2008

Four pieces today that visit various aspects of our work here at NDN, and are all worth reading to help make sense of the emerging politics of our day.

Matt Bai has a must read cover story in the Times magazine on the legacy of Clintonism.

The Post has a cover piece on the historic weakness of the GOP Presidential field.

NPI author Ruy Teixeira and his longtime collaborator John Judis make the case that we are entering a new era of Democratic dominance.

And the Times has a lead editorial on the importance of trade liberalization to our future prosperity.

Enjoy. 

There are all sorts of news reports this morning that Tom Tancredo, who has based his entire campaign on an anti-immigrant platform, is ending his bid for the Presidency. As all of us trying to make sense of the current immigration debate and how Tancredo's total rejection by Republican primary voters fits in let's consider these two figures: 1% and 62%. 1% is the share of the Republican vote Tancredo has been receiving. 62% is the share of Republicans who support an earned path to citizenship, according to a new LA Times poll taken two weeks ago. Taken together it appears that Tancredo's approach to immigration, "Deport Those Who Don't Belong, Make Sure They Never Come Back" has been overwhelmingly rejected by even Republican voters, and is just one more example of how the GOP's investment in the immigration issue has failed time and again to produce the results they had hoped for.

Later today Tancredo will probably try to argue that the reason he never got traction is that the rest of the Republican field has adopted his position. But that really isn't true. Mitt Romney, who has made intense anti-immigration rhetoric a centerpiece of his campaign, is dropping across the board. Mike Huckabee, who seems to rise for every new anti-immigrant ad Romney runs against him in Iowa, has adopted at least rhetorically a much more compassionate path (see here for his new, wacky immigration position). Fred Thompson who has also taken a very hard line on immigration isn't getting any traction, despite his recent endorsement by Iowa Rep. Steve King, a Tancredo ally. John McCain, the Republican most associated with Comprehensive Immigration Reform, is rising in mosts polls and is now very much back in the race. And Rudy, who leads in most national GOP polls has embraced a version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and is now running an ad that openly talks about citizenship. Rather than triumphing inside the GOP field, it seems much more plausible to conclude that the Tancredo vision is in the process of being rejected by a Republican Party unwilling to embrace his racist and nativistic approach while acknowledging the importance of the issue itself.

The immigration issue is crying out for strong and forceful leadership. As I argued recently, I see immigration reform as one of the Democratic Party's greatest opportunities to contrast their pragmatic, common-sense approach to tackling the tough problems of the 21st century with the failed conservative approach which, all too often in recent years, has chosen politics over progress. The Comprehensive approach to fixing our broken immigration system has a deep and broad bi-partisan coalition supporting it that includes many important business, labor, religious and immigrant leaders and elected officials of both parties; is one of the few issues embraced by both Bush and Clinton; has a history of bi-partisanship, as it is one of the few important bills to actually pass the Senate in recent years; is supported by all the Democratic candidates running for President, most of the Democrats in the Senate, and many other critical Democrats like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chairman Howard Dean; and in poll after poll is supported by a majority of the American people.

As I wrote: "Democrats should be viewing this ongoing GOP obsession with immigration not as something to fear but as a powerful sign of the collapse of the modern Republican Party. In 2008 the GOP cannot run on its governing accomplishments. Cannot run on its health car plan. Cannot run on its vision for our security. Cannot run on its strategy to help a struggling middle class. Cannot run on their high moral and ethical standards. Cannot run on fiscal responsibility. So what is left? An issue that nostalgically evokes the racism of their now anachronistic Southern Strategy, that doesn't even have majority support in their own Party, is reinforcing that their Party has become more interested in scoring political points than solving vexing national problems, and that is managing to anger the fastest growing part of the American electorate, Hispanics."

Our immigration system is broken. That is something we all know. We also know the American people are rightfully unhappy about it and that it has risen to be one of their top 5 or 6 issues of 2008. The real question, then, is what we are going to do about it? As Rudy argues in his new ad, leaders will bring people together, step up and fix it. Other politicians, including some in the Democratic Party, will continue do what Tancredo has done which is to confuse toughness with strong leadership. This approach has been rejected again and again, as the American people desperately seach for a politics that is not safe but bold; that is not just tough but smart and effective; that is not calculating but courageous; that is not divisive and angry but that brings us together; that once again puts the interests of Americans and their families above all else.

