Hopeful, Barely



Digby remarks "It's good to see some people making the progressive argument at long last. The media seems to be treating them as slightly slow children as usual, nodding patiently at the absurd notion that the "entitlements" don't have to be slashed mercilessly for our own good."     On Thursday, during a press conference following a summit of House and Senate progressives the previous day,

... liberal lawmakers struck a supportive tone when invoking Obama.

"We will have your back, you will have ours, together we will give President Obama all the support he needs during these negotiations," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)

Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. It is funded by payroll taxes, and currently enjoys a $2.7 trillion surplus, enough to fund the program without any changes until 2033. While lawmakers at Thursday's event universally rejected any cuts to Social Security benefits, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told the crowd he would be happy to boost revenue for the program by allowing income for people who make more than $108,000 a year to be subject to the payroll tax. Doing so, he said, would allow beneficiaries to receive an additional $65 a month through 2050.

"If you wanna fix Social Security, there it is. Make those making millions of dollars a year pay the same thing and the same rate as those making 40 or 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year," Harkin said. "This is not magic. It can be done."

Medicare, by contrast, is a major driver of long-term deficits, driven by the abnormally high cost of health care in the United States. Whitehouse said that any changes to Medicare included in a debt-reduction package should focus on reducing health care costs, not on cutting benefits for seniors.

Whitehouse also said that the Defending Social Security Caucus, a 19-member group of senators founded by Sanders, would create a "firewall" in Congress to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from cuts. Sanders highlighted Wednesday comments from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who said he would oppose any deal to cut the deficit that would reduce Social Security benefits. The notion that Social Security is in dire financial straits, Reid says, is a "myth" created by Republicans.

Recent history suggests a bit of skepticism is in order.    In late August, 2009 leaders of the House Progressive Caucus delivered to the White House a letter signed by 57 Democrats characterizing any health care bill without "a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Medicare rates-not negotiated rates" as "unacceptable"- and noted it must be available immediately "and not contingent on any trigger."

At the time, the prescient Greg Sargent warned

Should Obama jettison the public option, progressives will come under tremendous pressure to back the plan anyway. White House advisers will likely insist that liberals mustn’t deny the president a historic victory and enable a defeat that could cripple the first African-American presidency.

Forty- two Democrats stood up and issued an ultimatum- or at least what they wanted viewed as an ultimatum- and exactly zero (0) of those Democrats ended up voting against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act without a public option, with or without reimbursement based on Medicare rates.

And now we have 29 members of the United States Senate addressing to the President a letter (PDF) in which they maintain

... we believe it would be a serious mistake to cut Social Security benefits for current or future beneficiaries as part of a deficit reduction package.  To be sure, Social Security has its own long-term challenges that will need to be addressed in the decades ahead.  But the budget and Social Security are separate, and should be considered separately.

Credit those Senators for stating, dangerous in the Age of Obama, a few simple truths about Social Security:   the average monthly benefit is low "by international standards;" it is not "welfare;" and of course, that it operates independently, cannot borrow, pays all benefits from its trust fund, and is separate from the federal budget, thus not contributing to the deficit.   But the letter does not address Medicare and does not define "cuts" (omitting reference to chained CPI), and does not pledge to oppose any reduction in benefits (though considering the experience of health care, that may be an asset).  

Still, there were 24 Democrats who chose not to sign the letter. Significantly, their number included Obama's closest ally in Congress, Dick Durbin, and John Kerry, a likely Obama nominee to head the departments of Defense or State.  Kerry of Massachusetts- Massachusetts!- may be reluctant to offend or challenge the President, who tends to be sensitive to criticism from liberals.

Resistance from the left (what is left of it in the U.S. Senate, or in either chamber, in The Age of Obama) is greater on Social Security than on Medicare, for which the best-case scenario is a reduction merely in provider benefits.  But there are trying times ahead, as one would expect with a (Eisenhower) Republican in the White House.


Share |

And Now A Rice Has To Pay The Price?



They seem deadly earnest- but could John McCain and Lindsey Graham really be serious?   Or is this just some kind of joke?

