David Plouffe returns to the national scene with an ambitious and thoughtful op-ed in the Washington Post today. It is a true must read for anyone trying to make sense of the national environment right now, and where it might be headed this fall.
Also of interest on this busy Sunday morning is a sort of GOP response to the Plouffe piece in the WaPo, this one by the one of the message architects of the Scott Brown race. And of course if it is Sunday there is Frank Rich.
For good measure I will toss in my own essay which ran in Salon earlier this week. It offers some thoughts on where the President's governing narrative might head this year.
Although the Obama administration and some economists have touted the early signs of an economic recovery, the public is, if anything, more gloomy about the economy than it was two months ago. Ratings of the national economic situation remain dismal, with 52% saying the economy is in poor shape, and 38% saying its condition is “only fair.” People’s assessments of their own financial situation are less negative, but the number describing their finances as “poor” ticked up from 22% in June to 26% today.
The most notable change in economic views is the decline in the number of people who expect their financial situation to improve over the next year. The June survey found a nine-point increase in optimism since February (from 54% to 63%). In the current survey, the proportion expecting their financial situation to improve has fallen back to 55%. Much of the change since June has occurred among middle- and upper-income people. There was no rise in the percentage who think their situation will worsen; instead, the number expecting things to stay the same has grown.
My recommendation to President Obama - spend much more time talking about what is clearly the number one issue to voters today, the economy; do more to help improve economic conditions for every day people; and use Labor Day and the G20 meeting as hooks to restart an important conversation with the American people about their economic future.
A new USA TODAY/Galllup poll reports that one-third of Republicans view their party unfavorably.
Apparently this didn't stop Newt Gingrich from pulling in $14.5 million last night at a fundraiser for the House and Senate campaign committees. Gingrich's de facto role as the head of the GOP may be good for fundraising, but it's not so great for favorability ratings. Later today, USATODAY.com will present further polling on "who speaks for the GOP."
The findings of a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll underscore the perilous state of the GOP. Over the past three years, Republicans have lost control of the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they're now struggling to forge a unified response to the popular new Democratic president.
More results from the survey — including Americans' views of who speaks for the GOP — will be unveiled online later tonight at USATODAY.com.
The survey of 1,015 adults, taken by landline and cellphone on May 29-31, has a margin of error of +/— 3 percentage points for the full sample and 5% for the subsamples of Republicans and Democrats.
Asked by Gallup "what comes to mind when you think of the Republican Party," 25% of those surveyed said "unfavorable" and another 1 in 4 offered negative assessments including "no direction," "close-minded" and "poor economic conditions." Sixteen percent said conservative and 7% "favorable."
According to a Bloombergreport on last night's event, Gingrich had the red meat ready to go. From a New York Daily News account:
As Barack Obama fights a recession and attempts to fix the auto industry, Republicans have taken the fight to the president.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama's plan to fix the economy through stimulus dollars and investing federal money into bankrupt companies like GM has "already failed."
"Bureaucrats managing companies does not work, politicians dominating the economy does not work," said Gingrich at a fundraising dinner with about 2,000 Republicans in attendance at the Washington Convention Center Monday night.
This is not the first time in recent weeks that Gingrich has taken a shot at the president. He called Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a 'racist,' before dialing back his comments.
Last night's remarks by Gingrich follow his appearance at a recent "Rediscovering God in America" conference. An article from U.S. News & World Report includes a video compliation of Gingrich's statements at the conference by People for the American Way. According to the former Speaker of the House, "Our First Great Challenge Is Spiritual."
Is it possible that more people -- including Republicans interviewed for the USA TODAY/Gallup poll -- are worried about their pocketbooks than paganism?
President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court hasn’t triggered a conservative firestorm yet; and like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, that’s part of a larger pattern affecting policy well beyond the Supreme Court. Granted, partisan conservatives find themselves facing an engaging, activist, Democratic president with very broad public support at his back. So it's unsurprising that most GOP senators are withholding public judgment on Judge Sotomayor's nomination, and even the RNC has taken the tact, haven't found anything on her -- yet. While Newt Gingrich went glibly over the top by calling the Judge a racist, even Rush Limbaugh couldn't manage anything beyond calling her a hack who would be a disaster on the court.
The problem for partisan conservatives is that nobody listens to them except the bare quarter of the country that already agrees with them. The other three-quarters of us are comprised of partisan progressives, often as sure of their opinions as partisan conservatives, and the great plurality of Americans with views about many things but no unvarying, partisan or ideological take on reality. And every American has fresh memories and often personal feelings about the damage left by the recently departed, partisan conservative Administration. So, almost nobody is interested today in hearing about conservative alternatives to the President's policies and decisions.
