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How To Understand the Independents (and How To Win Them Back)

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
Lee Drutman


Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Lee Drutman

For Obama and the Democrats to win in 2012, they will clearly need to win back the “Independent” voters who they lost in 2010. As we know, Independents broke hard for Republicans this time, after breaking hard for Democrats in two previous elections. Clearly they hold the balance of power in American politics.

Figure 1: Independent Voter Preferences, 1998-2010

Source: Resurgent Republic

So who are these Independents? What do they want? And how can the Democrats win them back?

According to Nov 4-7 Gallup Poll, 41 percent of voters now identify themselves as Independents, as compared to 26 percent who identify themselves as Republicans and 31 percent as Democrats. This 41 percent marks a high point in Gallup’s polling results for the last six years. However, since the mid-1970s, the number of self-identified “Independents” as a percent of voters has remained steadily in the 30s, occasionally flirting with the 40 percent mark.

It is obviously difficult to generalize about Independents, since it turns out they are actually quite a heterogenous group. About two-thirds  lean to one party or the other, consistently voting for that party about 80 percent of the time. However, they are less partisan than strong partisans, and there are at least a few true independents in the mix: about 10 to 15 percent of the electorate, according to political scientists.

WHO ARE THE INDEPENDENTS?

Pew probably has the best typology of Independents, breaking them up into five categories: “Shadow Republicans” (26 percent of Independents); “Disaffected Republicans” (16 percent); “Shadow Democrats” (21 percent); “Doubting Democrats” (20 percent); and “Disengaged” (17 percent).  As the names suggest, the shadow partisans vote somewhat predictably as partisans, while the Disaffected/Doubting class are slightly less reliably partisan, and the “Disengaged”, while most likely to be “true” Independents, are also the least likely to vote – only 21 percent told Pew they were planning to vote this November.

In 2010, independents broke down as 41 percent conservative, 39 percent moderate, and 20 percent liberal, at least among those who voted. In 2008, independents were 43 percent moderate, 35 percent conservative, and 18 percent liberal, a breakdown that has been roughly consistent for the last 10 years.

Though many Independents may vote like partisans, choosing to identify as Independents rather than partisans is a conscious choice. For some, it may just be because they prefer to think of themselves as “Independent” because it sounds better. It probably also reflects a certain disenchantment with either of the two parties. Accordingly, 64 percent of Independent voters say that “both parties care more about special interests than about average Americans” and 53 percent say that “I don’t trust either party.”

Independents are also more likely than not to be conflicted between the two parties: 58 percent say that ”I agree with Republicans on some issues and Democrats on others.”

Generally, Independents (particularly “true” Independents) are more likely to be younger, more male, less well educated, less well off financially, have less political information, and be less engaged politically. In the past election, Just 31 percent of Independents said that it makes “a great deal of difference which party controls Congress” – as compared to 63 percent for Republicans and 53 percent for Democrats; accordingly, 37 percent of Independents think it makes no difference at all – as compared to only 13 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of Democrats.

Finally, it is worth noting that according to Senate exit polls, the five states with the highest percentage of Independent voters are New Hampshire (44 percent); Washington (42 percent); Colorado (39 percent); Oregon (38 percent); and Hawaii (38 percent). Note that none of these are rust belt states, where party loyalty actually seems to run deeper.  Only 28 percent of Ohio voters were Independents and only 23 percent of Pennsylvania voters were Independents.

WHY DID INDEPENDENTS SHIFT TO THE REPUBLICAN COLUMN IN 2010?

There are probably four reasons why Republicans won Independents in 2010, two of which are structural, one of which is performance-based, and one of which is policy-based.

On the structural side, it is very likely the case that the Independents who turned out in 2010 were somewhat different than Independents who turned out in 2006 and 2008.  First, as compared to 2008, turnout in midterms is consistently about two-thirds lower than it is in presidential elections. This means that the mid-term election electorate (including Independents) look older and whiter, and thus typically more Republican (young people, who as noted above are more likely to be Independents, just don’t vote as often.)

Moreover, since Independents in general tend to be less politically engaged, the enthusiasm gap is going to be the most pronounced among Independents. It seems highly plausible, then, that a lot of Independent-leaning Republicans sat out the 2006 and 2008 elections while a lot of Independent-leaning Democrats sat out the 2010 elections, and for similar reasons: their preferred party didn’t seem worth turning out to support.

The second structural reason is that Independents as a category have probably become a little bit more Republican because more registered Republicans have become Independents. Consider Table 1, which takes Gallup data for the last four elections. Between 2004, Republicans fell from 38 percent to 26 percent of the electorate, while Democrats dropped only slightly.

Table 1: Changing Party Identifications

Rep Ind. Dem.
Nov 2010 26% 41% 31%
Nov 2008 28% 37% 33%
Nov 2006 31% 32% 35%
Nov 2004 38% 27% 35%
’04-’10 change -12% +14% -4%

What happened to that 12 percent of the electorate who had previously called themselves Republicans? There is good evidence they started calling themselves Independents, making Independents more conservative on the whole. Now, these were Republicans who obviously felt poorly enough about Republicans in 2006 and 2008 to no longer align themselves, and may have even voted Democrat (or more likely stayed home). But by 2010, they were back to voting Republican, even if they now thought of themselves as Independents.

Of course, this can’t and probably shouldn’t completely explain the shift. Part of it has to do with the economy. When unemployment is near 10 percent, the weakest partisans and the true Independents, who are the most sensitive to economic conditions in their voting (since they have no ideology to base their decisions), are going to punish the incumbent party.

Consider the following:  In 2006, when asked which party can better “improve the job situation,” 43 percent of Independents picked Democrats; just 24 picked Republicans. In 2010, they picked Republicans 40-35. Similar reversals have taken place on “reducing the budget deficit” (44-18 for Democrats in 2006; 44-29 for Republicans in 2010), and “managing the federal government” (38-26 for Democrats in 2006; 42-31 for Republicans in 2010).

In short, Independent voters are performance-based, and when the party in power is not producing jobs, cutting the budget, or generally running things in a commanding way, Independent voters are quicker to turn against the party in power and assume the other party deserves a chance

And finally, on the policy: since almost half of Independents call themselves moderate, a number of them were probably uncomfortable with the liberal direction unified Democratic control was taking government. There were probably some number of genuinely moderate voters who saw Republicans as a correction to Democratic extremism, just as they had recently seen Democrats as a correction to Republican extremism. They might also want divided government.

WHAT DO INDEPENDENTS WANT?

Having noted the heterogeneity of Independents as a category, it is obviously a challenge to make generalizations about what Independents want.

First of all, their top priority, like all voters polled, is “economy and jobs.” More than half (52 percent) of Independents believe that Congress should focus on economy on jobs. Though, interestingly, both Republicans (59 percent) and Democrats (57 percent) put even slightly more emphasis on jobs.

