Posts Tagged ‘
Senate ’
Friday, November 19th, 2010
Phil Goldberg
Phil Goldberg is an attorney at Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP in the firm’s Washington, D.C.-based Public Policy Group. From 1993 through 2000, he was a staff member to three Democratic Members of Congress, including Rep. Steve Rothman (NJ), when Mr. Rothman served on the House Judiciary Committee.
by Phil Goldberg
Read the entire memo
Environmental progressives have been urging the federal government to address climate change for more than 30 years. Many of these efforts have focused on setting limits on the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases collectively referred to as “greenhouse gases” or GHGs. Presidents George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama all negotiated international treaties on global emissions, and Congress has considered numerous climate-related bills. None of these efforts, however, has resulted in binding emission caps for U.S. operations, and Senate efforts to pass a “cap and trade” bill have been dropped. As a result, some progressives advocate a new arena for this battle: the courts, with lawsuits against a group of companies to directly force them to reduce emissions.
There are four lawsuits based on the premise that a handful of American companies, all associated with energy use and production, can be held legally responsible for “global warming.” The suits claim that the companies engaged in operations or made products that contributed to the buildup of GHGs in the atmosphere, causing the earth to warm. The cases seek either reductions in emissions or payment for injuries caused by specific weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding, allegedly caused or made worse by climate change. The liability threat for these defendants is massive: billions of dollars in the current suits, injunctions against their operations, and new filings for future weather-related injuries.
For environmental progressives, the real purpose of this litigation is to use the threat of massive liability to force the companies to accept concessions on climate change policy. These lawsuits, first filed in 2004, were born of frustration with the political process, particularly under President Bush, for failing to take steps to combat climate change. Given the seeming demise of climate change legislation in the current Congress, many progressives have found achieving the same – or perhaps more stringent – policies in the courts an increasingly appealing option.
Read the entire memo
Tags: cap-and-trade, carbon dioxide, Climate change, Clinton, Congress, courts, emission caps, energy use, environmental progressives, gases, George H.W. Bush, GHG, global emissions, global warming, grehouse gases, lawsuits, massive liability, methane, Obama, progressives, Senate
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
President Obama is in Seoul today for what promises to be a contentious meeting of the world’s leading economic powers. He probably won’t mollify China, Germany and other critics of the Federal Reserve’s plan to pump more money into the U.S. economy. But the President does have a chance to further his goal of doubling U.S. exports by bringing home an improved trade agreement with South Korea.
In addition to attending the G-20 summit, Obama is slated to meet with South Korean officials to finalize a bilateral free trade pact negotiated by President Bush. Congress has not ratified the treaty, which is snagged by concerns about U.S. auto exports to South Korea, as well as lawmakers’ eroding faith in the benefits of free trade. The president said in June that he had instructed the U.S. Trade Representative to have all the outstanding issues “lined up properly” before he arrived for this week’s visit, so he could close the deal with Korea and present the agreement to Congress again in the coming months.
South Korea isn’t just a major trade partner, it’s also a key strategic ally and a counterweight to China’s growing heft in the Asia-Pacific. Since its tariffs traditionally have been much higher than ours, there’s little doubt that the agreement would spur U.S. exports and help offset weak economic demand at home. It requires South Korea to lower its high taxes on U.S. farm goods and open markets for insurance and other services to American firms. As the treaty has languished in Congress, however, Seoul has been busy on other fronts, deepening economic ties with China and finalizing an important trade pact with the EU last month.
Although President Obama sounded an ambivalent note at best on trade during the 2008 presidential campaign, he understands that expanding U.S. exports is crucial both to creating jobs and shrinking America’s outsized trade deficits. Now that he’s made the Korean deal a top priority, we’ll find out if the newly Tea Party-infused GOP will be more amenable to passing the treaty than Congressional Democrats were.
The agreement would lower tariffs on auto imports on both sides. South Korea’s are higher — 8 percent compared to 2.5 percent here. (The United States also would gradually lower a 25 percent tariff on imported pickup trucks.) Nonetheless, U.S. auto makers, especially Ford, have argued that the treaty would not bring down cultural and non-tariff barriers that have confined their sales to a sliver of South Korea’s lucrative auto market.
They have a point. Seoul exports more than 400,000 vehicles (mostly Hyundais and Kias) to the United States each year, while manufacturing an additional 200,000 cars at U.S. plants. According the U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. auto makers sent a paltry 5,878 vehicles to South Korea in 2009. Ford’s Stephen Biegun notes that more than 70 percent of the cars made in South Korea are exported, while imports account for less than 10 percent of sales, well below the average of 40 percent in other economically advanced countries.
As an auto industry representative explained in testimony before Congress, Korea has an extensive web of non-tariff barriers that make it harder for foreign car makers to penetrate the Korean market. Some of these are technical regulations like emissions standards and even license plate size. Establishing a clear link between such policies and the small U.S. market share in Korea isn’t always easy. But there’s no doubt that some of Korea’s policies reflect a well-entrenched hostility toward imports. For example, until recently anyone in Korea who bought a foreign car would automatically have their income taxes audited—a policy that chilled demand even after it was officially ended.
