Democrats Need a Proactive Messaging Strategy

Polling in the last several days has carried some blunt reminders that the public isn't nearly as well-informed as the Beltway conventional wisdom might hold.

We've repeatedly highlighted Kaiser's health care polling, which revealed that only about half of the public knows about many of the key provisions that are in the Democrats' bill, such as coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Meanwhile, a Pew poll this week found that only 26 percent of Americans know that it takes 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster -- and only 32 percent know that Senate GOPers voted unanimously against the Democrats' health care plan. And a Rasmussen poll of likely voters found that only 21 percent of them believe that the Democrats have cut taxes for "95% of working families", a fact which is probably true.

I don't particularly blame the public for this. The number of politics "fans" probably numbers somewhere on the order of 10 or 20 million out of a country of 250 million adults. Most people have lives and have better things to do than to follow politics all the time. They pay quite a bit of attention during Presidential elections and, I would argue, make reasonably sophisticated decisions. But outside of that, most people aren't watching MSNBC or Fox News every evening or logging onto the Washington Post or FiveThirtyEight. They're developing impressions based on limited information, often gleaned from partisan news sources and politicians who have an incentive to tell them anything but the truth.

But right now it's Democrats who are behind the 8-ball -- and the extent to which voters are disengaged from each twist and turn of the news cycle is not liable to change any time soon. And what these semi-informed voters have mostly seen from the Democrats is a series of mixed messages.

On health care, between people attacking the policy from the right and from the left, very rarely have positive messages about the bill had the chance to penetrate through the media morass. On the economy, the Democrats have had to do a weird tapdance between highlighting, on the one hand, their sensitivity to the depth of our economic problems and the need for further stimulus, and on the other, the fact that many economic indicators (although not employment) do indeed show a recovery underway. On process issues, the public has mostly observed Democrats fighting with one another, and messages about Republican obstructionism were liable to fall flat when -- until about 10 days ago -- the Democrats had a 60-seat majority in the Senate, however dysfunctionally so. Lastly, the White House's meta-message about "post-partisanship" is a difficult one to maintain in the face of actual policy-making, since in a rather literal sense, Republicans can brand any policy as "partisan" simply by opposing it, however moderate it might in fact be.

In contrast to the vapid media narrative about the "perpetual campaign", the Democrats have perhaps not been sensitive enough to how their messaging might play with the sort of mainstream voters who might read a newspaper or turn on CNN once or twice a month, but not more often, or who consume news from only one or two sources, but not others -- descriptions that apply to most of the people that will turn out to vote in November.

What can Democrats do differently? Unfortunately, this is not such an easy question to answer. But from the White House's perspective, the most obvious solution would be to behave more decisively. Don't let policies like the public option twist in the wind: embrace them, or press forward without them, but either way, remind the House and the Senate that having a 3-month fight about the issue will leave the Democrats as a whole much worse off, regardless of how the dispute is resolved. Endorse some relatively specific version of financial reform, a policy that polls overwhelmingly well in the abstract but which the details of which are banal and which will easily bore and confuse the public.

And all Democrats need to realize, meanwhile, that sometimes the message isn't going to sink in until the sixth or seventh time that you repeat it. Before Tuesday's State of the Union, for instance, the White House had almost literally never mentioned that the stimulus contained a huge tax cut -- they shouldn't expect the public to believe it any more than Warner Brothers should expect a ton of people to go out and see their new movie if they only begin advertising it 48 hours beforehand.

Rather, the Democrats need to figure out what their November messages are now and begin planting seeds for them now. You want to run on Republican obstructionism? Well then, don't neglect the golden opportunities that the Republicans are providing you with today, such as when they voted unanimously in the Senate against re-imposing pay-go rules or unanimously in the House against a very centrist financial regulation package. How many people know that House Republicans voted 174-0 against a jobs bill? It's probably not even 20 percent or 30 percent -- more like 2 or 3 percent, at best. The DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and sympathetic groups like unions should be blasting out advertisements whenever the Republicans cast a vote like this.

With respect to the economy, the Democrats are still largely at the whim of the business cycle, since they may lack the political capital to pass policies through the Congress which could substantively impact the numbers by November. But if it were me, I would err a little bit less on the side of caution in highlighting numbers like, for instance, the 5.7 percent GDP growth that the country experienced in the 4Q. It's not that I expect these messages to be winners now; rather, it's that you want to plant the seed with the public for the fall. Otherwise, it may feel like too little too late when the employment numbers turn positive too, and the public may believe that the recovery occurred in spite of, not because of, the stimulus.

If Democrats have any skepticism about this, they need only look back to the year or two that have just elapsed. Republicans were crowing about socialism and government takeovers way back in the summer of 2008, and opposing virtually every policy that the Democrats put forth from the first meeting of the 111th Congress last January -- a time when Obama's approval had been in the high 60s. At first, those messages weren't working for them -- they were particularly ineffectual, for instance, for the McCain campaign, and there were lots of stories in the spring about the number of people who identified as Republican slipping to all-time lows. But the GOP stuck by their messaging strategy, and it has allowed them to frame everything that has come thereafter in ways that are more resonant with the public. Had the economy recovered sooner, perhaps this would have been a spectacular failure. But they at least did a very, very good job of poising themselves to take advantage of the downside case.

Now it's incumbent upon the Democrats to poise themselves to take advantage of the upside case. Political time is moving faster and faster, and it goes without saying that a lot could change between now and November. But precisely because the public is so bombarded with information, it may be all the more important to develop a proactive rather than reactive messaging strategy, and to implement it sooner rather than later.

There's More...

Contract Post

What Killed Obama's Approval Numbers?

If we look back at the trajectory of Barack Obama's approval ratings, which began at about 65 at the time of his inauguration and have fallen to about 48 now, there were two periods that account for most of the decline. One was the period immediately following his inauguration until about the first week in March; Obama's ratings fell by about 5 points over this interval. The other was a longer period from the end of May through mid-August, during which time Obama's approval declined by 9 points or so. Those two periods collectively account for about 14 points of the roughly 17-point decline that Obama has experienced.



There's a fairly intuitive explanation for what was happening during that first period in February: the honeymoon was wearing off, as happens sooner or later for most Presidents -- and sooner, perhaps, for one who was attempting to push huge policy initiatives like the stimulus from his first day on the job. But its a bit less obvious what sent his numbers on such a sharp downward trajectory in that second, roughly 75-day stretch from late May through mid-August.

Was it the economy? Undoubtedly, the economy is a significant part of the story. The employment reports that came in during this period showed the economy losing about 300,000 jobs per month, which is really, really bad. Still, it wasn't as bad as the reports that came in during April and May, which had the economy losing 500-600K jobs per month, and during which time Obama's numbers were rather steady. (A more robust indicator, perhaps, is consumer confidence, which had a bit of a reversal in June and July before picking up again, but the correlation there is still fairly weak.)

Well then, perhaps it was the health care debate? I have a bit of a side project to track what the lead story is on any given day on the content aggregator Memeorandum. Some days are relatively newsless, in which case no story is assigned to that day, but most of the time it's clear enough what everyone is talking about. According to my tally, the health care debate was the lead story during the following dates:

June 11, 22
July 15-16, 18, 20-22, 26, 28-30
August 4, 6, 14, 16-17, 19-21
September 8-9, 14, 16, 18, 29
October 1, 13, 26-27, 29
November 7-8, 11, 21-22
December 8-9, 14-21, 24
January 22, 2010

Let's take that graph from before and plot these dates (as shown by the red shading) against the trajectory of Obama's approval numbers. I've also indicated the dates in January and February during which time the stimulus debate was the lead story, as indicated by the blue bands below:



The fit isn't as good as you might think. Health care didn't become the lead story on a consistent basis until July 15th or so. But Obama's approval ratings had already been on a 6- or 7-week downward trajectory by then. In addition, Obams' approval ratings weren't particularly impacted during other very intense periods of the health care debate, such as the second half of December. So it is not obvious how much blame we should lay at health care's feet.

