Tom Jensen on PPP's latest Montana polling, showing Baucus with shrinking support from Democrats, and popularity among Republicans long gone:

Baucus' plight is similar to that of a number of other Senators who tried to have it both ways on health care, watering down the bill but still voting for it in the end. Blanche Lincoln's stance, among other issue positions, alienated her base so much that she nearly lost her party's nomination. And it certainly didn't help her to win Republican votes in the fall, leading to her overwhelming defeat in November. Joe Lieberman's actions on health care have helped to put him in a most unusual position- his approval rating is under 50% with Democrats, Republicans, and independents, one of very few Senators who's managed to pull off that trio. And on the other side of the aisle Olympia Snowe's vote for the health care bill at one point in committee, even though she voted against it in the end, infuriated the Republican base in the state and has many folks hankering for a primary challenge against her.

Every voter has his or her issue that is, to them, indisputably the most important issue ever, but Jensen's conclusions show that every party also has a set of issues that support for (or opposition to) is a nearly foregone conclusion in the minds of voters.  Affordable health care was such an issue for Democrats.  Opposition to that same reform was a given for the GOP.

Baucus lost any popularity he held with Montana Republicans the minute he even acknowledged there was a health care reform effort to be a part of.  So you follow that up with a plan to water down the bill, weakening not only the reform, but support from the base you need even more, having lost the Republicans?  Genius strategy.

You're losing one side either way.  Why not give the side you still have everything they really want?

The choice was always either complete support of the strongest bill possible, or complete opposition to any reforms at all, and the electorate had shown that clearly in poll after poll leading up to Max's two month long delay crusade to be everyone's hero. 

Baucus' antics during the health care reform debate exemplify the Democratic Party's obsession with moderation (as defined by David Broder!) for moderation's sake and bipartisanship (as defined by Fox News!) for the media's sake, and now, for Baucus, it's coming home to roost.

Time to bypass this Liebermann/Blue Dog strategy for electoral "success."

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters.

"It is fair to say that 2010 was the year of older, rich people." That's the conclusion of a new research memo from Project Vote, "An Analysis of Who Voted (and Who Didn’t Vote) in the 2010 Election," by Dr. Lorraine Minnite. It finds that wealthier voters and Americans over the age of 65 surged to the polls in 2010, and increased their support for the Republican party, while young voters and minority voters (who strongly favor Democrats) dropped off at higher rates than in 2006.

Two years ago, African-Americans, lower-income Americans, and young Americans all participated in the 2008 presidential election in decisive numbers, making it the most diverse electorate in history. In 2010, however, these historically underrepresented groups were underrepresented again, as they (in common with most Americans) largely stayed home. Non-voters were the majority in 2010, a fact that "throws cold water on any victor’s claims for a mandate."

There's more...

From the Restore Fairness blog-

Last Friday, Emily Guzman spoke at a vigil outside the Stewart Detention Center in Southwest Georgia where her husband, Pedro Guzman, has been held for over a year. Pedro was brought by his mother from Guatemala to the United States at the age of 8, and they stayed on after being denied asylum. He was arrested a year ago after his mother was denied a request to stay on in the country legally. Despite being married to an American, he has been kept in detention while fighting his case, with limited access to medical care and to visits with his mother, his wife and his four-year-old son, Logan. His wife Emily, who is an American citizen, spoke about the traumatic experience that her family has been through while Pedro has been fighting deportation from prison-

I never knew that the immigration system in the United States was so outrageously flawed until I began to experience it through my husband, Pedro is one of the very few fighting his case in immigration detention. It is a daily emotional fight for him to continue without his freedom.

