, create talking points, coordinate with other offices, prepare questions for committee hearings, do proactive communication with constituents, draft legislation, hold hearings, and engage with the press.

There used to be internal think tanks in Congress (such as the Democratic Study Group) to do some of the heavy lifting and organizing by analyzing legislation, creating shared talking points, and driving process reforms. Gingrich defunded them after the 1994 election to consolidate more power in the Speaker’s office while crippling Democrats. The Republicans invest in outside capacity to get those things done by funding the Heritage Foundation to the tune of almost $40 million per year; the Blue Dogs have had Third Way for the last few years with a $7 million per year budget. Progressives have, by contrast, invested almost nothing in Congress-focused capacity. Since a bunch of experienced, top-notch committee staff are about to lose their jobs when the majority changes hands, we have a great opportunity to snap up some of the cream of the crop to make this happen.

3. Change the rules when they’re rigged against us.
Filibuster abuse crippled the Senate, making it impossible to do the things necessary to aggressively create jobs, address climate change, and even fill key positions in the Administration and the courts. The country is suffering as a result. Fix the damned rule.

Progressives are incredibly reliant on the Internet as the backbone of our communications infrastructure, but without net neutrality the phone companies and the cable companies are free to turn off DailyKos while letting you see unlimited amounts of streaming Fox News. Don’t think they won’t: cell phone companies have already refused to allow text message fund-raising for organizations they don’t agree with, such as NARAL Pro-Choice America. Apply pressure to the administration for a Federal Communications Commission fix now.

And I don’t think I need to say anything about Citizens United except to point out that a true fix will require a Constitutional amendment establishing that corporations are not persons, and that such an effort is going to take many years and some extremely skilled organizing.

4. Get incentives right.
Progressives have gotten better about rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies, but if voting against key Democratic initiatives were to cost members support from the Democratic Songressional Campaign Committee or Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and make them less likely to get committee chairmanships, they might be a little better behaved.

5. Fix the way we do campaigns.
We need to be strategic and data-driven. Right now we are rarely either.

We should be targeting districts now in which to recruit progressive candidates, looking at both pick-up opportunities (such as the 61 districts that Obama won in 2008 that will be held by Republicans as of January) and open Democratic seats where we can get a progressive over the primary line. We need to fully support those candidates a full year before the election, ensuring they are on track to have both the money and trained staff to be viable and win. We need to be way more aggressive at using (and sharing!) data to improve campaign processes and targeting. We need make it so that media consultants aren’t rewarded for wasting millions on TV when other communications channels would be more effective. And we need to fully leverage technology to actually reach voters with messages we know they care about.

Start treating politics as the team sport that it is.

We need to stop pretending that we can each focus on our own siloed issue and ignore the rest of the progressive coalition. Unless we build the capacity of the progressive coalition as a whole, we won’t win anything big.

6. Play nicely with each other across issues.
The fate of all big progressive issues is tied to the well-being of the broader progressive coalition and its capacity to move things. If progressive women are demoralized because they feel they’ve been thrown under the bus on choice, or if gay donors withhold their political contributions because Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell isn’t addressed, the broad spectrum of progressive issues bears the cost. Losing House seats because women shifted towards Republicans or because Democrats were greatly outspent makes it harder not only to address choice and Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell but also things like climate change and military spending. This means, in particular, that issue organizations need to think about the full costs of their endorsements of candidates who are bad on key progressive issues, because such support weakens the progressive coalition as a whole.

7. Help pick the right team captains.
In the next week or two the House minority leader for next year will be chosen. It might be a good idea to do everything possible to make it a progressive such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., since the minority leader will set the tone and strategy for the whole House Democratic Caucus.

8. Reward team players.
Progressives have gotten better at taking care of their own – witness the very small House losses for the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona survived his election because progressives swooped in to help. But we should also apply pressure to ensure that people who undermine the Democratic Caucus don’t get rewarded with lots of campaign funding and plum committee positions.