What other stories were leading the news in June and early July, when Obama's approval ratings were steeply declining but before health care had crowded the other news out? From the period encompassing May 21st though July 14th, I have the Iranian elections being the lead story for 8 days, the SCOTUS vacancy and the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor being the lead for 9 days, and Sarah Palin (in particular, her decision to quit as Alaska's governor) being the lead for 11 days. Otherwise, we had a hodgepodge of stories like Mark Sanford and the CIA torture probes, but none controlled the headlines for more than about 24 hours at a time.

I'm going to take it for granted that Obama wasn't negatively impacted by Sarah Palin's having gone rogue and left Alaska's governorship. But could the other two stories -- Iran and Sotomayor -- have been bigger negatives than people think? On Iran, it seems extremely doubtful. The only poll released on Iran in conjunction with their disputed election was from CNN, and it showed just 15 percent of Americans saying that Obama had shown too little support for the protesters (versus 13 percent saying too much and 56 percent the right amount). Apart from a few Beltway pundits, there weren't too many people critiquing his response.

Sotomayor, too, generally polled somewhat favorably (although most people are fairly indifferent toward SCOTUS nominations). One interesting bit, though, taken from Gallup's weekly approval tracking by demographic groups. Sotomayor dominated the headlines from about May 26th through May 30th, in conjunction with her nomination. (Her actual confirmation several weeks later was something of an anti-climax.) In the week of May 18th-24th, just before Sotomayor's nomination, Obama's approval rating among men was 62 percent, according to Gallup. In the week just after her nomination, from June 1st-7th, his approval rating among men had fallen to 56 percent. So perhaps that nomination, while appealing to Obama's base, gave him some problems among men -- particularly white, independent men, an important swing demographic that has since turned against Obama. And there may have been something of an echo several weeks later when the Henry Louis Gates story hit on about July 23rd.

Another story that was taking place during this period, although it was playing out more in the background, was that Al Franken was in the process of becoming the Democrats' 60th vote. After a very drawn out process, the Minnesota Supreme Court declared Franken the winner on June 30th and he was seated on July 7th. As Mark Schmitt has argued, having 60 votes was in certain ways problematic for the Democrats; it helped to give rise to the narrative about their "ramming though" a partisan agenda, while at the same time those 60 votes included people like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson who weren't much easier to corral than a moderate Republican might have been. That 60th vote may have come at a high price, in other words, in terms of the way that Democrats came to be perceived by the electorate.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to give you any one incredibly satisfying answer here. The most basic reason for the decline in Obama's numbers, almost certainly, is that people's expectations for what he ought to have been able to accomplish on the economy have accelerated faster than his ability to do so. But beyond that, things are a little murky. The periods that represent the steepest declines in Obama's approval ratings are only loosely related to the periods that provided the most disappointing economic news. Meanwhile, while I'm sure that the health care bill hasn't helped Obama any, the trajectory of that debate isn't a great fit for the trajectory of his approval numbers. Finally, factors like the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor and the seating of Al Franken may not have been terribly impactful unto themselves, but may have given rise to unhelpful narratives for Obama and the Democrats that contributed to their problems.

One takeaway here, I suppose, is that the deterioration of Barack Obama's political fortunes is not quite so easy to diagnose, even in retrospect. It sort of crept up on us -- until suddenly it became obvious with Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts last week. There's a role for Monday morning quarterbacking, and it's certainly fun to think about how the Democrats have become so unraveled and whether there's anything they might have done to prevent it. But many things that seem obvious now certainly weren't that way at the time.

There's More...

Contract Post

Prime Minister's Questions: Iraq

In just a few minutes, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will appear before the so-called Chilcot Inquiry, a special committee of inquiry into Britain's involvement in the Iraq War. Led by senior diplomat Sir John Chilcot, the committee has interviewed an impressive array of senior public officials from the Blair government and staff, the civil service and the military. Ranging from Sir Michael Wood, then the top legal advisor to the foreign office to former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the investigation has spared few senior people with a role in the war.

For the most part, the players have stuck to their scripts, with a few sound bites but little new specific evidence coming from the top people. That said, many influential, less public players have come onto the official record by way of the inquiry, triangulating and sometimes contradicting the well-spun storylines from the top.

Regardless of the content of the testimony given at the Inquiry, a key element is its broad mandate, public hearings* and strong ability to compell testimony from former senior officials on the subject of the Iraq war. Tony Blair, on the hot seat today, is the key witness for the investigation, and though it is unclear if new ground will be broken on the subject today, the fact that he is being held to account in public is certainly meaningful.

In the United States, no such public accounting has been undertaken nor is planned. Much like the contrast between the House of Commons' weekly interrogations of the Prime Minister and the annual polite speech given by the U.S. President to Congress, the American system conceives of accountability in a quite different context.

In the case of the 9/11 Commission, created by then President Bush and the U.S. Congress, the inquiry was completed through private interviews, with many of the most senior officials like Bush, Cheney, Clinton and Gore refusing to testify under oath. The two chairmen of the Commission, former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean (R) and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton (D), wrote in 2006 that contradictory statements and "deliberate" obstacles from officials led them to believe that Bush administration officials in the Pentagon, the FAA and NORAD were engaging in purposeful "deception."

In the Iraq case, it was a 2006 U.S. Senate Intelligence Report that undertook the definitive review of the evidence that lead to the Iraq war decision, namely the suspected WMDs. Also called the Silberman-Robb Commission, the inquiry reflected only on the so-called "intelligence failures" made by various three-letter agencies, as opposed to the public decision-making that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Rather than public commissions of inquiry, it is instead the media in the U.S. who usually charged with pursuing accountability on issues of this sort. As such, books have been published by various public and private authors, including members of the 9/11 commission, members of the Iraq Study Group and officials from the Bush Administration.

President Obama made clear early in his administration that in the interests of political harmony, official inquiry into the subject, particularly regarding President Bush and Vice-President Cheney would not be undertaken. Indeed, is within the sphere of published media discourse that this argument regarding "who knew what" is taking place.

Perhaps it is simply a difference of political culture that lead the U.S. to take an informal, media-driven approach and the U.K. a more formalized public inquiry process. Certainly the tradition of the weekly Prime Minister's Questions shows that boisterous public debate -- often verging on simply an obnoxious weekly deployment of each party's talking points and 'zingers' -- in a formalized context is well within the political conscience.

Regardless, it is well understood in both the US and UK that the evidence given in justification of the war, regarding both weapons of mass destruction and the alledged link between Iraq and Al Qaida, were mistaken. The judgement of the leaders of both countries at the time has been called into serious question as a result, bolstered by evidence that the ensuing war was mishandled by leaders on both sides of the pond.

However, whether it would be in best interests of either public to drag its former leaders through the mud in punishment if certain criteria for deception were me remains an open question. Particularly during times of political polarization, perhaps the Obama approach of looking forward rather than back is an appropriate strategy. That said, a post-Iraq political strategy of "forget the past and move ahead on other issues" is likely to be a hard sell in either country.

---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

* The commission as envisioned by Gordon Brown would have done private hearings, but heavy pressure from the opposition parties and public opinion in support of a public hearing process quickly changed this.

UPDATE: Speaking of Prime Minister's Questions, President Obama spoke at the House GOP retreat today and took questions from some members.

There's More...

Contract Post

Arlen Specter May Be Screwed, But He Probably Isn't THIS Screwed

After Massachusetts, I'm going to try to resist critiquing individual polls that contain pessimistic results for Democrats, particularly since we're transitioning into a more systematic and objective approach into forecasting the midterms. Nevertheless, I find this Franklin & Marshall poll that shows Arlen Specter 14 points behind Pat Toomey -- and Joe Sestak 23 points behind Toomey! -- to be a little dubious. Here is the key graphic from that poll:



Note that Specter and Toomey are tied (although with a huge number of undecideds) among registered voters; Toomey opens up his large lead only among likely voters.

