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Is the Center Still Vital?

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

Lee Drutman

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

by Lee Drutman

Over at Third Way, Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck have published a new analysis about the role of moderates in American politics, “The Still-Vital Center: Moderates, Democrats, and the Renewal of American Politics.” It’s a keen paper, and I generally suspect they are right in their basic thesis: American government would work a whole lot better if there were more moderates running the place and that self-identified moderates have a more coherent worldview than many critics think.

Galston and Kamarck have pulled together some solid survey data on moderates, enough to conclude that, “moderates have mixed opinions about the overall stances of the two parties.” They’re more like Democrats on social issues, a little more like Republicans on foreign policy, and about split on economic policy.

But in general, moderates are more likely to support Democrats. Since 1980, the U.S. electorate has hovered around 20 percent liberal, 33 percent conservative, and 47 percent moderate. This means that Democrats need moderates more, since liberals make up only one-fifth of voters. Conservatives outnumber liberals by a substantial amount, so Republicans need fewer moderates to establish a winning coalition. This is the kind of simple math that liberals keep forgetting. Obama, like every Democrat before him, couldn’t have won without strong support among moderates.

But there’s also a puzzle here, and one that continues to frustrate centrists: If moderates consistently represent almost half of the electorate, why are there so few moderate representatives, and why is our politics so polarized?

Galston and Kamarck put a lot of emphasis on primary elections as a culprit, since they are generally low-turnout affairs, in which extremist candidates who are able to mobilize a small but loyal following can win. (Witness Christine O’Donnell winning Delaware’s Republican primary with 30,561 votes in a state of 900,000 people).

They advocate for open primaries so that voters from both parties can participate, which might, as they write, “open up the possibility that moderate and compromise might be rewarded rather than punished.” By all means! But already half of the states do this, and I’ve yet to see any systemic evidence that states with closed primaries turnout candidates any more extremist. Moreover, Alan Abramowitz has made the case that primary voters are actually not that different from general election across a number of ideological indicators.

But the ability of ideologues to triumph in primaries points to a larger problem: that moderate voters tend to be the least engaged and least educated part of the electorate. This extends as well to general campaign work, contributions, and even just talking to other people about politics.

In Abramowitz’s recent book The Disappearing Center (reviewed here by me), he shows that 56 percent of strong liberal or conservatives reported being politically engaged in 2004, as compared to 36 percent of those who “lean” liberal or conservative, and just 20 percent of those who say they are moderate, or of no ideology. And according to National Election Studies data, 43 percent of self-identified conservatives had a college degree, 32 percent of self-identified liberals had a college degree, but only 18 percent of moderates had a college degree. This is something centrists are going to have to grapple with.

In Abramowitz’s story, the plight of the moderates is mostly a story about less-educated, less-engaged citizens who don’t know or care enough about politics to pick a side. Were they to get wealthy and educated, like the partisans, they would presumably then know enough to pick one of the two distinct teams in American politics. But lacking the means or the will to pick a side, they call themselves moderate, feel disengaged and disenchanted by politics, and try to get on with the business of making a living.

However, I’m not sure about this. Have political moderates instead become less engaged out of frustration with extremism? Feeling that they have nobody in politics who speaks for them, have they simply stopped bothering? Galston and Kamarck come down on the side that moderates are becoming more frustrated as parties have become more ideological. My hunch is that they’re right, though it would be hard to prove this.

For my money, I think probably the best thing we could do to empower moderates would be to reduce obstacles to voting by supporting reforms such as vote-by-mail, Internet voting, same-day-registration, and moving Election Day to the weekend (the vast majority of countries hold elections on Sundays). In many respects, our current voting system effectively privileges the most engaged partisans and those with the most time on their hands, while disenfranchising more moderate voters for whom politics is, unfortunately, often less of a priority. Getting more moderates voting would force candidates to pay more attention to them and result in more moderate candidates. Additionally, instant runoff voting could enable centrist and independent candidates to run for office without worrying about being dismissed as spoilers.

Galston and Kamarck also propose “real redistricting reform” (hard to argue with the wisdom of non-partisan commissions drawing lines, though the fact that polarization extends to the Senate suggests there’s more than gerrymandering at work here), and a highly intriguing proposal that becoming Speaker of the House or Majority Leader of the Senate should require 60 percent support from the entire body (That’s 261 votes in the House, for those of you keeping score at home). This would be quite a change from the current approach, in which the leader is selected by only the majority party, and thus is only responsive to the majority party. But with a 60 percent super-majority, any leader would have to be able to draw at least some support from the opposing party.

I suspect this would have a minimal effect in the Senate, which is already pulled towards moderation by the 60-vote threshold to get anything done.

But could it change the way the House works? Galston and Kamarck argue that “super-majorities guarantee ownership by both political parties.” I guess it depends how the public perceives it. My hunch is that the majority party will still mostly get the blame or the credit, since the public doesn’t really get the concept of super-majorities (think how confusing the filibuster is to your average voter).

Moreover, given how hard it is for even a single party leader to keep the troops who are supposedly on the same team all marching in the same direction, wouldn’t it be even harder to have to steer a larger and more internally divisive army without mutiny? But who knows? Maybe it could work. It deserves more thought.

The bigger problem is that in some respects, the problems of polarization are built into politics: there is a tendency for those who have the most extreme views to care the most deeply, simply because they perceive the most at stake in the outcomes. And particularly in the current political environment, there is a tendency for those most interested in politics to be pulled to the extremes, in part because political discourse offers little guidance for those seeking a middle course – there is a lot more intellectual sustenance and solidarity on both poles.

But obviously, there have been periods in American politics (most recently the 1950s and 1960s) in which there was a Vital Center. So what happened?

The short version is that several demographic changes led to political sorting, which reduced moderating pressures on candidates. African-Americans migrated to the North and as a result became a more important political constituency. Civil Rights reforms alienated Southern Democrats, freeing the Democrats of their conservative wing and making their caucus more liberal. New Southern Republicans, plus the rise of the conservative Sunbelt, shifted the Republican center of gravity, as did the political awakening of evangelicals.

The decline of machine politics played a role. Without party machines to turn out votes and with new sprawling suburban districts to cover, candidates turned instead to special interests and ideological believers who were willing to volunteer and give money because they felt so strongly. A new political class that cared more about being right than actually winning took over the party mechanisms, creating the perfect breeding ground for ideological candidates.