9. Grow the farm team.
We need to nurture progressives who are willing to be bold and engage—whether they win or lose. On the right, think tanks have programs to employ key allies who are between elected positions, and career paths for activists from cradle to grave. On the left we leave people to their own devices and often let people drop completely off the radar after a loss or the end of a campaign. We need to invest in long-term capacity in the form of talent.

Expand the definition of engagement.

10. Find ways to engage people where they are, including online.
While Democrats are out of power in the House, there will be an opportunity to help some of them better reach their audiences via new methods. How might they better use Facebook? Twitter? Online question-and-answer mechanisms? Online video? They’ve got little to do but communicate; let’s help them figure out how to do it well.

11. Think outside of the box, especially with younger people.
Efforts like Drinking Liberally, the Oregon Bus Project and Trick-or-Vote have come up with some novel and very effective ways to make politics fun for younger people. It works, too—there’s measurable impact. Expand those programs nationally while continuing to innovate.

Focus on the things that don’t require Congress to pass laws.

It seems exceedingly unlikely that any progressive legislation will pass the House while it’s in Republican hands. We and our progressive allies in Congress can still do two really critical things:

12. Pressure the Administration to act on things it can do unilaterally.
The Obama Administration can do a whole lot by executive order, administrative rule-making, and strategic appointments. They could, for instance, end Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell, implement net neutrality, stop separating families through deportation, require that all future Federal Reserve appointees agree to prioritize full employment as equally important as price stability, change procurement processes to reward the creation of American jobs, aggressively prosecute war profiteering, begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan as promised, rescind executive orders restricting access to legal abortions, throw the book at companies that break the law to thwart worker organizing, and enforce existing laws and safety regulations for oil and mining companies as a start. They could do that all today. And a concerted effort from the progressive community and our Congressional allies to force their hands might actually work, especially with 2012 now looming on the horizon.

13. Elevate a clear progressive message.
The American people are actually pretty progressive:

While we’re not going to duplicate the capacity of Fox News overnight (nor are we going to match the Heritage Foundation’s $38 million/year), we could do a lot more to leverage progressive members of Congress and the soapboxes they have by:

a. Making sure they have top-notch research on issues and messaging;
b. Ensuring that members and progressive spokespeople get top notch training and practice for media appearances and public speaking;
c. Having people whose job it is to book progressive members of Congress and spokespeople into the press;
d. Building new distribution mechanisms for content and information, whether by radio, on TV, over the Internet, in print, in person, by text message, by iPhone app, or some other way;
e. Coordinating messaging so that different people are saying things that reinforce each other; and
f. Insisting that progressive leaders use communications best practices, such as telling stories. Saying that “women should have access to abortions” is not going to work as well as talking about the woman who showed up at a Catholic hospital late in her first trimester of pregnancy suffering from pre-eclampsia which would kill her if the pregnancy didn’t end. The nun in charge got permission to end the pregnancy to save the mother – and then was excommunicated. The next woman who shows up in that emergency room with pre-eclampsia will die. By eliminating coverage for medically necessary abortions, we’ve ensured that similar stories will play out all over America: women will die because a bunch of lawmakers didn’t understand why what they were doing was a problem.

There is plenty for progressives to do post-election both inside and outside of Congress. Act as if the future of the country depended on it. Because it does.

Election 2010: How Progressives Should Respond

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:51:57 -0400

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, offers his analysis of why Democrats lost the House during the 2010 elections and how progressives can regain their momentum. "I don't think there is any evidence at all that the public is turning conservative," he says, but that Democrats failed to present compelling answers for the economic pain working-class people were feeling.

In this interview, he critiques President Obama's response at his Wednesday news conference to the GOP victories, He also offers ideas on how progressives can make progress for the nation on jobs and economic recovery in an environment where stalemate is expected.