Pedro’s story is just one of the myriad of reasons why human rights organizations and supporters marched to the Stewart Detention Center last Friday. The groups, including the Georgia Detention Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia, were seeking to draw attention to the “traumatic effects” that detention has on immigrant families. The marchers carried lists with the names of over 110 people who have died in immigration detention since 2003, including 39-year-old Roberto Martinez-Medina and 50-year-old Pedro Gumayagay who were detained at Stewart. This protest followed the release of a report by the Georgia Detention Center about the lack of transparency, accountability and due process at the Stewart Detention Center, which, as one of the largest (and most remote) detention centers in the country, has a vast list of human rights violations including lack of waiting periods of 65 days for cases to be heard, lack adequate medical care, and the imposition of solitary confinement without a hearing.

In addition to calling for the release of Pedro and the closure of the detention center in favor of alternatives to detention that are cheaper and more humane, the groups also aimed to highlight the “collusion between government officials and for-profit corporations to place profits and politics over people.” The overt connections between the massive expansion of the detention system and the direct profit made by private prison companies such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, which runs the Stewart Detention Center) were thrown into the spotlight when National Public Radio (NPR) did a story exposing the ties between CCA and the SB1070 immigration law in Arizona.

8 of the protesters, including Emily Guzman’s mother, Pamela Alberda, were arrested as they crossed over a ‘Do Not Enter’ tape at the entrance to the detention center. They were released on bond later the same day. Speaking about the impending protest and vigil, an ICE spokesperson said-

ICE fully respects the rights of all people to voice their opinion without interference. We recognize that our nation’s broken immigration system requires serious solutions, and we fully support comprehensive immigration reform efforts.

It is a relief to know that in the midst of this glaring lack of due process and fairness, a modicum of justice also exists. In what is a significant victory for immigrant rights activists, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled yesterday that all defendants with limited English proficiency have a right to an interpreter for criminal trials. Speaking about the case filed by the ACLU of Georgia and the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, Azadeh Shahshahani, Director of the National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia said that the court ruling upheld a basic tenet of the U.S. Constitution-

The court acknowledged that we don’t have two systems of justice in this country – one for English-speakers and another for everyone else. The constitutional guarantee of due process applies to everyone in this country, not just fluent English-speakers.

In keeping with the spirit of the Constitution practiced by the Georgia Supreme Court, let us hope that these same principles are upheld in all aspects of life, ensuring that everyone is treated equally with respect to dignity, justice, due process and fairness.

Photo courtesy of immigration.change.org

Learn. Share. Act. Go to restorefairness.org

(Cross-posted from Think it Through.)

Did you hear the joke about the president who wants to reduce the deficit and cut taxes?  Depending on your level of cynicism, you are either amused or annoyed that our lawmakers in Washington simultaneously pay homage to special commissions on the federal budget deficit and debate the size of the tax cuts they will enact.

But you cannot place all the blame on our politicians.

Ever since Ronald Reagan made tax cuts the engine of his drive for smaller government, the American voters have acted like spoiled children holding out their hands for more candy even when Halloween is long past.  The tea party members have built an entire political movement based on such childish selfishness.

Before Ronald Reagan, Americans seemed to understand the income tax was a necessary price to pay for the functions of government that benefit society as a whole and each of us as individuals.  This may be why, prior to Ronald Reagan, no candidate had run for president on a platform of cutting taxes.

It is true that President Kennedy, once in office, decided to try a Keynesian approach to stimulate a sluggish economy by lowering taxes and increasing government spending temporarily, but he did not campaign on tax cuts.

In the last century, Americans managed to build a strong economy and a broad middle class with top tax rates ranging from 70 to 90% of income.  By the time Reagan left office in 1988, he had cut the top tax rate to 28%.

The lost income for the government, mixed with Reagan’s huge military build-up, left the country deeply in debt.  Nonetheless, Reagan’s legacy has been that Americans feel entitled to tax cuts and, ever since, political candidates of both parties have made sure some type of tax cut played prominently in their campaigns.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both campaigned on tax cuts – Bush promised a cut in the capital gains tax and Clinton called for reduced taxes for middle- and low-income workers.  Once in office, however, both of these presidents raised rates on upper-income households in order to recover from the deficit-spending Reagan years.  Clinton’s tax and budget policies gave the country eight years of economic prosperity, and he handed his successor a budget surplus.