They also want both parties to moderate and compromise. By a 63-26 margin, Independents want Democrats to move to the center, and by a 50-40 margin, they want Republicans to move to the center. By a 61-32 margin, they agree that “Governing is about compromise” more than “leadership is about taking principled stands.” That puts them a little closer to Democrats (who lean towards compromise 73-21, than Republicans, who are split 46-46 on the question.)

The bad news for Democrats is that Independents are skeptical of government. More than four-fifths (82 percent) say they trust government only sometimes or never (up from 71 percent in 2006), 57 percent agree that “the federal government controls too much of our daily lives,” and 55 percent say “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”

However, these last two categories are not as overwhelming majorities as one might expect, given the anti-government rhetoric swirling around. And, interestingly, Independents are actually trending downward on both of these questions. In 1995, 70 percent of Independents thought that “the federal government controls too much of our daily lives.”

The good news for the Democrats is that by a 49-32 margin, Independents think that the Democratic Party: “Is more concerned with the needs of people like me.” Independents also are even more secular than Democrats, are tend to look like Democrats on the social issues (gay marriage, abortion, etc.) as well. Like Democrats, they also favor a more balanced approach to national security.

Figure 2: Issues Where Independents Look Like Democrats

source: Pew, “Independents Take Center Stage in Obama Era”

Independents also look a little bit more like Democrats than Republicans on the environment (82 percent of Independents agree that “there needs to be stricter environmental laws and regulations to protect the environment” and 53 percent agree that “protecting the environment should be given priority, even if it causes slower economic growth and some job losses”) and immigration (61 percent say they “favor providing a way for illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to gain legal citizenship.”)

Finally, by a 50-to-41 margin, Independents say they are “optimistic about the next two years with Barack Obama as president.” So they still haven’t written him off.

A CAVEAT ON “CONSERVATIVES”

Much has been made of the fact that there has been a shift towards conservatism in the electorate, and that the number of Independents identifying themselves as conservatives has ticked up a few points in the last few years. This may partially be an artifact of more Republicans moving into the Independent column, as described above. But it’s also useful to keep in mind that voters pick the conservative label for symbolic as well as substantive reasons.

According to research by Chris Ellis and James Stimson, some people genuinely know what it means to a conservative in the current political debate, and indeed express matching preferences across all issues. But these “constrained conservatives” (as Ellis and Stimson call them) account for only 26 percent of all self-identified conservatives.

More common are the “moral conservatives” (34 percent), who think of themselves as conservative in terms of their own personal values, be they social or religious. And they are indeed right leaning on social, cultural, and religious issues. But they also like government spending on a variety of programs and generally approve of government interventions in the marketplace, hardly making them true conservatives.

And still others, “conflicted conservatives”  (30 percent), are not conservative at all on the issues. But they like identifying themselves as conservatives. To them, it somehow sounds better. Or at least, they like it better then their other choices in the traditional self-identification questionnaire: moderate and liberal.

Finally, a smaller group of self-identified “conservatives” (10 percent) could be classified as libertarian – conservative on economic issues, liberal on social issues.

In other words, just because people identify as conservatives doesn’t mean that they are actually true conservatives. There are numerous reasons why they might identify so. It has long been the case that that the American public, on average, is operationally liberal and symbolically conservative. That is, that when asked about specific “liberal” government programs – be they spending on education, environmental protections, regulation of business – the majority of voters consistently say they approve. But when asked to self-identify themselves as liberals, moderates, or conservatives , many of the same voters say they are “conservative.”

LESSONS AND TAKEAWAYS

How can Obama and the Democrats win back the lost Independents? Since the Independent voters most likely to swing back into the Democratic column are also those who are the most performance-based and the least ideological, it makes sense for Obama to keep focused on economic recovery and let Republicans go pursue an extremist agenda. If Obama and the Democrats can pitch themselves as the hard-working, economy-focused force of moderation while Republicans engage in partisan bomb-throwing, many of the true swing voters who went Republican will surely have a bit of buyer’s remorse. Additionally, many younger Independents, who presumably stayed home in 2010, should come back out in 2012, helping Democrats again.

It is conventional wisdom by now that if the economy is recovering by 2012, Obama will benefit, and Democrats along with him, and this is surely true (assuming nothing else happens to overwhelm that effect). However, there is only so much the president can do to influence the economy, though he can certainly look like he is doing more.

Certainly, to the extent that Independents are distrustful of politics and parties and view both as too extreme, Obama and the Democrats will benefit by showing a willingness to compromise and moving to the political center, which Republicans are increasingly abandoning. A fundamentally moderate public will respond, especially if the economy is improving and it becomes less of an issue, meaning that something else will have to take its place in people’s minds.

If Democrats are willing to take a riskier strategy, they might goad Republicans into a few battles on issues like “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” or even immigration, battles that will draw out the crazy side of the Republican coalition while showing the public and generally socially-liberal Independents that Democrats are on the side of social progress.

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Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues, Political Memo | 4 Comments »

The Obama “Theory of Change”, the 50-50 Nation, and the “It’s-the-economy-stupid” Dodge

Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Scott Winship


Scott Winship is research manager of the Pew Economic Mobility Project and a recent graduate of Harvard's doctoral program in social policy. The views he expresses do not represent those of Pew.

by Scott Winship

On the eve of the Iowa caucus in late 2007, Mark Schmitt, editor of The American Prospect, wrote an influential essay titled, “The ‘Theory of Change’ Primary”.  The thesis of the piece was that Barack Obama’s frequent paeans to bipartisanship were not to be understood as the naivety of a political Pollyanna who would be rudely awakened upon taking the reins of power.  Rather, Schmitt argued, appeals to bipartisanship were a tactic that President Obama would use to make Republicans an offer they couldn’t refuse: join with your colleagues across the aisle to enact the progressive policies the country demands, or reject bipartisanship and bear the wrath of voters in 2010.

Obama’s theory of change—as interpreted by Schmitt—has not worked out so well.  Half the country supports repealing the healthcare reform bill, half say Democrats are too liberal, and half think that “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”. While the lackluster economy clearly played a major role in ushering in the sweeping gains made by the GOP on Tuesday, progressives need to recognize that Democratic losses were not simply due to bad luck.  Progressives overreached, which may or may not have been worth yesterday’s shellacking but which certainly calls for a change in strategy over the next two years.  By taking seriously the theory-of-change strategy and recognizing that the 50-50 Nation continues to govern national politics, progressives can come back in 2012.

There are limits to blaming the economy for Democratic losses.  Most strikingly, the exit polls last night revealed that Republicans won a majority of the national House vote even among the one in three voters who said something other than the economy was the most important issue facing the country.  No, the theory-of-change strategy failed because the priorities Democrats pursued and the specific solutions they offered were not popular enough that Republicans felt any pressure to go along.