Delusion, Thy Name Is Republican Voter

Brian Dockstader — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:20:01 -0400

A favorite pastime of post-election analysts and pundits is to parse, re-parse, and re-re-parse exit polls and other data to draw out interesting demographic and historical notes. One such data point struck me in particular:

Who's to blame for the economy? Bankers (34%), Bush (29%), Obama (24%). Of those who blame bankers, Republicans hold an 11 point advantage.

Wait, I must have copied that wrong, let me try that again:

Who's to blame for the economy? Bankers (34%), Bush (29%), Obama (24%). Of those who blame bankers, Republicans hold an 11 point advantage.

Sorry, maybe I'm not wearing my contacts...I could have sworn...

Who's to blame for the economy? Bankers (34%), Bush (29%), Obama (24%). Of those who blame bankers, Republicans hold an 11 point advantage.

Really??

So let me get this straight: the voters who are the most upset with Wall Street, who put the most direct blame on bankers for causing the recession and wrecking the economy, voted more for the party that held the White House when the Wall Street bailout was signed into law (hint: it wasn't Obama) and that almost unanimously opposed even the most modest reforms to hold Wall Street accountable and make it so the bankers can't wreck the economy again.

They are mad at Wall Street, yet turned around and handed Wall Street's Puppet Party control of the House? Seriously?

How exactly does one reconcile voting pro-Wall Street while simultaneously believing that Wall Street nearly destroyed the economy? How does anyone who acknowledges the role Wall Street (and thus financial deregulation) played in the economic collapse turn around and vote for the same people who fought hard for the conditions that led to the collapse?--Unless, of course, they like recessions and want more of them.

I guess ignorance really is bliss, at least for the ignorant, until it turns around and screws us all equally. Their inability to inform themselves or connect even the most basic of dots hurts us all.

And the fact that Republican voters are so confused about the cause of the economic collapse, who protects those at fault, and who saved us from the brink of depression, doesn't point to much of a mandate for the Republican Party. If soon-to-be Majority Leader John Boehner (pronounced BAY-ner) were to declare that he had just been given a mandate to demolish Smurf Village and forcibly relocate its inhabitants to Candy Land, it would be about as reality-based as the claim America just signed on to his pro-Wall Street, anti-Middle Class agenda.

It took less than two short years for a majority of Americans to forget the tragedy that was the Bush years. Exactly how bad do conservatives have to wreck this country before Americans' attention will hold for more than an election cycle?

One of the milestones of child development is the formation of the concept of objects. Prior to six months of age, infants can't wrap their minds around the idea of objects as separate, enduring entities. As soon as an object passes out of view, it no longer exists. It is forgotten by the infant and they look for something else to occupy their attention. This is something that dogs are able to do, yet many American voters still seem to have a hard time with, despite the eighteen year minimum age requirement for voting. Connecting dots, understanding elementary causal relationships, and having a memory that outlasts a season of Dancing with the Stars--if more Americans had those skills nailed down the election results last night would have looked very different.

Progressives Fare Better Than Blue Dogs In Contested Races

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:16:32 -0400

The conservative Blue Dog House Democrats, who borrowed heavily from Republican and Tea Party themes in an effort to save their jobs, floundered badly Tuesday. Meanwhile, Progressive Caucus members in contested races had much better success at getting re-elected in spite of some strong right-wing assaults.

Of the 54 seats occupied by members of the Blue Dog coalition, 27 of them were lost to Republicans. (That includes five held by incumbents who either retired or ran for the Senate.) On the other hand, all but three of the much larger group of Progressive Caucus members up for re-election won their seats, including six out of nine caucus members whose races were rated as competitive.

The three Progressive caucus members who lost their seats to Republicans are Reps. Alan Grayson, Fla., Phil Hare, Ill., and John Hall, N.Y. A fourth Progressive Caucus member, Carolyn Cheeks Kirkpatrick of Michigan, was defeated in a primary; her successor, Democrat Hansen Clarke, won 79 percent of the vote Tuesday.