Meanwhile, as politics became more partisan, it also became nastier. Because the activists who increasingly control the party now feel more is at stake, they became more aggressive – a feedback loop that has left much wreckage in its wake.

What Galston and Kamarck provide is a starting point back from the wreckage: evidence for a fundamentally moderate public, and a distinct “moderate” worldview. (For even more on this, it’s also worth reading Disconnect by Morris Fiorina. Fiorina’s basic thesis is that “the orientation [of the public] is more pragmatic. Far more people position themselves on the issues on a case-by-case basis rather than deduce their specific positions from some abstract principle ….Those who ostensibly represent the American public take positions that collectively do not provide an accurate representation of the public.”)

The big question is how to give moderates a more active role in politics. I suspect there is a bit more work to be done here in giving moderates more intellectual sustenance than they have traditionally received, and providing leadership and discourse that supports moderation as vital centrism rather than mushy compromise, and that fundamentally engages moderates. This analysis is a great place to start.

Tags: bipartisanship, centrists, ideology, liberals, majority, moderates, polarization, political parties, The Disappearing Center, Third way
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Political Memo | 3 Comments »

Going, Going, Gone?

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Lee Drutman

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

by Lee Drutman

Book Review: The Disappearing Center, By Alan Abramowitz

That our politics are now deeply polarized is a well-known fact. But do the polarized politics in Washington reflect the deep divides in the country between red and blue voters (and their respective desires for increasingly opposite policies on both sides)? Or do these elite divisions exist in spite of an essentially purple, moderate America?

Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University, is on the side of Washington as mirror of a deeply fractured electorate rapidly losing its political middle. His new book, “The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy” is the story of how voters migrated to the extremes over the last five decades.

Essentially, four big, interlinked things happened. The first is that the parties “sorted” better. The second is that the number of safe districts and safe states increased. The third is that Americans as a whole became more educated. The fourth is that the engagement gap between strong partisans and political moderates widened.

In their 1960 plumage, Republicans and Democrats were both diverse species, loose-fitting labels that meant very different things depending on where you were from. Northern “liberal” Republicans and Southern “conservative” Democrats made up large minority factions, and both often found more common cause with their fellow “liberals” or “conservatives” across the aisle than their fellow partisans. In such an environment, bipartisanship was the norm, rather than the exception.

Then the tumultuous ‘60s shook the snow globe of American politics. The fight over civil rights broke the Democrats’ hold on the “Solid South,” turning Southern Democrats into Republicans. The Republican center of gravity gradually migrated deep below the Mason-Dixon line, taking on a much redder hue: much more socially conservative, more skeptical of government. Democrats, meanwhile, freed from the need to keep placate the conservative southerners, grew bluer: more socially liberal, and less skeptical of government.

Once upon a time, congressional districts were highly competitive, and a Democrat (or Republican) had to be sensitive to the concerns of voters in the competing party to maintain a seat. Even as late as the 95^th Congress (1977-1978), only 24 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of Republicans were in “safe” districts; By the 108^th Congress (2004-2005), 49 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans were in “safe” districts. The consequence: they were far more likely to be worried about fending off extreme challengers in their primaries than about winning the general election by moving to the center. Thus, more extreme politicians replaced more moderate ones.

In 1976, the eight most populous states were all battleground states in the presidential election, and the average winning margin among them was 3.1 percentage points. In 2004, only four of the eight most populous states were battlegrounds, and the average winning margin in the eight states was 9.3 percentage points. Thanks to both realignment and demographic change, Abramowitz writes, “Red states, counties, and congressional districts have been getting redder while blue states, counties, and congressional districts have been getting bluer.”

At the same time, the American public got a whole lot better educated. In 1956, 37 percent of Americans had only a grade school education, and just 19 percent had some college; in 2004, only three percent of Americans had just a grade school education, and 61 percent had at least some college.

This matters, Abramowitz argues, because “College-educated citizens are generally more interested in politics, more politically active, and better informed about candidates and issues than high school-educated citizens. This is especially true with regard to one important form of political engagement: ideological awareness.”

So: the parties got better sorted into distinct camps, districts became less competitive, and an increasingly educated electorate was better able to pick up on the differences and to respond accordingly, sorting themselves likewise into the appropriate categories. Abramowitz notes that especially among the better educated, there has been increased “partisan-ideological polarization” – that is, that high-information liberals are indeed reliably liberal across all issues, and high-information conservatives are reliably conservative across all issues.

All of this polarization has actually been good for political engagement generally. Abramowitz cites numerous measures of a public that now cares more about politics, follows it more closely, and talks about it more to their friends – partly because they are more educated, and partly because if the parties are highly polarized, the stakes of political victory are significantly greater (high stakes are a terrific motivator.)

But, at the same time, a certain slice of the electorate has been left behind: “The American public appears to be increasingly divided into two groups,” writes Abramowitz, “the politically engaged, who view politics in ideological terms, and the politically disengaged, who do not.”

For example, 56 percent of strong liberal or conservatives reported being politically engaged in 2004, as compared to 36 percent of those who “lean” liberal or conservative, and just 20 percent of those who say they are moderate, or of no ideology. In the 1950s, this gap did not exist.

To Abramowitz, the story of the disengaged moderates is mostly a story about less-educated, less-engaged citizens who don’t know or care enough about politics to pick a side. Were they to get wealthy and educated, like the partisans, they would presumably then know enough to pick one of the two distinct teams in American politics. But lacking the means or the will to pick a side, they call themselves moderate, feel disengaged and disenchanted by politics, and try to get on with the business of making a living.

On the descriptives, The Disappearing Center is a terrific compendium to what’s happened. The parties have pulled apart, and in particular strong partisans on both sides are further apart than ever before. There are fewer competitive states, fewer competitive districts, and politicians who dare to compromise are increasingly punished. Nor is this likely to change: “A coalition of moderates is no longer possible because the center is a shrunken remnant of what it was forty or fifty years ago,” concludes Abramowitz. The forecast is for more partisan rancor, far as the eye can see.

