Democratic Rep. Eric Massa's resignation should trigger a special election in his district. This will make for a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans, since John McCain actually carried New York’s 29th District over Barack Obama in 2008. And Massa’s is only one of three Democratic-held seats that Republicans -- at least on paper -- should, in the coming months, have a decent chance of claiming in special elections.
But recent history suggests they shouldn’t get too excited.
Believe it or not, it’s been almost nine years since the GOP picked up a previously Democratic-held House seat through a special election. Democrats, by contrast, have won six GOP-held seats in special elections in that time. And it’s not as if the Democrats were picking off low-hanging fruit: All but one of those victories came in districts that vote reliably for Republicans at the presidential level.
There are several reasons for the Democrats’ special election success. The most obvious is that many of the pickups came when George W. Bush’s popularity was at its lowest and voters were eager to take out their frustrations on Republican candidates.
But the more recent GOP losses can also be chalked up to intra-party warfare. In 2008, for instance, the more conservative and less electable candidate managed to win the GOP nomination in three special elections. Each was then defeated by the Democratic candidate. And last fall in New York’s 23rd District, national movement conservatives helped elbow aside the establishment GOP’s pick, Dede Scozzafava, to make way for tea party favorite Doug Hoffman. Bush may be off the stage, but similar fissures could still haunt the GOP this year.
In addition to Massa’s seat, Republicans currently have at least a chance of picking up the late John Murtha’s seat in Pennsylvania, where a special election will be held on May 18; and the Hawaii seat vacated by Democrat Neil Abercrombie (only because that state’s unique winner-take-all special election rules could allow the lone Republican candidate to win with a small plurality of the vote).
Still, even though the national climate is quite favorable for them right now, there's no guarantee that Republicans' special election futility will end this year.
Colby Hamilton
WASHINGTON -- Wake up, America, there's a new, dangerous threat on the horizon: progressives. You may have heard about them if you've been paying attention to the right sources. They come from the 1920s, they're basically socialists -- or maybe fascists -- and they're here to steal your country.
A generation after Ronald Reagan and his allies turned "liberal" into an epithet, conservatives are going after the term many Democrats adopted in its place. Glenn Beck and his paranoid Fox News Channel ranting is just at the forefront of what appears to be a movement to demonize the word "progressive," in hopes of scaring voters away from the left. "Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution," Beck told thousands of adoring fans at the conservative CPAC conference last month. "And it was designed to eat the Constitution. To 'progress' past the Constitution." The National Review ran a whole special issue on progressives in December; staff writer Jonah Goldberg even published a book on the subject, "Liberal Fascism," two years ago. The latest ad for Liz Cheney's new group, Keep America Safe, prominently features Attorney General Eric Holder declaring that progressives are about to run the nation -- before seguing, sharply, into asking whether Holder's pals share the values of al-Qaida.
Of course, "progressive" also happens to be the way nearly every Democratic lawmaker, activist and politician describes him- or herself these days. There is, for example, the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House and Senate; and the Center for American Progress, a think tank; and the Progressive Democrats of America, a liberal group. Which means all the scary rhetoric on the right -- if it goes unanswered -- could do exactly what it's intended to do: make Democrats seem like the enemy.
The bad-mouthing of the word "progressive" hasn't quite reached the fever pitch that the Reaganite bashing of liberals did. After the culture wars of the 1960s and the backlash of the 1970s, "liberalism" had developed such a bad rap that throwing the word around was like political Kryptonite for Democrats. By the end of the Reagan era, Republican adman Arthur Finklestein was helping his clients win elections simply by calling their opponents liberals. (Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo was unseated in 1994 by then-state Sen. George Pataki, using the slogan: "Too liberal for too long.") At the time, Bill Clinton and his ideological friends at the Democratic Leadership Council got a lot of attention for finding a way to move past the old definition, which got bogged down in cultural politics and Reaganite slurs about "welfare queens," and claiming to represent a new type of Democrat.
"On the left, cold-war liberals and neoliberals were not what anyone wanted to be, and the right had done a job on 'the liberal elite,' the 'tax-and-spend liberals,' etc.," says George Lakoff, a Berkeley linguistics professor who has consulted with Democratic leaders on how different words can affect political battles. "So many of us went to 'progressive.'"