Aren't likely voter polls more accurate than registered voter ones? The general consensus (see also Mark Blumenthal, who has written much more extensively about this) is that likely voter polls are better when you're close to an election but perhaps not any better when you're months away from one and few people are tuned into politics. Frankly, it's probably not a bad idea to have some mix of the two at this stage when compiling a polling average. But when a pollster offers a choice, as F&M did, our policy has been to use the registered voter version up through Labor Day of the election year and then the likely voter version thereafter.

The reason why I'm somewhat disinclined to look at the likely voter results in this particular instance is because Franklin & Marshall shows only 395 likely voters among a sample of 993 registered voters, i.e. a turnout rate of about 40 percent of registered voters. But turnout among registered voters in midterm elections typically averages between 65-70 percent, and will probably be toward the high end of that range in Pennsylvania with such a highly competitive Senate race. So whatever screen that F&M is using, they're kicking out a lot of people who almost certainly will vote in November.

There's also the issue that the number of undecideds is rather high -- 20 percent in the Specter-Toomey matchup (plus another 4 percent voting for 'other' candidates) and 37 percent for Sestak-Toomey. Some of this is because Franklin & Marshall, unlike most other pollsters, explicitly prompts for the option "or aren't you sure how you'd vote". Nevertheless, if they're kicking out 60 percent of voters for being "unlikely", you'd think they'd have a pretty knowledgeable and committed group among those they keep in -- and yet a lot of those folks don't yet know whom their going to vote for.

I wish that more pollsters would disclose exactly what likely voter screens they are using. But whatever they're doing, Franklin & Marshall is not winding up with a sample that accurately reflects what turnout will actually look like in November -- their subsample seems to be less a "likely voter" population and more of a "highly enthusiastic" voter population. Clearly the Republicans have an enthusiasm advantage this cycle and clearly that could be enormously consequential for Democrats -- they shouldn't comfort themselves too much by looking at registered voter polls which, if the enthusiasm gap persists, will tend to overestimate their performance. But this one is probably going a little too far.

There's More...

Contract Post

Obama's SOTU: Clintonian, In a Good Way

Perhaps it is the low expectations established by what has been an exceedingly rough couple of weeks for Democrats, but I was pleasantly surprised by Barack Obama's State of the Union Address last night, which managed at once to recall why the majority of the electorate voted for him while at the same time demonstrating an awareness of the difficult situation in which the President now finds himself.

Nevertheless, subjective evaluations of Presidential speeches are notoriously useless. So let's instead attempt something a bit more rigorous, which is a word frequency analysis of the terms that President Obama used last night. What did President Obama focus his attention upon and how does this compare to his predecessors?

To investigate, we'll compare the President's speech to the State of the Union addresses delivered by each president since John F. Kennedy in 1962 in advance of their respective midterm elections. We'll also look at the address that Obama delivered -- not technically a State of the Union -- to the Congress in February, 2009.

I've highlighted a total of about 70 buzzwords from these speeches, which are broken down into six categories. The numbers you see below reflect the number of times that each President used term in his State of the Union address.

Process:


Obama engaged in a lot of process talk last night -- a relatively frank discussion of the nature of the relationship between the two parties, and the political constraints that operate upon him. Particularly unusual was his use of various forms of the world "politics" -- usually a no-no in speechmaking -- as well as the terms "Democrats" and "Republicans", which he's used essentially as often as all of his recent predecessors combined.

Values:


One reason that Obama's speeches may come across as a bit aloof is that they are quite devoid of values buzzwords and particularly the terms "free" or "freedom", which were among the more frequently employed words by most of his predecessors. He's also failed to make use of one of Bill Clinton's favorite hobbyhorses, which is the term "opportunity".

Domestic Policy:


What's striking here are not Obama's numbers but Bill Clinton's from 1994, in which he drilled down very deeply on several domestic policy initiatives. Under ordinary circumstances, it's unusual for a President to lobby so intensely such specific domestic policy programs during the State of the Union -- and at may not have served Clinton well considering the fate that the Democrats met in the 1994 midterms. Obama's speech was more balanced in this regard.

Foreign Policy:


Here, we see the obsession of LBJ and Richard Nixon with the terms "war" and "peace", almost always as related to the Vietnam War. Particularly in 1974 as the Watergate scandal was beginning to ensnare Nixon, his frequent repetition of the term "peace" reads almost like a plea for mercy. George W. Bush's obsession with terrorism is also obvious here, not just in 2002 when it was at the forefront of everyone's mind but also in 2006. Obama is more notable for his lack of emphasis on foreign policy and in particular his infrequent use of the terms "world" and "worldwide".

The Economy:


Rhetorically at least, Obama was exceptionally focused on jobs last night, using that term 29 separate times, and variations on the term "work" or "working" another 34 times. In this respect, he was quite similar to Bill Clinton, who also dealt less in abstractions about the economy and more in the question of jobs in particular.

Obama also used the term "business" or "businesses" unusually often during last night's speech. In about half of these cases, "business" was prefaced by the term "small" as in "small businesses" -- the term "small business" almost always polls well in focus groups.

Obama also used the term "tax" or "taxes" as often as any president since Reagan in 1982, mostly to point out (as I've argued was long overdue) that the stimulus package contained an enormous volume of tax cuts. Another obsession of the White House speechwriting department is the use of the terms "investing" and "investment", which Obama used very heavily last night as well as in his 2009 address.

Framing/Narrative:


One way in which Obama quite explicitly invokes Clinton is in his frequent use of the terms "family" and "families", which he used 20 times last night. He has yet to pick up on the Clintonian tic of using the term "community" constantly, on the other hand.

Contrary to popular belief, Obama does not talk about "hope" very often -- indeed, he seems to have been conspicuously avoiding the word since having become President. He did use the word "change" eight times last night, however. Obama has ratcheted down the use of the term "responsibility" since last year's address while increasing his use of less abstract (i.e. more emotionally impactful) words like fight/fighting and strength/strengthen.

*-*

One neat thing we can do here is to run a simple correlation on the 70 or so buzzwords that we've identified -- which speech is most like the others?

Unsurprisingly, this analysis finds that Obama's address last night was most similar to to his own speech from last year. But after that, it most invokes Bill Clinton's two addresses, as well as Jimmy Carter's in 1978:



Perhaps this is the wrong way to go about this, however, since a lot of these numberrs are context-sensitive, dependent upon the particular crises that a President faces and the particular policies that he's trying to advance. So let's remove everything in the domestic policy, foreign policy and economic categories, and re-run the analysis, focusing more explicitly on the enduring themes of a President's framing and rhetorical tics:



The correlation with Bill Clinton's speeches increases further when we do this. What's just as striking, however, is how dissimilar Obama's State of the Union was to any predecessor apart from Clinton. The combination of process talk and populist rhetoric was rather unusual; Obama managed to reflect Clintonian populism while at the same time still sounding like himself.

Indeed, I think Obama at least potentially succeeded in achieving the goal that I set out for him, which was to re-brand himself in a way that reminded voters of the better moments of his campaign while at the same time displaying a sensitivity to the challenges that both he and the country now face.

It was just a speech, however, and most State of the Unions have had a fleeting impact, at best. And were I evaluating the speech on policy grounds, I would evaluate it more skeptically.

Nevertheless, it was a strong speech that ought to lift Democratic morale in the near-term. And in the medium-term, it reminds us that the Republicans' recent momentum may not be the irresistible force that it seems. Their steadfast opposition to any and all policies -- whether popular or not -- carries its share of downside risk with such a rhetorically skilled President at the helm.

There's More...

Contract Post

Did the Speech Work?

Here are some immediate reflections on the politics and optics of the speech tonight. (I already commented below on the optics—quite literally—of the Republican response.)

1. Making nice. Obama continues to express his desire to mend Washington, work cooperatively with friend and foe alike, lead instead of bicker—the “deficit of trust” stuff. If that’s just rhetoric to put his Republican and conservative critics on their heels, fine. And I realize the president did give the Republicans the business for their obstinacy. But by now he must know that this makes for good rhetoric but is no way to govern if he hopes to get things done. Lesson 1 from Year 1: You’re going to have to this by yourself and with fellow Democrats, Mr. President.