Ford, America’s healthiest car maker, sees itself as the chief victim of South Korea’s import-unfriendly policies. That’s because General Motors, through its Daewoo subsidy, makes cars in South Korea, selling more than 100,000 locally and exporting hundreds of thousands more elsewhere (including to the United States).
What can President Obama do to resolve the impasse over autos and get the U.S.-South Korea agreement through the Senate? He can’t reopen negotiations, but he can use the presidential jawbone to win binding side agreements with Seoul to remove non-tariff barriers to U.S. auto exports. He could, in short, bring pressure on South Korea to fully liberalize its auto markets and embrace the reciprocal obligations that come with free trade. Much like his powerful message in New Delhi that “India has emerged,” the president needs to make the case that South Korea has also fully emerged as a mature economy, and it can no longer justify the kind of protectionist and mercantilist trade policies that are more typical of poorer developing countries.
A more aggressive stance would show that the President is serious about doubling U.S. exports. But there’s a complicating factor: the global spread of auto production, design and supply chains. That makes it hard to say just how “American” any given car really is, or how many U.S. jobs are engaged in making cars.
Nonetheless, as long as the answer is “greater than zero,” the President has an obligation to ensure that major U.S. trade partners offer as much access to their domestic markets as we do to ours. And the Korean pact presents him with an opportunity both to restore U.S. global leadership on trade liberalization and to integrate America more deeply into the world’s fastest-growing markets in East Asia.
Photo credit: South Korea
Tags: American firms, Asia-Pacific, auto imports, auto industry, bilateral free trade pact, China, Congress, Daewoo subsidy, East Asia, emissions standards, EU, FED, Federal Reserve, Ford, G-20, General Motors, Germany, GOP, Hyundais, insurance, Kias, Korean market, license plate size., mercantilist, New Delhi, non-tariff barriers, Obama, open markets, President Bush, protectionist, Senate, Seoul, South Korea, Stephen Biegun, Tea Party, technical regulations, Trade, trade deficits, trade liberalization, U.S. auto exports, U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. economy, U.S. exports, U.S. farm goods, U.S. global leadership, U.S. plants, U.S. Trade Representative, world's leading economic powers, world’s fastest-growing markets
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Friday, November 5th, 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
So Election Day is over (except, of course, in Alaska, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Illinois, which have statewide races in some doubt, and in eight states with a total of nine unresolved House races).
You probably know the basics. Democrats held onto control of the Senate, their margin reduced from 59-41 to 53-47, and Republicans won the House, having gained at this point 60 seats, 21 more than they needed for a majority. Governorships flipped from 26D/24R to 29R/20D/1Chafeecrat. Republicans took over control of 19 state legislative chambers, just in time for redistricting.
Republicans won the national House popular vote by a 52-45 margin, roughly the same margin by which Barack Obama defeated John McCain in 2008. But it clearly was not the same electorate; exit polls reported that voters split evenly in their 2008 preferences. Many observers explain that by an “enthusiasm gap” between the two parties, but much of it is a matter of normal mid-term voting patterns, producing an older and whiter electorate that happens to favor Republicans at the present time.
House losses by Democrats were, to a remarkable extent, concentrated among districts that are either pro-Republican or highly marginal according to recent presidential elections. There were virtually no true upsets. A significant share of Tuesday’s casualties involved long-serving members from southern and border states who finally succumbed to ever-increasingly hostile territory (e.g., John Spratt of SC, Jim Marshall of GA, Gene Taylor of MS, Chet Edwards of TX, Ike Skelton of MO; two similar Members from TN retired). A much larger group, particularly from the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic states, were Class of 2006 and (especially) 2008 who got to Congress via close races and were extremely vulnerable to adverse trends in turnout and the overall political climate.
Trying to link these losses to any specific issues or controversies is probably futile, with the possible exception of climate change; support for legislation on this subject undoubtedly hurt Democrats in coal-producing states, most notably veteran VA Rep. Rick Boucher. But generally, the results reflected a general partisan shift, which in turn reflected a general (if predictable) change in turnout from a presidential to a mid-term profile.
The Senate results were not terribly surprising, either. What looked to some like a slight pro-Democratic trend in some of those races (notably PA and WI, where Democrats did better than expected, and in NV and CO, where Democrats won after Republicans led in late polls) were probably more the product of Republican bias in state-based polls, particularly those conducted by Rasmussen. The Alaska situation, obviously, is very unusual; Lisa Murkowski’s apparent lead guarantees a count of write-in votes, but though a loss for Joe Miller would be deeply embarrassing to Sarah Palin and to the Tea Party Movement, it would not change the partisan balance in the Senate.
