Event

Stockholm -- The best way to clear your head of the political chatter that passes for policy debate in Washington is to get out of town. I’m writing today from Stockholm, a grand old city on a picturesque harbor and archipelago, where it’s harder to care much about Larry Summers’ squabbles with White House colleagues, the cynical fulminations from Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh, or even the heated discussions inside Obamaland over its legislative strategy for health care reform. With a little distance, it’s easier to focus on developments which may actually matter for the rest of us, such as the prospects of Iran electing a democratic reformer as president this week or how the unfolding, deep slump in global trade may imperil economic recovery by China, Japan and Germany.

 It’s also easier to concentrate on our own economic conundrums. Let’s start with the crying need for new financial regulation that can prevent a system whose dysfunctions have just wiped out 20 percent of America’s wealth from doing it all over again sometime soon. The current TARP program, now officially a tangled mess, isn’t much of a model. This week the Treasury announced that 10 large institutions will be permitted to repay their TARP loans, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan, while nine others, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citicorp, have to stay in the system. It sounds reasonable, since the lucky 10 can afford to repay while most of the rest cannot. But the TARP system ties regulation to outstanding loans, so now we’re left with a two-caste financial market where the weaker ones operate at a market disadvantage and others who used the taxpayers to fund their comebacks are no longer constrained to operate in the interests of a public which rescued them less than nine months ago.

We also learned this week that the Treasury’s clever plan to use taxpayer guarantees to create a private market for the toxic assets of all these institutions is a flop: Even with all that largesse, nobody wants to buy much of the toxic paper. So if the economy dips again, the 10 institutions now exiting the TARP regulations will be back for more, and there won’t be enough money in the Treasury or the Fed to save Citicorp and Bank of America again.

Then there’s the matter of how to regulate the derivatives that knocked the pins out from under the vaunted U.S. financial markets last year. The Administration’s current economic mandarins, along with the most elevated mandarin of all, Alan Greenspan, all have confessed publicly to their errors in dismissing the need for such regulation in the late-1990s. With the catastrophic collapse of the multi-trillion dollar markets for mortgage-backed securities and their credit default swap derivatives, strict regulation of these transactions to protect the rest of us -- which basically means transparency and reasonable limits on the leverage used to create or buy these instruments -- should be a no-brainer.

So what’s the logic behind the Administration's decision to keep trading in large, “private” deals in derivatives outside regulated markets? Those are precisely the deals that pose a danger for the rest of us, since they’re the large ones and inevitably the deals carried out by the institutions now acknowledged to be too large to fail. That’s Washington-speak for companies important enough to demand help from the taxpayers whenever they need it. The justification is the same as in the 1990s -- it will reduce their profits. That’s correct, in order to protect the rest of us from the now well-known consequences of a mindless drive for higher and higher profits regardless of the risks.

The next time you feel yourself drawn to the insider accounts of the greasy pole inside the White House or the breakup of the Republican coalition, take a deep breath and remind yourself that these are the players actually responsible for serious matters that ultimately may determine whether you ever have the income and assets required to send your kids to college or retire before you’re 80 years old.

Note: This essay is the first in a new series that I will be contrubuting to NDN. The essays will examine important and interesting data from available public surveys and surveys commissioned by NDN and its affiliates. Themes and analysis will include attitudes toward race and ethnicity, the economy, foreign affairs and the Millennial Generation, but will not be limited to those topics. 

In a recent posting on his fivethirtyeight.com Web site, Nate Silver raised the possibility that the Republican Party could more effectively compete in the 2012 and 2016 elections by turning its back on Hispanics and attempting to maximize the support of white voters in enough 2008 Midwestern and Southern blue states to flip them red. This would involve positioning the GOP as the non-Latino party by "pursuing an anti-immigrant, anti-NAFTA, 'American First' sort of platform.'" The Republican Party rode similar exclusionary strategies to dominance of U.S. politics during most of the past four decades.

But America has entered a new era. Propelled by the election of its first African-American president, an increasingly non-white and more heavily Latino population, and the emergence of a new, significantly more tolerant generation, the Millennials, America is not the same country, demographically and attitudinally, that it was in the 1960s or even the 1990s. These changes have altered the electoral environment and lessened the usefulness of divisive strategies that were once effective, but may no longer be so.

Superficially, a non-Latino strategy might seem more plausible than anything else the GOP has attempted since the election of Barack Obama. After offering significant support to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Hispanics have recently become a solidly Democratic group. Republicans may have little to lose in not courting them in the next election or two. Nationally, Hispanics voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by more than 2:1 (67% vs. 31%). They supported Democratic House candidates last year by an even greater margin (68% vs. 29%). Pew surveys indicate that four times as many Hispanics identify as Democrats than Republicans (62% vs. 15%).