2. Running to the hills. Good job calling out his fellow Dems and reminding them “not to run for the hills.” If he can say that publicly, he ought to say it far less politely in private.

3. Populism. Striking the populist tone worked to some degree, but I still think he has not properly explained (a) why any healthcare reform needs to happen simultaneously, no less before, doing jobs and stimulus; and (b) he seemed to fizzle as he got to the laundry-listing section in the middle, in terms of the investment programs and initiatives. On the other hand, attacking the banks seems to be quite popular, and working.

4. Tone. I can’t quite put my finger on it because his literal tone and volume seemed to change at different points, but he seemed less bellowing, less thundering tonight. Maybe I was too busy cutting-and-pasting clips in the liveblog post, but it just seemed quiet at moments—both Obama’s projection and the reactions in the chamber.

5. Throwaway. The military and foreign policy section was mostly a throwaway section at the end. You can’t give a SotU speech without mentioning defense and foreign policy, and there was nice stuff in there about vets. But the truth is that all the wind-up, focus and discussion in the weeks leading up to tonight led us to expect a mostly domestic-themed speech, and that’s what we got.

6. Educator-in-chief. It’s very, very hard to explain how budgeting works, how deficits and debts work, and it was nice to see Obama try to explain these things. He obviously did so with the intent of twisting the knife in Republican backs about the deficits they handed off to him. But if you are a president who claims to want to fix how politics works in Washington, you are going to have to educate the public about how politics isn’t working at present. People are familiar with partisan rancor and bickering, and they know we are spending more than we raise.

7. Healthcare. It’s hard to ignore the fact that the healthcare discussion was more or less shoved into the middle. He didn’t want to start or end with it. I continue to believe that healthcare cannot be sold to businesses and the insured by telling sad tales about the un/underinsured. I wish Obama would make a healthcare argument about American business productivity and efficiency, so I remain disappointed on this front—but this is my own pet peeve.

8. Follow-up. The president flies to Florida tomorrow for a visit. In Tampa he and VP Joe Biden “will announce $8 billion in Recovery Act awards to lay the groundwork for a nationwide high-speed rail system that will create jobs and transform travel in America.” So I suspect we are going to get a series of follow-on demonstrations and visuals to echo the jobs, jobs, jobs, recovery, recovery, recovery theme from tonight.

There's More...

Contract Post

Clashing Hues in Richmond

Ooh, look, down in Richmond, seat of the Confederacy: A 10-minute speech by Gov. Bob McDonnell--delivered in about the same time it took him just to enter the chamber (what, no litter available?)--with a lovely rainbow coalition of Virginians of all ages, races and both genders arrayed behind him, applauding.

Those folks must be a microcosm--a veritable random sampling--of the GOP's state legislative caucuses in the House and Senate in Richmond!

Um, not quite.

UPDATE: Apparently Virginia Democratic legislators were invited, but very late.

There's More...

Contract Post

Liveblogging Obama's State of Union

OK, devoted 538 readers, this is the first post of the night for President Obama's State of the Union speech. Nate and I will write post-speech reaction posts. But this will be the liveblog thread, which I will update periodically with key excerpts. You can also follow us on twitter, where Nate will have additional thoughts.

[10:18 PM] Obama returns to change theme and sounds a bit like Michael Douglas in The American President.

I campaigned on the promise of change – change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change – or that I can deliver.

But remember this – I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.

Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.

[10:11 PM] Obama turns to foreign policy and defense...

Even as we prosecute two wars, we are also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people – the threat of nuclear weapons. I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons, and seeks a world without them. To reduce our stockpiles and launchers, while ensuring our deterrent, the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades. And at April’s Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring forty-four nations together behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of these weapons. That is why North Korea now faces increased isolation, and stronger sanctions – sanctions that are being vigorously enforced. That is why the international community is more united, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is more isolated. And as Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: they, too, will face growing consequences.

That is the leadership that we are providing – engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We are working through the G-20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. We are working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science, education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We are helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bio-terrorism or an infectious disease – a plan that will counter threats at home, and strengthen public health abroad.

[10:03 PM] Obama speaks to the partisan division and rancor and continues to express his belief that Washington pols can transcend.

But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We cannot wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent – a belief that if you lose, I win. Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can. The confirmation of well-qualified public servants should not be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual Senators. Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, is just part of the game. But it is precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it is sowing further division among our citizens and further distrust in our government.

So no, I will not give up on changing the tone of our politics. I know it’s an election year. And after last week, it is clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual. But we still need to govern. To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

[9:55 PM] Obama sets the record straight on the amount of debt added in the past decade and that portion to which he has added...and announces his controversial budget freeze, which drew laughs for being delayed a year.

So let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight. At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. That was before I walked in the door.

Now if we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit. But we took office amid a crisis, and our efforts to prevent a second Depression have added another $1 trillion to our national debt.

I am absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight, I’m proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year.

[9:47 PM] Obama tackles health care head on.

Now let’s clear up a few things – I did not choose to tackle this issue to get some legislative victory under my belt. And by now it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on health care because it was good politics.

I took on health care because of the stories I’ve heard from Americans with pre-existing conditions whose lives depend on getting coverage; patients who’ve been denied coverage; and families – even those with insurance – who are just one illness away from financial ruin.

After nearly a century of trying, we are closer than ever to bringing more security to the lives of so many Americans....

Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, this process left most Americans wondering what’s in it for me?

But I also know this problem is not going away. By the time I’m finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance. Millions will lose it this year. Our deficit will grow. Premiums will go up. Patients will be denied the care they need. Small business owners will continue to drop coverage altogether. I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber.

[9:32 PM] Obama will not accept second place. A good applause line.

From the day I took office, I have been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious – that such efforts would be too contentious, that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for awhile.

For those who make these claims, I have one simple question:

How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold?

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China’s not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany’s not waiting. India’s not waiting. These nations aren’t standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They are making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.

Well I do not accept second-place for the United States of America. As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as the debates may be, it’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.

[9:23 PM] Following a little jab to Boehner, McConnel and the GOP about their lack of applause for tax-cutting, he went into full defense of the stimulus package. Did the Reagan thing with personal stories of those who benefitted.

Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, and first responders. And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.

The plan that has made all of this possible, from the tax cuts to the jobs, is the Recovery Act. That’s right – the Recovery Act, also known as the Stimulus Bill. Economists on the left and the right say that this bill has helped saved jobs and avert disaster. But you don’t have to take their word for it.

Talk to the small business in Phoenix that will triple its workforce because of the Recovery Act.

Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created.

Talk to the single teacher raising two kids who was told by her principal in the last week of school that because of the Recovery Act, she wouldn’t be laid off after all.

[9:19 PM]: After dropping some "hope" on the audience (both sides of the aisle stood), he went right at the bailout and wrapped his arms and the GOP's arms around it. For better or worse, the not-popular-but-necessary reminder harkens back to Bush's war-of-necessity-not-choice response to Russert. Added a root canal metaphor for good measure.

Our most urgent task upon taking office was to shore up the same banks that helped cause this crisis. It was not easy to do. And if there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans, it’s that we all hated the bank bailout. I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.

But when I ran for President, I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular – I would do what was necessary. And if we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost.

So I supported the last administration’s efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and accountable. As a result, the markets are now stabilized, and we have recovered most of the money we spent on the banks.

To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn’t keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

[9:14 EST] President puts the past year into context, and makes clear he feels your pain. "I know the anxieties that are out there..."

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted – immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.

But the devastation remains. One in ten Americans still cannot find work. Many businesses have shuttered. Home values have declined. Small towns and rural communities have been hit especially hard. For those who had already known poverty, life has become that much harder.

This recession has also compounded the burdens that America’s families have been dealing with for decades – the burden of working harder and longer for less; of being unable to save enough to retire or help kids with college.