On CBS' This Morning on Wednesday, the Arizona senator asserted "the American people deserve the truth" because the "consulate in Benghazi was turned into a death house and somebody has to be held responsible."   He pledged to block any nomination of U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to head the Department of State, accusing her of "not being very bright, because it was obvious that this was not a 'flash mob' and there was additional information by the time she went on every news show...in America."

Graham also addressed yesterday Rice's possible appointment, maintaining during a press conference

Somebody has got to start paying a price around this place.   I don't think she deserves to be promoted. There are a lot of qualified people in this country the president could pick, but I am dead-set on making sure we don't promote anybody that was an essential player in the Benghazi debacle.

Acceptance of blame.   Responsibility. Accountability.  Thank goodness some people are looking out for these virtues.

The pair, joined to the hip in foreign policy, are new to the game.    When in 2005 President Bush nominated National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State, McCain charged

Also, I thought that some of the remarks — and I’m not going to mention my colleagues’ names — some of the remarks aimed at her during the hearings challenged her integrity. We can disagree on policy and we disagree on a lot of things, but I think it is very clear that Condoleezza Rice is a person of integrity. And yes, I see this, some lingering bitterness over a very tough campaign. I hope it dissipates soon.

When Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton identified Ms. Rice as a "liar," Graham responded "Yes, that's even more unfair. Because it was all in terms of weapons of mass destruction and misleading us about the war and what was in Iraq. Well, every intelligence agency in the world was misled. And to connect those two to say that she's a liar is very unfair, over the line."

Oh, how easily they forget- or at least pretend to.      In his State of the Union address in January, 2003, President Bush- as part of the ongoing effort to gin up support for the attack on Iraq- infamously claimed "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."   With the White House likely aware that the British intelligence was inaccurate, Bush's remark was probably a lie. Moreover  

Then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on July 11, "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President .This was a mistake." On July 22, Deputy National Security Advisor Steven Hadley said that he deleted a reference to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa from President Bush's October 7, 2002 Cincinnati speech based on a telephone call from DCI Tenet and two CIA memos sent to himself-one of which was also sent to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley said that this second memo detailed some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence . . . based on what we now know, we had opportunities here to avoid this problem. We didn't take them . . . having been taken out of Cincinnati, it should have been taken out of the State of the Union.

(Sarcasm Alert) Ever forthright, Rice in April of 2007 "rejected, on grounds of executive privilege, a House subpoena regarding the prewar claim that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger."

In her post-conservative but pre-Huffington Post Days, Arianna Huffington noted on Salon

Condoleezza Rice has been the worst offender. Now that we know that Tenet personally warned Rice’s deputy, Steve Hadley, not to use the yellowcake claim back in October, and the role NSC staffers played in manipulating the State of the Union, Rice’s widely publicized claim that at the time of the State of the Union, “maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery” has been revealed for what it is: A bald-face lie.

And even now as the truth comes flooding out, Rice continues to play fast and loose with the facts — and stand by her man. “The statement that he made,” she said on Sunday, speaking of the president, “was indeed accurate. The British government did say that.”

Condoleezza was a liar and terrible foreign policy official in the Bush administration.  Susan Rice, fortunately, has a long way to go before living down to the record of the other Rice.




Share |

Race-Obsessed, Class-Blind

Chauncey DeVega, editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes, has written an interesting, topical, and thoroughly patronizing essay addressed to "angry white conservatives who are mourning Mitt Romney's loss."   If the piece is intended to annoy conservatives as well as liberals who aware of the impact of class, gender (did I mention class?) and factors other than race, it is also a brilliant essay.

Noting "ultimately, Barack Obama is a Black man who is the chief executive of a white government," DeVega recognizes that the President "has done remarkably little in terms of advancing policy goals that would directly benefit people of color in the United States. In fact, Obama has spoken less about race than any president in 50 years."   Remarkably, this was after he asserted that having a black President of the U.S.A. is "a ground breaking achievement that should not be easily discounted or dismissed."  Except, presumably, that he has done virtually nothing to address the unique needs of blacks and has chosen to ignore the issue beyond that of "any president in 50 years."   There are echoes here of Republicans who have responded to the thundering rejection of their party's agenda by Hispanics by vowing to enlist more candidates who speak Spanish and look Latin, whatever their ideology.