The net-five-gain in governorships by Republicans disguises a much more complicated picture in which Republicans took control of eleven Democratic governorships (ME, PA, TN, OH, MI, WI, IA, KS, OK, NM,); Democrats took control of five Republican governorships (CT, VT, MN, CA and HI); and independent Linc Chafee won a formerly Republican governorship in RI. With all this churn, however, only two incumbent governors lost: Chet Culver of IA and Ted Strickland of OH.
The carnage created by Republican gains in state legislatures will take a while to sort out, but as Hotline noted:
The GOP holds the redistricting trifecta in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Utah, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Ohio – plus, as noted earlier, Nebraska and North Carolina [where the Democratic governor cannot veto redistricting plans].
Florida voters did approve a constitutional amendment imposing fairly strict conditions on redistricting to prevent gerrymanders; the state was already operating under a heavily pro-GOP plan. California voters also approved an initiative placing congressional redistricting under a very independent commission composed partly of citizens chosen by lottery; this change could help Republicans or at least produce more competitive districts.
In other non-candidate ballot developments, California voters rejected two nationally significant initiatives, one (Prop 19) that would have legalized small-scale consumption and cultivation of marijuana, and another (Prop 23) that would have suspended the state’s unique carbon emissions control system. In news of equal importance to locals, voters did approve a constitutional amendment getting rid of the two-thirds vote requirement for passage of a budget in the California legislature, which has all but paralyzed California government for years. In Iowa, voters rejected “retention” of three state Supreme Court justices who supported the unanimous decision to legalize same-sex marriage. This was major goal of that state’s powerful social conservative faction.
We’ll get more into post-election interpretations, along with prescriptions for what both parties should do now, next week.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, Alabama, Alaska, Barack Obama, CA, carbon emissions control system, Chet Edwards, Climate change, CO, coal-producing states, Connecticut, CT, cultivation of marijuana, Democrats, Election Day is over, enthusiasm gap, Florida, GA, Gene Taylor, Georgia, GOP, governorships, het Culver, HI, House, IA, Ike Skelton, Illinois, independent, Indiana, Jim Marshall, Joe Miller, John McCain, John Spratt, Kansas, KS, legalize same-sex marriage, Linc Chafee, Lisa Murkowski, ME, MI, Michigan, mid-Atlantic states, mid-term voting patterns, Midwest, Minnesota, MN, MO;, MS, Nebraska North Carolina, nine unresolved House races, NM, NV, OH, Ohio, OK, Oklahoma, older electorate, PA, Pennsylvania, Prop 19, Prop 23, Rasmussen, republicans, Results, Rick Boucher, Sarah Palin, SC, Senate, social conservative faction, South Carolina, statewide races, Supreme Court, Tea Party Movement, Ted Strickland, Tennessee, Texas, TN, Tuesday’s casualties, TX, Utah, VA, voters split, VT, whiter electorate, WI, Wisconsin
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Friday, November 5th, 2010
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
Now that the dust has cleared a little bit and the first round of post-election analyses are in, one emerging storyline is that the electorate has grown more conservative. But before Republicans go off and claim a mandate, a couple of caveats are in order.
- Beware the shifting independents. Much has been made of the shifting independents, who, according to exit polls, went from breaking 57-to-39 percent for Democrats in 2006 to breaking 55-to-39 percent for Republicans in 2010. Independents, who made up 28 percent of the voters in this election, are a difficult category to analyze, since many actually vote a lot like partisans even though they call themselves “independent” (for various reasons). As I’ve explained in an earlier post, it makes the most sense to think of independents in shades of independence, and the more truly independent the voter, the less ideological but also the less engaged and less politically informed the voter. All of which is to suggest that the independent voters who shifted from red to blue probably don’t really care much about ideology. Rather, they are most likely anti-politics and above all want to see more jobs and a recovering economy. They didn’t vote for an ideological crusade; they voted for the hope of a better economy and out of a need to blame somebody (the party in power) for their woes.
- Beware the shifting electorate. It’s pretty clear that the voters who turned out in 2010 were, on average, a bit older and a bit whiter than the voters who turned out in 2008. Had younger voters and African-American voters –who remain the most reliably Democrat demographics – turned out at 2008 levels, at least a few of the close House and Senate races might have flipped the other way. In part, this was entirely predictable, since voter turnout in mid-terms is historically two-thirds of what it is in presidential elections, and youth and minority voters tend to be most likely to not be paying attention for mid-term elections. But if they turn out again in 2012 at 2008 levels (and as long as Obama is on the ballot, there is good reason to think they will), then a decent number of the Republican freshmen could be one-termers. Republicans should be careful of mistaking a more conservative voter turnout this time around for a more conservative electorate.
