Pathetic and Misleading

The President's campaign is out with a new ad focusing on Mitt Romney's tax rate. Judge the effectiveness for yourself:

The Romney campaign's response is to call the ad "pathetic and misleading."

That's all well and good, but if it's misleading in any way, shouldn't the Romney campaign fight to get the full interview in front of voters? After all, the antidote to misleading speech is more speech, which is why federal campaign financing law tilts towards funneling more money into ad buys.

So I'm sure we can expect the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove to buy ad spots featuring the full, unedited interview. What are Romney and his band of billionaire backers waiting for? Call the President's bluff!

Crossover Vote Strategy a Double Failure

The political news of Primary Day in Michigan today was that Rick Santorum sent out an automated call targeting Democrats. The robocall asked Democrats to vote in the Republican primary. Exit polls are finding that very few Democrats are answering his call: 10% of the primary electorate identifies as Democrats. That number is in line with Michigan primaries where there was minimal crossover voting.

This was a terrible strategic decision in the first place. Even if Santorum's call to Democrats had driven a few into the voting booth for him, the election would become suspect. As much as a couple of extra delegates would have helped Santorum in the mathematical race to 1,144, the media environment is what matters in Michigan. The news that the campaign relied on Democratic voters who will turn out for Barack Obama in November for a victory would have negated any positive news from a win in the Motor State. We'll see what happens tonight, but we already know that Santorum's campaign shot itself in the foot today.

Palin's Docudrama

Scott Conroy, a reporter at Real Clear Politics, broke the news that Palin is producing a film explaining her abrupt departure as governor of Alaska. The former-half term governor fled her responsibility to her state amid a flood of complaints of multiple and flagrant ethics violations, including using state resources for family travel. Similar complaints would be aired after the 2008 presidential campaign, when she abused staffers' credit cards and donations to purchase clothes and accessories for herself and her family.

Joshua Green at the Atlantic thinks that the film will be a disaster. I would tend to agree with him, but for different reasons. He sees a missed opportunity of showcasing pragmatic non-ideological leadership during Palin's half term, although I'm not sure that bridging differences between Alaska Republicans and Alaska Democrats is quite as impressive as the President's accomplishments of bridging differences between North Dakota Democrats and Vermont Democrats. Palin's audience is the Republican base, which is mostly interested in finding a candidate who is least like a democrat. Showcasing bipartisanship is not a winning strategy in the 2012 Republican primaries.

Spending Cuts

Does anybody remember 2000, when America had lots of money?

A massive federal surplus promised to provide a solid financial foundation for national growth for years to come. Vice President Gore ran on the platform of protecting that surplus from wasteful spending, pledging to put the suprlus in a "social security lockbox," a phrase which became synonymous with the Gore campaign due to the SNL debate sketches.

Then George Bush became President. He directed Mitch Daniels to spend that surplus on tax giveaways to corporations and individuals who make more than a quarter million dollars in a year. At the same time, he plunged America into two costly wars, one unnecessary, that the military (and our national budget) is still fighting its way out of.

Now the Republican party wants Americans to trust them to cut spending. It's crazy. It's desperate. It's pathetic. But most of all, it's crazy desperate pathetic.

Liberal Anger in Action

This week, David Weigel called for liberal organizations to provide an outpouring of disgust and anger over Ryan's Folly, the Republican plan to end Medicare in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, similar in scope to the Tea Party organized in the summer in 2009. I was skeptical that the media is capable of portraying the liberal anger against Ryan's Folly in a neutral light, probably defaulting to Republican talking points about 'liberal radicals' to describe citizens asking for basic fairness. Weigel got a little bit of what he asked for as at (ironically named) Daniel Webster's disastrous, angry, no-good, very bad town hall meeting:

Tuesday at the Orange County Agricultural Extension office in Orlando, boos and shouts of "liar" were mixed with angry accusations that Ryan's plan to change Medicare would leave those now younger than 55 without health insurance in their retirement. There also were calls to eliminate the tax cuts first put in place by then-President George W. Bush and to raise corporate taxes rather than cut entitlement programs.

