2008

The Bush Effect

Proximity to this deeply unpopular President and his policies has become in itself a major factor in world affairs.  Let's call it the Bush Effect.  Throughout the world - and here at home - leaders allied with Bush has seen their political fortunes ebb, and leaders seen as opponents to this Administration's policies are gaining ground.  What this means is the very presence of Bush in the White House is becoming a daunting national security challenge for the United States. 

We've seen it here at home with the GOP, as their national repudiation in 2006 has left them with much less power and with their lowest levels of approval in a generation.  We've seen it with Tony Blair, and the Spanish government who backed the Iraqi war.  We've seen it in the rise of Putin and Chavez. 

But even more dangerous is how leaders, countries and parties seen as "pro-Western" are losing ground to more extreme elements throughout the Muslim world.  The installation of a Shiite government in Iraq has strenghtened the hand of Iran in the Gulf.  Our allies in Palestine lost an election to a group we had declared to be terrorists, and now have had to flee half the country.  Pro-Western forces in Lebanon have lost control of the nation's politics.  We know what is happening in Iraq, though it is increasingly unclear who are allies are there these days.  The Iranian government has its most radical leader since its revolution, one who replaced a leader much more oriented to the West.  Karzhai's government in Afghanistan is teetering.  And now our long time ally, General Musharrah in Pakistan, seems to be on the verge of collapse. 

Two germane stories in the papers this am.  The Times makes news with a great piece about our government's efforts to help salvage Musharraf.  In the Post Robin Wright has a story that looks skeptically at the Administration's strategy towards Iran, which concludes with these thoughts about their latest move to brand the Revolutionary Guards terrorists:  

Michael McFaul of Stanford University also urged more carrots. "If you want democratic regime change and to destabilize the regime, the best thing you could do is to make an offer about massive negotiations about everything -- human rights and state sponsorship in terrorism, as well as lifting [U.S.] sanctions and opening an embassy," he said. "Politically, this step doesn't help the administration undermine the regime -- it helps to consolidate the regime."

The Muslim world is in a very combustable place right now, and I have fear that the only thing this Administration can do - because of its ineptitude and the Bush Effect - is make matters much much worse. 

Pick up Matt Bai's "The Argument" today

This month a new book arrives from an old friend, Matt Bai, the talented New York Times Magazine writer. The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics - like everything Matt writes - is a good read, insightful, full of ideas big and small, and certainly worth picking up and making it one of your end of summer books.

The Argument takes an in-depth look at a process that NDN and its family have been at the center of these last few years: the re-invention and modernization of progressive politics. It is perhaps one of the most important and least understood stories in American politics today.

Whatever the short-term electoral outcomes of this decade in American politics, it will be remembered as one where the progressive movement, so dominant in the 20th century, shook off a generation-long period of drift and began to do what was necessary to take on a very powerful and modern conservative politics. The reasons for this are many: changes in campaign finance law, the Iraq War, the manifest failures of Bush and the conservatives to govern, even while they accrued more and more power. Today the progressive movement is much more 21st century than 20th, and is better able to play on the modern battlefield of today's politics. We've seen the creation of many new institutions: the Democracy Alliance, Media Matters, Center for American Progress, Center for Progressive Leadership, Democracy Journal, Catalist, America Votes; a whole new slew of internet-based players in the emergent "netroots" like MoveOn, DailyKos, Talking Points Memo, MyDD and the Huffington Post; and we've seen the emergence of a whole new set of leaders from Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, Rahm Emanuel, Andy Stern and Rob Stein.

Perhaps most importantly, all the new tools we have at our disposal today have made it easier for millions of Americans to partner with us in this critical effort to offer America a better path. Their arrival has brought more passion, more debate, more resources and is creating an entire new generation of leaders capable of serving the nation for years to come.

What Matt's book points out is that this process is still in its infancy, or in a start-up phase; and as such, it is in a very messy and emergent state. Overall Matt's assessment of all this, and of the people involved in this effort, is a little rougher than I would have liked, but that's the business we are in. But if Matt is correct in his assessment - and for this you should read the book - it means that there is much more for all of us to do in the coming days. Our work in building this modern progressive movement is far from finished. That is very exciting to me.

Looking ahead it is important to realize how much American politics has changed in the last few years. Just two years ago Bush and the conservatives were triumphiant. They had greater ideological control of the government than any time in the last 75 years. The progressives and Democrats appeared weak, in retreat, and unable to adapt to modern realities. But then the conservatives collapsed. Democrats won an historic victory in 2006. All measures of Party strength show the Democrats in the strongest shape they've been since before Reagan's election in 1980. The movement's infrastructure has become much more robust and modern. Progressives are way ahead in adopting a whole new set of 21st century tools to engage the Americans of today. Critical emergent constituencies - the new Millennial generation and Hispanics - are moving deeply into the progressive camp. And Democratic leaders are slowly re-orienting the debate and our government around the daunting array of 21st century challenges, many ignored by the conservatives in recent years, and many made much tougher to manage because of the conservatives' many mistakes.