- Beware the pendulum. In 2006, Democrats picked up 21 seats, and in 2008, they picked up 31 seats. Many of those pick-ups were in solid Republican districts, and so of the Republican pick-ups on Tuesday, 22 were in seats that had been solidly Republican in 2002-2006, and 15 were in seats that had been solidly Republican in 2002-2004. In other words, almost two-thirds of the pick-ups were simply reversions to ideological-demographic expectations. But Republicans also expanded into blue territory, picking up 22 seats that were solidly Democratic in 2002-2006, seats they might not be able to keep. As Ed Kilgore has explained, like all waves, this one “definitely has an undertow.”
America continues to be a 50-50 country, with a soft non-ideological middle of anxious, cranky, and sometimes fickle voters who don’t trust politicians and aren’t particularly happy with their choices. Majorities of voters now have an unfavorable view of both Republicans (52 percent) and Democrats (53 percent). Yet what’s remarkable is that even among those voters who had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, almost one in four (23 percent) still held their nose and pulled the lever for the GOP. By comparison, only 10 percent of the voters who held an unfavorable view of Democrats voted blue anyway. Taken together, we now have more than a sixth of the electorate voting for a party of which they have an unfavorable view.
In short, this election can be explained simply by noting that older, whiter conservatives turned out in greater numbers than younger, more diverse voters, and non-ideological, performance-oriented independents decided to blame Democrats this time around. Neither of these reflect a dramatic change or are necessarily permanent conditions of American politics.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, 50-50 country, African-American voters, anti-politics, bipartisanship, blue territory, Caveats, Ed Kilgore, House, ideological crusade, ideological-demographic expectations, less ideological, less politically informed, minority voters, non-ideological, older voters, pendulum, recovering economy, Republican “Mandate”, reversions, Senate, shifting electorate, shifting independents, whiter voters
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Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Lee Drutman
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
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Friday, October 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
Four days from Election Day, this exceptionally turbulent cycle is drifting to a close with a lot of uncertainty about specific races, but a growing consensus about the most likely overall outcome. Republicans are probably going to take control of the House, but not by as large a margin as Democrats currently hold, and Democrats are probably going to hang onto control of the Senate by the skin of their teeth. Republicans will definitely make notable gains in governorships, offset by some Democratic takeovers.
The size of the current Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress will make the “net gain” totals for the GOP look especially large, but the actual two-party vote in House contests will be close; Republicans continue to benefit from an advantage built into the last round of redistricting. The Senate results will be somewhat distorted by the favorable landscape for Democrats this year, with a disproportionate number of Republican seats up for re-election and a large number of Republican vacancies. It’s hard to remember this, but throughout much of 2009, Democrats thought they had a decent chance to actually gain Senate seats in 2010.
Looking at the House more specifically, the most prominent rating services are roughly congruent. The Cook Political Report shows exactly 100 competitive races (tossups and “leans”), with 92 of them in districts currently held by Democrats, which shows how heavily the landscape is tilting this year. In addition, Cook rates seven Democratic seats (all of them open) as “likely R,” or noncompetitive.
Of the 100 competitive races, Cook rates 27 as Lean D, 23 as Lean R, and 50 as tossups. This would suggest absolutely minimum gains of about 30 seats for the GOP, with 50 more likely, and 70-80 not outside the realm of realistic possibility.
Similarly, Stu Rothenberg has 107 seats—98 Democratic and 9 Republican—“in play;” his more complicated rating system has 18 rated “Democrat favored,” 12 “Lean Democrat,” 6 “Tossup Tilt Democrat,” 18 “Pure Tossup,” 24 “Tossup Tilt Republican,” 10 “Lean Republican,” and 19 “Republican Favored.” This would suggest Republican gains in the neighborhood of 50-60 seats.
Nate Silver’s projections for FiveThirtyEight are done in terms of probabilities, and he currently predicts a Republican net gain of 53 seats. For purposes of comparison, Republicans gained 54 net seats in 1994.
Because Silver’s system is so precise, his projections offer a good context for looking at the composition of the most likely Democratic incumbent losers. Of the 46 incumbent Democrats that Nate shows having a better-than-even chance of losing, 21 are members of the Blue Dog Coalition (another five open Democratic seats likely to flip are currently represented by retiring Blue Dogs, so the Coalition will definitely take a hit).
Moving on to the Senate, depending on the source, there are somewhere between seven and 11 races considered highly competitive at this point. IL, WA, CO, WV and NV are considered the true tossups; all are currently Democratic seats. Alaska has suddenly joined the unpredictable races, with a turbulent three-way contest involving Republican Joe Miller (who’s been dropping in the polls lately), incumbent write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, and Democrat Scott McAdams. Some analysts consider PA a tossup, thanks to polls showing Joe Sestak gaining on Pat Toomey. And some polls show Russ Feingold making a late surge against Ron Johnson in WI, though others show Johnson comfortably ahead. Republicans haven’t given up on California candidate Carly Fiorina, though Barbara Boxer seems to have solidified a narrow lead. There’s even some speculation that a late shift in votes from Democrat Kendrick Meek to independent Charlie Crist could put Florida back in play.
