Midterm elections are often called ‘base elections’ because without the publicity and drama of a presidential race, most casual voters stay home. The key to winning midterms, then, is to mobilize as many of your committed voters as you can and to, if at all possible, demoralize your opponent’s base.
Tuesday’s elections demonstrated that the Republicans are succeeding on both counts and the Democrats are failing. In some ways, the Democrats are caught in a vise. The types of things they might do to fire up their base are not necessarily the types of things that Democrats in marginal districts want to support. The rising tide of opposition in the country isn’t well articulated or particularly issue-based. It’s more of a combination of disgust with what happened to the economy and what the government did (in some cases, was forced to do) in response which led to a widespread feeling that the government is doing too much and growing too big. The Democrats’ instinct is to do something big to show the voters that they’re working hard to improve their lives, but the more they do, the more anxiety is created. Moreover, most of our vulnerable members represent culturally conservative states and districts, which makes it difficult to fire up our base without tilting the polls decisively in the GOP’s favor.
This paradox is making everyone uncertain how we should proceed, but one thing should be clear. The administration’s agenda remains incredibly ambitious and aggressive. They plan on adding the financial reforms being debated in the Senate right now to the sweeping and historic health care reforms, and then moving on to tackle climate change, confirm another Supreme Court Justice, and then begin work on immigration reform. And they plan on doing all of that before mid-September when they’ll recess for the campaign.
So, we’re absolutely not going to shy away from big government or trim our sails because of the generalized anxiety it is producing. Since that is the case, we must find a way to demoralize the Republican base. For starters, nothing is quite so demoralizing as watching the other party successfully seat a new Supreme Court Justice in a lifetime appointment (remember Samuel Alito). The worst case is when your own party doesn’t even put up a fight (remember John Roberts and the Daily Kos/Obama flap). That argues for picking someone who doesn’t arouse much controversy (which isn’t necessarily the same thing as picking someone centrist). Of course, it’s irresponsible to think in strictly political terms when selecting someone for a lifetime appointment on the nation’s highest court, but it is one factor among many. If Obama’s nominee wins overwhelming support, it will be devastating to the enthusiasm of the Republicans’ rabidly anti-choice base. Of course, for that very reason, it’s unlikely that Obama can find a candidate who will win overwhelming support. If, on the other hand, the nominee arouses a knockdown-drag out fight, it will disproportionately fire up the GOP base.
We can extend the SCOTUS situation to other scenarios. If, as seems somewhat likely, the Financial Reforms are passed with large majorities, it will take a lot of the wind out of the anti-TARP, anti-bailout attitudes that are driving the Tea Partiers. With a good number of Republicans having to defend their support for the reforms, it will be difficult to push a national message on the issue.
A successful effort to pass immigration reform would shatter the Republican Party, but it seems very unlikely that the reforms will get beyond the committee level before the September recess. If I am right, the Senate will attempt to mark-up a bill in the relevant committees, and that will be where things stand when people go to the polls. Either they will have passed bills out of the committees that await action on the floor, or they will have failed to do so after having tried. Depending on details, the issue could cut a couple of different ways. Obviously, the goal should be to pass reforms before the elections, but if that proves impossible, the best outcome is for the GOP to visibly split on the issue, with several members voting with the Democrats in committee. The Republicans are fueled by their unity in opposition, which keeps their base united and happy. If we can break down that unity on the financial and immigration reforms, and on the confirmation of the SCOTUS nominee, we will splinter and demoralize the Republican base, which will become disgusted with a good portion of their own party.
So, in this case, the best defense is a good offense, but the offense has to be concerned with breaking GOP unity, which means that steamrolling best outcomes isn’t the best way to go politically.
As a progressive, this isn’t the advice I’d like to give, because I want progressive outcomes, not mealy-mouthed compromise. And, in most cycles, I think mealy-mouthed compromise is depressing to our own base and harmful to the party’s brand. But this is not an ordinary cycle. We don’t have the tools or issues or political will we would need to out-motivate the Republican base. Our best bet, then, is to divide them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/republican-voter-enthusia_n_565793.html
🙂
Looking at the raw numbers in the primaries though makes you uncomfortable. It’s way, way down compared to the Republicans.