Adopting a non-Hispanic strategy would certainly be compatible with strategies the GOP has been utilizing for decades. From the "Southern strategy" of Richard Nixon and Kevin Phillips in the late 1960s, through the "wedge issues" used by Lee Atwater in the 1980s, to Karl Rove's "base politics" in this decade, the Republicans effectively took advantage of white middle and working class fears of the "other" -- African-Americans, gays, feminists -- who could be positioned as being outside the American mainstream. Applying this approach to Latinos would only be doing what came naturally for the GOP during the past 40 years.

But, while ethnically exclusionary strategies may offer the possibility of short-term relief, they do little to resolve the deep difficulties now facing the Republican Party. The ethnic composition of the United States is far different now than it was in the 1960s when the GOP began to separate white southerners (and like-minded white working class voters in other regions) from their long attachment to the Democratic Party. Four decades ago, 90 percent of Americans were white, and virtually all of the remainder were African-American. Hispanics were a negligible factor within the population and the electorate. Since then, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites in America has fallen to two-thirds. Hispanics now comprise about 15 percent of the population and just under 10 percent of the electorate. Moreover, Hispanics are a relatively young demographic. Even if no additional Latinos migrate to the United States, their importance will continue to increase as older whites pass from the scene.

It is this rise in the Hispanic population that prompted Silver to offer his suggested non-Latino strategy to the Republicans in the first place. But Silver's plan, which he facetiously calls "Operation Gringo," would require the GOP to pull off a rare political balancing act or "thread the needle" to use his term. In order to compensate for expected losses in the increasingly Latino Southwestern states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and, without John McCain on their ticket, Arizona, Republicans would have to win states like Pennsylvania and Michigan that they have not carried in decades. They would have to do this while not, at the same time, losing Florida and possibly Texas with their own large Hispanic electorates.

Moreover, while it is true that Hispanics are not distributed evenly across the country, Silver concedes "there are Hispanics everywhere now." Latinos were decisive in Obama's wins in closely divided "gringo territories" such as Indiana, North Carolina, and Nebraska's second congressional district and the growth rate of Hispanics is greatest in "nontraditional" areas like the South and Prairie states. This means that "America first" campaigning may ultimately have the effect of hurting Republicans even in some of the "white" states where it was intended to help.

However, the biggest barrier in running against Hispanics is that American attitudes on ethnicity have changed significantly over the past four decades. A new Pew survey indicates that Americans have become less hostile toward immigrants and more positive about policies designed to incorporate immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, into American society.

The number favoring a policy that would allow illegal immigrants (Pew's term) currently in the country to gain citizenship if they pass background checks, pay fines and have jobs has increased from 58 percent to 63 percent since 2007. While 73 percent do agree that America should restrict and control people coming to live in here more than we do now, that number is down from 80 percent in 2002 and 82 percent in 1994. Finally, support for free trade agreements like NAFTA has risen from 34 percent in 2003 and 40 percent in 2007 to 44 percent now.

The Pew findings are confirmed by the findings of a survey recently released by Pete Brodnitz of the Benenson Strategy Group. That study indicated that, across party lines, virtually all Americans (86%) favor the passage by Congress of comprehensive immigration reform when they are given full details of that plan.

Leading the way in these increasingly tolerant attitudes is the Millennial Generation (Americans born 1982-2003). Only a third of Millennials (35% vs. 55% for older generations) believe that the growing number of immigrants threatens traditional American values. Just 58 percent of Millennials (compared with 77% of older generations) agrees that the United States should increase restrictions on those coming to live in America. A large majority of Millennials (71% in contrast to 62% of older Americans) favors a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. And, 61-percent of Millennials favor free trade agreements such as NAFTA in contrast to just 40 percent of older generations.

To date America has only seen the tip of the Millennial iceberg. In 2008, just 41 percent of them were eligible to vote and they comprised only 17 percent of the electorate. By 2012, more than 60 percent of Millennials will be of voting age and they will be a quarter of the electorate. In 2020, when the youngest Millennials will be able to vote, they will make up more than a third of the electorate. Over the next decade, this will make the ethnically tolerant attitudes of the Millennial Generation the rule rather than the exception in American politics.