Barring some upset (e.g., California), Republicans would have to sweep the tossup states and avoid any nasty surprises (e.g., Alaska, WI, PA) to pick up the ten seats needed to gain control of the Senate. The more likely outcome is between seven and nine pickups; the higher number would almost certainly spur talk about the possibility of luring Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman to join the GOP Caucus and put Republicans over the top.
Among governorships, the big trend is towards reversion of red and blue states towards their natural majority party, mainly thanks to retirements; WY, KS, OK and TN are certain to replace Democratic governors with Republicans, while CT, CA, HI and MN are moving in the opposite direction. Republicans are also benefitting from a trend against the party of unpopular incumbents in more competitive states, notably MI, PA and WI (though the latter two races remain competitive). A pro-Democratic countertrend in two southern states, GA and SC, looks likely to fall short, though GA is close enough that an upset (or more likely, a forced runoff) is possible.
The real barnburners are in FL, where Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Rick Scott appear to be in a dead heat; OH, where incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland is making a late move against Republican John Kasich; RI, where independent former-Senator Lincoln Chafee is now favored in a three-way race; OR, where former Gov. John Kitzhaber and Republican Chris Dudley are virtually tied in most polls; ME, another unstable three-way race where Republican Paul LePage appears to have an advantage; VT, where Democrat Peter Shumlin and Republican Brian Dubie are deadlocked; IL, where incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn has recently closed the margin held by Republican Bill Brady. Some would add WI, where some polls have Democrat Tom Barrett gaining late on Republican Scott Walker; and most improbably, Colorado, where a couple of polls have shown third-party immigrant-basher Tom Tancredo moving up rapidly against Democrat John Hickenlooper thanks to a collapse in support for GOP nominee Dan Maes.
Overall, Nate Silver projects Republicans picking up twelve governorships and Democrats picking up seven.
The big imponderable for Tuesday is, of course, turnout, and political junkies will be looking closely at the final generic ballot polls that will come out over the weekend and Monday for clues of late trends. In a variety of big states (notably Colorado, California, Washington and Oregon), heavy-to-near-universal early voting is a factor. And for those hoping for an early election night, it’s worth remembering that the state most likely to determine control of the Senate, Washington, allows votes postmarked by election day to count, which sometimes means close races are not resolved for weeks. And if the Alaska Senate race is close and matters, get ready for extended confusion and perhaps litigation over write-in votes.
photo credit: oceandesetoiles
Tags: Congress, Democrats, Election Day, governorships, House, Mid-Term Elections, republicans, Senate
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Friday, October 22nd, 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 title of this piece might seem a bit counterintuitive given the presumed certainty of Republican gains on November 2, but within that context, there really is a surprising amount of uncertainty about which party is likely to get the late breaks in this cycle.
On the one hand, state polling is showing some good signs for Democrats in Senate and some gubernatorial races. Two left-for-dead candidates, Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, have rebounded into highly competitive positions, according to some polls. Joe Manchin of WV seems to have recovered from a near-fatal swoon. Poll numbers for Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have stabilized, as they have (at a lower level) for Patty Murray of Washington and Barbara Boxer of California. At least one poll shows Robin Carnahan of Missouri with a mini-surge, and Michael Bennet of Colorado seems to have drawn even with Ken Buck. The brief period of hysteria about a possible Tea Party takeover of New York politics has ended in derision. And at the moment, Democrats are optimistic about winning at least one southern governorship, in Florida, and believe they have an outside shot in Georgia and (surprise, surprise) South Carolina as well (polls are showing Nikki Haley losing support and making the race competitive).
But at the same time, certain meta-indicators are ominous for Democrats. Gallup’s last two generic congressional ballot tracking polls have shown Republicans with double-digit leads among likely voters, an unprecedented phenomenon. Worse yet, in a low-turnout scenario, Gallup has Republicans up by 17 percent, which if accurate would produce House gains well above what most analysts have been talking about. And Gallup’s not alone: another highly respected research firm, Pew, put out its own generic ballot poll this week giving Republicans a ten-point advantage among likely voters.
So how can we explain the macro-micro disconnect in polling at this moment? It’s possible that Gallup and Pew just have it wrong (Alan Abramowitz of Emory University has charged Gallup with making crucial errors), and that other generic polls will soon demonstrate that those results are outliers. Another common theory is that statewide races operate according to different dynamics than overall partisan preferences, and that while Republicans may make big House gains, that doesn’t necessarily translate into victory in close statewide races.
At RealClearPolitics today, Sean Trende suggests it’s the state polls that may be off, thanks to inadequate likely voter screens that are modeling the electorate’s partisan composition too favorably to Democrats. Using a partisan composition model based on the two 2009 gubernatorial contests, Trende hypothesizes that Republicans statewide candidates may on average perform better than their polling by a 3-4 percent margin, which would, of course, throw many close races to the GOP.