Eventually, the not-very-partisan or ideological majority of Americans will accumulate some unhappy memories and personal disappointments about the current Administration, and then they'll be more prepared to at least listen to the conservative message. That could take several years, so for now, the Republican's pitiable default position has become: just say no to the most popular president in a generation. The same partisan conservatives who used to advance fairly radical ideas, many of which became Bush Administration proposals, are now reduced to predictable defenders of the status quo, whatever it happens to be.
Economic policy is suffering from this result. The Administration's approach to the financial market crisis, for example, has been properly questioned as not going far or deep enough into the problem by Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Simon Johnson and other progressives (including myself). But questions from the progressive side have little political significance, since no Administration listens to outside advisors once its proposals have gone public, and everyone knows that friendly critics have no place else to go. The alternatives that matter in politics have to come from the opposition. But the Republican position here has been that government should be involved in the crisis as little as possible, which is as close as they can come to a status quo, when the status itself is a disaster. So the public debate never forced the Administration to sharpen its own thinking and further hone its policies. The result is an economic program which might succeed, or, equally likely, could leave us with a financial system and economy that remain weak for years.
As for the debate over soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor, the Republicans are simply cooked. They can't credibly say she isn't up to the job -- the meme on Harriet Miers -- since her academic record is brilliant. They can't credibly say she doesn't have the requisite experience, since she's been a sitting judge longer than any Supreme Court nominee in a century. And they can't credibly call her a radical, since her opinions place her squarely in the center-left territory occupied by the Justice she's replacing. In this last respect at least, she actually represents the status quo that Republicans currently cling to. But their followers won't hear of it. So they're left with another just-say-no message that's certain to further alienate Hispanics, the largest voting group not yet locked in fully to either of the parties, and many women, the largest voting group period. President Obama can rest easy: It's likely to be a long time before most Americans listen to new ideas from conservative Republicans. The rest of us will have to settle for a debate over a Supreme Court nomination that's likely to be as incoherent and enervating as the recent public discussions of the great economic issues of our time. In both cases, it' a genuine shame.
My new favorite weekly barometer of public opinion shows slight drops for all people and parties this week, but for the first time in many years the "right track, wrong track" measure did not have a higher wrong than right track. That measure came in 48/48, reflecting the growing optimism of the American people in this new age of Obama.
Amazingly the GOP's numbers continue to drop across the board. In this poll the GOP trails the Democratic Party in favorability by 30 points, the Congressional GOP trails the Congressional Dems by almost 30, and Boehner trails Obama by over 40 points. As low as the Republicans started this year - and it was low - it is astonishing that their numbers continue to slowly drift down, not having hit bottom yet. There isn't a whole lot more room for them to go. But they seem to be heading there any way.
After this week should we begin to speculate on whether Cheney is going to run for President this cycle?
NDN is on a roll when it comes to showing up in some of the nation's top op-ed pages on some of the most important topics of the day.
Wrapping up the most recent leg of their tour for the new paperback edition of Millennal Makeover: MySpace, You Tube and the Future of American Politics, NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais had a strong showing with their cutting-edge work and commentary on the Millennial Generation, the largest and most progressive U.S. generation ever.
To wit:
A New Generation Shapes a New Era, Politico, 4/6/09 ...outside the Beltway, America’s demography is steadily and quietly changing in a way that will fundamentally reshape the country for decades to come. A new generation, the millennial generation (born between 1982 and 2003), is coming of age to make over or realign U.S. politics.
The Republican Party ignores young 'millennials' at own peril, Los Angeles Times, 5/10/09 If the Republican Party thinks it has problems now, just wait. The party's incredibly poor performance among young voters in the 2008 election raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of the GOP. The "millennials" -- the generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2003 -- now identify as Democrats by a ratio of 2 to 1. They are the first in four generations to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.
Do you get the Millennial Generation?Christian Science Monitor, 5/15/09 MTV premièred in August 1981, seven months after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as America's 40th president. It revolutionized TV and the music industry as much as Reagan changed the country's politics. And now, just as the election of Barack Obama to the presidency signaled the end of that political era and the beginning of another, MTV is belatedly shifting gears as well.
Simon has also been featured very prominently in the Huffington Post:
The Economic Conversation Enters a New Phase: Putting Consumers Front and Center Now, Huffington Post, 5/14/09 This is a welcome turn in the national economic conversation from the plight of big institutions and the financial system to what is perhaps the most important part of the story of the Great Recession still not adequately understood - the weakened state of the American consumer prior to the recent recession and financial collapse.