It's a very dismissive portrayal of people upset that their congressman wants to change their Medicare coverage into a yearly check that won't cover the cost of basic health care.

I'd like to say that I'm right, that the anti-anger sentiment is a negative, and the dismissive portrayal of Webster's consituents proves my point. But thinking back to the original 'Summer of Rage,' the coverage started the same.

Liberal Anger: Not a Great Idea

Dave Weigel questions where the liberal anger is over the budget cuts advocated by Paul Ryan. A few Republicans have faced embarrassing questions after flip flopping to support the far-right agenda that demolishes Medicare and cuts even more taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Weigel notes that there's simply no comparison to the outpouring of anger over the Affordable Care Act that was ginned up by talk radio, Tea Party organizers, and Koch money. The angry protests, often armed and dangerous, at Congressional town halls shocked the media narrative into Republican hands, handing the GOP footage of old Americans, demanding "Keep your damn government hands off my medicare!"

I have less faith than Weigel does that "liberal anger" would be as well received by the corporate media as the apparent outpouring of pro-corporate values in the summer of 2009. First of all, Conservatives already invoke the specter of of angry brown and black people whenever they want to support an unfounded point. It excites their largely white and often racist base. Whereas conservatives have wrapped anti-government anger in the American flag, they have consistently cultivated an image of any sort of liberal demonstrations as inherently violent. They claim that a return to historically moderate tax rates on the super-wealthy would amount to a class war against the rich. They claim that "union thugs" intimidate poor old Republican state house members while they illegally attempt to strip unions of existential rights.

Republicans are going to claim that liberals (read: historically moderate voters) are inherently violent anyway. Why give any credence to their noise? The mainstream media will inevitably carry any mention of "liberal anger" alongside a Republican denunciation of liberals as radical individuals. Democrats turned backflips in the summer of 2009 to avoid calling Republicans carrying guns to town hall meetings radicals. They insisted that the display of unhinged absurdities would backfire on Republicans. They did everything but call the anger what it was.

Republican Presidential Contenders Are Cowards

That's what Charlie Cook is saying in today's National Journal, cowards. I think he's probably right when he says:

Given the minefield of Washington politics, and all of the attention being paid to budget fights and the upcoming battle over the debt ceiling, Republican presidential candidates are probably better off lying low for now. They can allow the dust to settle before the press entourages form and start asking them to articulate a position on every issue in the news. Letting House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and their respective leadership teams walk point in these fights is not the worst thing for these contenders. They can talk later about what they would have done in the budget battles.

Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney have been playing a waiting game in order to avoid having to provide any leadership to their party or to Americans.

Obama Opens Up the Debate

Politico wonders what President Obama set out to achieve in Wednesday's debt speech blockbuster. The speech began with reminder of why government is important. He addressed the plutocratic nature of the Republican plan to shift health care costs onto the elderly and middle class while slashing taxes for the wealthy. He proposed a four-part, balanced package, including one quarter that subsumed the only serious Republican proposal: domestic discretionary spending cuts.

But the combative tenor of Obama’s remarks, which included a swipe at his potential 2012 GOP challengers, may have scuttled the stated purpose of the entire enterprise — to start negotiations with Republicans on a workable bipartisan approach to attacking the deficit.

What Politico fails to understand is that the President feels no need to reach his grand bargain before 2012. He can negotiate with the 113th Congress or even the 114th one if he wins reelection.

The value of structuring the speech within a vision of America, then comparing whose plan would get America into the 21st century without seriously hobbling it in the global marketplace, is that it provides exactly the kind of contrast that is helpful for voters in an election. Unlike President Obama's signal achievements like the Affordable Care Act--and major defeats like the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts for income above $250k--that occured in the dark recesses of Congress, the debate about the broad outlines of the role of the American government in the 21st century requires public input. It requires a referrendum on the ideas put forth by both parties.