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, is ahead of a challenge from a Tea Party candidate who received not only a record level of individual contributions to a Republican in that district, but the support of Republican Sen. John McCain, who had his own reasons for going after Grijalva. Grijalva was under siege in part because of his strong opposition to Arizona's SB 1070, the law requiring Arizona residents to prove their citizenship on demand. As of midday Wednesday, he was ahead of challenger Ruth McClung by about 2,500 votes.

In Oregon, Rep. Pete DeFazio triumphed over a conservative whose candidacy was supported by an independent expenditure campaign that DeFazio helped expose and turned into an issue in his campaign. DeFazio was targeted because of his support for Wall Street reform, as was Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House committee responsible for crafting the financial reform bill the House passed. Frank's Republican opponent, Sean D. Bielat, raised more than $1.2 million in direct contributions, far exceeding the total money raised by general election opponents in the previous five elections combined. Bielat's contributors included Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and a number of venture capital and investment firms.

Reps. Maurice Hinchey, N.Y.; David Loebsack, Iowa; and Chellie Pingree, Maine, also won races that were deemed potential Republican pick-ups.

On the other hand, there were 13 Blue Dog incumbents among the 17 House Democrats identified by National Journal as the "anti-Pelosi caucus," people who vowed not to support Pelosi's continuation as House speaker if Democrats retained House control. Seven of them lose their re-elections.

At DailyKos, Meteor Blades sums up the takeaway:

Blue Dogs hoping their dilute-everything, obstructionist "moderation" would persuade voters to keep them in office found out that works as well as seeking bipartisan harmony with the current crop of elected Republicans. But the silver lining is that those Republicans - now in the majority - have a year or so to make good on their ludicrous vows to fix the economy they deny having done so much to wreck and to make all the other magical fixes they implicitly promised in the just-finished campaign. When this inevitably fails, the voters will be ready to throw them out (again). Liberals, meanwhile, have the same amount of time to identify districts where better Democrats than many of those who just lost their seats can be elected with the proper organizing, funding and messaging. Overcoming the deluge of money the Republicans will have at their disposal thanks to rightist billionaires and a rightist 5-4 Supreme Court ruling will be no easy task. But, as Meg Whitman just found out in California, money ain't everything.

Eric Hunt contributed research to this post.

Compromise Or Obstruction, Mr. Boehner?

Robert Borosage — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:39:39 -0400

In the wake of what he described as a shellacking, President Obama repeatedly detailed his willingness to sit down with Republicans, share ideas, find areas of agreement, compromise.

But the press didn't mention the elephant in the room -- so to speak. There is little reason to believe that Republican leaders have either the desire or the capacity to compromise -- particularly on jobs.

The Republican job program -- keep all taxes where they are, cut domestic sending by $100 billion next year, repeal the Recovery Act and TARP funding, and give small businesses a tax cut -- will cost more jobs than it creates. Rep. John Boehner, the perpetually tanned future Speaker of the House, was truculent in his election eve remarks, arguing the voters message to the President was "change course." And the way to do that was to make government smaller and cut spending. Rep. Eric Cantor, future majority leader, said the first thing for Republicans to do is to repeal the health care bill. Not exactly, a "let's reason together" position.

Moreover, it isn't at all clear Boehner has the capacity to compromise even if he wanted to. Republicans are now terrified by their tea-party base -- and from Sen Jim DeMint to Sarah Palin, they've made it clear that they will oppose any compromise with Obama.

Worse, there is good reason to doubt that Republican leaders are interested in productive compromise. Sen Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said their number one objective was to make certain that "Barack Obama is a one-term president." He didn't say create jobs, get the economy going, balance the budget, lower taxes. No, the number one objective was to beat Obama.

So what happens if Republicans don't compromise? No boost to jobs. No agreement on rebuilding our infrastructure. Hard pushes to keep taxes where they are, and cut spending. Gridlock insures a stagnant economy. But will Republican leaders care? A bad economy will be blamed on the president, not the majority party in the House. They can show their base that they are against spending, and let Obama take the rap for economic stagnation.