Nowhere was this truer than for health care reform, where controversies over government intervention into medical decisions, deficits, Medicare cuts, illegal immigration, and abortion gradually eroded the fragile support for reform among moderates.  Democrats, oversimplifying polling that showed support for “health care reform”, convinced themselves that the time, budgetary resources, and energy spent on pushing through their particular vision of reform would trump the anemic jobs picture in the midterm elections.  (And simmer down, public option advocates—there is absolutely no evidence that the purer original reform proposals would have produced a better outcome politically.)

Abandoning the “it’s-the-economy-stupid dodge” will be crucial for progressives moving forward, because in the most important respect the Administration finds itself right where it was in January of 2009.  The country is mired in an economic downturn, with few positive signs on the horizon.  Progressives can passively wait and see and allow the 2012 election to depend on what happens to the economy between now and then.  Alternatively, by taking seriously the theory-of-change strategy, the President and Congressional Democrats can improve their chances of success next time and minimize the damage should the economy remain lousy.

Taking the theory-of-change strategy seriously means discarding the naively hopeful view that the 2008 election was a mandate for progressivism.  As I wrote the night of that election, that view profoundly ignored the evidence from 2008 and political history since the Clinton years.  The 50-50 Nation lives, and the Administration will have to stake out positions that are both popular and on which Republican-led gridlock will be met with disapproval from moderate voters.  Such positions will often be met with howls of protest from the left, but if Democrats are smart, they will look to President Clinton’s success after 1994 as a model for how to get another bite at the apple in two years.

For instance, the easiest way to continue providing some stimulus to the economy is going to be via tax cuts.  Rather than continuing to push for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers, Democrats should instead advocate for ex-budget director Peter Orszag’s proposed two-year extension of tax cuts for everyone.  Such a stance would be both pro-stimulus and anti-deficit.  Both positions are important, for while the economy is the overwhelming priority of voters, the broad question of the size, scope, and effectiveness of government is second, and this is where Democrats’ weakness really lies.

Democrats could also take a moderate position on foreclosures and the barrier to growth that underwater mortgages present.  Rather than bailing out distressed homeowners—which polls show commands only weak support, due to perceptions of irresponsibility on the part of homeowners who took out mortgages they could not afford—Democrats could propose incentives for lenders and loan servicers to refinance the mortgages of distressed borrowers.  For instance, Ben Bernanke has suggested allowing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure “shared equity” mortgages, whereby lenders would offer lower interest rates in return for an agreed-upon stake in the home’s equity upon purchase or refinancing.  Democrats could also offer tax breaks or loans to make up the difference between the selling price of a home and a (bigger) mortgage payoff.  This would help homeowners seeking to move for better economic opportunities who are not in danger of foreclosure or delinquency.

Welfare reform is up for reauthorization, and President Obama is in a strong position to preemptively lay out proposals that promote individual responsibility but that also fund the block grant more generously in response to data showing that the program’s growth has not nearly kept pace with the rise in joblessness.  Furthermore, he could advocate responsible fatherhood provisions and other family-oriented policies, consistent with his past championing of such initiatives.

On immigration, Democrats should abandon their proposals advocating a general pathway to citizenship—a hopeless cause that will always be seen as rewarding law-breaking—and embrace the DREAM Act, coupled with tougher enforcement.  The DREAM Act gives undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as minors the chance to earn residency if they serve in the military or complete some college.  It addresses a fairly sympathetic group—the sons and daughters brought over the border by their parents, who never chose to break the law but who now face severe restrictions on their ability to get ahead through higher education because of their lack of documentation.

Finally, on deficit reduction, Democrats should use the housing crisis as an opportunity to begin a conversation around the distortions introduced into the economy by tax subsidies (such as the mortgage interest deduction’s complicity in the mortgage and financial crisis).  Larry Summers has suggested that a global cap could be placed on the amount of itemized deductions a taxpayer could take, which would be progressive while avoiding fights over this tax provision or that one.  The President can ask whether the federal government should really be subsidizing the purchase of second homes and vacation homes.

Democrats used the first two years of Obama’s first term to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make big changes in domestic policy.  Progressives may differ in their evaluation of whether the cost has been and will be worth it, but what is clear is that if 2012 is to turn out differently than 2010, they will have to scale back their ambitions in the next two years.

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Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | 1 Comment »

Southern Republican Focus on Immigration Intensifies

Thursday, July 8th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

As regular readers might recall, back in May I did an analysis which predicted that the furor over immigration policy touched off in Arizona would have its greatest political impact not in the southwest or west coast, but in the Deep South, where a combination of new and highly visible Hispanic populations, low Hispanic voting levels, and red-hot Republican primaries would likely bring the issue to the forefront.

Nothing that’s happened since then has made me change my mind about that, though southern Republican unanimity on backing the Arizona law and replicating it everywhere has reduced the salience of immigration as a differentiator in some GOP primaries, most notably in South Carolina (where in any event the Nikki Haley saga eclipsed everything else).

But in Georgia, whose primary is on July 20, immigration is indeed a big issue in the gubernatorial contest, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway:

For the next 13 days, all stops are off when it comes to debating the issue of illegal immigration.

The Obama administration’s court challenge to the Arizona law that gives its peace officers the authority to stop and impound undocumented residents is already serving as a stick to a wasp nest in Georgia’s race for governor.

Former congressman Nathan Deal’s first TV ad of the primary season on Wednesday focused on illegal immigration and a promise that Georgia would soon have an Arizona-style law.

On the answering machines of tens of thousands of GOP voters, former secretary of state Karen Handel left a message of endorsement from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. Expect to see Brewer at Handel’s side before the July 20 vote.

The climate doesn’t brook dissent. Democrats have been uniformly silent on the Arizona issue.

As it happens, Deal and Handel are battling for a runoff spot. Handel and long-time Republican front-runner John Oxendine are also proposing radical changes in the state tax code, abolishing income taxes entirely, but so far that momentous issue is not getting the kind of attention generated by the action of another state on immigration three time zones away.

Photo credit: Th.omas’ Photostream

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics | No Comments »

Just Cops or Teachers, Too?

Friday, June 18th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

A debate among Republican gubernatorial candidates in Georgia this week illustrated just how far the GOP (particularly in the South) has drifted from the impulse that led George W. Bush and John McCain to support comprehensive immigration reform back in the day. Now it’s all about deporting the undocumented pronto, and the only difference of opinion is over how many public employees need to spend their time in the dragnet for illegals.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway, candidate Eric Johnson, who’s struggling to land a runoff spot, came out for requring both teachers and hospital employees to verify the citizenship status of their patrons. Candidate Nathal Deal professed frustration that few cops in Georgia viewed themselves as immigration enforcement officers, but did draw the line at teachers being enrolled in the chore.