George W. Bush reverted to the Reagan lesson.  He promised and delivered a massive tax cut with virtually no rationale other than “It’s your money, I want to give it back to you.”  Democrats in Congress were not willing to buck the Reagan legacy, so they essentially went along.

Even Barack Obama, the self-described agent of change, followed suit and ran for president on a platform of a middle class tax cut.  Now he is shadow-boxing with himself about how many of the Bush tax cuts installed in 1981 he wants to let stand.

The Pew Research Center reported this year that a majority of nearly six in ten voters would choose to either repeal all of the tax cuts (31%) or just repeal the tax cuts for the wealthy (27%), while only one in three (30%) wanted to keep all of the tax cuts.

In extensive research on taxes over the years, we have found that when people are informed of things such as the budget deficit, the national debt, and the billions of dollars the government spends every month simply to pay the interest on the national debt, tax cuts are placed on a much lower priority.

Yet, President Obama has not explained the choices between tax cuts and what else can be done with the money.  He, like most other politicians, has accepted as truth that you cannot oppose all tax cuts.

Why not inform people of the payoffs – for jobs, for the economy, for programs they care about – if we repeal all of the Bush tax cuts?  You can make a compelling case that the benefits to repeal are far greater than those of letting the tax cuts continue.

Is there no public official with the skill and courage to help the country break its adolescent dependency on tax cuts?

John Russonello is a partner with Belden Russonello & Stewart: Public Opinion Research and Strategic Communications in Washington, DC. He writes the blog Think it Through.

William Bradley serves up an expansive campaign diary style recap of Jerry Brown's win against Whitman in California. 

...the story as told in the cut-back conventional media is on the under-cooked side.

Which is not surprising, since virtually all the state and national press early on anointed Whitman as an unstoppable high-tech juggernaut of a campaign run by the best consultants in the business. Up against poor old Jerry Brown and his ragtag little band. When in reality, it was Ali-Foreman '74 all along, with what I called Brown's Zen rope-a-dope approach unfolding as anticipated.

Jerry Brown ended his campaign and began his gubernatorial transition in the place where he regenerated as a political figure: Oakland. If you want to understand the stunning Brown comeback, you'll understand the significance of Oakland as its nexus.

... In all, a fitting symbol of regeneration both for a city and for a politician...

One race I couldn't help myself from following.  In ways, the archetypal battle between the corporate-backed superfunded candidate who wanted to "run California like a business," and the quirkly, admitedly flawed underdog, speaking often about "rebirth" and "renewal" in a decidedly hokey fashion. 

No doubt my impression is oversimplied, but I'm certain the conventional wisdom circulating about the race misses the mark much further.

CA Democratic Party fundraiser Wade Randlett, for example:

Brown beat back the national conservative wave with a message that "I will be a frugal governor who will make hard decisions, who won't tax people without their approval," Randlett said. "It was a moderate, centrist message" that exit polls show played especially well with Latinos and women voters in California.

Party conditioning at it's glaring worst.  Any Democrat who won in 2010 obviously ran center, with a moderate message.

But Brown only tracked center on two points: promising "no new taxes (without public approval)" and endorsing pension reforms, vaguely stating he would like "other concessions" from unions as well.  Outside of that, Brown ran more often as a progressive.  More from Bradley:

"I want the people of California to know we will have times that are tough, maybe a year more," Brown cautioned his excited supporters in his victory speech. Then he gave the uplift. "I take as my challenge a common purpose based on a vision of what California can be. I see California leading in renewable energy, public education and an openness to every person."