President Reagan and President Clinton recovered from midterm reverses to win re-election on the back of growing economies. If your number one objective is to beat Obama, then a recovering economy is a problem, not a solution. An economic agenda that caters to the anti-government passions of the conservative base even as it contributes to economic stagnation may suit Republican leaders just fine. Obstruction turns to Destruction.

After the Election Disaster

Norman Solomon — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:21:21 -0400

Now what?

We need to build a grassroots progressive movement -- wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party.

The stakes are too high and crises too extreme to accept “moderate” accommodation to unending war, regressive taxation, massive unemployment, routine foreclosures and environmental destruction.

A common formula to avoid is what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the paralysis of analysis.” Profuse theory + scant practice = immobilization.

It’s not enough to denounce what’s wrong or to share visionary blueprints. Day in and out, we’ve got to organize for effective and drastic social change, in all walks of life and with a vast array of activism.

Yes, electioneering is just one kind of vital political activity. But government power is extremely important. By now, we should have learned too much to succumb to the despairing claim that elections aren’t worth the bother.

Such a claim is false. As bad as the election results are, they would have been much worse across the country if progressives hadn’t worked hard against the right-wing juggernaut.

For instance, consider the many hundreds of on-the-ground volunteers who rejected the paralysis of analysis by walking precincts and making phone calls to help re-elect progressive Congressman Raul Grijalva. He won a tight race in Arizona’s southwestern district and will return to Congress next year -- much to the disappointment of the corporate flacks and xenophobes who tried to defeat him because of his strong stance against the state’s new racial-profiling immigration law.

The mass-media echo chamber now insists that Republicans have triumphed because President Obama was guilty of overreach. But since its first days, the administration has undermined itself -- and the country -- with tragic under-reach.

It’s all about priorities. The Obama presidency has given low priority to reducing unemployment, stopping home foreclosures or following through with lofty pledges to make sure that Main Street recovers along with Wall Street.

Far from constraining the power of the Republican Party, the administration’s approach has fundamentally empowered it. The ostensibly shrewd political strategists in the White House have provided explosive fuel for right-wing “populism” while doing their best to tamp down progressive populism. Tweaks aside, the Obama presidency has aligned itself with the status quo -- a formula for further social disintegration and political catastrophe.

The election of 2010 is now grim history. It’s time for progressives to go back to the grassroots and organize with renewed, deepened commitment to changing the direction of this country. If we believe that state power is crucial -- and if we believe in government of, by and for the people -- it’s not too soon to begin planning and working for change that can make progressive victories possible in future elections.

Obama's Top Priority Must Be Jobs, Not Republican Appeasement

Zach Carter — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:08:31 -0400

Economic policy has faced grave challenges over the past two years, hamstrung by obstructionist Republicans in the U.S. Senate and Wall Street-friendly advisers in the Obama administration. With the Republican Party now in control of the House, it seems certain that any major action to create jobs will face tremendous obstacles. This is a global calamity. But the political lesson of the past two years should be clear: all the good PR in the world can't whitewash a terrible economy. For the next two years, President Obama and his Congressional allies must do everything they can to actually improve the job market. Without a better economy for ordinary Americans, Democrats are doomed in 2012.

Ezra Klein presents what he thinks is a rosy view of how policy could proceed after last night. To me, it looks like exactly the sort of empty political gesture that Democrats should be fighting. Ezra envisions Obama and new House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, reaching a grand bargain on economic policy: the payroll tax is lifted for a year, $50 billion in infrastructure spending is approved, the unspent 2009 stimulus money is abandoned, and $400 billion in spending cuts over 10 years are approved.

Ezra calls this the next chapter in an imaginary "universe where the government works." It's more like the next chapter in an imaginary world where the government works, and every policymaker is completely insane. Sure, the deal would convince voters that Democrats and Republicans can pass legislation (if it passed). But the result would be a neutral to negative impact on the job market. Continuing today's avoidable economic suffering is bad enough in its own right, but it's also a political disaster for Democrats.