That seems to have worked. A few years ago, a Rasmussen poll found 39 percent of voters reacted negatively to calling a politician "liberal," compared to only 18 percent for "progressive." Just a couple of months ago, the Des Moines Register's Iowa Poll found 42 percent of Iowans -- including 15 percent of Iowa Republicans -- considered themselves progressive.
There's a solid history behind the term that appealed to many Democrats, as well. The Progressive Era brought America, among other innovations, direct election of senators; the right for women to vote; antitrust regulations and the first limits on corporate power; child labor laws; the eight-hour workday; and national parks. "Folks at [the Center for American Progress] clearly identify with the animating values and spirit of the original Progressive Era," says John Halpin, co-director of CAP's Progressive Studies Program. "This is not a dodge, it's a proud association."
But listen to Beck, or read the sources of his paranoia, and there's a far more sinister history involved. Progressives, in Beck's telling, were the prototypical European authoritarians, tied just as closely to fascists and Communists; the progressive notion that government could help change things for the better (instead of just staying out of the way of the free market) becomes the ideological glue that unites those two disparate movements. "Where did the progressives go, where did they come from?" Beck asked at CPAC. "All of a sudden, I'm not a liberal, I'm a progressive. It was the opposite a hundred years ago. I'm not a progressive, I'm a liberal. I mean they keep -- they keep changing their names. Every time they wake America up to their policies, they have to change their names. What are they going to be next, the Royal Order of the Orange? It doesn't matter. They're running out of names." Not long after that, he went on a long tangent praising Calvin Coolidge. At times, Beck really does seem to want to go back to a time before the Progressive Era. On Wednesday's show, he scoffed at the notion of national parks and monuments, asking -- dead seriously -- why the country doesn't just drill for oil in all of them to wipe out the national debt.
The net effect of most of his rhetoric, though, just adds up to a spooky conspiracy theory that's hard to follow because it jumps around so much. "It mixes up these abstract ideas of the original Progressives with notions of European fascists and socialists and Communists -- it lumps them all up and they all sound bad," Halpin says. "They never actually repudiate any of the key advances of the Progressives that most people take for granted today." In Beck's version of history, the Founding Fathers come out as the heroes for fighting against the Progressives -- never mind that they predated them by over a century. "They just have this, 'We're going to vaguely associate with fuzzy good things, and we're going to bad-mouth things that sound like they're evil,'" Halpin says.
But instead of sitting back and letting "progressive" become the next American political boogieman -- like what happened to "liberal" -- some Democrats want to fight back. "This is the big fight about the role of government and markets," says Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future (who also says he's proud to call himself a progressive, because of the original economic populism of the Progressive Era). "People need a clear narrative about how we drove off a cliff, and what we need to do to get off of it, and it has to relate to a set of ideas about how we got off the cliff." That's where laying out a progressive agenda -- and explicitly identifying the conservative agenda as opposed to it -- would help.
After all, it's one thing to spin conspiracy theories and imply that your opponents are goose-stepping Nazi Communists hell-bent on seizing all private property. It's another thing altogether to have a debate over whether to abolish the weekend, or go back to the pre-"Jungle" days of no meat inspection. Last time conservatives went after the term Democrats used to define themselves, the damage lasted a generation. Progressives may laugh at Glenn Beck now, but if his assertions keep going unchallenged, they might not be smiling for long.
No one should be shocked by a Republican National Committee fundraising document recently uncovered by Politico. With condescension bordering upon satire, it divides potential GOP donors into two groups: simple-minded dimwits and wealthy egotists.
The key to raising cash from small donors, according to a PowerPoint presentation given by RNC operatives Rob Bickhart and Peter Terpeluk at a retreat in Boca Grande, Fla., is to dazzle them with scare talk about "Socialism," images of President Obama as "the Joker," Nancy Pelosi as "Cruella de Vil" and other bright, shiny objects. The idea is to exploit "visceral" emotions, "fear" and "extreme negative feelings" toward Obama.
Similar tactics have, of course, been used by shameless broadcast evangelists to pry open the piggy banks of elderly shut-ins since the invention of mass media. The antichrist will get you if you don't watch out!