NDN Vice President for Hispanic Programs Andres Ramirez had an important op-ed in a special section of Roll Call on the 2010 Census and the growing power of Hispanic voters:
Ramirez: Hispanics Poised to Flex Muscle in Politics, Policy, Roll Call, 5/18/09 In particular, Hispanics stand to gain substantially from the census as the U.S. Hispanic population continues its rapid rise. And it is projected that Hispanics will represent at least 16 percent of the American work force by 2014.
NDN has an important new addition to our team, Nelson Cunningham, Chair of our Latin America Policy Initiative. Cunningham kicked off his chairmanship with a strong essay in the Chicago Tribune:
Hearing 'friend' in Trinidad, Chicago Tribune, 4/22/09 as Hugo Chavez...“friended” President Barack Obama at the 34-nation Summit of the Americas last weekend in Trinidad, he handed him a book about 500 years of neo-colonialist exploitation of Latin America by Europe and the United States. But the gesture was clear, as was the broad grin on Chavez’s face as he shook Obama’s hand on the summit’s first day. So was Chavez’s announcement that he would send a new ambassador to Washington, seven months after pulling out his last envoy in the waning days of the Bush administration.
And last, but by no means least, NDN Green Project Director Michael Moynihan weighed on on grist.org about one of the hottest debates in Congress:
Cap and Market This Year, grist.org, 5/14/09 The question is what does the compromise on auctioning credits mean? In my view, it is secondary to the greater goal of moving a bill forward. Accordingly, the deal reached by Chairman Henry Waxman and Congressman Ed Markey with other Members should be hailed as a victory by everyone who cares about the climate.
On July 25, I wrote about U.S. Sen. John McCain's newfound ability to raise massive amounts of money from some folks who hadn't been giving him the time of day -- or much money, for that matter -- before he found religion and reversed his long-held position against offshore drilling.
And BOOM! McCain hit a gusher, which I touched on here.
According to a report from The Washington Post:
Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.
McCain and his Republican buddies haven't let up since. They believe they've found their holy grail in convincing the American people -- frustrated and burdened by $4 a gallon gas prices -- that offshore drilling will immediately lower those skyhigh prices. There's just one little problem: it's just not true. McCain has admitted it. Even the American Petroleum Institute has admitted it. So why does McCain keep talking about offshore drilling as the solution to all of our nation's problems?
A few more follow-the-money details have emerged:
In a witty (but all-too-familiar) article in today's Los Angeles Times, reporter Dan Morain writes:
DEPARTMENT OF COINCIDENCES
Oilman greases skids for McCain campaign
Among the donors from John B. Hess' company are an office manager and her husband, who pony up $57,000.
August 5, 2008
On June 10, John B. Hess, a top executive at the oil company with his family name, summoned friends to the 21 Club, a former speakeasy in Manhattan, and delivered $285,000 to John McCain and the Republican National Committee.
A week later, McCain traveled to Texas and announced his support for offshore oil drilling.
Hess Corp. is an East Coast gasoline retailer with major refining and exploration operations, some of which happen to be offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hess was one of half a dozen hosts who tapped friends for the maximum $28,500 donation to the GOP. Others included investor Henry Kravis and hedge fund mogul Paul E. Singer.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said there was no link between the money and McCain's stand. "Mr. Hess was fundraising before Sen. McCain made the announcement," he said.
Most Hess donors were company attorneys, vice presidents or, like John Hess, board members. But one, Alice Rocchio, listed her job as office manager, and she gave $28,500, as did her husband, Amtrak foreman Pasquale Rocchio.
The information emerged in a Campaign Money Watch report last week, followed by an item Monday on Talking Points Memo, which wondered how they could afford to give $57,000 to a political campaign. Alice Rocchio told TPM that McCain was her favorite candidate and the money was the Rocchios' to give.
The Rocchios also gave $4,600 in February, when Hess employees -- one of whom listed his occupation as "driver" -- delivered $23,000 to McCain. The couple have not given to any other federal campaign for at least the last decade, according to Federal Election Commission records.
But records suggest that the Rocchios are not without resources. The couple listed an address in Flushing, N.Y., and also have an Arizona home.
And this from the Houston Chronicle:
August 05, 2008
McCain's contributions from energy interests spike
John McCain received prolonged applause from the oil executives who gathered June 17 in Houston to hear the Republican presidential candidate's speech on energy policy.
Now it appears that McCain received something else: Lots of campaign contributions.
John McCain's contributions from energy industry interests happened to spike right around his Houston speech (and a fundraising tour of Texas).
Is it a coincidence, the result of aggressive Texas outreach -- or is it a show of gratitude? Let us know what you think.
Chronicle photo
John McCain greets well-wishers after his June 17 energy speech in Houston.