I see your point about demoralizing the GOP base by breaking up party unity. But our side has to get out and vote, too. For that to happen, we need victories in the fall. At least one big one.
Remember: the Democrats have to work continually to banish the spectre that they are ineffective and weak when it comes to political confrontations.
I see your point about demoralizing the GOP base by breaking up party unity. But our side has to get out and vote, too. For that to happen, we need victories in the fall. At least one big one.
Remember: the Democrats have to work continually to banish the spectre that they are ineffective and weak when it comes to political confrontations.
Moreover, most of our vulnerable members represent culturally conservative states and districts, which makes it difficult to fire up our base without tilting the polls decisively in the GOP’s favor.
But most of the Representatives from these areas are Blue Dogs, and they vote against their district on economic areas(see HCR). Will they vote to stick it to the Big Banks(or otherwise punish those who screwed the economy)? Will they vote to raise taxes on the rich?
Well, to some degree the Blue Dogs have to make hard decisions about what will and won’t benefit them. Overall, they’d like to be able to show some separation from the national party and Pelosi in particular. So, they covet opportunities to demonstrate their independence. That makes it hard to use base-rallying strategies to help them.
On the other hand, as could be seen with Blanche Lincoln’s decision to go long on the derivatives regulation, the atmosphere is ripe for some anti-Wall Street populism that is quite pleasing to our base.
I think i’ve played this game before, and i’m not particularly interested in playing again.
Cus what we’re talking about here is “tack right”, am i correct? Throw reproductive choice and civil liberties under the bus in order to seat someone the GOP can accept to the SCOTUS? Something like that?
Not really what I am arguing.
We face choices on whether to fight hard to get the very best bills or nominees, with one or two Republicans supporting us, or compromising to get significant support. So far, we haven’t been able to get significant support for anything no matter what, so that made our decision easier (even if it took us forever to make it).
As a progressive, I favor getting the best policies, no matter how polarizing the atmosphere becomes, and I generally think that better policies will translate to electoral gains and party loyalty. That’s the argument I usually make against the DLC and against ideological-blurring in general.
But I am looking at this from a short-term, purely political point of view. And we have the opportunity in the remainder of this Congress, prior to the elections, to break the back of the Party of No. And that is the only way I can see us avoiding a bloodbath in November and a potential Speaker Boehner.
And, I long ago resigned myself to the sad truth that the most important issue facing our nation and the world is not marginally better legislation but keeping the current incarnation of the GOP out of power. So, I advice a short-term strategy of breaking the unity of the GOP with every arrow in our quiver.
meta: “keeping the other party out of power” is a pretty piss poor argument for supporting the democrats (or the republicans for that matter), because it soon becomes ossified and leads to an incumbency protection racket, since “our guys” are better than “their guys”.
isn’t that exactly the strategy rahm emmanuel pursued, blurring ideology and bringing conservatives into the democratic party, who effectively have undermined the president’s progressive bent? isn’t that what bill clinton did with all the triangulation?
“we have to keep the other guys out of power” is not much of a rallying cry.
I’m actually not quite sure WHAT you’re arguing. it seems that in SCOTUS you want to take the safe uncontroversial route (a fantasy given that Obama could nominate Superman and the right would got apeshit), but what do you mean in financial reforms?
Well, on the SCOTUS, there are candidates that would probably get significantly more support than what Sotomayor received. Some of them would be to the left of John Paul Stevens. Personally, I like Diane Wood, but she would be exactly the kind of candidate that we would enjoy for decades on the court but would hurt us significantly in the midterms. If I didn’t care about Speaker Boehner, I would recommend her. If he picks her I will loudly applaud. But if my job is to provide short-term political advice, I’d say to find someone just as progressive but without the public record that will drive the anti-choice loonies to their ramparts.