Complicating all this analysis of public opinion research, of course, is the fact that the two parties’ ground games are just now really kicking in, which could change turnout patterns, along with the phenomenon of very heavy early voting. On this latter front, the preliminary data indicates that Democrats seem to be doing a relatively good job of early voting mobilization, but don’t have the sort of advantage they enjoyed in 2008, and may not have an advantage at all in certain key states (e.g., Colorado, Nevada and Florida).
Then you get into some really hazy phenomena that may affect particular races. The most discussed is California’s Proposition 19, which would legalize small-scale cultivation and use of marijuana. There is a persistent belief among California Democrats that Prop 19 will turn out younger voters (and perhaps African-Americans and Latinos) at higher levels than in other states, giving Democrats a crucial boost in close contests.
But overall, the varying indicators of late trends (unless unanimity suddenly emerges between now and November 2) are providing some real mystery and drama in this bitter cycle, and plenty of questions to mull over in the post-election rumination period that will ensue.
Photo credit: bjornmeansbear
Tags: 2010 midterm election, African-Americans, Alan Abramowitz, Barbara Boxer, California, California’s Proposition 19, Colorado, Connecticut, Democrats, electorate’s partisan, Emory University, Florida, Gallup, Georgia, GOP, Gubernatorial races, heavy early voting, Joe Manchin, Ken Buck, Latinos, left-for-dead, macro-micro disconnect, marijuana, Michael Bennet, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Nikki Haley, November 2, oe Sestak, partisan preferences, Patty Murray, Pennsylvania, Pew, Public opinion, RealClearPolitics, Republican gains, Richard Blumenthal, Robin Carnahan, Russ Feingold, Sean Trende, Senate, South Carolina, southern governorship, state polls, Tea Party, voting mobilization, Washington, Weatherman, Wisconsin, WV
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Friday, October 15th, 2010
Lee Drutman
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow and the managing editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Lee Drutman
I was struck by an item in the recent Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard Survey on The Role of Government: The fact that in 2000, 28 percent of Republicans said they would give the overall performance of the federal government a grade of “A” or “B”. (And that was with Bill Clinton as President.)
That number today is 8 percent, which is about what you would expect, given the ubiquitous anti-government rhetoric. It’s a remarkable loss of any faith in government by one of the two major political parties. (By contrast, 42 of Democrats now rate government “A” or “B” – slightly less than the 47 percent in 2000, but not as significant a decline.)
But here’s the question that sticks with me: What happens if the Republicans take back the House or at least make significant enough gains to have ownership over the government again? Will the anti-government rhetoric explode in their face?
Having spent so much energy disparaging Washington, can Republicans maintain popular support if they take back some share of the federal government and are forced to make hard choices of actually governing? It’s easy for Republican voters to have no faith in Washington when it’s controlled by Democrats, but what happens if Republicans again have a share of governing responsibility?
Consider another telling item in the same poll highlights a problem that Republicans are going to face: Half of the country thinks that the budget can be balanced with only cuts to “wasteful spending.” But as Jon Cohen and Dan Balz note: “Eliminating waste in the budget would do very little to bring down the size of the deficit.” Republicans have, as many opposition parties are wont to do, peddled excessively simple solutions to excessively difficult problems.
In today’s Times, Kate Zernicke notes that “33 Tea Party-backed candidates are in tossup races or running in House districts that are solidly or leaning Republican, and 8 stand a good or better chance of winning Senate seats” – In other words, a there will be a sizeable caucus of firethrowers who will continue to amp up the anti-government rhetoric within the party.
But how long before the Tea Party faithful loses faith in the Republicans who they’ve elected on the bold revolutionary promises to tear down government when those promises go unfulfilled – as they inevitably must, given the dramatic mismatch between their platforms and what is actually possible to accomplish in Washington?
Republicans are essentially saying: Elect us to do things that we are incapable of doing. Elect us to run an institution that we have encouraged you to be thoroughly frustrated with, so that we can ultimately be in charge and be accountable for your frustration.
Of course, that’s not to say that Republicans can’t continue the Janus-like pose of both being responsible for governing and bashing the very idea of government. Reagan did it successfully. And even if Republicans take back the House, they will still have Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate to bash.
But ultimately, it’s a self-negating electoral strategy. Republicans are never going to succeed in drastically shrinking the size of government or even repealing healthcare reform for the simple reason that when it comes down to it, there’s much less fat to trim than most people think, and certainly no fat to trim painlessly.
So I do not envy the new crop of Republicans who will be picking up seats this November. They’ll have been elected as part of an anti-incumbency, anti-government mood that they’ve done much to foment. But that mood takes on a life of its own. It may not be so useful when they become the incumbents and are part of the government.