But the analysis lacks in a few areas. For one, Abramowitz doesn’t engage with the possibility that political moderates have become less engaged out of frustration with extremism; his preferred explanation is that they remain moderate only out of an ignorance of the stakes involved. More frustratingly, his analysis is based heavily on reported self-identifications, rather than actual issue positions, and the issues he choose to measure polarization tend to be particular hot-button issues, like abortion and the Iraq war. More thorough issue-based measuring of public opinion (see, for example, Morris Fiorina’s Disconnect, or Joseph Bafumi and Michael C. Herron’s research on leapfrog representation) has found a much more moderate public on the issues, a public that has been left behind by two increasingly extreme parties.

Tags: 108th Congress, 95th Congress, Alan Abramowitz, and American Democracy, bipartisanship, blue voters, College-educated citizens, congressional district, conservative, Democrats, Disconnect, elite divisions, Emory University, extremes, high school-educated citizens, ideological awareness, inority factions, Joseph Bafumi and Michael C. Herron, leapfrog representation, liberal, Mason-Dixon, moderate America, moderates, Morris Fiorina, partisan-ideological polarization, polarization, polarized politics, political engagement, political moderates, politically active, politically disengaged, red voters, republicans, safe districts, safe states, self-identifications, socially conservative, Solid South, strong partisans, The Disappearing Center, The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Washington
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics | No Comments »

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

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Lee Drutman

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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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Tags: 2010 midterm election, 2012 presidential election, balance of power, budget deficit, centrism, Chris Ellis, Colorado, compromise, conflicted conservatives, Congress, conservative, Democratic extremism, Disaffected Republicans, disenchantment, Disengaged, doubting Democrats, economy and jobs, enthusiasm gap, Environment, environmental laws and regulations, Hawaii, heterogeneity, How to Win Them Back, Immigration, independents, James Stimson, job situation, liberals, libertarian, moderates, Moral Conservatives, New Hampshire, Nov 4-7 Gallup Poll, Obama, Obama Era, Ohio, operationally liberal, Oregon, parties, partisans, Pennsylvania, performance-based, Pew, policy-based, presidential elections, regulation, Republican extremism, Senate exit polls, Shadow Democrats, shadow Republicans, skeptical of government, special interests, structural side, symbolically conservative, trust, typology of Independents, Washington
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

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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.

Tags: 2010 midterm election, 2012 election, 50-50 Nation, abortion, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, big government, bipartisanship, budgetary resources, Bush, businesses, citizenship, Clinton, DREAM Act, economic downturn, Federal Housing Administration, GOP, House of Representatives, illegal immigration, Immigration, individuals, Iowa caucus, Larry Summers, liberal, Mark Schmitt, medical decisions, medicare cuts, moderates, Obama, Peter Orszag, Pollyanna, progressive policies, repealingm health care reform, stimulus, tax cuts, The American Prospect, The Theory of Change primary, Theory of Change, unemployment, upper-income taxpayers, welfare reform
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | 1 Comment »

Why Post-Election Soul-Searching Is Overrated

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Elbert Ventura

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Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. He formerly served as the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Elbert Ventura

The smoke has cleared; only the maimed and the dead remain on the battlefield. They are, for the most part, Democrats. The job of carting them off will take weeks; the post-mortems will take even longer. And yet progressives — we with our fetish for soul-searching — should reject a new, indulgent round of autocritique, or at least recognize that there is only so much to reflect on. The electorate’s rejection of Democrats is a lot of things, but a referendum on the quality of our ideas it isn’t.

How can that be? Isn’t a rebuke of this magnitude by definition a rejection of a party’s ideas? Well, it is if the ideas were carefully inspected and considered by an informed electorate. But sobriety has been hard to come by this election season. And what we tend to forget is that, before our discourse got sucked into the Fox-powered Tea Party vortex, our ideas were actually popular across the spectrum. Far from dogmatic and divisive, the policies that progressives have pushed in recent years have been sane, sensible fixes that have drawn support from left, right, and center.

Take cap-and-trade. Only the truly delusional still think that climate change and our voracious consumption of fossil-based fuels are nothing to worry about. Cap-and-trade was an innovative solution to the problem, harnessing the market — and eschewing command-and-control regulation — to bring about a reduction in carbon emissions.

Or take health care reform. Despite cries from left and right, the Obama administration got reform generally correct, setting us on a path to cutting costs and increasing access, all while leaving a system that Americans had grown accustomed to intact.

Or infrastructure. Economists of all stripes believe that we need more stimulus to spur economic activity. Every American who uses our roads, bridges, and water supply knows that our infrastructure is crumbling. In light of those needs, President Obama pushed through billions in infrastructure spending and just recently proposed a new $50 billion infrastructure bill.

All of these are good ideas that have achieved a certain degree of consensus, or at least support from moderates. An original version of cap-and-trade was co-sponsored by John McCain and was backed by moderate Republicans in the prelapsarian days before the Tea Party’s rousing. Health-care reform: As Jonathan Cohn noted, “Obama’s plan closely mirrors three proposals that have attracted the support of Republicans who reside within the party’s mainstream” — the most prominent of whom is Mitt Romney, whose health-care legislation in Massachusetts is a fairly close sibling of the national reform passed this year. As for infrastructure, money for more spending on the nation’s backbone was supported by Republican senators like Kit Bond and George Voinovich (both retiring – no coincidence) in an earlier jobs bill vote.

In all these cases, an urgent public problem was identified, and sensible, pragmatic solutions were proposed. But we no longer have politics that can accommodate the sensible and the pragmatic. The same John McCain who co-sponsored cap-and-trade now rails against it. Romney and Republicans who supported previous iterations of the Obama health plan have nothing but calumny for reform. Meanwhile, the only news of conservatives dealing with infrastructure is when they shrink from the challenge, like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey backing away from a proposed, and badly needed, tunnel to New York.

Over and over again, progressives have come up with solutions to our problems that can be embraced by the moderate middle. But in these last two years, we’ve seen that no matter how good and moderate the ideas are, it doesn’t seem to matter.

In this dilemma lies the priority for the pragmatic progressive in these next two years. The fact is our ideas are good. They are sound. Progressives of the Obama era have brought an innovative, reformist sensibility to government that prizes empiricism and problem-solving above all. Yet the party across the table has pulled back and shown little interest in engaging. They want us to keep coming to the table with more concessions — while hardly offering any concessions of their own. If we keep whittling down our ideas to meet their whims, our ideas will be hardly worth enacting at all.