On financial reform, it could mean beating back some good amendments that would cause the GOP to line up in lockstep against the bill’s final passage. That depends, of course. I’d like to see the financial bill pass overwhelmingly. Nothing would do more to improve our prospects in the fall.
I am well aware that ‘the other guys are worse’ is not a good rallying cry. And blurring does harm to our brand and to our base’s motivation. But this isn’t blurring to appeal to independents, which is the DLC strategy. This is blurring to splinter the opposition. If we don’t bring dissension into the GOP’s ranks, their superior motivation will crush us in the fall.
gotcha. I just don’t want kagan.
Auditing the Fed, if it survives a threatened (and IMO foolish) presidential veto could go a long way toward splintering the opposition. some of the GOP base supports that very much, while others will freak out about the government and soshalizm!!1!.
on an unrelated note, I have made my choice for the PA primary, should I vote for Senator.
It looks like their “superior motivation” may be something of a paper tiger.
Seems reasonable to expect Dem enthusiasm to keep growing as long as Dems are accomplishing something, and for the GOP base to splinter because they see hated bills passing and so turn to the loudest factions, the teapartiers and Paulites and Palin crowd. I think your analysis errs in believing that the Rep base will give their Congress members a pass because they put up a good fight. The more solidly reformist legislation and appointments the Dems achieve the more scattered the Rep base will become, regardless of how big a show of opposition their reps put on. The more fanatical the base, the more likely they’ll turn away from failure and seek other leaders who promise a return to power.
it wasn’t a paper tiger on tuesday. It was a five-alarm bell.
I don’t see how votes in primaries have any connection to motivation to vote in the general. There were no real ideological chasms among the Dems, so why would many people vote? The passion driving the wingnuts is real, but that doesn’t mean they’ll see anyplace to go in November.
If Democrats get the audit-the-Fed provision in the financial industry reform bill and can explain in simple terms what is in the bill, that will deal with some anxiety that the government is taking money from ordinary people and giving it to the undeserving. To do that, they will have to risk Timothy Geithner being caught in a conflict-of-interest scandal.
This is the consequences of these representatives not messaging to move their districts in a more Democratic direction. Carter’s Georgia didn’t become Newt’s Georgia magically overnight; relentless Republican messaging consistent conservative base and exploitation of personal networks (you know how pushy your conservative family members, neighbors, friends, and co-workers are) transformed the political conversation and changed the political culture. All of those vulnerable Democrats have essentially been butts in chairs purchasing elections with earmarks.
The biggest issue progressives have is expecting elected officials to carry the weight of change while they sit back and vote now and then. It is not going to happen. Turnout doesn’t depend on Congressional strategy, it depends on local will to turn out voters.
To the extent that the local Democratic establishment undercuts this will (see the case of the Boston establishment in the election of Scott Brown) the base will not turn out or will reject the establishment endorsed candidate. The sad fact is that Howard Dean was working on this problem, and Tim Kaine isn’t.
There is too much emphasis on Washington strategy or Congressional strategy. As important as they are, the critical thing that has to be done is for Democrats to find some way of speaking directly to the people without the roadblocks put up by the national media and nationally owned local affiliates. That is going to require that some progressives who do have money to buy radio stations in lots of rural areas and operate them at a loss. Because that is exactly conservative radio’s business model. But that is long term.
The Supreme Court is too important to add to the conservative majority. Republicans are going to oppose any nominee reflexively. Caving on that will not work short term or long term. Time to trot out the “the President deserves to have his choice” argument that was used to shoehorn in Roberts and Alito.
The climate change bill, at least the pseudo-market carbon tax or cap-and-trade is dead. Drill, baby, drill is dead. Kowtowing to the coal industry is dead. Most likely a package of tax incentives for new technologies and some bow to the nuclear industry. If Congress has to leave behind something until after the election, this is it.
Immigration reform splits both Republicans and Democrats, but it also might rally a new base in some otherwise conservative Democratic districts if those Democrats are smart enough to turn them out. It is going to be interesting to see how it plays in states along the border. Hispanics are motivated. But expect some ugly attempts at voter suppression.