Photo credit: babasteve
Tags: anti-government rhetoric, Bill Clinton, Budget, Campaigns and elections, caucus, Dan Balz, deficit, Democrats, Electoral Strategy, Harvard, Healthcare, House, Kaiser, Kate Zernicke, Obama, on Cohen, Republican, responsibility, Senate, Tea Party, Times, tossup, Washington Post, wasteful spending
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Tuesday, October 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
Three weeks out from Election Day, it’s increasingly unlikely that any news event, economic development, or overall party message is going to have a major effect on the outcome. Yes, long-planned GOTV efforts—beginning with early voters—will come to fruition, and actual events, including candidate debates, could swing close individual races. But to an extent that would depress most candidates (who naturally tend to think their fate is in their own hands), a lot of what we are doing now is trying to predict results that are pre-ordained, and even anticipating some of the post-election debates within the two parties.
The exceptions to this predestination rule are close statewide races, for two reasons. First, statewide candidates simply get greater exposure, if not from ads then from media coverage. And second, gubernatorial candidates are affected to some extent by their own political dynamics, particularly if they belong to the party in power at the state level, and thus represent the “wrong track.”
The implications of the first factor are explained by PPP’s Tom Jensen in a post about Democratic prospects in House and Senate races:
I think Democrats are going to lose the House, with Republicans quite possibly picking up a lot more seats than they even need for a majority. At the same time I think Democrats will hold onto the Senate and that it may be by a larger margin than people are expecting, with the party perhaps holding onto its seats in places like Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, and West Virginia where the party lucked out because the GOP nominated weak candidates.
That’s a reminder that candidates matter- but they matter a lot more in Senate elections where voters really get to know them than in House elections that are much more likely to be determined by the national tide. We’ve seen time and again in Senate races this year that the better voters get to know the Republican candidates the less they like them. But unfortunately for Democrats I don’t know that voters ever get to know the House candidates well enough for that same effect to occur.
Jensen’s point reflects past experience, as well. In 1972, 1984, and 1990, one party made gains in one chamber of Congress while losing seats in the other. The most famous example was in 1972, when despite the Nixon landslide over McGovern, Democrats actually gained two net Senate seats. And even where one party has made gains in both Houses, they haven’t always been congruent in size or sweep (e.g., 1982, when the two parties broke even in the Senate even as Democrats gained 27 seats in the House).
The ideological sorting-out of the two parties may have reduced the likelihood of such variable results, insofar as ticket-splitting has become less common, particularly in congressional races. But the higher profile of statewide races does give candidates greater opportunities to make news—or make costly mistakes—and down-the-stretch financial advantages can have a greater impact as well.
Having said all that, the precise results to be expected on November 2 remain unpredictable, not so much because of candidate behavior, but simply because an unusually large number of races are competitive. This is particularly true in the House. As Nate Silver explained at some length in a post on his own and others’ projections of House results:
According to just about every objective and subjective indicator, then, the number of competitive House districts is roughly twice as high as in recent years. This is why the margin of error on our House forecast is very wide. If the polling is off by just a little in one direction or another, it could have profound consequences for the number of seats that Republicans are likely to gain. Likewise, there are a great number of districts in which both parties have viable candidates who could over perform or underperform the trends present in the national environment.
Why are so many races competitive? That could merit an article on its own. I suspect much of the reason is that the deterioration in the political environment for Democrats was evident quite early in the cycle — certainly by around August or September of last year — leaving both parties with plenty of time to prepare. The fact that the Internet has made fundraising much less burdensome, and allowed name recognition to be built through a variety of “nontraditional” means, may also play a role.
With more seats in play, the odds of missing the exact post-election count go up quite a bit. Cutting in the other direction is the fact that there is a lot more public polling data available than in the past, so projections are less likely to depend entirely on past performance or some sort of vague, thumb-on-the-scales estimates of national trends.
As Election Day approaches, the likelihood of major surprises will naturally go down. But there are more than enough razor-close races to ensure considerable mystery on Election Night.
Photo credit: Andrew Bossi
Tags: candidate debates, Colorado, competitive House districts, Democrats, Election Day, Election Night, GOP, gubernatorial candidates, House, House elections, House forecast, Illinois, Internet, media coverage, Nate Silver, Nevada, PPP, Republican, Senate, Senate elections, statewide races, Tom Jensen, West Virginia, wrong track
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Tuesday, October 12th, 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
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
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Wednesday, September 22nd, 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
Yesterday, I observed that we are getting to the point where all the speculation about individual 2010 contests will begin to yield to hard data, and the actual battlegrounds will emerge.
A good example of how that might be happening is provided by new polls from PPP of two Senate races that have been ostensibly very similar, in WI and CA. In both of these blue states well-regarded but always-vulnerable progressive Democratic U.S. senators are under attack from amply-financed Republican “newcomers.”
But according to PPP, Russ Feingold is suddenly in deep trouble against Ron Johnson, while Barbara Boxer is expanding her lead against Carly Fiorina. Both these polls represent a shift by PPP from registered voter to likely voter samples, making the trends interesting measurements of the so-called “enthusiasm gap” afflicting Democrats.
According to an account by its partner DailyKos, PPP finds the “enthusiasm gap” in WI to be “one of the most severe” in the country, with Johnson’s 1-point lead among 2008 voters ballooning to 11 points among likely 2010 voters.