Immigration is one of the great early political tests of the 21st century. To date the Republicans have failed their test of whether they have what it takes to solve the emerging problems of the new century. For the good of the nation I hope the Democrats do not fail theirs.

This am the Washington Post had its latest Democratic poll from Iowa. Tonight it is the Republicans. And it is a two man race. Huck and Mitt.

Rudy is at 8 percent, and is now "focusing" on New Hampshire and thelater states. A very risky strategy, as few candidates who have skippedIowa in recent years ever really got back in the game.

Which brings us to New Hampshire, where amazingly McCain is now tied with Romney. I've been writing for a while about McCain's apparent recovery. But it would be remarkable if Huckabee's rise ended up knocking off Romney; Rudy never catches fire; and that it becomes a Huckabee-McCain race. While I have a great deal of respect for McCain on some issues, he is old, feels tired and would clearly be a settle for the GOP primary audience. On an issue we care about a great deal - immigration reform - he has at times been a thoughtful leader, though he seemed to have wilted this year under pressure from his skeptical base.

No matter what happens here all the signals from the GOP side are ones of weakness. This is a weak field, with no one being strong enough to win it out right. While McCain may be able to get a few weeks of good press it is hard to see how he is at this point a strong candidate for the GOP. Huckabee is one of the least serious candidates to have gotten this far in modern times. And of course Mitt is not out of it but he appears to be dropping everywhere.

Stay tuned. The GOP race is going through a big transformation.

- First off, our thoughts and prayers are with Dennis Kucinich and his family during what is sure to be a difficult time, particularly during the Holiday season.

- The Hill analyzes the weeks ahead for the GOP candidates, arguing that the field is so up in the air that the weeks ahead will not be easy. The new Reuters/Zogby poll adds fuel to that argument, showing Mike Huckabee within one point of Rudy Giuliani nationally.

- For those of you who are looking to get a better understanding of the fight Chris Dodd has been waging with respect to retroactive immunity, check out Dodd's blog. See Dodd's reaction on the vote on YouTube.

- Howard Fineman used Allen Iverson's nickname to give Barack Obama some advice: in order to be the Democrats' "Answer" (aka, counteract the Republican attack machine) Obama needs to take his game to another level. (Editorial note: Fineman gets major points for weaving Iverson and his nickname into his piece.)

- During his bus trip across Iowa, Fred Thompson's message seems to be that he's not giving up. In fact, he's working hard to regain his place in the top-tier.

- Two things you should know about Joe Biden: 1) He's on a first-name basis with dignitaries around the world; and 2) Biden had the 6th most memorable quote of 2007 according to the Yale book of Quotations.

- John McCain, whose endorsement from Joe Lieberman made me wonder if I should buy a holiday sweater, criticized Barack Obama over his plan to shift the focus of combat brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan. (Not that it matters, but I'm not the only one who noticed the love of the holiday sweater!) Related aside: Henry Kissinger's endorsement of McCain did not make me want to buy a holiday sweater.

- The Edwards campaign is the focus of some interesting analysis: Chris Cillizza takes a look at the Edwards electability argument, while Marc Ambinder wonders whether the buzz around Edwards' campaign is real.

- Ron Paul continues to rake in the cash, despite his low position in the polls.

- The idea of Clintonism, an underlying topic at many debates, and the impact it is having on Hillary Clinton's campaign is the topic of Matt Bai's upcoming piece in the New York Times magazine.

- In a nod to the new tools, Susan Davis from the WSJ blog analyzes the comparative impact of Rudy Giuliani's recent speech and Mitt Romney's speech on faith in terms of how many people watched it online. Hint: Romney won the contest.

- On a related new tools note, YouTube is teaming up with the Des Moines Register to collect videos from Iowans around the caucuses. Steve Grove from YouTube has more.

- There are a few new ads worth checking out: "Tested" from Hillary Clinton, "Searched" from Mitt Romney, "All Out" from Bill Richardson, "Not Easy" from John McCain, and of course the holiday ads like the one below from Barack Obama, entitled "Friendship":

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.

If you need your daily dose of Presidential news the Washington Post has offered up both a very interesting new IA poll of Democrats, accompanied by an excellent analysis of the process of the Caucus itself. I strongly recommend it. And while it shows that essentially Iowa is still way too close to call, Obama's lead remains - in their polling - at 4 points.