We must, of course, never slow our indefatigable search for new ideas – it is what defines progressivism. But the paramount challenge, for these next two years at any rate, is finding a new politics. The calls for a new radical center are all well and good, but we need to remember that that’s where our ideas already are. It’s the right that has abandoned that center. The consensus ideas of yesterday have become the Marxist plots of their 2010 campaign. And sensible ideas have little chance of growing in political soil parched of sense. Will the part of the conservative movement that still cares about fiscal responsibility, fact-based argument, and good-faith dialogue resurface? Will they make their voices heard against the know-nothings and the ideologues who have taken over their party?

No doubt progressives should continue to be on the lookout for all who are sober and serious about solving our nation’s problems. Challenges must be issued and coalitions of the willing must be sought. But we shouldn’t allow the emergent faction of hysteria and irresponsibility to sway us from a core conviction: that when one already occupies the reasonable center, standing one’s ground is the reasonable thing to do.

Tags: Cap-and-tade, center, Chris Christie, Climate change, consensus, cutting costs, dogmatic, Environment, fossil-based fuels, Fox, George Voinovich, health care reform, independents, information, Infrastructure, John McCain, Jonathan Cohn, Kit Bond, know-nothings, left, Marxist plotsfiscal responsibility, Mitt Romney, moderates, New Jersey, New York, Post-Election, President Obama, progressives, radical center, right, Tea Party, Transportation
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | 1 Comment »

How to Win Back the “Independents”

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Lee Drutman

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

by Lee Drutman

In the next few days, we’re going to be hearing a lot about how the Democrats lost “independents,” who, after breaking for Democrats in both 2006 and 2008, broke hard this time for Republicans, and for the third straight cycle, voted against the party in power.

And while it’s clear that “independents”, who now make up 37 percent of the electorate (as compared to 34 percent for registered Democrats and 29 percent for registered Republicans) hold the balance of power in American politics, understanding how to win them or even who they are and what they want is less clear.

In short, the best way to win back “independents” is this: Obama and the Dems need a little bit of patience, a lot of attention to pragmatic problem-solving, and the ability to resist the temptation to hunker down and move to the left.

But before getting to details of the political prescriptions, any discussion about the mood independents needs to begin with the observation that “independents” is a much more varied category than almost all pundits make it out to be. Many independents are actually shadow partisans, and a good number even see themselves are too far left or right for the two parties.

According to Gallup, only 43 percent of independents indentify themselves as “moderate,” while 35 percent say they are “conservative “and 18 percent say they are “liberal”. By comparison, 39 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of Republicans identify themselves as “moderate.” In other words, independents are hardly more “moderate” than Democrats.

In a recent survey, Pew broke independents down 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.

So one way to think of independents is in terms of various degrees of independence. At the core are the true, true independents, who political scientists estimate to be about 10 percent of the electorate. These tend to be the most disaffected, disengaged voters, and lacking the ideological litmus tests of partisans, they also tend to be the most subject to the atmospherics and moods of how the country is doing and how even their own life is going rather than caring whether so-and-so voted the “right way” on some particular issue.

This probably goes a long way in explaining why they abandoned Democrats. Given the struggling economy, there is a desire to do something different, regardless of whether or not it makes sense – what Shankar Vedantam recently described as “action bias.” But it also means that they could turn just as quickly against Republicans, as they have in the past.

The lack of ideological attachment also suggests that while vague sloganeering against “big government” may make a good rallying cry, in all likelihood, few of these performance-based voters care all that passionately about the size of government. Rather, they are latching onto the most available explanation for the current sorry state of affairs. In their gut, they sense something is not working, but don’t have well-formed theories about what, exactly, it is that is not working. And, of course, they’d be hard-pressed to lay out exactly what they’d cut. They are not ideological crusaders. They are just generally cranky.

Expanding to the weak partisans – the so-called “Disaffected Republicans” and “Doubting Dems” – widens the category to bring in both the Republicans who probably dropped from the GOP column in 2006 and 2008 and either voted Dem or stayed home, and the Dems who are presumably crossing over or staying home this time (only 23 percent of the so-called “Doubting Democrats” told Pew that Obama’s policies have made economic conditions better, as compared to 50 percent for partisan or shadow Democrats). The weak partisans are more cynical and more anti-politician than their shadow partisan counterparts, and are accordingly probably more susceptible to the “throw the bums out” mood than their shadow partisans, who maintain a more interest in candidate positions and ideology.

Obviously, there is a mood of unusual restlessness in this country. This election marks the first time in almost 60 years that THREE consecutive elections resulted in House pick-ups of 20 or more seats for one party or the other (Dems picked up 31 seats in 2006, and 21 in 2008). One has to go back to 1952, when Republicans picked up 22 seats, marking the then-fifth consecutive House election of 20+ seat swings.

It’s also worth noting that 74 percent of independents now support the idea of a third party, up from 56 percent in 2003, and almost two-thirds (64 percent) of independents think that, “both parties care more about special interests than average Americans.” (Of course, it’s not just independents who want a third party – it’s also 47 percent of registered Republicans and 45 percent of registered Democrats, and overall, 58 percent of Americans who feel the two-party system is not providing adequate representation.)

So how can Democrats win back and re-mobilize these perpetually disaffected and disengaged types who broke for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008, and then either turned Republican in 2010 or just stayed home?

Partially, they just have to be patient and mature, since two big things are likely to happen in the next two years that will benefit them:

The economy is likely to improve, and Obama and the Dems should be able to take credit for this if they manage their communications strategy correctly, which will help with the performance-based calculus of these voters.
Republicans are likely to over-reach politically and spend too much time blocking administration initiatives, and holding investigations that lead nowhere. This may play well with the base, but it is unlikely to impress the non-ideological independents who are more interested in whether something is being done to help them pay their mortgage or get a job. If Obama and the Dems can offer a problem-solving oriented contrast to the ideological rampage of angry Republicans, they will benefit from looking like the adults in the room, just as they did in the 2008 election.

Will this be enough by itself to win back the sliver of disaffected independents who hold the keys to the balance of power? Maybe so, but maybe not.

To the extent that Obama and the Democrats want to win back the lost independents, they need to do their best to show them that they are reasonable, interested in making government work, and capable of making government work.