All the GOP candidates, of course, supported the idea of Georgia enacting a law like Arizona’s; this is a position that’s becoming as much a litmus test for southern Republicans as attacking unions. That will become significant nationally in 2012 when the Republican presidential nomination contest moves south.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Did Nikki Haley Help Kill Cap-and-Trade?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

The big development in non-election news from Washington this week has been the collapse of bipartisan negotiations for cap-and-trade legislation, caused by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s defection. Said defection has been a long time in the making; earlier Graham broke off longstanding negotiations with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman on climate change, allegedly because he was angry with Harry Reid for hinting that immigration reform might come first in the Senate. Now that Reid’s backed off that idea, Graham’s been forced to more or less flip-flop entirely on climate change, and is now backing a far less ambitious bill introduced by Richard Lugar that would have no cap on carbon emissions.

The CW has suggested that Graham’s happy feet on climate change is the product of pressure from his Republican colleagues in Congress who don’t want any “cap-and-tax” bill and basically don’t want any cooperation with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. But I think the problem may be a little closer to home for Graham.

Earlier this year, a couple of Republican county committees down in South Carolina raised eyebrows with censure resolutions aimed at Graham for his support for cap-and-trade, comprehensive immigration reform, and TARP. One of those committees was from Lexington County, which happens to be the residence of Nikki Haley, who then became the only gubernatorial candidate to embrace Graham’s censure for ideological heresy.

Now maybe it’s a coincidence that Graham threw in the towel on cap-and-trade the day after Haley became a national political rock star in the wake of her strong (49%) performance in the SC Republican gubernatorial primary, but maybe it’s not. Graham won’t be up for re-election until 2014, but as Bob Dylan once said (though not in the context of climate change): “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

I bring this up in part as a reminder to progressives who are naturally sympathetic to Haley as a woman and as a minority member who has been accused without much evidence of being a cheat and a liar, and called a “raghead” to boot. That’s all well and good, but don’t forget she is also a serious hard-core conservative who eagerly identifies herself with the Jim DeMint, take-no-prisoners wing of her party, and who may have just played a role in blowing up what was once a promising effort to deal with one of the most important challenges facing the country and the world. To be sure, she should be judged on her ideas and record and not subjected to gender-based double standards or sexual innuendo. But make no mistake, her “ideas” are really bad from any progressive point of view. She’s only a breath of fresh air in SC politics if you think, like she does, that the good ol’ boys who’ve been running things are dangerously liberal.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum’s Photostream

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Posted in Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix | 1 Comment »

New Poll Shows Tradeoffs on Immigration

Thursday, May 27th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

It’s been pretty obvious for a while that there’s a major split between Hispanics and non-Hispanics on the immigration policy furor sparked by Arizona’s new law authorizing state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws.

A new MSNBC/NBC/Telemundo poll helps outline the political choices this situation poses for both parties.

To put it simply, white Americans tend to support the Arizona law while Hispanics tend to oppose it, by roughly even two-to-one margins. But the internals of the poll tell a more interesting story. The short-term advantage to Republicans of loudly backing the Arizona law is reinforced by the fact that many Democratic-leaning voters — notably suburban women and women over 50 — say they’d look favorably on candidates raising Arizona. And the long-term problem for Republicans is reinforced by the finding that hostility to the Arizona law — and to the GOP — is especially strong among younger Hispanics.

Complicating the picture further is the fact that a sizeable majority of all Americans (60-29) continue to support some sort of comprehensive immigration reform with provisions that include stronger border security and sanctions against both employers of undocumented workers and the workers themselves–short, however, of deportation. (This is what Democratic Strategist Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira has been pointing out). And big majorities want Congress to do something about the problem.

This last finding may tempt Democrats to move ahead with comprehensive reform in Congress, heightening Hispanic hostility to alternative approaches while convincing non-Hispanic voters that it’s possible to increase enforcement without deportation schemes or potential harrassment of citizens and legal immigrants. But as Jon Chait notes today, certain GOP obstruction of comprehensive immigration reform legislation might simply increase the frustration of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic voters about the status quo, while shifting attention away from Republican extremism on the subject. And as William Galston recently argued, highlighting this issue is a perilous strategy for Democrats, given the likely composition of the 2010 electorate.

There are big risks and big tradeoffs for both parties in making immigration a big issue in 2010. I doubt Republicans in most parts of the country are going to be able to keep themselves from expressing solidarity with Arizona and trying to make this a wedge issue. Democrats need to be more consciously strategic than that, which probably means a principled position that avoids the extremes of “amnesty” as well as deportation or ethnic profiling by law enforcement agencies — but that also makes Republicans play offense on immigration, and lets them become truly offensive.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix | No Comments »

Earning Green Cards Through Diplomas

Friday, May 14th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

The recent re-emergence of immigration on the national agenda, not to mention our slow recovery from an economic slump, has illuminated an underappreciated but serious flaw in U.S. immigration policy: It is fundamentally misaligned with the needs of America’s economy.

Our current policy does little to prevent an influx of undocumented workers across our southern border, or to raise the education levels of those who are already here. It admits legal immigrants mostly on the basis of unifying extended families, rather than the skills they bring. The U.S. in recent years has admitted roughly one million legal entrants per year. Of these, about two-thirds are admitted based on family ties, while 16 percent come in for employment-related reasons. Programs targeted at skilled migrants let in only about 180,000 people each year. Our immigration policy, in short, lowers the overall skill level in the U.S.

It is time we looked at immigration reform through the prism of human capital development. America’s ability to compete globally increasingly depends on skilled workers and ceaseless innovation. Two policies in particular will help us re-orient our immigration posture.

First, we need to make it easier for foreign students who receive advanced degrees from U.S. institutions in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to stay in the U.S. and join the workforce. Our current immigration system makes it unnecessarily difficult for STEM advanced-degree graduates who are here legally to gain employment. Those students have to compete with foreign-educated and more experienced workers for the 65,000 H1-B visas and 80,000 priority worker and advanced-degree green cards issued every year. We need to change immigration law so those students have a chance to earn a green card with their diploma.

But they are not the only students whose potential we are squandering with an outmoded immigration system. Every year up to 65,000 children of undocumented immigrants graduate high school. While it’s not illegal for them to attend college, universities and colleges have given new scrutiny to immigration status in the wake of 9/11, which has had a chilling effect on undocumented immigrants’ enrollment. It’s in our economic interest to encourage these kids to get a college education. Enacting a policy that would give them a path to citizenship through college education and national service can only strengthen the country.

Rewarding Achievement in Science and Math

First, we should enact policies that make it easier for motivated, capable young immigrants to establish U.S. citizenship. Attaching a green card — granting lawful permanent residence — to every foreign student’s post-graduate STEM degree diploma is one such policy.