Here's the list:
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ENERGY INTERESTS
DATE.....................AMOUNT
April......................$40,000
May.......................$96,950
June 1-15.............$219,550
June 16-17...........$303,400
June 18-30...........$313,950
For the complete text of McCain's Houston speech, click here.
To read the Houston Chronicle's story on McCain's June 17 speech, click here.
Oh, and there may be just a few more reasons why McCain supports offshore drilling. Maybe it has something to do with all the people who work on or advise his campaign and also lobby for the oil industry? Watch this new ad here:
Two central dynamics are now taking over the Presidential campaign - the enormous, even historic, structural advantage of the Democrats, and Obama's new "surge", brought about through the early stages of his imminent victory over Senator Clinton.
Poll after poll these last few years have documented the emergence of a whole new political dynamic in American politics - the end of the conservative ascendency, the collapse of the GOP brand and the rise of the Democratic brand. Simply put, the country is more Democratic today than it has been since at least 1982 and perhaps all the way back to the 1960s. Today's Washington Post has a new national poll which again captures the yawning gap between the two parties, and the strong wind blowing behind the Democrats as they head into 2008 (for further evidence of this note huge fundraising and turnout advantage for the Dems so far in 2008).
A big looming question over the Presidential race has always been would the Democratic nominee be able to match the 10-15 spread between the two parties, resulting in what could be a truly realigning election and the dawn of a new progressive era? So far there has been little evidence of this, and indications have largely pointed to a very close general election.
But in the last week, there are signs that Obama's slowly emerging "victory" over Senator Clinton is beginning to alter that dynamic. Winners often get a bounce from their victory. It can be a few points or much more. And given that Senator Clinton is still in the race, it would be surprising for the Obama bounce to be more than a few points. But looking at the Post poll, the new LA Times poll, Rasmussen and Gallup, there is evidence that Obama is in the early stages of a bounce. He now leads Senator Clinton in all these polls by a larger margin than he has at any time in the campaign, consistently in double digits now (destroying her argument to be a stronger general election candidate). But he also is now starting to show three, six and in the Post poll, seven point advantages over Senator McCain.
While the Post makes the case that at this point McCain is outperforming the GOP and is showing remarkable early strength, I think that interpretation, while partially true, does not really capture what is happening in the race (particularly on the day GOPer Bob Barr entered the race, again showing how hard it is going to be for McCain to take full control over his party). Given the nature of the Democratic race, we really have no idea what a true McCain-Obama match up looks like. Senator Obama has yet to go through his ascension to be the Democratic chief, and all the public benefit that accrues from winning. This week, we are starting to see the public in the early stages of seeing Obama now as the Democratic nominee, and his numbers are rising across the board. But has he has not yet really won yet. I don't think at this stage he has risen as far has he will once Senator Clinton drops out of the race. He is in a sort of "mid-bounce." Which given that Senator Obama is now up mid- single digits now without having fully won, and given that the structural gap between the two parties is between 10-15 points, means he is likely to keep climbing over the next few weeks.
So, to me, this new Post poll should not be a comfort to the GOP, but yet another reminder of the catastrophic legacy of the age of Bush, and another early sign of what may be an historic realigning election to come in 2008 (the Mississippi House Special Election will be another sign).
For more on the dawn of a new political era, be sure to read our recent magazine article, The 50-Year Strategy: A New Progressive Era.
Just a few days ago Senator Clinton was leading by 4 and 6 points in the two major daily Presidential tracking polls. Now Gallup has Senator Obama up 5 (49-44) and Rasmussen has him up 2 (46-44). Obama has clearly now recovered from his tough week last week and seems to regaining some degree of national momentum. In both polls the movement is two way - he is trending up and she down. It is astonishing how this race continues to change, evolve, mature.
See this post for more on my thoughts about this next phase of the Democratic campaign for President.
Tue Update: Rasmussen now has it 48% Obama 41% Clinton, Gallup 48%-45%. If Obama breaks 50% later this week with the small momentum he will get from his Mississippi win tonight, he will be able to say to all the undecided superdelegates that he is over 50 percent in the national polls, has won more votes, states and delegates, has raised much more money and has a far superior national organization. And that given the math the only way she can win is by destroying him and his campaign, something nobody wants.
So while the campaign moves on to the next round of states, you could see a scenerio developing in this 6 week window before Pennsylvania where elite Democratic opinion decides that he is definitively ahead, that it is dangerous for the party to prolong the fight and pressure mounts on Senator Clinton to fold. For her campaign Obama's rebound in the national polls is a dangerous development, and one she is going to have address quickly or risk having this race slip from her grasp before we get to the Keystone State.