Brown beat back the "national conservative wave" by saving his money until the end, running smart -- The Twins! -- and -- whether he truly will be as Governor or not -- walking and talking like a progressive, without apology.  No doubt he did appeal to moderates in contrast with Whitman's reach for the Tea Party on issues like immigration and social services, but to say this was the deciding factor in Brown's successful campaign largely ignores the majority of what was presented to California voters on the ballot.

Brown didn't win the middle by speaking to them only as a moderate.  He won them by default while campaigning foremost for his base, careful not to throw them to the wolves in search of centrist appeal.

There's a lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure...

cross-posted from Main Street Insider

There are several reasons that we decided upon the Tester Amendment to the Food Safety Bill for episode 12 of 90 Second Summaries. First and foremost, the amendment is a significant one that is essential to understanding this piece of legislation (legislation we summarized in episode 7). Not only is it the most substantial difference between the Senate’s version of the bill and the House’s, but without it the future of the legislation itself would be unclear. Therefore, we think it is important that people understand how this amendment changes the bill.

Another significant influence in our decision was you. When we summarized the Food Safety Bill in episode 7 a number of viewers brought up the issue of protections for small farmers. It was clear to us that this amendment was worthy of a summary.

We expected this bill to get a cloture vote today, but they’re taking the week off and coming to it next Monday. Which makes sense, it’s not like they have a lot on their plate this lame duck session (other than this, DADT repeal, tax cut extensions, the DREAM Act and a new START Treaty, you know, minor stuff).

Tester Amendment to S. 510, the “Food Safety” Bill
Sponsor: Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT); Cosponsor: Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC)
Also called the Tester-Hagan Amendment
Click here to download this summary (pdf)

Status: The Tester Amendment has been included in the Manager’s Amendment to S. 510. A cloture vote is scheduled for November 29th. The Senate bill will then need to be merged with the H.R. 2749, the House version which does not include a similar provision to the Tester Amendment.

Purpose: S. 510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, creates new regulations on the food industry intended to prevent food-borne illnesses. However, many believe it places undue burden on small farmers. Numerous national, state, and local organizations – repre

senting consumers, farmers and ranchers, local food producers and co-ops – quickly expressed their concerns regarding the proposed regulations.

In response, Senator Jon Tester proposed an amendment designed to protect those small and local farmers from burdensome safety regulations.

Summary: The Tester Amendment exempts small businesses from the regulations proposed in S. 510 and establishes some new guidelines for those businesses. Specifically, it:

• Exempts businesses that have annual sales of less than $500,000 and sell the majority of their products to consumers, or to restaurants and retailers within the State or within 275 miles. The Food and Drug Admini stration (FDA) will have the power to revoke an exemption if the facility has been associated with a foodborne illness outbreak.

• Exempts all “very small businesses,” to be defined by FDA.

• Defines farmer’s market sales as “direct-to-consumer” for FDA purposes

• Requires exempted businesses to submit to the FDA documentation that demonstrates that the facilities qualify for the exemption and are in compliance with state and local laws.

• Requires exempted businesses to put their business name and address on all product labels.

These businesses would not be exempt from any other existing or future regulations, only those established by this legislation

.

CBO Score: None provided.

Supporters: Small and local farm organizations,

• Supporters, argue that small farmers provide an important option for consumers and that the regulations proposed in S. 510 could push many of them out of business. The also point out that the recent, well-publicized incidents involving food-borne illnesses resulted from “industrial food supply chains” and not small farms.

Opposition: American Meat Institute, National Chicken Council, etc., and some food safety advocates

• Most opponents argue that federal food safety frameworks should apply to all segments of the food industry regardless of size, location, or type of operation.

Further links

There's more...

With 90 Second Summaries, we aim to cover policy items due to receive close attention in the coming weeks and months that are not being properly explained by most of the press corps. As a result,  over one third of our episodes cover pieces of legislation that are receiving action or are expected to receive action during this lame duck session of Congress. We did not hit every hot topic on the board, but we got to a good number of them. Without further ado, here's a roundup of the bills we covered that you should know about as the lame duck session unfolds:

Unemployment Insurance Extension:

UPDATE: The unemployment insurance extension failed to pass in today's House vote.