Currently foreign students are allowed 12 months of practical training after completing their studies. Under a Department of Homeland Security interim ruling issued in 2008, foreign students with STEM degrees can extend that out to just over two years (29 months). However, students cannot have more than 90 days of unemployment during this time. Once their visa expires, they have to leave the U.S., taking their education and skills with them.

But the average unemployment stint is 130 days, and in this recession, over 200 days — more than twice the official limit. The rule means that students in technically intensive degrees are being turned away after valuable education capital has been invested in them. By attaching a green card to a STEM advanced degree, hardworking and high-achieving foreign students won’t have to leave the U.S. to apply their skills and find good work. From the U.S.’s perspective, it would get to keep bright and industrious workers who can add the most value to our economy.

The government should also exempt green-card recipients who hold advanced STEM degrees from green card caps currently in place. Advanced-degree holders currently face a five-year wait to get a green card. By exempting them from that cap, we can keep valuable human capital here.

Not everyone is on board with this idea. Critics have argued against policies that would encourage foreign students to enter STEM graduate programs in the U.S. They contend that providing further incentives for foreign students will accelerate the crowding out of U.S. students — particularly minorities — and workers in the STEM fields.

But such skeptics ignore the considerable benefits of a vigorous STEM/green card policy. The open flow of knowledge and talented researchers has long helped keep the U.S. at the forefront of science and technology. According to a National Academies report:

The participation of international graduate students and postdoctoral scholars is an important part of the research enterprise of the United States. In some fields they make up more than half the population of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. If their presence were substantially diminished, important research and teaching activities in academe, industry, and federal laboratories would be curtailed, particularly if universities did not give more attention to recruiting and retaining domestic students.

Unleashing the innovative and entrepreneurial energies of our best students — be they American or foreign-born — will be key to America’s resurgence. Stapling a green card to the diplomas of foreign STEM advanced-degree holders is one concrete policy step we can take to ensure that outcome.

A Pathway for Children of Immigrants

The same opportunity to become integrated and contribute to American society should be given to those who came to the U.S. as children with their undocumented parents. This may strike some as controversial, but it’s common sense. When an adult comes into the U.S. illegally, he or she is exercising a choice and is responsible for its consequences. That’s not true of the child who follows his or her parent across the border. A child should not have to suffer severe legal and economic limitations for the simple act of following a parent’s decision.

Yet that’s exactly what happens under the current system. Right now, the children of undocumented immigrants are stuck: As they grow up and go to school, they become more and more American. Yet this country gives them no pathway to legal residency or citizenship. This is bad not just for them, but also for our nation. We are consigning thousands of people to uncertain limbo status, with little hope for full membership in our society. But we are also depriving ourselves of the opportunity to benefit from their energy, ideas, talents and engagement in our national life.

We can tackle this problem by offering an expedited pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who go to college or engage in meaningful national service. This idea has been floated as part of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. The measure would grant conditional permanent-resident status to undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. before their 16th birthday, lived here for at least five years, are of good moral character and either graduated from high school or attained admission to college.

Opponents of this initiative complain that giving permanent-resident status to children of undocumented immigrants will be just a backdoor way for their parents to document themselves and live legally in the U.S. But those objections don’t stand up to scrutiny. Permanent residents can only petition for spouses and unmarried children, not parents or siblings. Citizens can petition for siblings or parents, but if that relative has been living in the U.S. illegally for more than a year, they may not re-enter the U.S. for 10 years.

It’s also worth noting that comprehensive immigration reform will likely result in some undocumented families having to leave the U.S. For those who meet the conditions to stay, it’s in our economic interest to encourage their kids to get a college education.

Estimates of the number of young people who would become eligible for legal residency under the Dream Act vary widely. The Migration Policy Institute has estimated (PDF) that 360,000 unauthorized immigrants would become immediately eligible, with perhaps another 715,000 who might become so if they make it through high school and meet the other requirements.

Supporters of this idea should be open to some changes in order to not only win passage but also strengthen the benefits from the proposal. For example, if the only way to get the initiative through Congress is to extend the academic requirement for full permanent-resident status from two years of college to four, that’s better than seeing the whole thing go down to defeat, as what happened with the Dream Act.

A broader definition of national service can also win additional votes. Let’s expand the service requirement beyond military experience. An undocumented youth might satisfy the service provision by teaching in low-income schools, tutoring in an adult-literacy program, helping to maintain our national parks, serving in the Peace Corps, or enlisting in a service program established by one of the states.

A Pragmatic Course

America’s immigration policy is badly broken and requires fixes that go far beyond what we have proposed here. We need sweeping reform that dramatically reduces illegal immigration by enforcing laws in the workplace; that ties legalization to workplace verification of identity and legal status; that enlarges the pipeline for legal immigrants, particularly those with high skills; and that engages Mexico in cooperative efforts to curb the flow of guns and people across the border and confront the scourge of narco-terrorism.

A progressive blueprint for reform must also bring our anachronistic immigration laws into closer alignment with America’s economic needs. America can only hold onto its high living standards by competing on the basis of high-value goods and services. Because rapid innovation is key to U.S. comparative advantage, we need immigration policies that attract more educated and skill workers to our shores.

Immigration reform must tilt our laws toward skills. We could achieve this by increasing the number of permanent visas to skilled workers; by replacing per-country limits — which effectively cap skilled entrants from large countries like China and India — with an overall limit; and by limiting family-sponsored preferences to nuclear rather than extended family members.

And we must take the two steps proposed here: stapling a green card to diplomas awarded to foreign students who graduate with advanced STEM degrees from U.S. universities, and offering legal status to qualified children of undocumented immigrants who get a college degree. Offering a pathway to citizenship to high-achieving immigrants doesn’t just reward talent and diligence — it will lay the groundwork for America’s resurgence in the 21st century.

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Could Meg Whitman Lose Her Primary?

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

After spending upwards of $60 million, much of it lately on attack ads against her Republican primary rival, Steve Poizner, California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman appears to have lost most of a large lead over Poizner and is heading towards the June 8 balloting in an astonishingly vulnerable position.

A new Survey USA poll out this week shows eMeg leading Poizner 39 percent/37 percent, a 20-point net swing in Poizner’s favor since the previous SUSA survey in April. Even if you are skeptical about the accuracy of SUSA’s robo-polls, California political cognoscenti all seem to agree that Poizner is closing fast.

This is significant beyond the borders of California for at least four reasons. The first and most obvious is that Whitman’s epic spending on early television ads doesn’t seem to be doing her a lot of good. If she winds up becoming the new Al Checchi — the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who broke all previous spending records on heavily negative ads and then got drubbed in his primary — it will be an object lesson to self-funders everywhere.