DeVega points out

...White men control every major social, political, economic, and cultural institution in the United States. With few exceptions, white men are the CEOs of every Fortune 500 company.
White men control both Hollywood and the mass media. There, approximately 95 percent of the most important positions as writers, directors, advertising, producers, show runners, executives, and the like are held by white men.

This is a great advantage in a country where white men make up 30 percent of the U.S. population.

White men control the United States Congress and Senate. There are now 20 women in the Senate—a record number. But there are no African Americans in the same governing body. There are two Hispanic and Asian senators, respectively. The majority of senior-level and cabinet positions in the federal government are held by white men. White men are also over-represented on the United States Supreme Court.

It is unclear whether DeVega is addressing white people generally or conservative whites when he claims "people who look just like you remain in charge."   Remarkably, however, not all whites look alike, and I haven't yet found "in charge" anyone who looks like the Caucasian neighbor of mine, or is much like him.  Instead, the ones in charge are just like the bank executive who received total compensation of $261 million during his five years as CEO while his firm- which at $476.2 billion was the most generously aided recipient of federal largesse during the financial crisis- lost nearly 90% of its stock price.   Shortly before his recent departure, he steered his corporation to an $88 million quarterly loss, but as CNN Money reports

Citigroup said Friday that the former CEO, who resigned last month in a management shakeup, will receive an “incentive award” of $6.7 million for his work at the bank this year.  Former president and chief operating officer John Havens, who stepped down along with Pandit, is getting $6.8 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The two men will also continue collecting deferred cash and stock compensation from last year, awards valued at $8.8 million for Pandit and $8.7 million for Havens. 

Is Vikram Pandit even white- is he among the "people who look just like you"?   DeVega no doubt would want to know, or would assume he is.  I don't care, nor would historian/author Thomas Frank, who even in 2004 understood "the great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class."   He recognized the general applicability to the nation's conservative movement when he criticized the College Republicans of Kansas University by acknowledging

These complaints are of course small beer by the usual standards of oppression and unfairness.  I was never beaten for trying to vote or shot at for walking off the job. But these developments were nonetheless sufficient to awaken me to the existence of class, of the elite.  Also to the startling fact that I was not part of it.  The Franks may have lived near them, but I could no more choose to join them at their well-appointed table (to return to David Brook's cafeteria metaphor) than I could flap my arms and fly to the moon.  I had about as much of a stake in the order that propped up Mission Hills, I now realized, as did the Section Eight residents in decrepit midtown Kansas City, shuffling along the street muttering curses to themselves.




Share |

Teflon General, Still

Spencer Ackerman at least realizes he was bamboozled or, in contemporary terms, "punked."  He notes what should be obvious, that the affair conducted by General David Petraeus with the latter's adoring biographer, Paula Broadwell, "had nothing to do with his military leadership or achievements."

Perception of those achievements, Ackerman courageously admits, was enhanced as "Like many in the press, nearly every national politician, and lots of members of Petraeus' brain trust over the years, I played a role in the creation of the legend around David Petraeus."   Nevertheless, now that Petraeus has been brought down, one would expect soul-searching, or at least an objective evaluation of the General's leadership.  One would be wrong.

Broadwell wrote All In with with Vernon Loeb, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, who composed, as he puts it, "a real-time narrative from the torrent of e-mails, documents, and interview transcripts Broadwell sent my way" about Petraeus' year commanding the Afghanistan war.    Apparently a sheepish over his failure to recognize the relationship between Petraeus and Broadwell, Loeb nonetheless now writes, with no hint of self-reflection

The only contact I had with Petraeus during my work on the book came in 2011 during one of his trips back to Washington while he was still in command of the war. He invited me to go running with him along the Potomac in a gesture that was vintage Petraeus.