There will be great pressure, no doubt, from those who want Obama to draw a clear distinction with Republicans by pushing a more clearly left agenda. While this may excite the 20 percent or so of the electorate who are true liberals, it will all but ensure the kind of partisan gridlock that makes disaffected independents disaffected in the first place, further turning them off from politics (and making base voters even more important, which would be stupid, since the Republican base is bigger).

These swing independents don’t care much about ideology. They don’t pay attention to it, and they don’t vote on it. They care whether things are getting better and whether the folks in Washington look like they are trying to make things work.

There are plenty of sensible, centrist initiatives on important issues like energy, education, taxes, and infrastructure that we at PPI will be exploring over the next several months. We believe these solutions are both good policies and good politics for the same reason – because they are moderate approaches that can work, and in the process show some enough of the disaffected, non-ideological independents that Democrats are the party who is actually serious about governing.

Tags: 2010 midterm election, action bias, American politics, anti-politician, balance of power, big government, bipartisanship, conservative, Democrats, Disaffected Republicans, Disengaged, doubting Democrats, economy recovery, Education, energy, Gallup, GOP, hard-core independant, ideological attachment, ideological cursaders, ideological litmus, independents, Infrastructure, left agenda, liberal, moderates, performance-based voters, Pew, pragmatism, pundits, republicans, Shadow Democrats, shadow partisans, shadow Republicans, Shankar Vedantam, swing independents, Taxes, third party, Third way, two-party system, weak partisans
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | 1 Comment »

The Politics of Compromise

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Lee Drutman

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

by Lee Drutman

President Barack Obama, and Democrats in general, remain dogged by the question of whether they compromised too much and got too little in return.

The critique is familiar: There was no point in reaching out to Republicans; Obama should have come out swinging and browbeat moderates into more sweeping health care reform and a bigger stimulus — exciting the base. Now, the base is depressed, and the resulting enthusiasm gap is likely to spell defeat for Democrats. But this is shortsighted.

Continue reading at Politico

Photo credit: Chris-Harvard Berge

Tags: authority, Barack Obama, bipartisanship, Campaigns and elections, CBS/New York Times, centrist, clean energy, Climate change, communist, compromise, Democrats, economic recovery, Edmund Burke, fascists, GOP, hard-right, health care reform, ideological purity, in-goup/out-group, independents, Infrastructure, long-term trend, Manichean, Mid-Term Elections, moderates, modernization, no-surrender, Pew, polarization, Politico, Politics and politicians, Progressivism, Public opinion, reasonableness, republicans, Senate, sense of the sacred, smart politics, socialism, stimulus, Tea Party, terrorist, U.S. electorate
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues, PPI in the News, Press | 1 Comment »

Election Day is Here: What To Watch For Tonight

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Ed Kilgore

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

by Ed Kilgore

So Election Day 2010 has finally arrived, after what may have seemed to progressives like the longest midterm election cycle ever, dominated as it was (certainly in media coverage) by raging Tea Partiers determined to take America back to the prelapsarian paradise that was ruined by the New Deal.

Election Day itself isn’t quite what it used to be, thanks to the steady rise of early voting, especially in the West. Michael McDonald of George Washington University estimates that nearly 29 percent of all ballots will have been cast early (in person or by mail), with particularly high rates in all-mail-ballot Washington and Oregon, but also in Colorado, Arizona and California.

Election Night won’t necessarily end tonight, either, since both Washington and Alaska—both of which have potentially crucial Senate races—allow mail ballots postmarked by today to be received and counted later—sometimes much later. An additional issue is Lisa Murkowski’s viable write-in candidacy for the Senate in Alaska, since write-in votes are usually counted much later, and challenges to individual ballots are certain if it matters.

Since turnout is invariably important in midterm elections, it’s worth noting that the weather today is unusually good in most of the country, with the exception of heavy rain predicted in the lower Mississippi River Valley and parts of the Gulf Coast of Florida.

I’ve written a pretty elaborate Election Night Guide for The New Republic, which you can find here. It begins with the restive period before polls close, and concludes with what late-night insomniacs can expect to see and hear. But here’s a brief overview:

Ignore just about everything you hear during the day that purports to tell you what is happening. The days of leaked “early exits” that were exchanged (and often distorted) ended with the new security measures enacted in 2008. Now media outlets won’t get data from the exit poll consortium (which will cover statewide races only in 26 states) until 5:00 EDT, and won’t make any calls based on this data until the relevant polls are closed. You may also hear or read anecdotal assessments of turnout, usually from local media or state election officials; they often turn out to be wrong. Finally, given the Tea Party Movement’s paranoia about “voter fraud” (which has not, in reality, been a significant problem since the 1960s), there will undoubtedly be reports during the day of alleged pro-Democratic chicanery in heavily minority areas. Conservative media will fan the flames, in part to counter or cloak the often very-real incidents of voter intimidation or polling-place chaos engineered by local GOP operatives in these same locales. Be forewarned.
At roughly 5:30-5:45 EDT, turn on your television and watch as the networks begin carefully releasing exit poll “findings” that don’t related to specific contests; they are sometimes quite revealing, and the official network analysts often drop broad hints in reporting them. One obvious number to pay attention to is the president’s job approval/disapproval ratio; if it’s negative by more than a few points, that’s not good news for Democrats. Another key set of numbers involve the demographic breakdown of the electorate. Democrats hope that the percentage of voters over age 50 does not exceed 60 percent, and non-Hispanic whites aren’t over 80 percent. If partisan-ideological self-identification numbers are released, note carefully whether independent “leaners” are assigned to each party. If the percentage of conservatives significantly exceeds the percentage of moderates, that, too, is a bad sign for Democrats.
The first poll closings are at 6:00 EDT in the Eastern Time Zone portions of Indiana and Kentucky, where there’s a pretty good assortment of bellwether House races. Even if there seems to be a clear trend (e.g., Baron Hill is winning, or Ben Chandler is losing), be aware that regional trends don’t always hold sway elsewhere. The first inkling we will have about a highly competitive Senate race is at 7:30 EDT, when West Virginia closes its polls.
If you decide to watch the whole show on the tube, keep in mind that the networks are going to spend a lot of airtime reporting the results of non-competitive races (some of which, like the Senate races in Kentucky and Delaware, involve colorful personalities on which they probably have a lot of footage in the can), and letting their highly paid pundits and “guest commentators” have their say. This will be particularly true at 8:00 EDT, when nineteen states close their polls. If you want to keep up with what’s happening in real time, go online, and consult a cheat-sheet of key races (if you don’t like mine, which I mentioned above, there are many others available, including Nate Silver’s very precise hour-by-hour analysis of House races). Avoiding the tube will also enable you to postpone listening to massive quantities of spin until tomorrow.
Given the natural horse-race obsessions of the chattering classes, there will be a major emphasis in coverage on who “won” or “lost,” and in that connection, context is everything. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans will narrowly win the House while Democrats narrowly hold the Senate. But expectations are being distorted by the unusually broad range of final generic congressional ballot findings by major polling outlets, which has enabled spinmeisters in both parties to make a case that Republican gains will be larger or smaller than originally anticipated. Keep in mind as well that raw Republican gains must be assessed in light of the large majorities Democrats currently hold in Congress (known as the “over-exposure” phenomenon); the near-universal history of the party controlling the White House losing seats in the first midterm after a new administration takes office (the only recent exception being the post-9/11 midterm of 2002); and the normal midterm turnout patterns that create an older and whiter electorate. There will be plenty of time for analysis later, so take claims made tonight with a large grain of salt.