So I know the anxieties that are out there right now. They’re not new. These struggles are the reason I ran for President.

There's More...

Contract Post

What Obama Shouldn't Learn from Steve Jobs

Watching some of the breathless reaction to Apple's unveiling of the iPad today, I'm reminded a bit of the Obama campaign back during 2008.

The essence of a good brand is establishing high expectations with the consumer and consistently meeting them. What's striking about the iPad is how much it meets -- but does not really exceed -- expectations. Wow, the iPad looks just like a giant iPod! It has one button, just like the iPod! It plays songs and videos, just like the iPod! Multi-touch recognition! A really smart web browser! An exceptionally cool mapping function! Just like the iPod! iPad! iPod! iPad! iPod! Oh, and get this: now you can download books for your iPad too!

Who could possibly have seen this coming?



OK, well just about everyone. I'm not an Apple basher, by the way. Although I think their computers are about 40 percent overpriced, I looooove my iPhone. (For the time being, I'm biphonal, but the iPhone just does so much more than my Blackberry and does it so elegantly and engagingly that the Blackberry is probably headed for the recycling bin once its contract expires.)

And I'm sure the iPad will be a good product too. I never quite understood the appeal of the Kindle: there were relatively few things that it could do that my smartphone and/or laptop couldn't, but a lot of things that my smartphone and/or laptop could do that the Kindle couldn't. I don't own a Kindle so I have no right to bash it -- but there's nothing compelling about it. The appeal of the iPad, on the other hand, is a little bit more self-evident.

Still, as good as Apple's products are, they tend to get a little bit of a bonus from consumers. Average products are thought of as good; good products are thought of as great; great products are thought of as revolutionary. That's what a good brand does for you.

Back in 2008, Obama had an exceptionally strong brand -- one which, I pointed out at the time -- bore some resemblance to Apple's. He was able to maintain that brand because his "products" consisted of things like big speeches and wins in primary elections, and more often than not, he was able to deliver.

You often heard the refrain about how can Obama possibly deliver when expectations are so high? But rarely if ever was there a major Obama speech that was panned by the critics. How to explain this paradox? Human beings love having their expectations fulfilled; it makes us feel smart. And the thing about a great brand is that, although it necessarily entails high expectations, it also leads one to evaluate performance in the most favorable possible light. Each Obama speech reminded us enough of the Platonic ideal of the Great Obama Speech that we substituted the Platonic ideal for the reality. Thus the "glow" around Obama (like the glow around Apple) was somewhat self-perpetuating.

But once Obama became President, he was competing in a different vertical. Great speeches have their role in the Presidency, but elections only come along once every four years; what the President basically has to deliver upon is policy. And here, Obama has not delivered very much. The oceans have not begun to recede; the planet has not begun to heal. More tangibly, there's been a failure to deliver on promises to gays and lesbians, to environmental advocates, to unions, to civil-rights hawks, and to the working class. I do think there are a class of people who enjoy critique more than actual progress, and that people underestimate how difficult it is to get anything done in Washington when the economy is facing 10 percent unemployment. Nevertheless, the high expectations that once worked so much to Obama's benefit are now detrimental to him.

What Obama needs tonight, therefore, is a re-branding. He needs to create a new set of expectations, one which he can more easily fulfill. This is different from lowering expectations, or meeting them in a half-assed way. He can't promise an iPad, for instance, and roll out a Kindle. And it's also different from completely giving up on his original message. Successful re-brandings achieve the right alchemy of the virtues of the original brand and the changes that are needed to adapt to the new marketplace. It is not easy; for every Dunkin' Donuts (a company which successfully leveraged its reputation for convenient and unpretentious service and managed to make itself hip again), there are five Blockbuster Videos, companies which flail hopelessly and give up on any hope of differentiation as the world evolves around them.

The extent to which I'll look favorably on Obama's State of the Union address tonight is the extent to which it surprises me. When you have great brand, like Apple does now or as Obama once did, some well-choreographed boilerplate usually does the trick. But Obama needs to think differently about the country -- and motivate the country to think differently about him.

There's More...

Contract Post

After Massachusetts, Road to 218 is Long and Winding

House Majority Whip James Clyburn has boldly proclaimed that he felt "certain that the House Democrats will pass health care reform" if the Senate adopted certain changes to its bill as part of a reconciliation "sidecar". It was one of the few optimistic statements that we've seen from Democrats since Scott Brown's victory last week -- but it's contradicted by a raft of pessimistic sentiment coming from other parts of the caucus.

Here's what I think we can say: there's nothing to suggest that the math is impossible for the Democrats. But nor is it easy -- and you aren't liable to stumble into very many people on the Hill who would place a high probability on the Democrats succeeding. Let's take a somewhat detailed look at the math they now have to contend with.

The House passed its own health care bill 220-215 on November 7th, giving Democrats just 2 more votes than the 218 minimum needed for passage. One of those spares is already gone: Congressman Robert Wexler, who has since retired to head a non-profit. In addition to Wexler's defection, the Democrats face resistance from at least three other groups of people who initially voted for the bill:

1) Blue Dogs, freshmen and sophomores in tough districts. Although logic would dictate that it wouldn't do these Congressmen much good to flip-flop on the bill -- last I checked, "I voted for the bill before I voted against it" wasn't a winning campaign slogan -- people on the Hill are scared and the logic may not prevail in all cases. At least two Democrats, Zack Space of Ohio and Gerry Connolly of Virginia, have made statements critical of where the process now stands, although both left themselves some wiggle room.

2) The Stupak Block. These are people who ostensibly have moral objections to a bill which does not go far enough in cutting off federal funding for abortions -- one of the few areas in which the House's bill was more conservative than the Senate's. The buzz on the Hill is that Stupak won't be able to whip anything like his entire constituency, but could deprive the bill of 8-10 votes. One important caveat: as you'll see in a moment, there is a strong degree of overlap between Group 1 and this one; a lot of people may use Stupak as an excuse to flip-flop on the bill when really they're more concerned about their electoral status.

3) Progressives. If the Senate gets its act together and appears prepared to pass a reconciliation sidecar, odds are that there won't be a substantial number of defections from this group since the result should look fairly close to what would have come out of the conference process anyway. If the Senate cannot credibly promise to pass a sidecar, however, the center may not hold, as this group has already lost a lot of face throughout the health care debate and feels looped out of the process.

*-*

I designed a simple logistic regression model based on the results of the House's original vote; it predicted the likelihood of a yea vote based on two variables: the PVI of a district, and each Representative's lifetime Progressive Punch score on health care votes. Other variables -- such as the competitiveness of a district or the tenure of the Congressmen -- turned out not to be statistically significant, although that doesn't mean they won't play into people's thinking.

Here were the least likely yes votes based on that model, plus Steve Driehaus and Connolly, who have made skpetical statements about the bill.



It's not too hard to see where the "Stupak block" comes from. In addition to Stupak himself, there are five other Congressmen who appear on this list and who (i) voted for the Stupak amendment and (ii) are in a race that is characterized as 'lean' or 'toss-up' according to Cook Political. These are: Tom Perriello (VA-5), Joseph Cao (LA-2, the lone Republican vote for the bill), Zack Space (OH-18), Baron Hill (IN-9) and Steve Dreihaus (OH-1). In addition, there are five other Democrats who voted for Stupak and are in a district that rates as 'likely' Democrat: Jack Murtha (PA-12), Joe Donnelly (IN-2), Chris Carney (PA-20), John Spratt (SC-5) and John Salazar (CO-3). Although Murtha is unlikely to defect because of his leadership position, the other four easily could, which brings the potential size of the Stupak block up to 10.