The Affordable Care Act was the product of such a referrendum, but the debt and the contours of the American state was not the major issue in 2008. Health Care reform, federal failures to perform core governmental functions (see: FEMA), and the economy were the major issues. As Republicans would have it, government's role in the economy will be the central issue of the 2012 election. It is also a debate that Republicans will lose handily.

President Obama doesn't need to negotiate with the current Congress, and any attempt to do so would be disastrous. We already know that Republicans the 112th Congress have an unappeasable appetite for hostage taking.

At the same time, President Obama is offering to cut domestic discretionary spending by nearly a trillion dollars over 12 years. This is a genuine olive branch to Republicans, but not the ones in Congress.

Budget and Economic Messaging 101

The key for Democrats fighting the radical Paul Ryan budget is to be clear about what the budget means. The budget on its own terms are immensely unpopular. Of course, the key is message discipline and focus. I think Ezra Klein hones in on the simple problem for Republicans in the first line:

a) Non-defense discretionary: Brings spending back to pre-2008 levels and freezes it there for five years.

Americans don't want to go back to pre-2008 government. Of course, that phrase is a little obscure, and hard to connect with Americans' concrete realities.
Americans don't want to go back to Bush era government. Independent fiscal hawks are still unhappy with the Bush-era spending as they were with the current administration's attempts to fix the holes. Even self-identifying conservatives still don't like the Bush brand. Yet, it's exactly the plan that Republicans have promised.

Americans still remember that the Bush administrations' policies ended in the financial catastrophe which started the recession on mainstreet. Americans understand that Bush-era spending levels did not reflect their values. Americans soundly rejected Bush-era politics and spending in the 2008 election.

Newt Gingrich Rooting For Obama Impeachment

And so am I! The strongest demonstrated method for boosting a President's popularity is having a far-right House of Representatives act on articles of impeachment. Mr. Gingrich is trotting out impeachment rhetoric because the Department of Justice has decided that the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act is indefensible. Bill Clinton's approval ratings actually improved as a result of Republican impeachment efforts.

The net gain in approval ratings demonstrates that more Americans sympathized with President Clinton about the absurd abuse he suffered at the hands of Newt Gingrich than were put off by the lying and philandering (which was both intuitively and empirically a large group). Many Democrats still haven't 'forgiven' Clinton for the scandal, but were forced to support him in that period because of the obvious vitriol of the Republican.
Since President Obama's 'sin' according to Newt Gingrich was fulfilling a campaign promise to weaken DOMA, one could hardly imagine a more favorable issue of impeachment for the President.

GOP to attempt Affordable Care Act Repeal

The headline says it all, at least as far as the political elite and policy wonks are concerned. But what exactly does the GOP plan to overturn the 2008 electoral mandate for health reform mean?

Off the top of my head: the people who vote for this bill want to take away vouchers from millions of Americans to make health insurance affordable. They want to let health insurance companies refuse to insure Americans with preexisting conditions, many of whom would be healthy and productive members of society if they had access to health insurance. Republicans want to force people to have only one health insurance option in their market, granting monopolies to HMOs. Those are things that everyone should care about (and be against, those who own enough HMO stocks to balance out insurance premium increases excepted). Oh- I forgot, and defunding the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will make it less likely that insurance companies will stop raising their premiums to enlarge already sky-high profits.

For social Republican voters, there's the fact that Republicans will be voting to allow federal funding for abortions by repealing the Stupak amendment. Forcing more employees onto employer-provided plans will also inhibit hiring and slow job growth.

So if you were a Democratic strategist, which message would you stick to in order to ensure that it survived a few news cycles? I would pick the "Takes millions of dollars out of the pockets of American families that would pay for health insurance" angle. It matches the recent GOP tax cuts for millionaires in showing that Republicans want to tax the poor in order to pay for the wealthy's excesses. Oh- and while we're at it, bring on financial reform repeal, where the GOP will be voting for more bonuses for Wall Street.