So yes, Matt is right: there is work left undone. But left of center politics is so much more exciting, so much more passionate, so much more entreprenurial than its been since I joined it 20 years ago. We also have more wind at our back than at any time in the last political generation, and for all of this, I remain optimistic that this movement of ours, as imperfect as it is, is poised to take the reins and lead America with confidence and grace to meet the emerging challenges of our new century.

Rudy likens welfare recipients to animals

Remember when we said that Rudy Giuliani probably wishes things like YouTube didn't exist? Well, Adam Howard over at AlterNet gives us further proof that Rudy Giuliani's defeat may be delivered to him on a viral video silver platter. This latest video features the Former Mayor using animals to describe his position on welfare. Truly no words can describe it.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has part of the video on YouTube. Watch it below:

More Rudy News: A stark contrast to his position in the video we reference above, Giuliani promises that he can stop illegal immigration in this AP story. Obviously he hasn't read his Miami Herald, because if he had he would know that Hispanic voters in South Florida who were once solidly in the GOP's camp are becoming unaffiliated.

The Economist: Is America Turning Left?

This thoughtful magazine is a little late to the party, but this piece is worth reading nonetheless.

Schaller on the Democratic field

In Salon, Tom Schaller has an interesting take on the state of the Democratic presidential field.  Once there you can also read his recent take on the GOP side.

Time for progressives to stand against "the misery strategy" for resolving our immigration crisis

The Times weighs in with an excellent, though incomplete, editorial today.  Called "The Misery Strategy," it begins:

The path the country has set on since the defeat of immigration reform in the Senate in June enshrines enforcement and punishment above all else. It is narrow, shortsighted, disruptive and self-defeating. On top of that, it won’t work.

What it will do is unleash a flood of misery upon millions of illegal immigrants. For the ideologues who have pushed the nation into this position, that is more than enough reason to plunge ahead.

It then details a new program being rolled out this month whose goal is to make it much harder to employ undocumenteds.  What the editorial leaves out is a point made very clearly in a Times story yesterday - that these new efforts are creating a national climate of discrimination against all Hispanics, legal or not.  This new initiative will have the specific effect of discouraging the employment of legal Hispanics workers as employers will not want to take the risk of punishment if one of their "legal" workers turns out not to be so. 

A Sunday Times Magazine cover piece does a very good job describing how efforts to target undocumenteds can quickly become anti-Hispanic crusades.

Fixing our broken immigration system remains one of the most urgent governing challenges facing our political leaders today. Given this misery strategy described by the Times, it is also turning into one of the great moral challenges of our time, one that our leaders are simply not stepping up to meet.  It is time for our leaders, particularly the progressives, to do more than sit by and watch a new and virulent form of racism spread across our great nation.

More on the role of independents in 2006

As some of you may remember, I wrote an essay after the election called "the role of independents in the 2006 elections has been overstated."  An excerpt:

The early storyline then is that the shift from 2004 to 2006 came about from how independents swung.  They did swing 17 points, from 48R/49D to 39R/57D.  But a far greater shift happened inside the two parties, where there was an 8 point shift within the Democratic electorate, and a 4 point shift inside the Republican electorate, or a total of a 12 point shift. The Democratic vote went from 89/11 to 93/7, and the Republican vote 93/6 to 91/8.   

While less in percentage terms this 12 point shift happened in what is 3/4 quarters of the electorate, and this 18 point shift happened in what is 1/4 of the electorate.   So this means a far greater number of votes shifted in the last two years between and among the parties than shifted with independents - meaning that Democrats owe their victory much more to gains with Democratic and Republican partisans than they do to the gains they made with independent voters. 

This reduced role for independents was evident even in 2004.  John Kerry did what every Democrat was told was necessary to do win the Presidency - he won independents - and yet he still lost the election.  Why? Because the Rove machine pushed the percentage of the electorate that was Republican to an all time high, 37%, equalling the Democratic share, and they kept 93% of these Republicans.  Kerry while winning independents, only won 89% of Democrats.  This difference - between Rove's 93 and Kerry's 89 within their own parties - cost Kerry the election. 

Over at OpenLeft, Chris Bowers revisits this analysis, and offers a slightly different cut:

By now, we have all heard about how the great Independent swing toward Democrats from 2004 to 2006 was the key to Democratic victory. This is something many of us saw coming for quite some time, and we even dubbed it the "Indycrat" phenomenon. The first article I saw on this was a June 2005 post by Jerome Armstrong. During the rest of that year, it was a topic that was discussed other places like Donkey Rising, Survey USA and many other election focused outlets.