At this early point in the Millennial era, Republicans remain most open to the intolerance and immigrant bashing of ethnically exclusionary strategies. Pew indicates the number of Democrats and independents who favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is up 11 points and 3 points respectively since 2007. By contrast, the number of Republicans who favor that policy is down by six points. In the end, a non-Hispanic approach by Republicans would amount to a continuation of Karl Rove's base strategy. As the Republican base continues to diminish in the Millennial Era, that strategy will be a recipe for disaster for the GOP, certainly in the long term, and very likely in the short run as well.

Writing on the Huffington Post, Jon Soltz reports that Bush Administration favorite, and rumored possible future GOP Presidential candidate, General David Petraeus has declared that what the US did in Iraq violated the Geneva Conventions. 

Unless this spins in some other direction I'm not sure where the apologists go now. 

The conservatives have very little left to argue now.  Which is why I think the right's obsession with Twitter makes a lot of sense.  For a movement with so little to say a medium which maxes out at 128 characters seems like a very good fit.

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.

While it is still early in the effort to put Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court, my sense is that if she does make it, the prospects for passing immigration reform this year will improve. 

Part of the reason why has to do with how the White House has introduced her to all of us. The emphasis on her hard-scrabble roots, the classic immigrant struggle, her father who never spoke English, her own incredible success, is itself a deeply powerful repudiation of the other less than flattering narratives about Hispanic immigrants we've seen in the media these past few years.  As I wrote the other day, her nomination - along with many other moments - Bill Richardson's candidacv, President Obama's own story - is one more step in the American people's coming to terms with, and largely accepting, our emerging, much more diverse racial and ethnic demographic construct of the early 21st century.  

The acceptance of these new demographic realities, driven by the vast waves of immigration in the United States in recent years, is at the very core of our ability to pass an immigration reform bill along the lines of what we passed in 2006. As we have reported to you many times, in poll after poll taken over the past four years, a strong majority of Americans, between 55 and 70 percent, are willing to allow the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working among us to stay, and build lives for themselves and their families here. For many Americans, this act of allowing the undocumenteds to stay is not just about fairness, and making sure taxpayers are not unduly burdened, but about accepting another huge traunch of Hispanic immigrants, accelerating even further the already dramatic demographic changes under way. 

For there should be no mistake about this - any civil society would have a hard time accepting the level of demographic change America is undergoing right now. That only 15-20 percent of the nation is up in arms about it shows once again, at its heart, what a good and generous nation America is.

Months of discussion of Sotomayor's inspiring story will be a daily and powerful antidote to Lou Dobbs and the other racial scapegoaters who have come to occupy the airwaves.  If she joins the court for the fall term, in September, it will be a powerful affirmation of our new direction, and an elegant table setter for a fall effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform before the end of the year. 

Kudos once again to President Obama. Few politicians in recent history have been as comfortable taking risks, of not taking the easy path, as he. And for that I am, once again, very proud of our President, that self described "mutt" we have leading us today, with grace, to a better place.

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?

Let me begin by saying that I have a great deal of respect for Joe Scarborough as one of the few more sensible, moderate Republican voices out there nowadays.  However, Scarborough and Ed Gillespie's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday demonstrated that the Republican party is either unable or unwilling to step back and take an honest look at the main reason behind its current unpopularity.  Republicans are unwilling to accept that it is precisely their conservatism - their social conservatism - that has caused their demise.  There is no "big tent" any longer when it comes to the GOP.

MR. GREGORY:  But, Joe, it seems like the fundamental question is, what does the party want to be, right?......Ron Brown, seen in his column this week in the National Journal, talks about the party being more monochromatic, more conservative regionally and in terms of the voters.  And he talked to Tom Davis of Virginia who said this, "…Tom Davis of Virginia, who chaired the Republican--the National Republican Congressional Committee, calls Specter's defection a `devastating blow' that will send a `bad signal' of ideological intolerance to the moderate white-collar suburbanites the party must recapture if it is to threaten the Democrats' congressional and Electoral College majorities.  `The dilemma for Republicans is, are we--what are we going to become, a coalition or are we going to be a private club?'"
MR. JOE SCARBOROUGH:  ….So there's always a back and forth.  But the bigger question is, what does the Republican Party need to be? We keep hearing that it's too conservative.  You know, it depends on how you define conservative.
MR. GREGORY:  Right.
MR. SCARBOROUGH:  Over the past decade we've spent too much money, we've spread our armies across the globe, we've, we've changed rules on Wall Street that allows, you know, that allowed bankers to leverage 40-to-1.  That's not conservative, that's radical.  And we have to understand that and be truly conservative.

...............