Happy (or as the case may be, unhappy) election watching. This campaign cost a total of $4 billion, so let’s hope tonight is at least as entertaining as the alternative cable offerings.

photo credit: dailyinvention

Tags: 2010 midterm election, Alaska, Arizona, Barin Hill, Ben Chandler, California, Campaigns and elections, Colorado, Congress, conservatives, Deleware, demographic breakdown of the electorate, early exits, Election Day, Election Night, exit polls, George Washington University, Gulf Coast of Florida, independent leaners, Inidiana, Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski, Michael McDonald, midterm election cycle, Missisippi River Valley, moderates, Nate Silver, New Deal, non-Hispanic whites, older electorate, Oregon, over-exposure phenomenon, partisan-ideological self-identification, prelapsarian paradise, progressives, Senate race, Senate races, Tea Partiers, Tea Party Movement, The New Republic, Virginia, voter fraud, Washington, White House, whiter electorate
Posted in Daily Fix, Political Memo | 1 Comment »

Neither the Left Nor the Right Gets It

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Scott Winship

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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

The night that President Obama won the presidency, I was distracted by a looming deadline for New Republic piece I was already writing warning the left not to misinterpret the election results. Democratic Congressional victories were primarily the result of voters continuing to grow sour on the way Republicans ran the House and Senate. Obama’s victory owed its magnitude to the financial crisis and McCain’s response to it. Essentially, I warned that the 50-50 Nation was alive and well and that moving too aggressively could backfire.

The piece was largely ignored at the time, but it is looking pretty good today. Democrats successfully enacted landmark health care legislation, shepherded the financial system through a harrowing period when fears of another depression were widespread, passed an enormous stimulus package, and pushed through financial reform. In the process, the deficit soared to worrying levels, unemployment continued to rise, the government became the owner of FannieMae and FreddieMac and part owners of the automobile companies, the economy limped along, and public opinion turned against them.

In a sure sign that in its own way, the left is as out of touch as the conservative tea party activists, liberals lamented the supposed timidity and corporate-coziness of the Administration, and the base grew depressed. This despite the unprecedented scale of federal spending and intervention into the workings of the economy, the near death of health care reform (the biggest progressive victory since Medicare’s enactment), and loss of support among independents and moderates. Progressives thought they had a mandate for aggressive change. Apparently they still don’t realize that they didn’t.

Ironically, one of the left’s leading pundits, E. J. Dionne, argued in a sharp book in the 1990s called They Only Look Dead that the way to understand the 1992, 1994, and 1996 elections was to view the first two years as a period of liberal overreach and the second two years as a mirror image on the right. Despite all the evidence that the country is even more closely divided today, liberals such as Dionne cannot see the same dynamic of partisan overreach playing out over the past decade. But it was there during the Bush years on the right, and it has been there over the past two momentous years on the left.

Yes, the economy is surely the driving force behind voter dissatisfaction with Democrats, and Obama was damned if he did (spend hundreds of billions to avoid a depression) and damned if he didn’t. But health care was supposed to be a game changer—if voters were so keen on a massive disruption of the health care sector, as progressives have argued for twenty years now, why hasn’t this trumped the economy? The electorate is fundamentally moderate and as poorly served by liberals who want to circumvent that moderation as by tea-party conservatives who are convinced Obama is a socialist Muslim foreigner. It will be interesting to see which party—if either—gets it between now and 2012.

This article is cross-posted at No Labels.

Photo credit: Hyokano

Tags: 50-50 Nation, Bush, Campaigns and elections, conservative tea party activists, corporate-coziness, deficit, Democratic Congressional, depression, E. J. Dionne, Economy, FannieMae, federal spending, financial crisis, Financial reform, financial system, FreddieMac, Health care, House, independents, left, liberals, McCain, Medicare, moderates, New Republic, President Obama, progressive, Public opinion, republicans, Senate, socialist, stimulus package, They Only Look Dead, unemployment
Posted in Daily Fix, Fiscal Responsibility, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | No Comments »

Internet Wars: A Who’s Who Guide

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Steve Norton

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Steve Norton is communications director at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and a former journalist and speechwriter.

by Steve Norton

Back in the day, there were no protesters outside corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley, no one had a position on net neutrality because no one knew what is was, and technology journalists were breathlessly trying to keep pace with new technologies and companies instead of holding forth on civil rights and liberties or network engineering protocols.

But ten or 15 years in the life of the Internet is a long time. The Internet is the transformative phenomenon of our time and its role in our lives raises serious questions about who the Internet “belongs” to, whether it is used for good or ill, what are its technological limits, and what role government has as arbiter of its future. The debates on these and other questions has become passionate and shrill, generating more heat than light at times. A person trying to follow the debate might need a field guide to sort through the wide array of groups and their philosophical or economic orientation. Allow me to offer up this breakdown, the details of which are spelled out in “Who’s Who in Internet Politics: A Taxonomy of Information Technology Policy,” a new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

In the report, ITIF lays out the following eight categories:

Cyber-Libertarians – Think of them as the original “netizens” and purists who believe the Internet should be governed solely by its users that and “information wants to be free.” Privacy and piracy will take care of themselves by the individuals who make up the organic and living Internet and not by government. Groups include the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Social Engineers – Mostly liberal, they see a lot of good in the Internet as an education and communications tool but they worry about the “digital divide,” privacy, net neutrality, and a concentration of power by both government and major corporations. These issues could erode the Internet’s capacity to be a tool for good for all. Among groups are the Benton Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, Center for Digital Democracy, Civil Rights Forum on Communication Policy, Consumer Project on Technology, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Free Press, Media Access Project, and Public Knowledge, and scholars such as Columbia’s Tim Wu, MIT Media Laboratory’s David Reed, academics at Harvard’s Berkman Center (among them Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler).