What Can a President Do?

As ever, the economy looms large ahead of next week's elections. Forecasters are expecting incumbents to get tossed from their seats across the country, and voters say that the weak economy is the reason (A Newsweek poll actually puts the share of voters for whom the economy is the top issue about 20 points higher, but it's a pdf.)

The New York Times' David Leonhardt reminds us that when voters judge incumbents, policy positions take a backseat to perceptions of effectiveness. The early Spring Democratic strategy of complaining that Republicans were the "Party of No" highlighted the Democrats' inability to advance a centrist agenda over the objections of the minority party. Of course, the fact is that the Democrats achieved a large number of legislative goals in the 111th Congress. Compared to an average of 12 "major accomplishments" as picked by Wikipedia for a Congress since 1958, the 111th Congress has so far passed 22 major bills. That puts it as the second most productive Congress in the last 62 years, and the most productive under a Democratic president. However, the media narrative, driven by the "Party of No" strategy on the Democratic side never fixed on that data. The Republican contention that the Obama agenda has represented an unparalleled expansion of federal government power and spending implies efficacy of the Democratic majorities of Congress, but for some reason has not created a consensus that the 111th Congress has achieved much of anything. Only a third of Democrats think that this Congress has been more productive than recent ones, and that number goes down to one fifth of all American adults.

Corporate Ads

I'd like to find a copy of this ad attacking Ron Kind(WI-03) ran in the Madison Market on CBS affiliate during 11:00PM CST show, in the first or second adbreak

I just saw this ad, the main complaint of which is that Ron Kind (WI-03) allowed the government to spend money wastefully. Specifically, they list some boilerplate about how the stimulus money was a waste because it didn't turn around the unemployment momentum, then a pure pork project: replacing broken windows on a building owned by the federal government.

In my neighborhood, when there's a building on your block with gaping holes in the windows, we call it a nuisance. Dilapidated buildings depreciate property values in the entire neighborhood. If that building were on my block, I would ask the owner to fix it up. If not to inhabit it, then at least to dress it up well enough to ensure that it will sell quickly. The incumbent's position is "fix buildings". He probably voted for a bill which included a line item like "Federal building maintenance- Replace Windows;" now he's being attacked for it. That's silly, because the logical outcome of this ad is that the challenger in the race would prefer to "not fix buildings." Who would put up such an obviously bankrupt ad?

Well, turned out it's one of those old post-Citizens United corporate speech money holes. I'm not really sure I got its exact name correctly because I can't find it on the web, and the voice said it really quickly. I think it was, "National Foundation of Independent Businesses." I found a National Federation Independent Businesses but I don't think it was it.

Rapid Response No-Nos

One of the biggest questions that arises in a political campaign is whether or not and how to respond to accusations. John Kerry was famously "Switft Boated" because he did not respond to allegations stemming from the three purple hearts he was awarded in Vietnam. Then-senator Obama's Philadelphia speech addressing race in America was considered a brilliant response to the Jeremiah Wright-themed attacks that Team Clinton had been throwing around.

Generally, it seems that as an attack is more squirrelly and weird, and doesn't quite click with the general public, it's probably best to ignore it. My case in point?: WitchDonnell.

The 1999 video of Christine O'Donnell isn't terribly damaging. It's weird and kind of off-putting, but not so bad by itself. Her ad in response to the allegation that, I gather from her response, ran 'she's a witch', in which she flatly denies the witch thing elevates the 'controversy' to a new level. Not only does it grant credence to the idea that maybe she really is a witch and is playing some quick defense, but there's nothing quite as un-senatorial as putting up an ad on TV that starts out with "I'm a Witch". Beyond that, in the youtube era, she looks a lot stupider than she really needs to because there are people with computers and an hour of time on their hands who just enjoy making people look stupid.

Of course, no one really cares about these little things except for political junkies. That is, until you put up an ad on tv that just begs people to search youtube for "O'Donnell Witch", which won't end well for her.