Just imagine the uproar that would have attended the Democratic National Committee's caricaturing President Bush as, say, a Nazi prison guard from "Hogan's Heroes," or as Wile E. Coyote, the incompetent cartoon predator. But when it comes to Obama, anything goes.
Wealthy donors, as the world knows, need their posteriors kissed and their egos stroked. Hence GOP fundraisers ply them with access to party bigshots and tchotchkes ranging from "luxury retreats in California wine country to tickets to a professional fight in Las Vegas." And who could resist rubbing elbows with Newt Gingrich or Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol at a Napa Valley wine tasting? Kind of an Ayn Rand meets "Sideways" thing.
"Tchotchkes" is New York Yiddish for promotional freebies handed out at trade shows like the Oscars or the Republican National Convention. The idea is to flatter wealthy donors and make them feel important. It's the way of the world.
But what's so unusual about the document accidentally left behind in the hotel hosting the RNC's $2,500-per-person event, explains reporter Ben Smith, is the "air of disdain for the party's donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives." Indeed, the thing makes high-ranking RNC operatives -- Terpeluk was Bush's ambassador to Luxembourg, the cushiest of sinecures -- sound like carnies setting up sideshow exhibits at a backwoods county fair. What will open the yokels' wallets, the two-headed rattlesnake or the hoochie-coochie show?
No sooner did the document become public than Republicans took flight in all directions. Party Chairman Michael Steele's spokesman said he hadn't attended the conference, "disagrees with the language and finds the use of such imagery to be unacceptable. It will not be used by the Republican National Committee -- in any capacity -- in the future."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, "I can't imagine why anybody would have thought that was helpful. Typically, the way parties raise money is because people believe in the causes they advocate. I think the way we raise money from donors across America is to stand for things that are important for the country."
Ah, but there's the rub. What's telling about the RNC sales pitch isn't so much its borderline offensiveness and condescending tone. It's a classic bait and switch, revealing its authors' bad faith. The people who put the thing together not only don't believe in the causes they advocate; they have no intention of delivering on their implied promises should they return to power.
Socialism? When it comes to economics, today's GOP has nothing to advocate except the very policies that got us into this mess to begin with. They're simply trying to trick tea party activists into believing that this time, Republicans will deliver the fiscal conservatism they always advocate but haven't delivered since Herbert Hoover.
The simple truth is, they can't. The reasons, moreover, aren't far to seek. For all the anxiety President Obama's election has generated among those who perceive that people like them are losing power, everyone knows the America of the "Andy Griffith Show" and "Leave It to Beaver" isn't coming back. (Actually, it never existed, but that's a different column.)
Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of the budget deficits tea party activists rail about were created on President Bush's watch. When it comes to spending, surveys show that fewer than 25 percent of self-identified conservatives support cuts in government programs supporting science, protecting the environment, building highways, helping the poor, etc. When it comes to big-budget drivers such as defense, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, forget about it.
GOP politicians say government can't create jobs, but that's theology, not economics. They all want federal projects in their districts.
Hence the RNC's bait-and-switch campaign. It's all they've got.
Except for this: Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona recently argued that unemployment-insurance benefits prevent people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working." Former GOP House Speaker Tom DeLay echoed him on CNN over the weekend. Just keep talking, boys. You're coming through loud and clear.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com.
© 2010, Gene Lyons. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Meet Rush Limbaugh: the latest blowhard to learn nothing from history, thereby fating himself -- and his flock -- to repeat it.
Rush was on the air back in 1993 and 1994, when Republicans found themselves in essentially the same position they’re now in: locked out of the White House and staring up at imposing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
With Rush egging them on, they defined themselves by their blanket, loud, and often hysterical opposition to Bill Clinton’s agenda (and to his legitimacy as commander in chief). They killed his stimulus bill by filibuster, offered zero votes for his first budget (the one that set the stage for the economic prosperity -- and balanced budgets -- of the late '90s), and demagogued healthcare reform until an utterly defeated Clinton pulled it from the agenda.
And for their willful obstruction and fear-mongering, the Republicans were rewarded with an electoral tsunami in the 1994 midterm elections, one that handed them control of Congress for the first time in decades. And it was only supposed to be the beginning: Two years later, Clinton himself would be on the ballot (well, if Democrats didn’t dump him first), and then the real fun would begin.