The House votes today on a suspension bill to extend unemployment insurance by three months. David Waldman explains:

Now, suspension bills need a 2/3 vote to pass, so that's a pretty high hurdle -- 290 votes, at least 35 of which would have to come from Republicans. So why bring the bill to the floor that way? Suspension bills aren't subject to amendment, nor to the motion to recommit. So although the hurdle is high, it's a straight-up yes-or-no vote on unemployment benefits extension. Click here for more information on the unemployment insurance extension.

The Dream Act:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced he will bring up the DREAM Act as a standalone bill in the lame duck session. In the past, the Senate has attempted to attach the DREAM Act to larger bills.

Click here for information on the DREAM Act.

The Expiring Bush Tax Cuts:

The deals are still being hammered out on this so the specifics of what legislation will pass are still little fuzzy. By all reasonable expectations, an extension of some sort WILL get passed before the end of the year.

Click here for more information about extending the Bush tax cuts.

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act:

UPDATE 2: A compromise was reached on the Tester Amendment and it will be included in the Senate bill. It is still unclear whether or not a similar provision will be included when the Senate version is reconciled with the House version.

This bill has been moving its way through the Senate somewhat quicker than most of us expected. Cloture passed yesterday, 74-25, on the motion to proceed to debate (generally a proxy for cloture on the final bill) and the Senate is expected to pass the bill today or tomorrow. The hot topic has been the Tester Amendment, which provides exemptions for small and local farmers from the new regulations. The Tester Amendment will likely pass, but H.R. 2749, the House version of the Food Safety Bill, was passed without a similar provision. The two bills will have to be merged and whether or not the Tester Amendment will survive that step is unclear.

If the Tester Amendment is indeed included in the Senate bill, then it is scheduled to be our next 90 Second Summary (that will be Monday).

Click here for more information about the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

Women bring something different to the table; a perspective that is distinct from men’s. Both experiences are equally important, and both need to be incorporated in to decision-making and represented in power-circles if we hope to embrace all viewpoints and make progress as a society. Yet advancement for women and for gender equality seems to have stagnated, and considering how far we are from equality, stagnation is tantamount to decline. When it comes to the percentage of women in national legislatures, the United States ranks 90th in the world, with women holding 90 of the 535 (16.8%) of the seats in the 111th US Congress. These numbers did not improve in the latest election.  Recent public opinion research shows that a gender gap persists in perceptions of gender inequality, and sexist messaging not only undermines a female candidate, it significantly reduces her favorability among voters.

There's more...

Writers at The Democratic Strategist have embarked on a breakdown of the composition of the 2010 electorate, questioning the oft-repeated, little supported meme that Democrats lost big on Nov 2 for moving "too far left," against an electorate moving center-right.

Connecting two of the most recent posts on Ruy Teixeira's data crunching conclusions offers a glimpse at the reality slaughtered by what is passing elsewhere for post-election analysis.

First, Andrew Levinson on the shift of "moderates" to "conservative":

During the early, pre-9/11 era, not all of George W Bush's supporters considered themselves conservatives. Many considered themselves moderates. They would express this by saying things like "I usually vote Republican but I consider myself a political moderate and not a hard-core conservative. In 1992 I supported Bush senior, in 1996 I supported Bob Dole and In 2000 I supported George W. Bush because he seemed like a moderate too".

Since Obama's election, however, as the political debate has become deeply polarized with charges of socialism and fascism leveled against Obama, these same people can no longer accurately express their feelings about politics by calling themselves "moderate Republicans". They are now more likely to use the word conservative to describe themselves rather than moderate because the latter term does not adequately convey a clear rejection of Obama's agenda. In actual conversation this "moderate Republican now turned conservative" view is expressed in phrases like "Oh, I'm not a tea party person but I'm really a pretty conservative person in a lot of ways, you know, and I just don't support a lot of those these things Obama's doing."