I recommend the article because it does a very good job at explaining how the arcane Iowa Caucus process works, and all the strategic calculations that go into managing a campaign there. I was part of the Dukakis caucus operation 20 years ago, and know first hand how complicated and unpredictable it is. At this point it sure looks like we will only know the outcome late in the night on January 3rd.

The ONE Campaign is promoting their "On The Record" project with a new TV ad in IA, NH and national cable channels. Check it out:

Using the new tools for which our New Politics Institute advocates, ONE is also purchasing blog ads on every blog in both the progressive and conservative networks.

The escalated back and forth between GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee has prompted members of the clergy to intervene on how the candidates approach immigration. As Ariel Alexovich notes on The Caucus Blog, several clergy and religious activists have taken note of the current positions of the GOP candidates on immigration:

"Unfortunately, our presidential candidates are allowing themselves to be co-opted into the divisiveness of the debate," said Bishop Thomas Wenski, adding that he doesn’t yet see a leader emerging from the pack.

"Mr. Romney has bet his presidential run on the issue," said Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., president of Latino poverty relief organization Esperanza. That’s led Mr. Huckabee to take "a step to the right."

Rev. Cortes also worried that the country’s rising anti-immigrant sentiment, fueled in part by talk radio, is creating an increase in hate crimes against Hispanics.

"This issue isn’t going away, and it won’t go away with a few ‘Let’s just make the border stronger’ comments," said Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of the Northland parish in Longwood, Fla.

And in the spirit of Christmas, Bishop Wenski pointed out that after the baby Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph took him and fled the oppressive reign of King Herod:

"Certainly, they didn’t have visas to cross into Egypt."

The Catholic Church, which has long been a staunch advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, also weighed in. Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, wrote a letter to each candidate encouraging them to "show leadership on the issue of immigration" and to "work with your fellow candidates and the American people to find a humane and comprehensive solution to our broken immigration system." A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said, "The Cardinal understands that some of the candidates have addressed the issue responsibly and courageously, while others have used attacks against immigrants as a campaign tactic,” said Tamberg. “The latter group knows who they are." I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they're referring to candidates like this:

Simon and I made the case in a current Mother Jones magazine article that the 2008 election may well be like 1932. Among other things, Bush has the potential to do what Hoover did – tarnish the conservative brand for a generation or more.

Some have pushed-back that on the economic front Bush can’t be compared to Hoover, who was the steward of the biggest economic catastrophe in the nation’s history, The Great Depression.

But economist Joseph Stiglitz attempts to make the case of the enormity of the Bush economic catastrophe in the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine. We may not have to dig out of another Great Depression (thank goodness), but Bush’s economic legacy is going to be very bad. That legacy will include:

"…a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush.”

The piece is well worth reading, though I do think Stiglitz goes a bit too far in criticizing our economic prospects. Many fundamentals are still in place that should allow the American economy to kick back into shape and sustain a long boom of economic growth that spreads prosperity far more widely. But that’s the fodder for another post.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

- After reading the remarkable NY Times magazine interview with Mike Huckabee this weekend it reminds all of us how much his rise is a sign of the weakness of the rest of the Republican field. The man who is now perhaps the front runner in the GOP race for President, the most powerful elected office in the world, is running a very unconventional campaign. No real staff. No ads. No fundraising. Out there positions - abolish the IRS, deport the undocumenteds, vague ideas about foreign policy. Yet he leads. And amazingly this weekend Mitt Romney attacked him for not adequately embracing President Bush's foreign policy - again a sign of how unorthodox and interesting this Huckabee thing is.

But read the Times magazine piece. Huckabee may be hot, may be leading, may be unconventional but he is also not a serious thinker and is clearly not ready for national office of any kind. The rise of Huckabee and the weakness of the GOP field is another chapter in the most important story in American politics today - the end of the conservative ascendancy, the political and ideological collapse of the American center-right and the transformation of the party of Lincoln and Reagan into the party of Tancredo, Dobbs and Huckabee.