But that never came to pass, and surely you remember why: The Republicans who won in '94 mistakenly believed that Americans had ratified their right-wing philosophy, when voters had simply been using the GOP as a protest vehicle. When 1996 rolled around, the economy was stronger (thank you, 1993 budget), the Republicans' brand was tarnished (voters came to loathe the Gingrich Congress), and Clinton was again able to charm the country with his sunny demeanor.
The story of Clinton’s first term, in other words, is the story of the difference between midterm and presidential elections. You might think Limbaugh, having lived and broadcasted through it, would appreciate this. Apparently not.
On his radio show on Tuesday, he took after me for something I’d said on "Hardball" on Monday -- namely, that "the party of Sarah Palin, the party of Rush Limbaugh can win in 2010, but that same party can’t turn around and win in 2012." Limbaugh played a clip of me (the full video from "Hardball" is below) and then replied:
This guy is supposedly some brainiac at Salon.com. I don’t know how the Republicans can take victory in 2012 (SK: I think he meant 2010) as a vindication of their strategy when there isn’t one. What’s happening here is, Mr. Kornacki, is that independents and Democrats are running as far away and as fast as they can from Obama. And Obama’s still going to be there in 2012. (Laughs) He’s still going to be there. What this guy’s trying to say, 'You Republicans, don’t think conservatism’s going to win for you, ‘cause that’s not going to win for you….'
First, he’s wrong: The GOP clearly has a strategy right now, and it’s evident with every Senate filibuster, every "no" vote on healthcare, and every denunciation of the stimulus. Today’s Republican Party is treating the Obama administration just like the Republican Party of the 1993 and 1994 treated the Clinton White House. The strategy is to say no to everything and to benefit from the buyer’s remorse nature of midterm elections, which (as I noted on "Hardball") should be particularly apparent this fall, with joblessness near or above 10 percent.
Second, I’m well aware that Obama’s still going to be there in 2012. And it’s exactly why I’m so bullish on his reelection prospects. If recent presidential history has established anything, it’s that the political turmoil Obama is now enduring was essentially inevitable. There have been five presidents in the modern, "permanent campaign" era of American politics, and Obama is the third to reach this same low point in Year Two of their first terms. Clinton and Ronald Reagan were the others, and both, not at all coincidentally, rebounded to win second terms.
Does Rush not remember that Republicans were gloating in 1994 about how independents and even some Democrats were abandoning Clinton just like they're gloating about Obama today? And just like Democrats in 1982 and 1983 were crowing that independents and even some Republicans were fleeing Reagan?
The Clinton and Reagan comebacks provide very important lessons for those who would write Obama off right now -- and for those who would read the GOP’s bright 2010 prospects as much more than a predictable reaction to double-digit unemployment and single-party control of the White House and Congress. (I wrote much more about the parallels between '82, '94 and the present day -- and why they portend well for Obama’s '12 prospects -- here.)
The point I was making on "Hardball" is that the GOP is doing itself no long-term favors by blindly rejecting and obstructing Obama and by defining itself as Rush Limbaugh’s party. It won’t hurt them much in 2010. Midterm elections, by nature, just aren’t about the party that’s out of power. But presidential years are different. And, especially if the economy is showing signs of life, the GOP is positioning itself to pay dearly in 2012 -- just as Bob Dole paid dearly in ’96 and Walter Mondale did in ’84.
Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out one more thing that Rush screwed up. That thing about me being a "brainiac" -- well, as more than a few friends have already made sure to tell me, he’s wrong there, too.
Arlen Specter is stuck in a deep hole as he seeks a sixth term in the U.S. Senate. No, wait -- he’s actually in decent shape, running ahead of his potential Republican opponent. Both of these statements are actually supported by the numbers. It just depends which pollster you believe.
Specter, should he prevail against Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania’s May 18 Democratic primary, will face former GOP Rep. Pat Toomey this fall. Specter barely beat Toomey in the 2004 GOP primary, and the prospect of a rematch against an even-stronger Toomey this year helped prompt Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party a year ago.
At first, Specter’s plan seemed to backfire. Polls started showing him losing the general election to Toomey -- although many of these surveys came from Rasmussen Reports, an outfit that, some have noted, has a knack for portraying the GOP’s poll standing in rather favorable light.