No one cultivated e-mail relationships with journalists better than he did; no one could be more personable on a kind of superficial level that nonetheless made people feel good about their interaction with him....

We drove six miles out along the Potomac, were dropped off, and ran back along the dirt tow path. The commander of the war in Afghanistan and I ran side by side, talking about great world events. I could scarcely believe I suddenly had this kind of access.

That tingling feeling may have ensued because "As Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, I had briefly embedded with the 101st Airborne Division under Petraeus' command in northern Iraq in the fall of 2003, and found the general - and what he'd accomplished - impressive and inspiring. Mosul, and much of his sector in the north, were largely pacified."

Similarly, Loeb's newspaper yesterday editorialized 

The resignation of David Petraeus as CIA director is a serious blow to the nation’s national security leadership, and it comes at an unfortunate moment. With the expected departure of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a possible reshuffling of senior officials at the National Security Council, President Obama could have benefited particularly from Mr. Petraeus’s knowledge and seasoning as he begins to grapple with second-term challenges in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. Mr. Petraeus understands those issues as well as any American, and his record of service as a military commander is without equal in his generation...

The editors conclude "the loss of Mr. Petraeus' service" is "a harm brought about by his own actions, for which he has taken responsibility. But it will hurt the country no less."

The usually sober editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer claim

After only 14 months at the CIA, Petraeus can be replaced, which is not the same as saying his leadership won't be missed. He is an exceptional commander, as demonstrated by his successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq and results-oriented tour of duty in Afghanistan. In time, he was expected to produce similar results in directing the CIA.

Fortunately, with his nearly inevitable resignation, Mr. Petraeus no longer will be "expected to produce similar results in directing the CIA."  Journalist Juan Cole, who (unlike this blogger) opposed the escalation of American troops in Afghanistan, explains

What I had been concerned about, despite my admiration for Petraeus, is that he wasn't the right person to head the CIA when among its major tasks was to evaluate the counter=insurgency effort in Afghanistan. Since Petraeus authored that strategy and oversaw a stage of that war as commander, it actually was not fair to have him head the evaluative effort, and he shouldn't have been put in that position.

Counter-insurgency as Petraeus defined it involves a four-stage process. The army has to taketerritory away from a guerrilla movement. It has to clear that territory of the enemy. It has to hold that territory for long enough to reassure the local population that the guerrillas are not coming back and won't punish them as collaborators if they have something to do with the US. It has to build, i.e. build up local institutions such as police, so as to provide security and prosperity in the long run. Counter-insurgency is long and slow and requires winning over local hearts and minds.

Petraeus and other officers boxed Obama in in late 2009 and more or less imposed a counter-insurgency policy in Afghanistan on him. They only gave him this one plan, when he asked for 3 to choose from.

The counter-insurgency idea derived from the view of some in the officer corps that they had had a victory of sort because of the troop escalation or "surge" in Iraq late in the Bush period. As far as I can tell, however, violence in Iraq fell through 2007 not mainly because of US GI's but because a Shiite ethnic cleansing campaign chased most Sunnis from mixed neighborhoods.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had convinced Petraeus to begin with the Sunni armed groups, and to disarm them. Once they were helpless, the Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army went in and ethnically cleansed the remaining ones.

Through 2007 forward, as mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods became more solidly Shiite, the death toll began declining. Angry Shiites who wanted to kill a Sunni would have had to get in their cars and drive for a while to find one.

Petraeus knew about the ethnic cleansing campaign. He was aware that it was creating a new wave of Sunni refugees. But he saw the troop escalation or ‘surge' as the primary reason for the fall in violence.

Based on this misunderstanding of what had happened in Iraq, Petraeus hoped to do in Afghanistan what he thought he did with Baghdad. Hence the mantra, take clear hold build.

But this kind of counter-insurgency would have required hundreds of thousands of fresh troops. Petraeus didn't have them. It was a huge endeavor.

It has largely failed, though US politicians and journalists seem reluctant to say so.