Free Marketers – Unleash the entrepreneurs! This group views the digital revolution as the great third wave of economic innovation in human history and a dynamic and liberating force that the government should mostly keep out of it. Groups include the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Pacific Research Institute, the Phoenix Center, the Progress & Freedom Foundation, and the Technology Policy Institute.

Moderates – Unabashedly pro-IT, they see the Internet as this era’s driving force for both economic growth and social progress and they believe a light touch from government is useful in helping the Internet reach its potential. “Do no harm” to limit to IT innovations but also “actively do good” is their mantra. Examples of moderates include the Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ITIF, and the Stilwell Center.

Moral Conservatives – These groups see the Internet as an often smutty and dangerous place teeming with pornographers, gamblers, child molesters, terrorists that only government can keep at bay. They pushed for passage of the Communications Decency Act and Child Online Protection Act, Internet filtering in libraries, and worked to push legislation to ban online gambling. Examples are groups like the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family, and around the world with countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and other religiously conservative nations that seek to limit activity on the Internet.

Old Economy Regulators – This group believes the Internet should be regulated in the same way that government regulates everything else. Otherwise, you have chaos and inequities. Examples of this group include law enforcement officials seeking to limit use of encryption and other innovative technologies, veterans of the telecom regulatory wars that preceded the breakup of Ma Bell, legal analysts working for social engineering think tanks, as well as government officials seeking to impose restrictive regulatory frameworks on broadband.

Tech Companies & Trade Associations – Software and communications giants, Internet start-ups, and the groups that represent them, these tech interests tend to believe that regulation can be both advantageous and detrimental, depending on their particular business model. They also advocate policies that are good for the technology industry or the economy in general. Examples include IBM, AT&T, and Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems and Microsoft, and recent phenomena in the market such as Google and Facebook, as well as trade associations like the Information Technology Industry Council and the Association for Competitive Technology. They delve into trade, tax, regulatory, and other public policy issues from a bottom-line perspective rather than a philosophical basis.

Bricks-and-Mortars – This group includes the companies, professional groups, and unions that use the Internet but also see it eroding the old-economy and face-to-face business transactions and they struggle to hold back the tide. These include both producers and distributors and middlemen (such as retailers, car dealers, wine wholesalers, pharmacies, optometrists, real estate agents, or unions representing workers in these industries). The long running battle over taxing Internet sales illustrates their struggle.

Of course, individual groups defy rigid characterization. For example, Moral Conservatives might find themselves on the same side of an issue as Social Engineers. Also, consensus is often elusive in trade associations as member companies often have complicated interrelationships or niches in the market. However, whether you lean more toward advancing the interests of the individual or society as whole, see government regulation as generally useful or harmful, or are wary of the Internet’s influence or enthusiastic about it is useful to understanding where various groups stand. You might need Venn diagrams to fully understand the Internet policy landscape when surveying issues such as piracy, net neutrality, intellectual property rights, and Internet sales taxes. (An unusual pursuit, to be sure.)

One common theme in all these groups is that they almost certainly believe they are advocating sound policies and doing the right thing for individuals and for society – as incomprehensible as that might seem to those from an opposing organization. In some cases, their passion for their beliefs makes for a good sound bite in a news story. The societal destruction by a government that is scheming to implant chips in our heads is an easier story to sell than an explanation of how packets are sorted on broadband networks. And this is dangerous.

Internet and technology debate is being politicized and degraded. And misguided and ill-informed debates lead to misguided and ill-informed policies. We have enough of people vehemently opposing bills they haven’t read or crafting policy from bumper stickers and making caricatures of opponents. The Internet’s transformation is really just beginning so people in government, the media, and the public at large need to refine and update their understanding of the philosophical issues, the players, the economic realities, and societal issues as stake. Wherever you come down on a range of tech policies – whether you carry placards outside of Facebook’s offices or decide to get an engineering degree to figure out net neutrality – it is essential to understand the political and policy landscape that didn’t exist just 20 years ago. And now you have a map.

Photo credit: Stefan

Tags: arbiter, Association for Competitive Technology., AT&T, Benton Foundation, Bricks-and-Mortars, car dealers, Cato Institute, Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, Center for Democracy and Technology, Center for Digital Democracy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, child molesters, Christian Coalition, Cisco Systems, civil rights, Civil Rights Forum on Communication Policy, Columbia, Communications Decency Act and Child Online Protection Act, communications tool, Consumer Project on Technology, Cyber-Libertarians, dangerous, David Reed, digital divide, digital revolution, distributors, economic growth, economic innovation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, entrepreneurs, Facebook, Focus on the Family, Free Marketers, Free Press, Free Software Foundation, gamblers, Google, Harvard’s Berkman Center, Helwett Packard, IBM, ill-informed policies, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Information Technology Industry Council, intellectual property rights, Internet, Internet filtering in libraries, Internet start-ups, Internet’s transformation, ITIF, Larry Lessig, liberties, Ma Bell, Media Access Project, Mercatus Center, Microsoft, middlemen, MIT Media Laboratory, moderates, Moral Conservatives, ndonesia, net neutrality, netizens, network engineering protocols, Old Economy Regulators, optometrists, Pacific Research Institute, pharmacies, Phoenix Center, piracy, pornographers, privacy, pro-IT, producers, Progress & Freedom Foundation, Public Knowledge, real estate agents, regulatory public policy, retailers, Saudi Arabia, science and technology, Silicon Valley, smutty, Social Engineers, social progress, societal destruction, Software, Stilwell Center, tax, taxing Internet sales, Tech Companies, technological limits, technology industry, technology journalists, Technology Policy Institute, telecom regulatory wars, terrorists, Thailand, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tim Wu, Trade, Trade Associations, unions representing workers, wine wholesalers, Yochai Benkler, “Who’s Who in Internet Politics: A Taxonomy of Information Technology Policy
Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, Daily Fix, Issues | No Comments »

Jon Stewart, Michael Bloomberg, and the Resurgent Center

Monday, September 20th, 2010

Lee Drutman

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

by Lee Drutman

Over the last few days, I’ve become cautiously optimistic about the future of the political center. Something seems to be happening. Maybe it was Christine O’Donnell’s surprise Tea Party victory over moderate Michael Castle in the Delaware primary, but it feels like maybe, just maybe, the dormant defenders of moderation and reason are being roused from their slumber.