Rasmussen’s most recent poll of the race, conducted on Feb. 8, showed Specter losing to Toomey, 47 to 38 percent. But then, a twist: A March 2 survey from the more reputable (if less prolific) Quinnipiac Polling Institute gave Specter the lead, 49-42 percent.
So, which poll is right? Actually, they both might be (at least for now). The reason has to do with the one major difference in their methodologies: likely voters vs. registered voters.
Many pollsters are reluctant to sample "likely voters" this far from an election, as it’s hard to predict who’s planning to show up. Quinnipiac falls into this category; it sampled "registered voters," without asking who’s likely to vote. Rasmussen, however, has been using "likely voters" for all of its (many) polls this campaign cycle.
Notably, a third polling organization, from Franklin & Marshall College, was in the field around the same time as Rasmussen and Quinnipiac.
F&M offered both likely voter and registered voter models, and found Specter leading Toomey 44-40 percent among the broad pool of registered voters, and Toomey ahead of Specter 44-34 percent among the narrower likely voter pool.
This suggests a serious problem for Democrats this fall. The “unlikely voters” who are weeded out from registered voter polls are the young, the poor and people of color. When these constituencies show up, the results are usually good for Democrats (as in Barack Obama’s 2008 victory). But when they stay home, it gives the GOP an opportunity to achieve a 1994-like result.
To survive 2010, then, the challenge for Democrats is clear: They must turn unlikely voters into likely voters. And the clock is ticking.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was supposed to have the Republican nomination for his state's open Senate seat locked up by now. Indeed, he was supposed to be waltzing into the seat itself. Instead, he finds himself trailing behind former State House Speaker Marco Rubio, who is running as a conservative alternative. So Crist is getting creative.
The governor was interviewed by Fox News' Greta Van Susteren Monday night. He used the opportunity to attack his opponent over recent revelations that Rubio had been using a Republican Party of Florida credit card for personal expenses, including a haircut. And he took it to a whole new level:
CRIST: He's trying to pawn himself off as a fiscal conservative. And yet just in reason weeks, two weeks ago it has come out in news accounts he had a Republican Party of Florida credit card that he charged $130 haircut, or maybe it was a back wax -- we are not sure what all he got at that place.
VAN SUSTEREN: Wait a second, stop. A back wax? Wait a second.
CRIST: I don't know what it was, you know?
VAN SUSTEREN: I know, but was there a suggestion it was for a back wax or are you being flip?
CRIST: I don't know what it was. Initially we were told it was a haircut. And then he said it wasn't a haircut. Then he had the gall to go on Neil Cavuto's show and said it was his money. It was a credit card from the Republican Party. It was party donors' money.
The detachment from reality is stunning to me. And to try to say that you're a fiscal conservative, yet you spend $130 for maybe a haircut and maybe other things, I don't know what you do at a salon we you are a guy.
I get my haircut for $11 from a guy named Carl the Barber in St. Petersburg, Florida where I grew up. And to me that's real fiscal conservatism.
Crist and his staff are apparently pretty pleased with this line of attack. Tuesday morning, the governor's campaign sent reporters an e-mail blast that featured a partial transcript of the interview.
The Republican comeback of 2010
The midterm elections are only two years away. Can the Democrats defend their gains?
By Thomas Schaller, Salon
Five things the Virginia election results don't mean
Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial primary might seem like a first glimpse at the 2010 election. But it's not.
By Mike Madden, Salon
The Specter of a shrinking GOP
Arlen Specter's defection likely means a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority. Choose your metaphor -- rats, ships, small tents -- but will the last Republican to leave please turn out the light?
By Mike Madden, Salon
Michael Steele is here to stay
Plenty of conservatives want to eighty-six him. But the P. Diddy-loving RNC chair isn't going anywhere.
By Mike Madden, Salon
The Reintroduction of Kirsten Gillibrand
After a shaky first hundred days, the junior senator from New York is trying to start over.
By Stephen Rodrick, New York Magazine
Patrick picks Obama aide for his 2010 campaign
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is tapping David Plouffe, the architect of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, to help run his bid for reelection next year.
By Matt Viser, The Boston Globe
Fiorina Phones it In
Forget Blanche Lincoln. Let's Defeat the New Jim Bunnings.