The second reason a Whitman defeat or near-defeat would resonate broadly is that it would confirm the rightward mood of Republicans even in a state where they are reputedly more moderate. At this point, both Poizner and Whitman are constantly calling each other “liberals,” with Poizner, who’s running ads featuring conservative GOP avatar Tom McClintock, getting the better of that particular argument. Whitman would have undoubtedly preferred to have kept closer to the political center in preparation for a tough general election campaign against Jerry Brown. But Poizner is forcing her to compete for the True Conservative mantle in a very conspicuous way.

Third, there are signs that Poizner is also forcing Whitman — and by implication, the entire California Republican Party — to risk a repetition of the 1990s-era GOP alienation of Latino voters by endorsing harsh immigration measures. This has been a signature issue for Poizner from the beginning; he supports bringing back Proposition 187 — the 1994 ballot measure pushed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson that is widely interpreted as having destroyed California’s Republican majority by making the state’s huge Latino population a reliable and overwhelming Democratic constituency. Poizner has also lavishly praised the new Arizona immigration law. Having tried to ignore the issue initially, Whitman is now running radio ads in which Pete Wilson (her campaign chairman) touts her determination to fight illegal immigration. If those ads migrate to broadcast TV, it’s a sure bet that Whitman is panicking, and that monolithic Latino support for Brown in the general election is a real possibility. And if that can happen in California, where immigrant-bashing is so obviously perilous, it can certainly happen in other parts of the country.

Finally, it’s worth noting that aside from immigration, the issue on which Poizner seems to be gaining traction is the attention he’s devoted to Whitman’s involvement with Goldman Sachs. She was on the firm’s board for a number of years, and earned a very large amount of money from an insider practice — then legal, now illegal — called “spinning,” which she nows says she “regrets.” Poizner’s having a lot of fun with this issue, and the California Democratic Party is chipping in with an ad ostensibly promoting financial reform in Washington that is mainly aimed at Whitman. Lesson to would-be-business-executive-candidates: some kinds of private-sector experience are not helpful to your candidacy in the current climate.

It’s worth noting that there’s another major statewide GOP primary going on in California, involving another female former-business-executive who gained national attention through involvement in the McCain presidential campaign. That would be Carly Fiorina, who is running for the Senate nomination to oppose Barbara Boxer, but is struggling to catch up with an opponent, Tom Campbell, who really does have a moderate repuation, at least on abortion and same-sex marriage. And one of Fiorina’s main problems is a third candidate, Chuck DeVore, who’s running hard as the True Conservative in the race. Fiorina has recently wheeled out endorsements from Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum. All three major GOP Senate candidates have endorsed the Arizona immigration law. The outcome of this race, and where the competition positions the winner, could also have a fateful impact on the general election and on the future of California politics.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/farber/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

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Charting the GOP Shift on Immigration

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.

But in his weekly column for National Journal over the weekend, Ron Brownstein has done us all the great service of carefully documenting how far and how fast Republican members of Congress have moved on this subject since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2006:

Just four years ago, 62 U.S. senators, including 23 Republicans, voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. That bill was co-authored by Arizona Republican John McCain and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy. President Bush strongly supported it. The Republican supporters also included such conservative senators as Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky….The measure almost certainly could have attracted the necessary 218 votes to pass the House. But it died when House GOP leaders refused to bring it to a vote because they concluded that it lacked majority support among House Republicans.

Since 2006, Republican support for comprehensive action has unraveled. In 2007, Senate negotiators tilted the bill further to the right on issues such as border enforcement and guest workers. And yet, amid a rebellion from grassroots conservatives against anything approaching “amnesty,” just 12 Senate Republicans supported the measure as it fell victim to a filibuster. By 2008, McCain declared in a GOP presidential debate that he would no longer support his own bill: Tougher border enforcement, he insisted, should precede discussion of any new pathway to citizenship.

So the GOP position was moving rightwards at warp speed even with a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, George W. Bush, still in the White House, being advised by Karl Rove, who viewed such legislation as critical to maintaining a competitive position for Republicans among Hispanic voters. But it’s shifted even more since then, even though levels of immigration have significantly dropped.

For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating an enforcement-legalization plan that largely tracks the 2006 model with some innovative updates, including a “biometric” Social Security card to certify legal status for employment. On balance, their proposal appears more conservative than the 2006 bill.Yet it has been stalled for weeks because Graham had demanded that a second Republican sign on as a co-sponsor before the legislation is released, and none stepped forward. Even Graham angrily backed away this week, after Senate Democratic leaders briefly suggested they would move immigration reform ahead of climate-change legislation he is also negotiating. Reform advocates suspect that Graham is withdrawing from the immigration effort partly to avoid embarrassing his close ally McCain, who faces a stiff primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

So it appears that Senate Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform (or to be exact, a more conservative version of it) has dropped from 23 to 1 and perhaps soon to nada.

Underneath this shift, notes Brownstein, is the self-replicating demographic isolation of the GOP, which, as Rove forsaw, could make the construction of a Republican majority much harder in the medium-to-long-range future:

[T]he hardening GOP position also shows how the party is being tugged toward nativism as its coalition grows more monochromatic: In a nation that is more than one-third minority, nearly 90 percent of McCain’s votes in the 2008 presidential election came from whites. That exclusionary posture could expose the GOP to long-term political danger. Although Hispanics are now one-sixth of the U.S. population, they constitute one-fifth of all 10-year-olds and one-fourth of 1-year-olds.

This may not matter to Republican candidates in tough primaries this year, who aren’t looking beyond their noses and figure they can’t afford to get outflanked by opponents who are “getting tough” on immigration. But they are in danger of taking an existing demographic problem facing the GOP and making it immeasurably worse, and more immediate.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/takomabibelot/ / CC BY 2.0

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Charlie Crist to Run “Outsider” Campaign. Will Voters Buy It?

Friday, April 30th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

The big news this week was the much-telegraphed announcement yesterday by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist that he will abandon the Republican senatorial primary (where he was in danger of being trounced by Marco Rubio) and instead re-file as an independent candidate in that race.

Crist’s gambit raises a lot of questions, most immediately about how many of his donors will ask for their money back, and how, exactly, he will negotiate the very difficult shoals of an independent candidacy in a state famous for its partisanship. The instant GOP blowback was intense, as Jonathan Martin of Politico reported:

Immediately after he gave his speech, his campaign manager and two press aides resigned. His mail vendor and media consultant also indicated that they would not remain with him as he pursued a third-party bid.

In Washington, the very GOP senators who had anointed him as the party’s favorite last year castigated him as an untrustworthy opportunist and demanded that he return their contributions and those of other Republicans.

Crist appears determined to run an “outsider” campaign, which will be somewhat difficult for an incumbent governor and former darling of the national GOP establishment. The first post-announcement three-way polls will be very interesting.