That failure of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is dangerous and poses special dangers for our troops. It is dangerous for the future, since it cries out for clearsightedness lest we plunge into more such mistakes.

As coverage of the issue plays out, the emphasis on l'affaire Petraeus will demonstrate greater interest of the corporate media in matters sexual than in the conduct of foreign policy and national intelligence.     Little attention will be given to the massive human suffering which American policy, though in Afghanistan well-meaning, has helped bring about in the two Asian nations.   Still, the apparent disinterest in deaths of soldiers and civilians alike pale in comparison to the obliviousness, not so well-intentioned, of the American media to the causes and implications of both wars, and to the role played by the sainted General David Petraeus.






Share |

Compromising, At Best



First, the "fiscal cliff" is not a cliff at all, literal or otherwise.

Try driving your car to the edge of a cliff.   Get out.  Then put the car into drive, release the emergency brake (if it is on), and watch your car plunge to its destruction.   Matt Yglesias argues "a salient fact about non-metaphorical cliffs is that falling over them is generally irreversible.  If the cliff is high enough that falling off of it would kill you, then if you falloff you're going to die and that's the end of it.  The 'fiscal cliff' by contrast isn't like that at all." Krugman explains that, despite the hand-wringing from the media and Washington Wise Men (and women)

It's worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn't really a cliff.  It's not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed.  This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn't reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 201.  So there's time to bargain.

In a similar vein, Dan Gross notes

Most significantly, the cliff will change the negotiating dynamic. After January 1, 2013, for the first time in several years, Republicans will desperately need and want something from the President. As CEOs, investors, and lobbyists wail, Republicans will only be able to deliver if they can coax President Obama into a deal. They can jump up and down and demand that Washington cut taxes on the very wealthy at a time of high budget deficits. And if Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwartzman—who once compared the Obama administration to the Nazis, wants his low tax rate back—he can call the White House. Good luck with that.

Gross and Krugman recognize that a newly re-elected President Obama can negotiate from a strong bargaining position, the latter noting he is "in a far stronger position than in previous negotiations."   He can let the Bush-era tax cuts expire and then present Congress with the option of bringing back the lower rates for individuals earning below $200,000 and couples earning under $250,000.    House Democrats tried that in the summer but House Republicans, figuring the GOP might retake the White House and the Senate, predictably rejected it because the higher, 39% rate, would return for the wealthy.

That was then, this is now, and President Obama holds the cards- if he wishes to play them.    Early indications are mixed, at best.   On Friday, President Obama declared "But as I’ve said before, we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. If we’re serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue. And that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes."

Unfortunately, a moment later he followed that with"I want to be clear, I’m not wedded to every detail of my plan. I’m open to compromise. I’m open to new ideas. I’m committed to solving our fiscal challenges."

The community organizer, who won, and retained, the presidency by amassing the best campaign organization in American political history, is at it again, acting as if the opposition holds the power while he strives to secure half the pie, or even one-quarter.   We know he's "not wedded to every detail" of his plan and is "open to compromise," as he has been for four years.  Though Speaker John Boehner has indicated he is willing to raise revenues by limiting tax deductions, Digby realizes

So we have the general outlines of what revenues Boehner and the Republicans are willing to accept. Good to know. Does anyone have any idea what cuts the president and the Democrats are willing to accept in return? It seems as though it might be time to have a little chat about that because it appears that they've all agreed to accept some temporary chump change as a Big Victory and the Republicans may very well have wised up enough to recognize that now's the time to take the deal. 

So, what do you think the Republicans will demand for the tremendous sacrifice of closing a couple of loopholes? What will be the price for this huge sacrifice? 

I don't know, but I do know that the president once before agreed to 2 dollars in cuts for every dollar in revenue. He's said just recently that as Commander in Chief he can't go along with big defense cuts, so don't look for much money there. So, where are the cuts going to be?