In particular, I’m encouraged by three developments: Jon Stewart’s decision to hold a “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the National Mall on October 30, Michael Bloomberg’s decision to be very public about his widespread support of centrist candidates, and the fact that independents are really starting to turn against the Tea Party.

First Stewart’s decision to hold a rally: “We’re looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat,” advertises the website advertising the rally, “who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler.” (I was impressed that Stewart’s announcement went after both Tea Partiers and 9-11 Truthers, attacking extremism on both sides)

Such a rally at first seems like an unusually public move for somebody who has made a career out of skewering from the sidelines. But could it be that Stewart looked around, realized that he was one of the few partisans for reason and moderation left with a large and enthusiastic following, and felt a sudden pang of responsibility?

Perhaps Stewart actually can give voice to a many Americans who share the Daily Show’s conceit that our current politics is fundamentally fodder for satire. But if comedy is tragedy plus distance, perhaps the increasing tragedy of American politics is making it feel less distant. Is the Tea Party as funny when it forms a meaningful voting block in the U.S. Senate?

Then there is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to speak to the New York Times (his first newspaper interview in several years) in order to grab the lead story in the Sunday paper to highlight his systematic attempt to back moderates – raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for candidates that hew to a moderate vision of politics.

Bloomberg’s decision to make a public show of his plans may partly be an attempt to raise his profile as the leader of the radical center. But it also an encouraging development: a public signal that the political center is worth defending and supporting, and perhaps, just as Jon Stewart’s rally might be a clarion call to previously apathetic moderate voters, perhaps Bloomberg’s decision will be a similar call to disengaged moderate donors who are equally concerned about the increasingly extreme ways in which the current electoral season is shaping up.

The final encouraging development the latest CBS/ New York Times poll, in which the Tea Party’s unfavorable rating has risen from 18 percent in April to 25 percent (compared to 20 percent favorable, 18 percent undecided, and 36 percent saying they haven’t heard enough). Moreover, independent voters now have a more negative view of the party (30 percent unfavorable, to 18 percent favorable). These are small changes, admittedly, but they are in the right direction, and hopeful portents of a steady waking up to just how crazy the tea party is becoming.

Hopefully this confluence of factors – Jon Stewart’s empowering cheerleading of moderation, Michael Bloomberg’s aggressive financing of moderates, and sinking public support for the tea parties – are legitimate reasons to be optimistic that the center might indeed hold, and maybe even start to feel vital again.

Tags: "Rally to Restore Sanity", 9-11 Truthers, CBS/ New York Times poll, centrist candidates, Christine O'Donnell, Delaware primary, extremism, independents, Jon Stewart, Michael Bloomberg, moderates, National Mall, New York Mayor, October 30, political center, radical center, Senate, Tea Party
Posted in Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues | 3 Comments »

Taking Liberties

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Will Marshall

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Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

The following is an excerpt from Will Marshall’s essay in today’s Democratic Strategist. The piece is part of a Democratic Strategist/Demos online forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom.”

Freedom, says John Schwarz, is too important to be left to conservatives. No argument there. For too long, liberals have been flummoxed by conservatives’ success in posing as defenders of liberty against government encroachment. This stance has given the conservative cause a simple, reductive logic and ideological coherence that liberals lack – and often envy. It has enabled the right to tap the deep strain of anti-statism that really does make American politics exceptional.

Modern liberals have chafed at the constraint that this classically liberal understanding of freedom imposes on their social vision. For decades, they’ve struggled to articulate a countervailing principle that can trump the power of what Louis Hartz called America’s underlying “Lockian” consensus.

Arriving in Washington just after Ronald Reagan’s election, I’d often ask shell-shocked liberals to define their first principle. The invariable, deflating answer: “affirming a positive role for government.” This trope reflected a confusion of means with ends – and it goes a long way toward explaining why only about a fifth of Americans have been willing to call themselves liberals since the early 1970s.

The story of how liberalism came to be linked with social engineering and redistribution, with tax and spend, and with rights and entitlements to favored groups is too familiar to need rehashing here. Suffice it to say that liberal efforts to expand government’s role to advance worthy social goals have often crossed lines that are important to many if not most voters. These lines mark the boundaries between individual and collective responsibility, and between government’s legitimate efforts to assure equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcomes.

So Schwarz’s diagnoses is right: the public’s abiding suspicion that expansive government means contracting freedom tends to stack the political deck in conservatives’ favor and keep liberals on the defensive. His ideas for reversing the presumption in liberals’ favor, however, fall short.

When it comes to freedom, liberals face an inescapable dilemma. They can never be as simple-minded as conservatives. They can’t simply counter conservatives’ classic-liberal conception of freedom with a social liberalism that aspires to greater equality and social justice. Mid-century liberals succeeded by keeping these often antagonist approaches in equipoise. Modern liberals have lost the balance, and with it, the ability to persuade a majority of Americans to their point of view.

Read the rest at The Democratic Strategist.

Tags: Democratic Party, independents, John Schwarz, liberalism, liberals, moderates, Politics and politicians, progressives, Progressivism, Republican Party
Posted in A New Framework for Growth and Equity, A Progressive Security Strategy, Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix, Fiscal Responsibility, Fixing Our Broken Politics, New Schools for the 21st Century | No Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘ moderates ’

Is the Center Still Vital?

Going, Going, Gone?

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

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

Why Post-Election Soul-Searching Is Overrated

How to Win Back the “Independents”

The Politics of Compromise

Election Day is Here: What To Watch For Tonight

Neither the Left Nor the Right Gets It

Jon Stewart, Michael Bloomberg, and the Resurgent Center

Taking Liberties

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