While it was completely overshadowed by the Crist drama, the Florida senatorial race was also roiled by reports that billionaire investor Jeff Greene, who bet against the housing bubble and won big, will enter the Democratic primary against U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, who had been focused on the general election. Greene is apparently being advised by the eccentric duo of Joe Trippi and Doug Schoen.

The other trend worth watching this week was the sudden dilemma posed to Republican candidates for various offices across the country by Arizona’s new immigration law, which among other things, authorized law enforcement officers to demand proof of citizenship from anyone “reasonably suspected” of being in the country illegally. While virtually all Republicans have defended the Arizona action as an indictment of the failure of the federal government to “protect the borders,” the specific law has struck sparks, particularly among candidates in highly competitive Republican primaries.

In Nevada, for example, the front-runner in the gubernatorial race, Brian Sandoval, who happens to be both a Latino and suspected by hard-core conservatives of being a moderate squish, instantly endorsed the Arizona law. His main opponent, incumbent Jim Gibbons, who has been running as the true conservative candidate, demurred, arguing that Nevada didn’t need that sort of law because it wasn’t a border state. And a third candidate who is trying to outflank Gibbons on the right, Mike Montandon, not only endorsed the Arizona initiative but called profiling by law enforcement officers — the main concern many have had with the Arizona law — absolutely essential.

The furor over the Arizona initiative has not been confined to the West. It may, in fact, have its greatest impact on Republicans in the Deep South, where Hispanic immigration has been visible enough to upset conservatives, but has not yet created a significant voting bloc. Almost immediately after the enactment of the Arizona law, Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim James, who is struggling to overcome Judge Roy Moore as the Christian conservative candidate in that race, launched an ad attacking his own state’s practice of offering drivers’ tests in languages other than English.

Next door in Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal, who recently resigned from the U.S. House on the heels of an ethics investigation, publicly called for enactment of an Arizona-style immigration system in his own state. And in South Carolina, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who earlier compared subsidized school lunch beneficiaries to “stray animals,” harnessed the Arizona controversy to his own distinctive message in the gubernatorial race by suggesting that immigrants wouldn’t be coming to the Palmetto State if lazy welfare bums were willing to work.

It’s an easy guess that immigration fever will spread in highly competitive southern Republican primaries, and perhaps elsewhere. In general, cultural issues can be expected to pop up where candidates are trying to distinguish themselves in a Republican Party that’s now monolithically — even radically — conservative on economic and fiscal issues.

Poll Watch

In polling news, there were two big national surveys released this week, one by the Washington Post/ABC News, and the other by Pew. The WaPo/ABC poll had some good news for Democrats:

The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago, when Congress was engaged in the long endgame over divisive health-care legislation. A majority continues to see Obama as “just about right” ideologically, despite repeated GOP efforts to define the president as outside the mainstream.

Those polled also say they trust Obama over Republicans in Congress to deal with the economy, health care and, by a large margin, financial regulatory reform. And the president continues to get positive marks on his overall job performance, with, for the first time since the fall, a majority of independents approving.

Pew (PDF), on the other hand, found Republicans drawing even with Democrats on five of six major issues (the exception being energy policy). Go figure.

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Monday and Friday.

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Crapshoot

Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Ed Kilgore


Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.

by Ed Kilgore

Where is it most painful to be a highly visible incumbent politician at this particular moment in U.S. history? Perhaps it’s California, where current economic and budgetary discontents are compounding a growing public fury over chronically dysfunctional state government and an imprisoning constitution. Maybe it’s Florida, that fading Sunbelt powerhouse full of simmering regional and ethnic rivalries, whose perma-tanned governor has struggled to make up his mind which political party he belongs to.

But you couldn’t go far wrong by selecting Nevada, a state that shares Florida’s disastrous economic dependence on real-estate speculation and tourism — Nevada currently sports the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, 13.4 percent, trailing only Michigan — and the special disappointment of being, for many residents, a Paradise Lost. The state’s own demographic and ideological diversity also rivals Florida’s, home as it is to a rapidly growing Latino population (which made up 15 percent of the electorate in 2008), plenty of extremely conservative Mormons, powerful and politically active labor unions, a libertarian heritage of legalized vice and a Republican Party moving so quickly to the right that you can barely keep up with it.

Moreover, Nevada’s three top elected officials are currently Sen. Harry Reid (D), Sen. John Ensign (R) and Gov. Jim Gibbons (R). Reid, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and never terribly popular back home, has looked like a sitting duck for over a year. Ensign, once considered a rising conservative star, has been exposed as a sanctimonious hypocrite over the course of a particularly sordid adultery-and-cronyism scandal, in which a group of mysterious evangelical allies operating out of a compound on C Street in Washington, known variously as The Family or The Fellowship, were caught unsuccessfully trying to clean up his act or cover it up. Gibbons has had his own, somewhat more cartoonish series of sex scandals – although maybe they were just “relationship scandals,” if you buy his claim that he hasn’t had sex since the mid-’90s.

Luckily for him, Ensign is not up for reelection until 2012. Unluckily enough, Harry Reid is up for reelection in 2010, and, seeing as his son, Clark County (Las Vegas) Commission Chairman Rory Reid, is the frontrunner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, you’d think that Nevada Republicans would have a straight, clean shot at a sweep that dethrones the Reid dynasty. But it’s hardly that simple, thanks to Byzantine and fractious Republican primaries for both the Senate and the governorship (where Jim Gibbons is still a formidable candidate), the existence of an independent Tea Party ballot line and the always important factors of money and organization, where Democrats have a distinct advantage. Just six weeks before Primary Day, you’d have to say that handicapping Nevada’s political races is something of a crapshoot.

Dating all the way back to November 2008, Harry Reid’s “favorable” rating in Nevada polls has been wallowing monotonously in the high 30s and low 40s, deadly territory for an extremely well-known incumbent, and particularly for a national party leader who claims to be able to represent his state’s values and bring home the bacon as well. The difficulty that Republicans have experienced in recruiting a top-tier Senate candidate has newspapers hesitating to dust off obituaries to Reid’s Senate career. But in head-to-head polls with his most likely GOP opponents, Reid has persistently trailed all of them, sometimes by double digits, and almost never gaining much more than 40 percent of the vote.

After striking out in its attempts to recruit a strong candidate such as former Rep. Jon Porter, Republicans have on hand a field of three major candidates: casino owner, former state senator, party chairwoman, and ex-beauty queen Sue Lowden; realtor and famous-basketball-playing-son-of-famous-basketball-coach Danny Tarkanian; and right-wing grassroots favorite Sharron Angle. Until very lately, Lowden looked to be consolidating a strong lead for the nomination. Despite a somewhat moderate image (particularly on social issues), she won endorsements from national conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and benefited from the general impression that she was far and away the most electable of available Republicans.