Second, Ed Kilgore on "true independents":

...true independents tend to vote against the party in power when the economy is bad, regardless of the perceived ideology or partisanship of the party in power. It happened in 2006 and it happened again in 2010. Arguing, as some have done, that the answer for Democrats is to "move to the center" and find some way to work with Republicans makes sense only if such steps contribute to an improvement in the performance of the economy. If they don't, then it's not the right direction to take, particularly if you consider the costs in terms of sacrificing progressive policy goals and making the Democratic elements of the electorate unhappy precisely on the eve of the cycle when they can be expected to return to the polls.

The two takeaways here:

Despite the self applied "moderate" label, these "shifting" voters were just Republicans by another name.  At some point, they simply stopped labeling themselves "moderate."  The change from "middle" to "right" happened in poll responses, not voting habits, and within the confines of Republican voters, not the electorate at large.

Second, "true" independents don't care about bipartisanship, the process, or (surprise!) even intra-party leadership battles.  Many of them fail to even identify policy as Democratic or Republican policies.  They identify policy as effective (something changed for me) or ineffective (nothing changed for me).

Overall ideology hasn't changed much in the past few years, and it's important to understand, especially as a challenge to the idea that the midterms were a warning for Democrats to tack right in response. 

So no evidence of a shift in the electorate, and the swing-voters of 2012 will be just like the swing-voters of every election.  They don't care if the parties work together, and they certainly don't care if the Obama alienates his base in order to prove his commitment to bipartisan policy.  What they care about, as always, are the policies that brought results.

Kilgore quotes The Monkey Cage's John Sides:

Here's a counterfactual to ponder. What if Obama and the Democratic Congress had rammed through a $2 trillion stimulus, failing to garner a single GOP vote, but then the stimulus somehow reduced unemployment to 6%? Do you think independents would be offended by the lack of bipartisanship?

Nope, they'd be singing the Democrats' praises, all the way to the 2012 voting booths.

The Republicans always use the excuse that we have to give the rich huge tax cuts because they are the "job creators." Of course, the reality is that giving tax cuts to the rich is the very worst way of getting more money into the economy. The multiplier effect for tax cuts for the wealthy is the lowest of almost any stimulative program the government can try.

Plus, if they are creating jobs, it isn't here. The money is flowing out of the country and into developing markets at an incredible rate. Between 2002 and 2008, the Bush tax cuts equaled $1.3 trillion. The amount of money leaving the United States in the form of investment in developing countries in that same time period -- $1.9 trillion. It can be argued that all of the tax cuts to the rich went out of the country and then some (of course, it's a little more complicated than that but obviously a huge portion of the extra money went into investment abroad).

So, if jobs are being created through tax cuts it's probably in Shanghai or Mumbai. So, the Republican answer now is to give ... more tax cuts to the rich. They want to give $700 billion in tax cuts to the top bracket over the next ten years. I have a revolutionary idea instead.

How about instead of giving the money to the rich and hoping that they create jobs, we just create the jobs! Imagine what we could build and how much good we could do for the country if we used that extra $700 billion to actually hire people directly. Imagine how many jobs that could create.

It might be worth it if we just hired people to do what would otherwise be volunteer work. It might be worth it if we just built a whole new green energy sector. It might be worth it if we just hired an enormous number of teachers to give our kids the best education in the world. It might be worth it if we hired so many more cops to protect our streets or firemen to protect our neighborhoods. Or doctors to treat our sick. Or people to take care of the elderly or disabled. Or people to take care of our kids while we worked. Or people to build our bridges and our roads. Or just about anything else you can imagine.

Imagine. $700 billion set aside just to hire people. To hire Americans. Or we can go with the Republican plan of giving it all to the rich and hoping they create jobs at some point and hoping that those jobs are here in America. You be the judge.

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