- With Hillary's endorsement by the Des Moines Register, the Democratic race got much more interesting. Until this moment it was hard to see how the Clinton campaign was going to stop its slide. Whether this is enough to turn things around we will see, but there should be little doubt that this endorsement is a big deal. The Clinton field operation will ensure that every IA caucus goer gets a copy, and in a race oh so close it could be the difference maker, particularly as it changes the internal dynamic in the Clinton world that seemed to have become less than positive. It is interesting that where Obama was perceived to be strong - IA - Clinton won the big newspaper endorsement. And where she was seen to be strong - NH - Obama won the endorsement of the influential Boston Globe.

- Is McCain in this thing? Conventional wisdom is that Huckabee's take down of Romney was giving Rudy a shot. But will it perhaps propel McCain? McCain has been slowly creeping back into contention these last few weeks, running 3rd or 4th in the national polls and often in 2nd place in NH. If he manages to finish 2nd in NH we could emerge with 4 viable GOPers heading into the next round of states. It is hard to say what the Lieberman endorsement today means. Joe didn't do particularly well in NH in 2004, but it does seem to show that there is some life and creativity left in that old McCain yet.

Update: Adam Nagourney of the Times has an interesting piece that examines whether the GOP primary fight may go past February 5th. In general I am not a big believer in the brokered convention idea, feeling that in this age of oversaturated media and lots of money folks just end up winning early. But in this case, given how weak the GOP field is and what Huckabee's likely win in Iowa means, it is possible that no GOPer is strong enough to win the whole thing early on.

Here they are:

The Globe on McCain:

CONVENTIONAL wisdom among political handlers used to hold that a candidate needed to capture the political center. The last two presidential campaigns proved that wrong. The Republicans scraped out victories by pressing just enough buttons and mobilizing just enough voters. But such wins breed political polarization and deprive a president of the political capital needed to ask Americans to sacrifice in difficult times.

The antidote to such a toxic political approach is John McCain. The iconoclastic senator from Arizona has earned his reputation for straight talk by actually leveling with voters, even at significant political expense. The Globe endorses his bid in the New Hampshire Republican primary.

The Globe on Obama:

THE FIRST American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. The most sobering challenges that face this country - terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics - are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has this understanding at his core. The Globe endorses his candidacy in New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary Jan. 8.

The Register on McCain:

The leading candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president present an intriguing mix of priorities, personalities and life stories.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani inspired the city and nation with his confident leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister from Arkansas, charms with homespun humor. Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire investment adviser from Massachusetts, exudes
executive discipline. As governors, both worked across the party divide to improve education and health care in their states.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee brings an actor’s ease to his no-nonsense calls for a return to fiscal discipline.

Yet, for all their accomplishments on smaller stages, none can offer the tested leadership, in matters foreign and domestic, of Sen. John McCain of Arizona. McCain is most ready to lead America in a complex and dangerous world and to rebuild trust at home and abroad by inspiring confidence in his leadership.

In an era of instant celebrity, we sometimes forget the real heroes in our midst. The defining chapter of McCain’s life came 40 years ago as a naval aviator, when he was shot down over Vietnam. The crash broke both arms and a leg. When first seeing him, a fellow prisoner recalls thinking he wouldn’t live the night. He was beaten and kept in solitary confinement, held 5 years. He could have talked. He did not. Son of a prominent Navy admiral, he could have gained early release. He refused.

The one-time playboy emerged from prison a changed, more serious man. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and the Senate in 1986, he has built an unconventional political career by taking stands based on principle, not party dogma, and frequently pursuing bipartisanship.

The Register on Clinton:

A deep, talented field in the Democratic caucus race offers both good and difficult choices.

No fewer than three candidates would, by their very identity, usher the nation to the doorstep of history. Should the party offer the nation the chance to choose its first woman president? Or its first black president? Or its first Latino president?

Or should the party place its trust in two senators, Joe Biden or Chris Dodd, who have served their nation with distinction for more than 30 years each? Or should it heed John Edwards’ clarion call to restore opportunity for all Americans?

Beyond their personal appeal, the candidates have outlined ambitious policy proposals on health care, education and rural policy. Yet these proposals do little to help separate the field. Their plans are similar, reflecting a growing consensus in the party about how to approach priority issues.

The choice, then, comes down to preparedness: Who is best prepared to confront the enormous challenges the nation faces — from ending the Iraq war to shoring up America’s middle class to confronting global climate change?

The job requires a president who not only understands the changes needed to move the country forward but also possesses the discipline and skill to navigate the reality of the resistant Washington power structure to get things done.

That candidate is New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.