The good news for Democrats is that once you account for the Stupak voters, there's probably nobody else who is a slam-dunk to defect. Earl Pomeroy of ND-ALL and Alan Mollohan of WV-1 were rated as having under a 50 percent chance of voting for the bill by the model and each voted for Stupak, but both are popular incumbents in safe districts. For Democrats who didn't vote for Stupak, it will be a little bit more of a stretch to rationalize the flip-flop; perhaps someone like Bill Foster (in the highly competitive IL-14) would be tempted to, but for most the consequences of switching their vote (angering leadership, possibly inviting a primary challenge, confusing their voters) would seem to outweigh the potential benefit. What they're more likely to do is lobby against having to take another vote in the first place -- but if the bill does come back before the floor, they'll likely wind staying on the aye side.

On the other hand, there are a few potential sources of votes from people who didn't vote for the bill initially.

1) Retiring Democrats. Three Democrats who voted against the bill originally -- Brian Baird (WA-3), John Tanner (TN-8) and Bart Gordon (TN-6) -- have since announced their retirement, and all are at least reasonably liberal when free of other constraints. Any path to 218 will probably require these votes. There might also be Democrats who have not yet announced their retirement but are planning to do so, or are at least indifferent enough to the prospect that they might vote to protect their legacy rather than their electoral interests; the 78-year-old Ike Skelton (MO-4) comes to mind.

2) Progressive No's. Two Democrats, Dennis Kucinich (OH-10) and Eric Massa (NY-29), claimed to have opposed the original bill for being too conservative. While, on the one hand, it would seem unlikely that they'd vote for a more conservative bill if the original bill was already too conservative for them, on the other hand they both had the luxury to cast a protest vote before whereas now their votes might be needed. With that said, Kucinich is notoriously stubborn and perhaps unwhippable, and it's not clear whether Massa's opposition in fact comes from the left or whether he's trying to duck a tough vote without killing his netroots street cred.

3. Blue Dogs. Some other legislators, on the other hand, may like that the Senate's bill is more conservative, and one, Jason Altmire (PA-4) had come close to saying that he'd vote for it. Mike Ross (AR-4), who voted for a more conservative version of the bill in committee, is in an apparently safe district and is someone else who will be whipped heavily. Two other Democrats, Ben Chandler (KY-6) and Tim Holden (PA-17), also appear to be safe bets for re-election and are probably not too intractably conservative to consider changing their votes. (North Carolina's Mike McIntyre, who would otherwise fall into this category, apparently has more philosophical objections.) Then there are perhaps a half-dozen others who will at least take the phone call, based on a sort of sliding scale of their district's safety and their personal philosophy; John Barrow (GA-12), one of the few Democrats from a blue-leaning district to have opposed the original bill, is one who Nancy Pelosi will have on speed dial.

4. Artur Davis. Davis comes from the extremely Democratic (PVI D+18) Alabama 7th district, but has routinely voted against health care and most other Democratic initiatives because he thinks he can become Alabama's next governor. With due respect to Davis, his chances of becoming Alabama's governor are virtually nil in such a red-leaning cycle, and he may come under a lot of pressure to support the needs of his predominately poor constituents.

Here is how our model evaluated all 38 Democrats who voted against the bill originally, not counting Parker Griffith, who has since become a Republican.



Overall, the playing field looks to be something like this:

Possible Defections: 7-17, not counting progressives

Retirements (1): Wexler (FL-19)
Likely Stupak Defections (6): Stupak (MI-1), Perriello (VA-5), Cao (LA-2), Space (OH-18), Hill (IN-9), Dreihaus (OH-1)
Possible Stupak Defections (6): Pomeroy (ND-ALL), Mollohan (WV-1), Donnelly (IN-2), Carney (PA-20), Spratt (SC-5), Salazar (CO-3)
Possible Non-Stupak Defections (4): Foster (IL-14), Ellsworth (IN-8), Kirkpatrick (AZ-1), Connolly (VA-11)
Progressive Defections: ???

Possible Additions: 3-17, not counting other potential retirees

Retirements (3): Baird (WA-3), Tanner (TN-8), Gordon (TN-6)
Possible Progressive Additions (2): Kucinich (OH-10), Massa (NY-29)
Top-Tier Blue Dog Conversion Targets (3): Barrow (GA-12), Ross (AR-4), Altmire (PA-4)
Second-Tier Blue Dog Conversion Targets (7): Murphy (NY-20), Chandler (KY-6), Boyd (FL-2), Holden (PA-17), McMahon (NY-13), Kissell (NC-8), Adler (NJ-3)
Special Circumstances (2): Davis (AL-7), Skelton (MO-4)

If the Democrats still want to pass a real health care bill, their first step is to get everyone to focus and calm down, and their second step is to have the Senate prepare a reconciliation sidecar that will prevent progressives from defecting en masse. Although I don't necessarily know that the progressives wouldn't ultimately cave if they had to pass the Senate's bill without the possibility of a sidecar, that's certainly where the sentiment seems to be -- and with other groups having their own objections to the bill, it's going to be hard for a critical mass to form unless the progressives can save some face and begin to coalesce around the effort.

If each of those things is accomplished, the math is challenging, but not impossible. Although Democrats can expect at least 7 defections among people who voted for the bill originally and possibly as many as 15-20, there are at least a dozen and possibly as many as 15-18 Democrats who could at least potentially be whipped in favor of the bill, although only a handful of these will be easy acquisitions.

Intrade puts the odds of 'Obamacare' passing at about 2:1 against right now. I'd probably take the short side of those odds if forced to put money on it, as their are multiple stages at which the process could break down. Moreover, there is clearly very little margin for error, and Democrats will require both some focus and some luck. Nevertheless, the path to health care is probably still there, obscured as though it might be by the dramatics of the past eight days.

EDIT: What about passing a bill with a public option, as some progressive Congressmen are still trying to do? In that case, you're probably limited to picking up Kucinich, Massa, the three retirees and Artur Davis, for six total. Losing Wexler plus the other six likely Stupak defectees would put the bill at 219-215 for passage, so it's perhaps technically possible under the best of circumstances, but it makes the math more challenging in both the House and the Senate -- keep in mind that there were 37 Democrats who voted against the original bill from the right but just two from the left. Unless ... there's been some sort of paradigm shift and Democrats feel like they can't afford to sacrifice one of the more popular elements of the bill for the sake of fending off the "government takeover" meme, which sounds good on paper but is perhaps wishful thinking.

There's More...

Contract Post

This President Ought to Know Better

My post yesterday flowered into a full-blown column for the Baltimore Sun today, in which I concede that America is a center-right nation--but not, however, in the way you might think. An excerpt first, and then some further observations to follow:

Let me preface the following analogy by clarifying that I am not equating conservatives or Republicans to terrorists. But enacting progressive change is akin to defending against terror in one important way: Progressives must win repeatedly and at every stage, whereas those opposed to change typically need to win but once, at any stage. Power is as power resists.

Consider, for example, that Republican George W. Bush was able to push not one but three far-from-popular income tax cuts through a Congress boasting smaller Republican majorities than those the Democrats enjoy today. Thanks to the Republican voting tendencies of smaller states, the GOP's Senate majority at the time represented fewer Americans nationally than did the Democratic minorities.

What this and other juxtapositions tell us is that a supermajority is needed to govern from the center-left, whereas a simple majority or even a minority is capable of governing from the center-right. See, for example, the 2000 election result...

When conservative commentators grumble that "America is a center-right nation," they are right in one, undeniable sense: The institutional dynamics of American politics favor doing less in general, and yet more in the pursuit and preservation of powerful, monied interests. Nobody familiar with the long, slow, costly political battles for abolition, labor equality, consumer protection, civil rights and women's rights would dare argue otherwise.

This is why the flip of a single Senate seat means more for obstructionism than it ever could for progressivism. All ties go to the status quo even though, with 59 percent Democratic majorities in each chamber, Congress is hardly split evenly.

Look, liberals should be rightly upset with the Obama Administration for failing to recognize that battles to effect major, non-incremental policy change require (1) a lot of political capital in the first place; (2) and the exertion of unusual presidential influence on other Washington elites; (3) and a sophisticated and coordinated message campaign; (4) and probably a bit of luck.