The big question mark is whether the black community will turn out for Democrats. There is a bit of complacency after the big election of 2008. There are also a bunch of black Republicans who rode Obama’s coattails into office in “nonpartisan” races.
A lot will depend on how the White House supports candidates. Picking favorites and sandbagging others will not help Obama in Congress next year. Nor will it produce the victories we need in November.
Interesting points you raise here. I too have been harping on the progressive media deficit any chance I get. Why are moneyed progressive folks not ponying up the money to buy radio stations and tv outlets? You are right Rush Limbaugh and his band of lying radio hacks are like welfare cases for their corporate sponsors. They don’t make any money for their owners, but they keep the political temperature hot for the wingnuts propaganda purposes.
progressives had a new media advantage in the run-up to the 2008 elections and that is how it snagged all those new voters who don’t do talk radio and all trad med. But the rightwing has reached online parity with us now and even outpacing us on some social networking outlets.
This is what always happens. Democrats invent something then the wingnuts come along, copy it and then use it perversely. Now they are running a perverse version of the Obama campaign in a stealth fashion. So either we come up with something entirely new in innovative media technology or we have to out-strategize them on their own turf.
Ironically, the brilliance of the Obama campaign lulled us into complacency such that we did not challenge Repugs on their media turf. And now that we are focused on actually governing, Prez. Obama cannot do it all. I fail to see why Democrats are not crawling all over the MSM to blare out our achievements and point of view. If the President doesn’t do it, no Democratic congresscritter comes out. Sad really.
As you rightly said, we have dropped the ball on injecting progressive worldviews as “default conventional wisdom” in the public bloodstream. So the wingnuts have filled that vacuum with their madness. The polls on the “favorable” national opinion on the Arizona immigration law just depressed me, as has the absence of outrage over the BP oil spill. Unbelievable. It means we have a lot of work to do locally to change minds. A nation of morons we have become. Truly.
“Hispanics are motivated.” Really? I’m waiting for the evidence. Surprisingly, the protests and marches thus far have been underwhelming in size. And that has me really pissed! This country has not witnessed this overt display of xenophobia and racism in decades, but the reaction from communities of color and Democratic strong holds has been to tune it it out rather than turn out for elections thus far. I don’t get it, but we’ll get what we deserve.
Richard Burr invented the issue to beat Erskine Bowles at the last minute in 2004. North Carolina Hispanics know that even if most do not.
The best guage of what is going on is the discussion in Hispanic papers. The MSM is going to try their best to put a blackout on any Hispanic activism unless it is overwhelmingly too large. 50,000 in Los Angeles within a week of an event is not a small demonstration. Huge demonstrations of multiple hundreds of thousands take lots of planning and promotion. Just a huge GOTV campaigns do.
On a slight tangent, but I remember BooMan and DaveW asking why I hated populism. This audit the Fed provision is exactly why. The public (and politicians) are angry, I get that. However, this feel-good legislating that is more harmful than not pisses me off, and it’s the result of getting people into a frenzy and not thinking about the ramifications of it.
yeah, it is probably not a good idea. I don’t think I would vote for it the way it is drafted right now. And I don’t think anyone but the Paulistas give a crap about fed transparency (and they only care because they want to destroy it).
It’s not a vote-winner at all, and it will just politicize an organization that is designed to be shielded from politics.
There are ways to get more transparency without turning the internal deliberations of the Fed into a political circus.
Not only would it politicize them–far more than they are now (which I would argue isn’t even politicization but difference in opinion on economics, although I think Greenspan dropped a lot of economics in favor of free-market fetishism during the Bush years)–but you think the class war-fare is bad now? That income gap is large? Ha! You ain’t seen nothing yet. If we get to know Fed policy, so do the banksters. They will run amok and game the system more-so than they already do, predicting the Fed’s actions every step of the way. I’m not sure what people plan on doing with the information anyway. Ok, you know that $5 billion went to Bank A. And? Will you ask your Congresspeople to say “stop,” which would then indeed politicize the Fed’s decisions? Will you demand that your politicians lobby the Fed to have money go to their banks in their states?