However, at Yearly Kos I briefly chatted with Simon Rosenberg who asked me to look into whether, from 2004 to 2006, Democrats received a greater vote swing from self-identified Democrats or from self-identified Independents.  The reason he asked me to do that is because he believed Democrats actually received more of a boost from self-identifying Dems than they did from self-identifying Independents. While I was skeptical of this at first, I just looked into it now, at it appears Simon was right. Comparing 2004 and 2006 exit polls, here is the estimated swing Democrats received according to partisan self-identification:

Overall Dem vote increase: 5.15%
Growth from Dem's: 2.41%
Growth from Ind's:  2.08%
Growth from Rep's: 0.66%

No matter how you slice it, the 2006 elections were decided much more by the behavior of partisans than independents, who have shrunk to a mere 26% of the electorate.  What has happened in recent years is that the extreme partisanship of President Bush has forced people to take sides, and the number of independents in the electorate has shrunk, their role becoming much less significant.  For a while this all worked for Bush, but as the recent Pew Center Study showed, the electorate has tipped to the Democrats, going from 43-43 in 2002, to 50-35 Democrat/Republican today.  A remarkable shift.  In 2006 Democrats got 52 or 53 percent of the vote, the Party's highest performance since 1982, and one of its ten best showings in the last 50 elections. 

It is safe to say that today Democrats have more wind at their backs then they have since 1982, a long 24 years.  While it is no guarentee of future success, it is critical to note that we are experiencing the most favorable environment Democrats have seen in a generation, and that this environment has come about from both Republican losses and Democratic gains.  Whether this becomes a structural shift in public opinion is up to the Democrats and their leaders.  Certainly the opportunity is there, and all this explains why early polls showing Bloomberg doing much more damage to the Republicans than the Democrats.  The country is much more Democratic today, and that support is strong and holding.  There just isn't a lot of room left over for an independent bid.  What has become loosened - Ds, Rs and Is - has swung to the Democrats. 

For more on all this, check out my recent essay in the Politico, called the Democratic Opportunity.  More post-election analysis from NDN can be found here.

I agree with EJ - Romney is looking like a very serious candidate now

He's ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire.   Thompson is having a hard time getting going, and Rudy has all sorts of problems.  Will it be Romney?  EJ Dionne takes an interesting look at the former Massachusetts governor today, the candidate who increasingly appears to be the Republican frontrunner.

The rise of Romney also points to something about the relative importance of the national polls at this point.  Personally I dont think they mean all that much.  In the new USA/Gallup poll out today Romney is only at 8% percent nationally, far behind everyone, even McCain.  But he leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, the only place where voters are getting a much indepth look at the candidates - and in these places, where the campaign is engaged, Romney is besting all this rivals.  In Iowa he has opened up a double digit lead.  

The same is true in this new USA/Gallup on the Democratic side.  Hillary leads by a great deal, but in Iowa she is either even with or behind both Obama and Edwards.  In the state where the voters have seen the candidates the most, we see a very different picture. 

As I look to make sense of how the candidates are doing, I look to polls in the early states, money raised and number of supporters, and then to the national polls for guidance. 

It's becoming "open season" on immigrants, undocumented or not

The Times Magazine has a remarkable story today by Alex Koltowitz about a an Illiinois town's aggressive effort to deal with its growing immigrant population.  It is a great piece of reporting, and powerfully captures the state of play of this complex issue with real Americans in the aftermath of the collapse of the immigration bill in June. 

The bottom line is that without federal action Hispanics - undocumented or not - are going to be inreasingly targeted and discriminated against.  The situation is untenable, on many levels, and if allowed to go unadressed, will likely make this issue a major one in the Presidential campaign next year.   There is simply no way our national leaders can continue to do nothing on the immigration issue - our immigration system is terribly broken and needs to be fixed immediately.   

Please take the time to read this compelling story.

Quick '08 Update

- Barack Obama delivered a speech today in D.C. where outlined his plan to "fight global terrorism." Obama was introduced by Lee Hamilton, Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

- Fresh off the heels of the release of his health care plan, Rudy Giuliani criticized the Democratic candidates' plans, saying they would lead to socialized medicine.

- Chris Cillizza from The Fix takes a good look at Fred Thompson's fundraising numbers, which continue to be a point of discussion regarding his viability as a candidate.

- Speaking at a union conference, Hillary Clinton gave a huge shout-out to teachers in Iowa, pledging to make up for the "respect shortage" they face.

- According to the AP, Sam Brownback isn't satisfied with the statement Mike Huckabee's campaign released over a Huckabee supporter's comment about Brownback's Catholicism.

- Tonight, Chris Dodd will appear on "The O'Reilly Factor" to "stand up to its host, Bill O'Reilly, for his unfair attacks on progressive bloggers." Not a bad move, as the YearlyKos Convention kicks off tomorrow.

- While praising its existence, Mitt Romney said that the Department of Homeland Security is inefficient and in need of major restructuring. Further distancing himself from the Bush administration, Romney took a jab at the health care system by saying, "The last thing I want is the guys managing the Katrina cleanup managing my health care system.”

- The Richardson campaign released a new TV ad on clean energy. Check it out below:

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

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