We may have learned yesterday, when on Meet The Press yesterday Bob Woodward revealed that he had obtained

a confidential document, last offer the president -- the White House made last year to Speaker Boehner to try to reach this $4 trillion grand bargain.  And it's long and it's tedious and it's got budget jargon in it.  But what it shows is a willingness to cut all kinds of things, like TRICARE, which is the sacred health insurance program for the military, for military retirees; to cut Social Security; to cut Medicare. And there are some lines in there about, "We want to get tax rates down, not only for individuals but for businesses."  So Obama and the White House were willing to go quite far.

If Obama and Boehner had reached this agreement months ago, it would now be President-elect Romney with a Repub-controlled House and Senate.   And if this now forms the outline of a deal, the social safety net would be disemboweled, with even benefits for veterans cut, confirming the worst (inaccurate) stereotypes held of Democrats.  There will be no President (H) Clinton, (S) Brown, Biden, O'Malley, or (the fairly loathsome) Andrew Cuomo.  But at least, Barack Obama will go down in history as the transformative President always has yearned to be.



Share |

The GOP's Real Hispanic Problem


In 2004, George W. Bush won 44% of Hispanics voted to re-elect President George W. Bush.  Four years later, John McCain, a promoter of comprehensive immigration reform, garnered only 31% of the Hispanic vote.    Last Tuesday, only 27% of Hispanics voted for the GOP presidential nominee, Willard "Mitt" Romney.  He and Senator McCain were perceived as indifferent or even antagonistic toward Latinos.

No unanimity has emerged among Republicans as to how to win a greater share of the Hispanic vote.   Some want the party to re-examine its positions while others believe messaging and candidates with Latin faces will do the trick.

Many, however, recognize there is at least a problem.   The Washington Examiner's Byron York cited "Romney's failure to appeal to Latino voters."  Prominent CNN contributor and proprietor of redstate.com Erick Erickson maintained "At the same time, Romney made a conscious decision to blow off Hispanic voters. Yes conservatives, we must account for this. The Romney campaign to the Hispanic community was atrocious and, frankly, the fastest growing demographic in America isn’t going to vote for a party that sounds like that party hates brown people."

And the editors of the libertarian-leaning right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page argued  

Perhaps most damaging, Mr. Romney failed to appeal more creatively to minority voters, especially Hispanics. His single worst decision may have been to challenge Texas Governor Rick Perry in the primaries by running to his right on immigration. Mr. Romney didn't need to do this given that Mr. Perry was clearly unprepared for a national campaign, and given the weakness of the other GOP candidates. (Tim Pawlenty had dropped out.)

Mr. Romney missed later chances to move to the middle on immigration reform, especially Senator Marco Rubio's compromise on the Dream Act for young immigrants brought here by their parents. This created the opening for Mr. Obama to implement the core of the Dream Act by executive order, however illegally, and boost his image with Hispanic voters.

The exit polls show that Mr. Romney did even worse among Hispanics than John McCain in 2008, and we may learn in coming days that this was the margin in some swing states. The GOP needs to leave its anti-immigration absolutists behind.

(Note to the editors:  Obama's action was not that of an Executive Order but an administrative action, undertaken by order of the President and executed by the Secretary of Homeland Security.   But you're wrong about almost everything else, anyway.)

Clearly, since immigration (or illegal immigration; we'll say "immigration" for ease and use Hispanic/Latin/Spanish-speaking interchangeably) became a national issue, Republicans have been routed among voters of a Spanish-speaking background.    The party has been perceived, accurately, as generally less sympathetic to their interests.

Consider, though, that Mitt Romney stated definitively that he is opposed to "rounding up" Hispanics, a practice common in the Obama Administration as ICE has had the temerity to raid the workplaces of bosses employing illegal immigrants.   He took heat for recommending, during the primary campaign, "self-deportation," an unfortunate phrase which was politically damaging, though  he explained "people mak(ing) their own choices as to whether they want to go home & that's what I mean by self-deportation."   While opposed to what the Wall Street Journal termed the President's "Executive Order," Romney stated that he would not return to the nation of origin those young people authorized by the current president to remain in the U.S.A.  As on most matters, the views of the G.O.P.'s nominee were ambiguous and confusing.

