Friday Night Politics at the Last Manatee

Well, President Obama did it now. Tonight he hosted an iftar dinner to celebrate Ramadan, something President Bush did also but this will be forgotten. And he came out in full support of religious freedom, even citing the real Thomas Jefferson as opposed to David Barton's mythical creature, and supported the building of the Islamic Center near--sort of near--Ground Zero. As to be expected, it was an eloquent statement. So let the hysteria continue. Some 100 religious leaders a few days ago came out slamming the Islamophobia surrounding the Ground Zero project. But over 70% of Americans oppose the project, according to a CNN poll. Will this be the attacking rabbit of the Carter years?

Today I listened to the roundtable on the Diane Riehm show where all the news commentators basically said that the situation was dire for Democrats. One reporter was asked by Diane why after all the accomplishments of Barack Obama were journalists so hard on him. The answer was that they simply reflect the public opinion polls. An odd thing for a journalist to confess. The rest of the panelists chimed in that there was a sense in the Spring that the economy was poised to begin a robust recovery and when that didn't happen everyone's mood darkened. One other journalist said that this all comes at a bad time for the Democrats because now is when the opinion of the electorate solidifies. They likened the situation to the mid-term in Reagan's first term when unemployment reached 11.5% and he had cut taxes. Even though people felt money in their pocket, the Republicans lost 28 seats in the House. The commentators said that people have not felt the benefits of Obama's policies yet.

They went on to cite the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll about how Democrats have lost their competitive edge on major issues and that the Democratic Party approval rating is 33%, the lowest since July 2006. What they didn't comment on is that the GOP approval rating was 24%, the lowest ever recorded by pollsters Hart and McInturff. Don't you have to beat something with something? If the Republican Party still existed as a party,I think the panelists would be right. But it doesn't. And that should give some hope to Democrats. In the same poll, the GOP had a huge generic ballot edge in the South--52 to 31% but didn't lead anywhere else in the country. This was an area, the pollsters concluded, was "where you have whiter and older voters". The Republicans, according to this poll, are clearly a Southern Party, no longer a national party, which doesn't bode well for their future.

Now referring to an older post of mine, I wrote that the 2008 election showed that Republican congressional districts had become more Republican and Democratic districts more Democratic. My concern at the time was that we had become a more polarized society politically than ever before. That means the Republican side becomes even more right-wing, as the last 18 months have shown. But does that polarization simply work against Republicans actually gaining significant victories in both the congressional and senator races?

Add to this the other issue of organization. The Republican Party organization is in utter disarray. Witness how the chosen candidates in Nevada, Kentucky, Colorado and even Utah lost to Teabaggers. While the Obama campaign was decentralized, you can't say the Republicans have adopted the same strategy by their competing organizations and money sources. You have internal fighting between the Karl Rove parallel RNC and groups such as the Club of Growth, which Mike Huckabee tags the Club of Greed. The other disadvantage Republicans have is they are at a disadvantage in terms of money. Every time someone like the Chamber of Commerce annouces it will spend some $75 million to elect Republicans, the number is matched within a day by the Democrats.

Whatever happens in the mid-terms, this notion that Obama's popularity is sinking continues to be the most annoying meme in the media. At his first mid-term, Reagan had sunk to a 35% approval rating. President Obama has continued to maintain approximately the same approval rating all year. In the same NBC/Wall Street poll, they were other questions asked about President Obama's likeability, etc, soft questions. But they reflect for me the degree to which he maintains considerable political reserves. When Democrats attacked George W. Bush and pointed to then mediocre approval ratings, he retained enormous percentages in terms of likeability, which held him up until he fell to his low approval ratings in the last two years of his Presidency.

PPP just came out with its periodic 2012 Presidential survey. At this stage, they have Obama at a 47 approval--48 disapproval rating. Sounds bad except when you compare it to all the leading Republican presidential contenders--none of whom reached 40% approval and all had substantial disapproval ratings, some fatally so. In head-to-head contests, President Obama bests every one of them now. So it's really how you compare things. Obama has roughly a 20pt lead in approval rating over any Republican congressional leaders.

Even Hapless Harry Reid in the NBC/Wall Street poll has only a 10% approval rating. He has a slight edge on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, Reid today in Nevada is polling at 47.5% and has a four point edge over Sharron Angle. If he ran against someone normal, he would be toast.

In Colorado, it looked like Republicans this year would easily pick up the state house and a Senate seat. The Democratic candidate looks like he's going to win a landslide because of the lunatic Republicans selected and the renegade candidacy of Tom Tancredo. After a bruising democratic primary, Michael Bennet woke up and found himself against Ken Buck, a loony tune character, on the Republican side.

Yet the West will be tough this year for Democrats. They only have a one point generic lead on the Republicans in congressional races. In Washington state, Patty Murray will again face a well-financed Dino Rossi in a nail-biter. Republican hopeful Chris Dudley running for Oregon Governor seemed competitive but his tax issues and other problems seem to be sabotaging his effort.