But then, at a local candidate forum in early April, Lowden touted the idea that individuals should barter for health services as an alternative to Obamacare, making the particular mistake of mentioning the “olden days” practice of trading chickens for doctor visits. After Jay Leno and others started bagging on her for promoting “chickens for checkups,” Lowden made the puzzling decision to defend her statement — repeatedly — instead of brushing it off and moving on. Now the whole meme has gone very viral. There hasn’t been a Senate primary poll since this all happened, but Tarkanian and Angle — and for that matter, Harry Reid — have to be encouraged by all the laughter at Lowden.

Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, the Republicans’ frontrunner is former Attorney General Brian Sandoval, is struggling nearly as much as Lowden. The perpetually unpopular incumbent, Jim Gibbons, is playing every ideological angle to win re-nomination. Falling back on his traditional popularity among hard-core conservatives, Gibbons has boosted his anemic approval ratings by championing legal challenges to the new federal health reform legislation, and is accusing Sandoval — who has taken the supreme risk of refusing demands to take Grover Norquist’s no-tax-increase pledge — of being a moderate squish. Democrats, figuring that Gibbons is a much easier mark, have been running attack ads on Sandoval that echo conservative criticisms.

A late twist has been the reaction of Nevada Republicans to the draconian Arizona legislation requiring law-enforcement officials to demand proof of citizenship from people who raise “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally. Sandoval, who is Latino, immediately endorsed the Arizona law, indicating where he thinks his own political bread is buttered. Gibbons took a different tack, arguing that Nevada’s non-border location makes such tactics unnecessary. The third major candidate, former North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon, who is trying to undercut Gibbons from the right, drew cheers during a recent candidates’ debate for taking the following position:

“Why are we answering questions on whether illegal immigration should be legal,” Montandon said. “I support what Arizona did absolutely.”

He added that he supports profiling, calling it the single greatest tool of law enforcement.

That ought to go over well with minority voters, eh?

Aside from the particular dynamics of the senatorial and gubernatorial races, Republicans are uneasily aware that they don’t match up well with Democrats in terms of money or campaign infrastructure. As one reporter put it last month:

The state party itself evoked laughter among several prominent Republicans I spoke to last week.

“There’s a whole lot of unproductive activity going on over there without any rhyme or reason,” said a Republican source, before unfurling a string of unsolicited insults at party leadership.

A key question would seem to be, “Where are the adults?” Can’t someone put a heavy hand on the shoulder of a top-tier candidate and say, “We need you,” or clear the field of primary challengers, or tell Ensign it’s time to step aside?

“That’s usually the role of the head of party,” another Republican source said. “But who is the head of the party? Yeah, there’s your answer.”

Meanwhile, the massive organizing efforts that Democrats put into the 2008 Nevada caucuses and general election are still bearing fruit, their impact sustained by Harry Reid’s campaign cash. Reid’s various campaign committees donated $660,000 – serious money in this relatively small state — to the Nevada Democratic Party in 2009 alone. By the end of March, he had raised over $16 million for his re-election (with an ultimate goal of $25 million) and, after a lot of early spending, still had over $9 million in cash on hand.

By contrast, Reid’s two likeliest general election opponents, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, who still have to expend themselves in a June primary slugfest, each had just over one quarter-million in the bank at the end of March. Both have some personal money to throw in, but not enough to keep up with Reid’s cash machine.

There are those who look at Nevada and conclude that nothing can save Harry Reid (or his son), not money, not organization, not a scattered and vulnerable Republican Party, not Latino outrage at GOP immigrant-bashing, not chickens-for-checkups, not a third-party candidate, and not even the possibility of a GOP ticket led by Jim Gibbons. It is, after all, a bad year to be an incumbent, much less a Democratic incumbent, much less the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate. But add all of these factors together, in a year when Nevada Republicans are committing one unforced error after another, and almost anything could happen. Republicans probably shouldn’t bet the farm on victory.

This item is cross-posted at the New Republic.

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Labour’s Last Stand?

Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

Things look grim for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Heading into tonight’s third and final debate, his Labour Party trails not only the Conservatives, but even the Liberal Democrats, who usually finish a distant third. London odds-makers don’t give much for Brown’s chances of pulling off a Harry Truman-like upset.

If the pollsters and bookies are right, the May 6 election could end a remarkable, 13-year run in power by the “New Labour” tandem of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But in Britain, electoral victory is denominated in parliamentary seats, not popular votes. The Lib Dems’ unexpected rise, behind a breakout performance by party leader Nicholas Clegg in the first debate, has scrambled the race in ways that make a variety of untoward outcomes possible, if not probable.

Many observers are predicting a hung parliament if the Lib Dems win enough seats to deprive either of their opponents a majority. This would trigger intense efforts by Labour and the Tories to woo the Lib Dems into a coalition government. In any case, however, the result likely would be curtains for Gordon Brown.

Tonight’s debate is probably his last chance to reverse Labour’s slumping prospects. It’s on the economy, which would ordinarily be Brown’s forte, but Britain’s economy also has been hammered by the financial crisis. It’s also true that Labour governments, under pressure from traditional constituencies and the unreconstructed “Old Labour” left, spent heavily on public services. Now those services will likely face draconian cuts as the next government grapples with ways to whittle down a huge (by British standards) $236 billion deficit.

But the dismal economic picture isn’t Labour’s only problem. Public worries about immigration also have roiled the race. Brown stumbled yesterday when he was caught on tape calling one voter who expressed such qualms a “bigoted woman.” He then compounded the gaffe by going to her house to apologize, ensuring that the incident dominated campaign coverage.

If the episode underscored Brown’s lack of political touch, it ought to be said in fairness that 13 years is a long time for any party to hold power in Britain. Clegg has bolted from obscurity by tapping into the inchoate desire for “change” that another newcomer, Barack Obama, tapped so effectively here in 2008.

If this really is Labour’s last stand, it’s worth recalling a few things about its significance for U.S. progressives. First, “New Labour” was a joint, Blair-Brown project that borrowed heavily from Bill Clinton’s New Democrat innovation. In a similar fashion, they helped Labour cast off old socialist dogma and revive itself as a modernizing force not only in Britain but in center-left politics generally.

Not the least of New Labour’s achievements was a long economic boom whose chief architect, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was none other than Gordon Brown. Unlike France and Germany, Britain enjoyed robust growth rates and low unemployment. It also depoliticized monetary policy, created new incentives for work, kept labor markets flexible and encouraged innovation and trade.

Finally, Blair and Brown were, and remain, sturdy friends of the United States. Blair stood with America after 9/11, was a forthright critic of the kind of fashionable anti-Americanism in which Clegg indulges, and risked his career by supporting the Iraq war. Brown likewise has firmly backed President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, despite mounting pressures within his own party and a war-weary public to bring British troops home.

Americans of course have no business mucking around in British elections. But if Gordon Brown does go down next week, we should recognize at least that we have lost a staunch friend and faithful ally.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasokphotos/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

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