Inarguably, the Republican Party has lost serious ground nationally among Hispanics while failing to accrue support from other voters over its approach to immigration and related issues.   However, immigration is a national issue to Hispanics, but to other voters in only a few states.

Primary among the latter is Arizona.   There (interactive map, here), Senator Obama captured 45.1% of the overall vote to his Senator McCain's 53.7% in 2008, a deficit of 12.6% for the Democrat.  But the GOP candidate was from Arizona, and speculation ensued that President Obama could capture the state's electoral votes in 2012, especially given its growing Latin population.

In 2012, however, facing a candidate from Massachusetts (and Michigan and Utah), Obama managed to garner only 44.1% of the vote to Mitt Romney's 54.3%.  This deficit of 10.2% was only a slight improvement for Obama in a state in which the share of the Latino vote was projected to increase 23.2% since 2008.

The Hispanic vote in Arizona is not huge but at roughly 12.0% of the electorate, represents a greater share than in the nation at large.  Still, the Democratic nominee was defeated, although he undoubtedly won a majority of the Hispanic vote in the state. That appears to run counter to the prevailing narrative, especially because immigration is a bigger issue in Arizona than anywhere else in the nation.

Although counter-intuitive, Obama's failure in Arizona is not "incredible" or "unbelievable" but may be due precisely to the salience of the immigration debate there.   Elsewhere, immigration is of relatively little importance as an issue, leaving primarily Hispanics as the only voters to whom it is central.   By contrast, in Arizona, immigration is a primary issue, sometimes dominating the debate. Voters of all ethnic groups and political persuasions are engaged.  And there, not coincidentally, the candidate of the party less congenial toward immigration won in the presidential race- and in the U.S. Senate race as well.

Republicans have not been pummeled primarily because they have taken a hard-line on immigation.  They have been pummeled because they have tacked right, alienating Latinos, while simultaneously failing to engage the larger American community, much of which is severely displeased by high immigration levels.  They have missed out on the opportunity to mobilize support among anti-immigration voters as Hispanics, who have a heightened interest in the issue, have turned away from the party.

It may be hard to understand why a major political party would allow an issue to gain currency with one group, which thereupon flocks to the other party, and neglects to raise the issue to such a level of concern that other Americans would be energized to vote for it.   Hard, but not impossible.

There are two major factions in the GOP- the electoral base and the donor base.   Most voters registered as Republican are not enamored of high levels of immigration (or what they perceive as high levels).   But money flows into the GOP coffers from corporations or individuals or interests associated with corporations.  Those players are far less hostile to immigrants who, as luck would have it, double as hard-working employees.   Native-born American citizens, certainly, are available to work.  But the presence of large numbers of immigrants exerts a downward pressure on wages and benefits and, besides, employing other individuals might entail hiring blacks, which some businesses no doubt would find unpleasant.

This may be an oversimplification.  However, it is less so than conventional wisdom:  1) there are more Hispanics voting than ever before; 2) most Hispanics are voting Democratic; 3) Republicans have lost the last two presidential elections.  Therefore,  Republicans must favorably address the needs of Hispanics in order to win another national election.

  


Share |

Next Time, Try Bribery



At first glance, it makes sense.  At second glance, it does not.    Zeke Miller, whose article in BuzzFeed formed the basis of my previous post, noted also

More common is the sense that the party’s problems can be fixed without a philosophical shift.

“We have to do a better job of appealing to women, minorities, and young people,” a state-based Republican operative said. “I think a lot of that starts with adopting an approach to social issues that is more of a ‘this is what I believe and here's why it's important, but it's not government or politicians' role to impose that upon others who may not feel that way.’ It will be a challenge to unite the various factions behind that philosophy, but if we're truly the party of limited government and individual freedom and initiative then we must be willing to be consistent with that view.”