MR. GREGORY:  [On the Economy] You say independents are with Republicans on this.  Obama advisers say just the opposite, that he's in the high 60s in terms of approval among independents, much more trust for Obama than for Republicans on the economy.  And, and this from the ABC/Washington Post poll:  Who do you trust to do a better job handling the economy?  It's Obama 61 percent, Republicans in Congress 24 percent.
................
MR. GREGORY:  "The Last Best Hope:  Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise." And then look at the headline from The New York Times this week: "GOP Debate:  A Broader Party or a Purer One?" Both of you address this question.  Should it be broader?  Should it be purer?
MR. SCARBOROUGH:  That's a false choice, though.  Ronald Reagan was about as conservative as you can be.  Ronald Reagan said, you know, the government that governs the least governs best.  Thirty years ago you had Margaret Thatcher, 30 years ago this month, coming into power.  Again, Thatcher, a hard-core conservative on economic issues, especially.  We need to be conservative, but like Reagan.

But it was not President Reagan's fiscal policies that earned him two elections and popularity - it was his character.  Mr. Scarborough and most Republicans fail to understand the moment in history that we are living.  Republican, Democrat, Independent voters - who might disagree on fiscal policy, tax policy, etc. - all supported President Obama because he changed the tone of the debate.  They supported him because of what he stands for: empathy, conciliation, unity, progress.   As stated by Simon - the key to unlocking America's 21st century electorate is to understand and embrace how the concept of race is changing in America.  Fear-mongering, highly secterian, anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-Hispanic rhetoric and actions - in the name of "conservatism" - is the reason for the GOP's minority status.  Case in point (also played during Meet the Press):

As demonstrated by the recent polling conducted by ABC/Washington Post and the New York Times, American voters reject these "conservative" values.  Passing comprehensive immigration reform is one way for Democrats to consolidate their majority status by demonstrating to voters that they are problem solvers, and it is also a way for Republicans to begin the long road back to mainstream America.

Meet the Press ended with very fitting footage from an interview with Jack Kemp, who passed away this weekend:

(Videotape, February 9, 1997)
Representative JACK KEMP:  It's the single most important issue facing America at the turn of the century and the new millennium:  racial reconciliation, civility.  An America where you can have a dialogue over affirmative action, for instance, without being accused of being a, a racist on either way, or on either side of that issue.  These are important issues that have to be addressed, and I would like to see an America in which black and white actually listen to each other.  And it can't be solved with rhetoric, it has to be solved with sound, positive, progressive, inclusive policies.  And I want to see the Republican Party lead that debate, because we are the party of Lincoln.  And we must be an inclusionary party that says that by the year 2000, as I tried to say at Harlem one day during the campaign, I'd like to see an America where half of all black Americans are voting Democrat, but the other half are voting Republican.

 

The Times has a wonderful piece today which takes a deep look into how the concept of race is evolving in America today:

MILWAUKEE — Although the civil rights movement gave Samuel Sallis equality under the law a long time ago, he was left wanting most of his life, he says, for the subtle courtesies and respect he thought would come with it. Being a working-class black man downtown here meant being mostly ignored, living a life invisible and unacknowledged in a larger white world.

Then Mr. Sallis, 69, noticed a change.

“I’ve been working downtown for 30 years, so I’ve got a good feeling for it,” Mr. Sallis said. “Since President Obama started campaigning, if I go almost anywhere, it’s: ‘Hi! Hello, how are you, sir?’ I’m talking about strangers. Calling me ‘sir.’ ”

He added: “It makes you feel different, like, hey — maybe we are all equals. I’m no different than before. It’s just that other people seem to be realizing these things all around me.”

As the readers of this blog know well we believe this nation is in the midst of perhaps its most profound demographic transformation since the arrival of the Europeans here in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.   Due to large waves of non-white immigration over the past 45 years, America has seen its minority population triple, ending what was America's longstanding white-black, majority-minority racial construct.  Current projections have American becoming a majority minority country in the next 30 years. 

It was inevitable, given how our population was changing, that the America of the 21st century would end up having a very different - and much more tolerant - attitude towards race than any America that had come before. But the election and early success of our remarkable President, Barack Hussein Obama, the self-described "mutt," has hastened this process, allowing this nation to begin to truly realize, perhaps more than any time in our history, the radical promise of equality of opportunity offered by our Founding Fathers.

I was born in 1963, the last years of an America before the changes brought about by the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Immigration Acts of the mid 1960s.   The legacy of this period, of Lyndon Johnson and JFK, of Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others is so profound that sometimes I am literally overwhelmed by all this.  But this week, as we saw images of President Obama horsing around in the Oval Office with Caroline Kennedy, we are reminded that the two beautiful children of our President today are not John-John and Caroline but Malia and Sasha - and what a different, and better world, this is today.