On the first, as political scientist Paul Light explained long ago, a president's political capital--comprised as Light contends of public approval ratings; electoral margins and mandates; congressional party support; and presidential reputation--is largely an external resource, mostly determined by others or outside forces. Although presidents surely can do things to improve their public standing or boost their congressional majorities, their bank reserve of political capital is not entirely within their control. On the last, well, luck is luck: You take it when you can get it and hope it doesn't turn against you.

That leaves the middle two factors--exertion of presidential influence over key Washington actors, and the education and persuasion of the broader public--both of which remain(ed) almost exclusively within the control and purview of the White House. In that regard, while recently re-reading recently an autumn National Journal article by Kirk Victor entitled "Is Obama Tough Enough?", this three-paragraph section near the start of the piece jumped off the page at me:

"Obama has created an atmosphere of no fear," says Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and the author of several presidential biographies. "Nobody is really worried about the revenge of Barack Obama, because he is not a vengeful man. That's what we love about him -- he is so high-minded, and a conciliatory guy, and he tries to govern with a sense of consensus -- all noble goals, but they don't get you very far in this Washington knifing environment."

"He has been all carrots and no sticks so far," observed a veteran Senate Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity. Obama's style "has to be more Lyndon Johnson. Half, 'I love you, but I'll stick this screwdriver right through your heart in a second if it is to my advantage.' On the fear question, I don't think he or his team is feared."

Brinkley agrees: "He needs to be more like LBJ or Theodore Roosevelt. He has to change his tactical framework, if his personality will allow it, to being a much more in-your-face, cutthroat, high-minded nationalist, pushing the country's agenda to the people."

Connecting the top and bottom halves of this post, Obama--who, incidentally, is not only a former community organizer fully conversant in the history of social movements and the resistance to them, but a former constitutional law professor and student of presidential politics--needed to recognize from the jump that a supermajority-worthy personal and public campaign had to be waged on behalf of healthcare reform. A few heads should have rolled, a few prisoners taken. Rather than worrying as she was today about disgusting and devious wiretappers, Sen. Mary Landrieu--no Senate titan she--should have spent the past few months worried about the Wrath of Obama. Joe Lieberman, ditto.

Meanwhile, there should have been a rollout explaining that reform was not only good for corporate employers and thus American productivity, but also for worker and workplace performance and, thus again, American productivity. He should framed reform in those terms--rather than as a series of vignettes, true and as sad as they may be, about people with dropped coverage or bankrupting bills--and then publicly dared Republicans and their tea-partying conservative allies to vote against a bill that would make the American economy and the workers who fuel it more effective, more efficient, more productive and more competitive because we would no longer lose time and money and paperwork and missed work days to a cobbled-together health care system constructed more or less around the time The Edsel rolled out.

This much is for sure: Tomorrow night is a big moment for the President. And Obama should come out with guns ablazing. Hope, bipartisanship, compromise and listening are great while campaigning as a presidential candidate. But this is governing by the President of the United States and, more specifically, presidential governing within a political system and during a partisan era in which truly progressive reforms will always need to clear more and higher hurdles...as this President--of all presidents--ought to know.

There's More...

Contract Post

Evan Bayh To Oppose Procedure That Makes Evan Bayh Unimportant

Not to convey any sense of optimism whatsoever about the prospects for meaningful health care reform, but the fact that Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson oppose "fixing" their own bill via reconciliation is neither surprising nor particularly impactful, as in a 50-vote environment, all are well to the right of the veto point. I don't know to what extent discussions on the strategy have begun in earnest, but if Democratic negotiators have any brains, you'd think they'd know better than to worry about what Bayh, Nelson, Lincoln, Mary Landrieu or Joe Lieberman are thinking about and see what's doable with some combination of the other 54 votes. If Bayh et. al. want to vote for the sidecar anyway, bully for them, and likewise if they think they can squeeze some sort of electoral advantage out of opposing it. But they're no longer important.

Indeed, one of the few "perks" of Scott Brown's victory and the strong likelihood of further Republican gains in the Senate in November is that we'll likely avoid the situation we saw for much of 2009 where one or two Senators had a disproportionate amount of power and could hold the entire chamber hostage. If there are, say, 53-55 Democrats remaining after the dust settles in November, policy will be formulated by a fairly broad number of moderate Democratic and Republican Senators, perhaps numbering a dozen or more depending on the issue at hand and whether the Democrats are proceeding in a 50-vote environment or a supermajority one.

If you start to see Senators that are closer to the veto point make uncomfortable noises about reconciliation -- someone like Claire McCaskill or Nelson of Florida or Mark Warner -- that's when you'll know that the strategy is doomed.

There's More...

Contract Post

Why Obama Shouldn't Panic

This is a chart comparing an average of all Gallup approval ratings in the 4th Quarter of a President's term (that is, the fall of his first year) to the 8th Quarter of his term (the fall of his second year, when his party is facing a Congressional election). Presidents in their first full term are indicated with a filled-in circle; lame-duck Presidents have a hollow one.



There is a decent amount of variance concealed by this chart -- a standard error of about 6 points. It's also the case that Presidental approval drops a tiny bit on average between the 4th Quarter and the 8th. The way this works out is that by the end of the year, we can expect Obama's approval rating, which was 51 percent in the 4Q, to be between 42 percent and 54 percent about two-thirds of the time. About one-sixth of the time, it will be lower than 42, and another one-sixth of the time, it will be higher than 54. This is hardly trivial, since for every point change in Presidential approval, a party can expect to lose another 1.4 House seats or so.

Nevertheless, we have a pretty good idea of what Obama's approval rating is going to look like come the fall: it's liable to be somewhat lukewarm, just as it is right now.

By comparison, here's what we get if we take the 4Q approval number and compare it to the 15th Quarter* -- the summer of his fourth year, when the President's own re-election is on the line:



In this case, there's essentially no relationship, and the standard error is not 6 points but 14. About two-thirds of the time in August, 2012, Obama's approval rating will be between 32 and 60 points. There is a one-in-six chance that it will be above 60, and a one-in-six chance that it will be below 32. Not very helpful, right? The first year of Obama's presidency has taught us very little about his fate in 2012 (the same would hold if he had been more -- or even less -- popular).

You can spin these findings in various ways, but in a statistical sense, it's hard to make the argument that Obama's presidency is on the line right now**. An awful lot of things could happen between now and 2012: we could capture or kill Osama bin Laden, or get bogged down in a third front in the war on terror in Pakistan or Yemen; the economy could go into a double-dip recession, or grow at a 5 percent annual clip; a loss of a substantial number of seats at the midterms could bring out the best side of Obama, or his worst. So I don't use this to recommend (or recommend against) any particular course of policy. What I would say, however, is that if you begin to see a panicked attitude coming from the White House, it's not really called for -- it's the Congress's jobs that are on the line right now, and not theirs.


* Richard Nixon did not have his approval rating taken in the 15th quarter of his first term, so we use the average of his last rating from the 14th quarter and his first rating from the 16th quarter.

** Let me add a bit more nuance here: I think you can make a good (although probably not rock-solid) case that the idea of a substantially progressive Obama presidency is on the line right now. But there are a lot of scenarios where the combination of voters getting a little something out of their system in 2010, combined with (eventually) an improving economy and perhaps a foreign policy success or two, could leave Obama personally in fairly good shape in 2012.

There's More...

Contract Post

The White House's Brain Freeze

First reactions aren't always the best ones, but my first reaction to tonight's news is that it's a mistake on par with John McCain's "suspending my campaign" gaffe. Politico:

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up Wednesday's State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama's $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits -- and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday's Massachusetts Senate election -- is projected to save $250 billion, the Democrats said.

The freeze would not apply to defense spending or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans.