Where to start?   Wisely, the "state-based Republican operative" evidently did not offer his or her name.    Barry Goldwater is dead, literally and figuratively.  Others have noted the Republican Party ceased long ago to be "the party of limited government and individual freedom and initiative."    It has ceased to exist for any reason other than to uphold corporate power, as reflected in its opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Act.  The legislation, vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan claimed, "wasn't an equal pay law, and of course, we support equal pay."    Of course they support it- as long as it's voluntary; we wouldn't want to inconvenience corporations of course, by giving women a fair opportunity to challenge discrimination.  It would be just swell if employers decided on their own on a wage scale uninfluenced by the sexual machinery an individual is born with.

In a second straight presidential race, the GOP was clobbered, as this operative understands, among young people.    But it is to some extent a function of a Democratic nominee who particularly appeals to young people and, to a lesser extent, alienates elderly people.

"Our packaging lost," claims the chairman of the College National Republican Committee, "and we have to improve the way we communicate our message to young and Hispanic voters.”

How soon we forget.  Soon after Ryan's selection by Mitt Romny, The Daily Beast's Kirsten Powers wrote

We’ve finally been vindicated: Members of Generation X have a representative who is anything but a slacker.

GOP Congressman Paul Ryan—the tireless, wonky, 42-year-old workout freak—has made history by becoming the first member of our generation to join a presidential ticket. It should come as a surprise to no one that his calling card is reforming entitlements.

We hear incessantly about how members of today’s screwed generation face the prospect of less prosperous lives than those lived by their parents. But the maiden generation to stare down that gloomy prognosis was Generation X, the tiny slice of America born between about 1965 and 1980. (Ryan was born in 1970.) We were the first generation to be told we would never get Social Security or Medicare even though we would be forced to pay into these programs.

Enter Ryan. While Democrats attack his Medicare plan as “radical” and portray him as pushing granny off the cliff, young people don’t seem to be buying this caricature. Or maybe “radical” is what they want.

A Zogby/JZ Analytics poll Tuesday showed increased support among voters 18-29 for the Romney ticket, which pollster John Zogby attributed to the Ryan pick.  President Obama received just 49 percent of the youth vote, versus Romney’s 41 percent. (Obama took home 66 percent of the youth vote  against McCain in 2008.)

For those who think those numbers are an anomaly, take a look at Pew’s 2011 polling that found that among 18-29 year olds, 46 percent supported Ryan’s proposed Medicare changes with only 28 percent opposing (the rest had no opinion). Among 30-49 year olds it was 38 percent approving and 36 percent opposed. The strongest opposition to Ryan’s plan comes from those over 65, who ironically won’t even be affected by his plan since it would only apply to those 55 and under . Pew found that age, not party identification was the biggest predictor of how a person would feel about his plan...

But Ryan is young and is poised to be the intellectual leader of the conservative movement for the next generation. He will be a force to be reckoned with. Name-calling and distortions of his plan by Democrats is not an effective long-term strategy, nor is it good for the country.

Powers, who doesn't understand Social Security and Medicare, nevertheless acknowledged what many Repub analysts will not do so in the wake of the election:   Ryan was selected in part for his appeal to youth. Young people are more accepting of efforts to undermine Social Security and Medicare.   For many years now, they have been led to believe by opportunistic and dishonest politicians that Social Security, without changes, is on the road to extinction; and that the increase in health care costs owes not to health insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals or public policies favoring the medical-industrial complex but to Medicare itself.   Additionally, young people have not themselves experienced either program, whose popularity among the elderly is astounding.

Romney hoped Ryan's addition would appease the far right and take back in Wisconsin (how did that work out, Mitt?),   He obviously recognized that Ryan's leadership in the effort to decimate Medicare and eviscerate Social Security was a risk worth taking in the effort to woo young voters.   The nominee could have chosen Ohio's Senator Rob Portman and won in Ohio- and in Florida, whose voters are deeply vested in the importance of maintaining Social Security and Medicare benefits.    But youthful, hapless Paul Ryan, who was eaten up and spit out by Joe Biden in debate and spent the last couple of weeks of the campaign wandering the country, was expected to expand the GOP brand to young people.   Instead, he was the second straight Repub presidential nominee to contribute to his party's defeat at the polls.  Good luck with that "packaging" to the under 30 crowd.



Share |