But in California, Boxer’s 49-40 lead among RVs in July is a virtually unchanged 50-41 lead among likely voters today. More specifically, Boxer’s support among Democrats remains very strong, and as PPP’s Tom Jensen notes:
[T]he simple reality is that Fiorina has not proven to be a particularly appealing candidate to California voters. 42% of them see her unfavorably with only 34% rating her positively. Republicans like her, Democrats dislike her almost as much, and independents are slightly negative toward her. Again, not the formula that’s going to get a Republican elected to the Senate from California.
One other factor that should be noted here is that Boxer is just about the only vulnerable Democrat seeking reelection in a state where the majority of voters still approve of Barack Obama’s performance. His approval is 53/42, and by and large the folks that like Obama are supporting Boxer- California’s one of the last frontiers left where he’s not a drag.
Interestingly, PPP also shows Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman among likely voters by a 47-42 margin in the CA governor’s race, even though Brown is just now getting around to running television ads.
Now it may be that PPP’s current polling in either WI or CA could prove to be an outlier; it happens to all pollsters on occasion. It’s also true that Russ Feingold has a habit of getting into trouble in his re-election campaigns, only to eventually recover and win.
But whether or not these two races in particular are examples, we should soon begin to see disparities in the host of “close races” we’ve all been watching, and separate the sheep from the goats.
This article is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist
Photo credit: Kat Clay
Tags: Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, blue states, CA, Carly Fiorina, DailyKos, Democratic Strategist, enthusiasm gap, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, PPP, progressive Democratic, Republican newcomers, Ron Johnson, Russ Feingold, Senate, Tom Jensen, WI
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Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
Daniel Weeks
Daniel Weeks is the president of Americans for Campaign Reform.
by Daniel Weeks
Eight months after a landmark Supreme Court ruling lifted decades-long limits on corporate and union spending in elections, the 2010 midterm election promises to be the most expensive – and most secretive – on record.
In a radical departure from previous high court jurisprudence, the decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission extended full personhood freedom-of-speech rights to corporations , allowing them to spend unlimited funds to advocate the election or defeat of candidates at any level. It is little surprise, therefore, that analysts are predicting political ad spending to balloon to $4.2 billion this year, fully twice the level spent in 2008.
In the absence of FEC enforcement of longstanding disclosure norms and the failure of the DISCLOSE legislation to garner 60 votes in the Senate, millions of dollars in electioneering ads are being spent for or against candidates by unknown players who are unaccountable to either the candidates or the public. A recent study issued last week by the watchdog group Public Citizen found that less than one-third of independent groups receiving electioneering donations have revealed their donors this election; virtually every such group did so in 2004 and 2006. Small wonder that eight in ten voters roundly condemn the Supreme Court ruling in opinion polls.
With these sobering changes in special interest spending and disclosure comes an opportunity for Congress to shift the election year debate from issues – on which there is little hope of consensus between the parties – to process. The political imperative for such a change is clear, as liberals and Tea Partiers alike are outspoken in their rejection of the current system of corporate special interest-funded elections. While progressive support of campaign finance reform has long been assumed, Republican strategist Mark McKinnon recently observed, “There is a conventional myth that Republican voters are opposed to campaign finance reform, but [recent] research shows that Republican voters, like all other voters, believe our system of electing representatives is irreparably broken.”
It is encouraging news that the Committee on House Administration is planning to vote this Thursday on the Fair Elections Now Act. The bill offers a sweeping overhaul of congressional campaign finance rules. It would take require that participating candidates say no to special interest contributions and instead raise money in $100-or-less donations directly from their constituents. Qualifying House candidates who can collect at least 1,500 such donations in-state would be eligible to receive competitive matching funds with which to run a viable campaign. The legislation is supported by 164 cosponsors in the U.S. House and 26 cosponsors Senate.
For Democrats concerned with leveling the electoral playing field to allow more voices to enter the debate, the appeal of Fair Elections is clear. For Republicans opposed to old fashioned limits-based regulation of ‘free speech’ but who are equally fed up with the never-ending hunt for special interest dollars, Fair Elections represents a free market-oriented ‘more speech’ approach, enabling non-millionaire and non-special interest candidates to compete against those with big money. Recent surveys confirm broad public support for Fair Elections across every political group.
Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United came down, President Obama roundly condemned the decision in his State of the Union address on the grounds that “American elections [should not] be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.” Now is Congress’ opportunity to make good on their objection and to ensure that American elections are bankrolled by the American people.
Photo credit: Nick Ares
Tags: 2010 midterm election, Bankroll Elections, campaign finance rules, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Committee on House Administration, corporations, DISCLOSE, donors, Fair Elections Now Act, FEC, free market-oriented, free speech, independent groups, jurisprudence, liberals, Mark McKinnon, process, Public Citizen, Senate, special interest, State of the Union, Supreme Court, Tea Partiers, U.S. House, unlimited funds
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