If Obama heads into 2012 with double-digit unemployment, he will lose. End of story. Voters have a terrible view of Republicans, and they just sent over 60 new Republicans to Washington because Obama didn't bring down the unemployment rate. Those results prove that Democrats' backs are already up against the wall on 2012. Fixing the economy takes time, and we need strong, serious action as soon as possible, or we are headed for political calamity.

Why won't Ezra's policy package work? It has two useful elements—a tax cut to hire more workers, and $50 billion in infrastructure spending. Both of these would help some—if the tax cut was really wildly effective, they might combine to take the unemployment rate down by half a percentage point. But these useful policies would be offset by other spending cuts. And unless we're only cutting $600 hammers in the Pentagon budget, those spending cuts are going to kill jobs. To get $400 billion in cuts, we'd have to find 667 million of those hammers.

Lifting the payroll tax really might help create jobs. We don't know how many, but it surely wouldn't be as effective as simply hiring people outright, and that's what government spending—"stimulus" or otherwise—does. In other words, Ezra has outlined a proposal to kill jobs in order to maybe create some.

Showing that they can work with Republicans won't save Democrats in 2012. Only real economic results will. Aggressive PR about how you really actually did fix things won't convince people who are out of a job or in foreclosure. They know the economy still sucks, and even worse, they know you're not telling the truth.

So Obama also has to get his messaging in order. It may very well prove to be the case that Republicans block all but the most modest of steps to create jobs. Obama can't pretend that these steps are enough, and he cannot hesitate to attack Republicans, holding out hope that maybe, someday they will magically come to their senses and start approving policies that promote growth. He can't keep repeating the Republican talking points Rahm Emmanuel fed him over the past two years—the government can create jobs. Right now, it's the only entity that can.

Getting past "partisanship" doesn't mean cutting whatever crappy deal you can with your political adversaries. It means eschewing political grandstanding for good policy. Without good policy, bipartisanship is a pyrrhic victory.

So Obama has to fight hard for policies that actually bring the unemployment rate down, and he must be willing to defend his policy proposals from Republican attacks, making a clear moral case for why spending to support jobs is a good idea. Republicans know that they can win the White House in 2012 by simply blocking Obama and letting the economy fall apart. They'll do it. They already have. Obama has to hold Republicans rhetorically accountable so they fear the electoral consequences of obstruction enough to vote in favor of policies that actually work.

If Republicans refuse to cooperate, Democrats must at least demonstrate to voters that they are working for voters, not for bigwig bankers. The stimulus package approved in 2009 was too small for a variety of reasons, but one of them was due to the fact that Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner expected the financial system to help revive the economy. It didn't, because the system is dominated by too-big-to-fail behemoths with massive losses embedded in their balance sheets.

It's been very fashionable in D.C. to say that the bank bailouts "worked," even though they were unpopular. But they didn't work—banks aren't lending. And they didn't work because banks are still saddled with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of lousy assets. Regulators are allowing banks to account for those assets at inflated values, which protects the banks from losses. So banks trade securities instead of lending, and slowly recognize losses as they rake in gambling profits. This is why the foreclosure fraud scandal has sent bank stock prices on a downward trend—investors know that enough documentation will spark a new wave of losses, causing big trouble for Wall Street.

So we still need to fix the financial system. Banks must be forced to recognize their losses. Where those losses render a bank insolvent, the bank has to be restructured—shareholders wiped out, creditors taking a hit, and taxpayers putting up money only where doing so prevents a cascade of defaults. This will be painful, but no more painful than watching a recovery without credit.

And if Obama can't get these policies, he needs to at least fight for them. Prosecute the deep fraud in the financial system that is being uncovered every day. Explain to voters that Republicans are blocking job-creation.

These policies will be extremely difficult to secure in the face of anything close to the Republican obstruction we've seen over the past two years. But Democrats simply have no other choice. Without major action on the economy very soon, the White House is already gone.