Democrats seem to be forfeiting a real chance to take out Senator Burr in North Carolina. The problem Elaine Marshall has is the lack of cash to define Burr. She is a capable candidate with state-wide name recognition. But so far Burr can come home after the Senate break and actually tell voters he is for extending benefits to the uemployed while he filibustered against every attempt in the Senate and voted against extending benefits at every opportunity. It seems to be a Republican trait this year to return to the homes district and tell voters the opposite of what you really did.

Republicans are banking on California as a sign of their success this year. Right now Carly Fiorina, the disgraced CEO of Hewlett-Packard, has opened a 5 point lead against Barbara Boxer. Meg Whitman is a point ahead of Jerry Brown, who still hasn't begun to campaign yet. AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumpka arrived today in California to blast both Republican candidatesas two "clueless CEOs".

Trumpka went on to say," So in the elections for governor and senator, who do Republicans throw at the problem? Two clueless CEOs: Meg Whitman, who was too shady even for Goldman Sachs; and Carly Fiorina, who laid off 30,000 Hewlett-Packard employees, shipped jobs overseas, got fired--with a $20-plus million golden parachute--and was labeled one of the worst CEOs of all time." "How about Carly Fiorina--who calls offshoring jobs "right shoring"? She actually said that."

President Obama is scheduled to make several campaign stops during the August break to shore up Democratic candidates, including stops in Washington and California.

And what about the anti-incumbent fever? We have had more primaries and the number 90% of incumbents re-elected still holds. Yet even during today's Diane Riehm show, the panelists all talked about the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the country.

The White House has distributed a memo done by President Obama's pollster Joel Benenson, which claims the negative public opinion of the Republicans would forestall a "wave" election, which the GOP would need to win back both the House and the Senate. Basically, both parties have the same disapproval rate but the Republican approval rate is the lowest in history. The Republican approval rate has worsened since the last mid-term election in 2006. Benenson argues that Democrats today look about the same as they did in the summers of 1998 and 2002, neither of which were "wave" elections.

One interesting little thing has emerged as people contemplate Tan Man Boehner as Speaker of the House is that even Republicans are circulating the gossip that he tends to cry in his speeches late in the day, which they suggest is caused by his drinking. This is beginning to make the rounds on the internet.

A secret weapon that Democrats still have is the whole tax issue, something they haven't played well yet. In 2008 Obama took the tax issue away from the Republicans and they didn't even know it. When I asked republican strategists about this, they didn't even know what I was talking about. Obama promised tax cuts to everyone earning under $250,000 and he has delivered. But the Democrats seem to step on this message. But now in front of the nation, we have the issue of the Bush tax cuts. Ezra Klein produced a graph for the Washington Post comparing Democratic and Republican tax plans. Everything looked very similar until you reach the graphic about people earning over $1 million a year. The comparison then ends with the Republicans giving these high flyers over $106,000 in tax breaks, a dramatic huge circle distorting the whole graphic. The Democrats should just show this as often as they can.

The CBO also has done a list of all the things one can do to stimulate the economy. The least effective thing on their long list is to give tax breaks to rich people. Since every Republican has gotten this talking point about the Bush tax cuts and appeared on national television arguing it, the Democrats should just wrap it around their necks along with every jobs bill they either opposed or killed.

Then we reach the situation where the Republican Party has come out now as explicitly the party of white, older men. Even the white women campaign against women's rights. have we come to the point where we can coin the term "self-hating woman"? But in the mid-term the White position can be strong. Older white tend to vote more often and they now seem to be the only demographic Republicans actually have a lead. There is a perverse logic of Republicans running in the mid-terms against President Obama, despite the fact he is far and away more popular than any Republican in the land. He only won 43% of the white vote in 2008 and Democrats have not won a majority of white votes since LBJ. Republicans are banking that the Obama voters can not be mobilized to come out in any significant number so that the election really comes down to a fight between white voters. That's why they feel they can play the immigration card even though only 7% believe it is an issue--this is their wedge issue and can move enough voters in a low turnout election in their direction.

The risk of them doing this is considerable in Florida, Texas, Nevada, California and Colorado. The overt anti-Hispanic sentiment of the GOP has galvanized the Latino community,who will likely vote in greater number this year than normal. Even people like Karl Rove and Jeb Bush know that for the long-term prospects of the party this is suicidal.

The other self-destructive tendency of the GOP this year is their frontal assault on Social Security and Medicare. Because people like Pat Ryan are advocating massive restructuring of entitlement programs, older Americans are correct to be anxious about their security in a time of deep uncertainty. Social Security today prevents some 19 million people from slipping into poverty. This year the usual reassurance from Republicans not to touch these programs doesn't feel or seem credible. And this will erode their advantage among older Americans.

The unknown know will be the political efforts of the 99ers, people who have been unemployed beyond the time of their benefits. They are organizing in the thousands and on the internet they are nearing about 1 million. Today they held a rally on Wall Street. Many of these people were reliable Republican voters, who have become disgusted by the party's attack on them as some sort of "welfare queens".