I'll let the economists talk about the wisdom of curtailing government spending in the middle of a massive consumption deficit, but what concerns me more is the politics. Specifically, the sort of cognitive dissonance that is going to be created in the mind of the average voter when the White House is promising to freeze spending on the one hand (or, more accurately, this will be the media caricature of their gambit), and on the other, trying to defend its stimulus and its health care reform package, trying to excuse the bailout package as a necessary evil, and perhaps trying to champion new programs. Sure, the story is probably being somewhat overreported, and the spending "freeze" will only apply to certain types of spending. And it's applied relative to the already-elevated levels of spending from the FY2010 budget, and not some earlier baseline. There's more bark here than bite, in other words: "freeze on discretionary spending" means something different on K Street than it does on Main Street. But that's precisely what will make the White House (or at least the Democrats collectively) look flip-floppy. Every time the Democrats propose a jobs bill, or a big investment in alternative energy, you're going to have Krauthammer and Kristol chomping at the bit to go on Fox News and proclaim Obama to be a hypocrite. Pity Robert Gibbs trying to parse his way out of that. This is not how one wins news cycles -- or elections.

Edit / postscript: I'm fairly certain that the "spending freeze" will poll well in the near-term, and may even take Obama's approval numbers up a point or so with it. But Obama's not the one on the ballot in 2010; in the medium run, it's most likely effect is to confuse voters, and in the long run, it'll probably either be forgotten about or become Another Broken Promise™. The narrative about the "perpetual campaign" is generally kind of facile, but this whole thing has a weirdly campaign-trail quality to it.

There's More...

Contract Post

The Risks of Compromise

During the 2008 presidential campaign, I had repeated arguments with various friends on the topic Nate raised earlier, namely, whether Barack Obama was a liberal disguising himself as a centrist, or whether he was in fact a centrist. With respect to healthcare, as Nate argues--and I would agree--the worst outcome is to be depicted as having staked out a liberal position despite having actually forged a centrist consensus. I don't say "worst" in a normative sense here; I mean worst in terms of the politics, the optics. If healthcare reform is going to be depicted as unacceptable (and defeated) because it's considered a too-liberal big government power grab, it may as well be that.

One of the joys of reading The Audacity of Hope is also one of its repeated annoyances: Obama's reasoned and reasonable mind almost always works through a problem or controversy by admitting the merits of arguments made by advocates on both sides of some issue, then confesses his preference for a more liberal solution, but admits he is open to alternative solutions that might take into account a broad range of views and values. The book was undoubtedly written with his own political future in mind, and he surely aimed to demonstrate both his intellectual faculties and his open-mindedness.

But the presidency is not an intellectual exercise. It is a not a law school class debate. And in this hyper-partisan age it damn sure isn't a colloquium in which opponents try to find common ground with opponents uninterested in reaching accommodation, no matter how much good faith bargaining is done. Consider the filibustering tendencies of the past three years, with the Republicans in the Senate minority, compared to the six years prior with the Democrats in the minority and George W. Bush in office.

Based on data provided by the U.S. Senate, cloture activities have doubled since the GOP became the minority. The average annual filed cloture motions from 2001 through 2006 was 34, but jumped to 69 in the three years since; average votes on cloture grew from 27 to 50; and per annum invoked clotures ballooned from 13 to 33. Neither party plays well with the other, but the GOP is more likely to throw a tantrum in the sandbox.

Did Obama think his political philosophies or 2008 campaign rhetoric would be an antidote to this sort of obstructionism? Did he think that the hand he reached across the aisle would be shook rather than bitten? Did he think wishing for a post-partisan America would make it so?

As I wrote previously, there is little to no incentive for Republicans to vote along with the Obama agenda. The president was in a go-it-alone situation from the beginning. He was going to absorb all the blame or reap all of the credit no matter what happened with health care or the economy.

In hindsight, tackling healthcare in the first year may have simply been biting off too much politically to chew. The complex web of interests arrayed on both sides of the issue presented a perilous landmine field in which almost every step would set off an explosion on Obama's left or right. I always thought energy was the safer policy issue to tackle first because, among other things, energy is viewed as a "Republican" issue whereas healthcare is viewed as a "Democratic" one. (For the same but inverse reasons, Bush tried to co-opt the Democrats on education with No Child Left Behind.)

The lesson to take away from the first year of the Obama presidency is that the risks of compromise as a governing philosophy in office are much greater than the risks of running as a "uniter, not a divider" or with a "there's not a blue America or red America, but the United States of America" theme during a presidential campaign. After all, a presidential election, after the primaries are done, is a forced, pairwise choice between the major party nominees. A policy debate, however, is anything but a pairwise choice, even if final votes in Congress or a presidential signing or vetoing of a bill are. A complex issue with a vast menu of options and trade-offs can end up angering a huge swath of the population in the way that an electoral choice does not.

A final irony is that the compromise reflex only tends to beget more compromise, more dissensus and more frustration. Proponents and opponents alike view you as weak, and in turn expect more compromise, greater concessions. Obama needed to lay down some markers during Year One. And now, amazingly enough, the ability to lay down markers is diminished by the loss of a single U.S. Senate seat, as Official Washington commences with calls for the president to curb his audacious appetites in Year Two.

There's More...

Contract Post

Senate Rankings Update: Delaware, Indiana, Nevada

There is some further erosion in the Democrats' standing in the 2010 Senate picture this afternoon, although several of the risks to them had already been accounted for by our model. Democrats now project to retain a total of 54.4 Senate seats in the 112th Congress that will convene next January, a loss of 4.6 from their current position. This is down from a forecast of 54.7 seats late last week.

This may somewhat understate the downside risk to the Democrats, however, as our model shows a somewhat asymmetric distribution in the potential number of Senate seats. Although the average number of Demcoratic seats is 54.4, the median and modal numbers are closer to 53.



Let's check in on some of the individual races whose status has been impacted by recent news.

Delaware. In Delaware, the Democrats' preferred candidate, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, will not run for the Senate. Although this substantially reduces the Democrats' chances of retaining the seat, which was formerly held by Vice President Joe Biden, we think it would be premature to classify the race as solid Republican. Although Mike Castle is fairly popular as an individual, he is also a part of the very unpopular institution known as the Republican Congress. In addition, an October poll found New Castle County Exeuctive Chris Coons, a potential candidate, running within 12 points of Castle, a not-insurmountable deficit for someone with less than 50 percent name recognition. Although I suspect this is slightly too generous to the Democrats, in the absence of further polling our model gives them a roughly 1 in 4 chance of holding the seat:



(Note: eagle-eyed readers will note that Coons' chances had been 17 percent, not 27 percent, in last week's update. The change does not reflect any new polling but rather the fact that we had erroneously characterized Coons as having no electoral experience when he is in fact the Executive of New Castle County, a non-trivial position considering that Delaware has just three counties.)

Indiana. In Indiana, a Rasmussen poll shows incumbent Evan Bayh leading declared GOP candidate John Hostettler by 3 points, and trailing potential candidate Mike Pence by the same margin. Although this is the first poll of the state, our regression model had already flagged Indiana as being competitive, and potentially highly so. Evan Bayh's favorability rating in the poll is 58 percent, which is actually not bad, but down from previous polling which had frequently shown his approval and favorability numbers in the 60s and which may not provide enough cushion in a magenta state in a very tough cycle for the Democrats.



Overall, and despite the fact that Rasmussen polls have had a Republican-leaning house effect (which our model accounts for), we show the race as being a toss-up, regardless of the identity of the Republican candidate. Although an entry by Mike Pence would surely help Republicans, it is perhaps not as critical to their chances as is commonly believed as this is mostly about generic anti-incumbent and anti-Democratic sentiment.

Nevada. Lastly, in Nevada, a Research 2000 / Daily Kos poll shows Harry Reid trailing his most likely Republican opponents by 9 and 11 points, respectively. This is the first poll to show Reid losing by double-digits against any Republican and is especially bad news for him considering that Research 2000 polls have had a Democratic-leaning house effect thus far this cycle. We now show Reid with just a 14 percent chance to keep his seat against Sue Lowden, and just a 17 percent chance against Danny Tarkanian. An entry by Nevada Lieutentant Governor Brian Krolicki could make life even more difficult for him. Both the Research 2000 poll and our regression model, however, show other Democrats in a more competitive race against the Republicans.

There's More...

Contract Post