I’m just not sure what they want to do with this information. I don’t think they know either, they want to know “just because.” Like you said, there’s a reason the Paulistas want to know, and that’s so they can convince the American people to support ending the Fed altogether.
Plenty of other countries do just fine with Central Banks that operate like the Fed. If we emulate Canada, we will be fine.
There’s a reason why most (barring a few) leftward economists don’t support this.
So the only way to keep the economy working is to have shitheads like Greenspan doing whatever they want in secret?
More or less. How much it lends, at what rate, in what format, etc should not be disclosed to the public. Otherwise, I ask you–why not just abolish the Fed and go back to pre-Depression era where Congress took the decisions?
Ron Paul is the only honest person in this debate. He knows full well what would happen if this passes.
So any chance to expose corruption and incompetence in the entity that controls our economy means economic disaster. It’s now pretty well established that the Fed’s main concern has been the well-being of the financial profiteers, any you oppose any means of monitoring that — just trust the banks and idiot stalkers of Any Rand to do what’s right. Maybe abolishing the Fed is indeed the right starting point for thinking about reform.
No, Ayn Rand would not approve of the Fed in the first place. You monitor it just like you monitor Supreme Court nominations. Don’t like their monetary policy? Win the presidency and have him appoint people to the board. If you’d like to abolish the Fed, well, I don’t know what to tell you other than to look at what the average American’s life was like before it: complete and utter hell.
Every other country has the same sort of central bank, and they do just fine. The key is regulation. My ideal financial regulation bill would turn our banking sector into Canada’s.
You are missing the point. Sanders amendment has now been amended, so half this conversation is irrelevant.
But the objection to the original amendment was that it created the kind of transparency that would interfere with the Fed operating independently of political considerations.
As I said, there are ways to have more transparency and accountability without doing that. Apparently they figured it out.
A friend of mine also wrote a succinct post about this, which I shall now share:
The lingering stench of vested interest shenanigans in how the $2 trillion of no/low-interest loan funds and what those banks used those funds for is going to keep dragging down the reputation of the Fed. And Obama’s trying to block transparency is an issue that might come back to haunt him.
Not auditing the Fed will play into the Paulistas’s agenda. Auditing will allow for the holding accountable of those who behaved in interests other than the public interest. And could conceiveably exonerate some folks currently held suspect.
Why there aren’t regular audits of the Fed as a matter of course to assure its integrity is baffling.
This comment over at FDL was perfect:
Scarecrow argues that it’s a strawman, but I don’t see how. His main argument boils down to this:
If anything, he’s the one who’s not being honest here. how is there no stigma created? I mean, that’s the WHOLE POINT.
“You borrowed, you better be under our thumbs and behave by not borrowing anymore”
How is there no stigma created with that attitude? He doesn’t say.
Via email:
That statement rubs me the wrong way; the deputy is “accepting” the amendment, but is is clearly not too enthused.
…without compromising the Federal Reserve’s full independence…
Bullshit argument – independence does not mean free from oversight!
Here’s the problem. Congress needs to know how much money the taxpayers are on the hook for and why a commitment of $2 trillion did not get lent out to restore the economy. Those are legitimate oversight responsibilities.
A second problem is that the Fed is not independent of the institutions that sit on its boards. And there are charges that individual members of the boards arranged deals that particularly benefitted their institutions. An audit is the only way to determine whether that happened or not. Especially if some institutions were made whole with taxpayer funds or Fed loans and others weren’t. And more especially if those institutions did turn around and invest in government debt, taking a government zero-interest loan and buying government 3%-4% debt.
What is being sought in the amendment is not a routine audit but a special audit surrounding the actions taken to bail out the banks.
The routine operations of the open market window are not up for this sort of scrutiny. And if there is any stigma it will be on those people and institutions who gamed the system to socialize their losses on the taxpayer. And quite frankly, using a board member to drive corporate interests instead of the public interest should not disqualify the institution from borrowing anymore but it should disqualify the board member from service on a Fed Board ever again and cause the institution to be disqualified from providing a board member for a set number of years. This amendment does none of those disqualification.
Finally, I disagree with Scarecrow’s criticism of the amendment. The GAO is tasked with reporting to Congress; in preparing the report, the GAO will be authorized to seek out the specific information to report. Not all of that information will either be provided to Congress or made public; it is an audit not an investigation. However relevant materials might be. I think the GAO can be trusted to protect the independence of the Fed and provide Congress the information they need for legislative action. And make referrals to DOJ of any criminal wrongdoing that they uncover. And one can audit specific actions of the Open Market Committee without getting into the nuts and bolts of the open market (monetary policy setting) process itself.
BTW, here is the text of the revised amendment:
Revised Sanders amendment
So it’s a good bargaining chip to trade for substantial reforms I guess?
I think trying to manipulate the GOP base is a loser’s game. The attitude that underlies it is nothing new: if you look back over the years, you find constant expressions of hope that we can take advantage of Rep screwups, the the GOP will stumble, that their extremism/corruption/hypocrisy will depress the base and drive away indies. You’ll find very little about the vision for America and the accompanying legislation that will fire up our own base and show indies who’s on their side. I think that’s precisely what has to change.
Ever since at least Reagan, Dems have found it comfortable to accept the meme that this is a conservative country, and the best they can do is nibble around the edges of reform while avoiding anything that might be seen as “too much too soon”. The Clinton administration became the proof of that wisdom, both by its incompetent failure to win its one genuinely progressive initiative, and then its capitulation to rightwing anti-regulation, pro-corporate economics and tepid triangulation on social/cultural issues. Clinton’s electoral success and legislative failure is used to justify the timidity we see today. Dems don’t want to consider that Clinton left them no legacy to build on.
It’s kind of startling to see a progressive still clinging to the idea that content matters in how the GOP will react to anything the Dems do. I think the financial bill is the key to Dem triumph. The more it’s seen as paying back the banks and Wall Street for their crimes, the more it will both energize the Dem base and the indies while it demoralizes the Rep base as even they are forced to see that their guys are siding with the bunch that everybody hates (with good reason). I think Obama and the party bureaucrats are being sickeningly stupid by opposing the Fed audit amendment, among others. If they want to turn things around they need to pass a bill that reinstates Glass-Steagall, breaks up the biggest banks, regulates and requires total transparency of all derivatives, ends “too big to fail”, and precludes any more financial industry bailouts. It also wouldn’t hurt for the Justice Dept to cast a much wider net of Wall Street criminal investigations.
I don’t really see what the court nomination has to do with anything. Unless Obama names a pro-gun, anti-abortion racist, the GOP base will be fired up no matter what.
The real Dem problem is its failure to communicate. It’s getting better, but has yet to take a page out of the other side’s playbook and clearly stand for change our side can believe in. By November the Dems will have a legislative and administrative record with the power to fire up the base. The real question is, will they manage to let the base know that.
On the SCOTUS, I want you to look at something. Here are the confirmation votes on the current members of the Court.
As you can see, two Republicans are on the court despite not reaching the 60 vote threshold. Unsurprisingly, they are two worst justices.
We are going to win no matter what. The Republicans are not going to filibuster a Supreme Court justice unless they have some major stuff uncovered that indicates that they are a crook and the administration doesn’t care. In other words, the GOP base can get as fired up as the want but we’re going to confirm whomever Obama appoints. But their base will be demoralized if we get a vote like Breyer received. At a minimum, they want to see a Sotomayor level of resistance.
I think the further “left” they perceive the nominee to be the more demoralized they’ll be over their party’s impotence. Of course we don’t want Obama nominating some crook, but that’s not in the cards, presumably. I think the appointment of somebody like Woods will do at least as much to demoralize the Reps as somebody sold as “centrist” that gets more Rep votes. And will to more to energize the Dems.
Vise not vice, unless you’re referring to Bill Clinton or Elliott Spitzer.
Sorry, it’s the mechanic in me.
thanks.