Economics, the State of the Union, and the Ever-Dimming Appeal of the GOP

As State of the Union speeches go, President Obama's 2014 appearance before the joint chambers of congress went well. Of the people who watched the speech, 53% had a "very positive reaction to his speech." Conservatives will no doubt point out that the sample is skewed left, but the poll can hardly be blamed for not including people who refused to watch the speech. The audience was largely Democrat and indie, so the sample is largely Democrat and indie.

Still, there's some nasty news for Republicans here. The CNN flash poll's respondents were "44% Democratic and 17% Republican." Yet, when asked if "the president's policies will move the country in the right direction," 71% said they would -- a number way too high to be explained by Democratic boosterism. That number has to include a lot of indies and even some Republicans. CNN reports that the number of dems in the sample is "about 12 points more Democratic than the population as a whole," so 71-12=59.

But let's not get all teabagger about things and start "unskewing" polls to advantage Republicans. Let's look at numbers that need no adjustment.

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Yes, Pres. Obama’s poll numbers are bad — but Republicans envy those numbers

NBC News: A year that began with President Barack Obama riding high after his re-election victory is ending with him in the biggest hole of his presidency.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that more Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance than ever before; half say they’re either disappointed or dissatisfied with his presidency and 54 percent believe he’s facing a long-term setback.

In all, only 43% say they’re satisfied with Pres, Obama’s job performance, leaving his numbers underwater. However, the same poll asked, “How would you rate the overall performance and accomplishments of this year’s Congress—one of the best, above average, average, below average, or one of the worst?” only 3% answered the best or above average, 17% said average, and 79% said below average or the worst — with more than half saying that this was one of histories worst congresses.

Obama’s numbers are driven largely by the troubled rollout of Healthcare.gov. With this issue about 90+% resolved and rapidly improving, the president is about to cut the line on that particular public opinion boat anchor, after which we can probably expect his numbers to improve — most likely dramatically.

And if we head over to Gallup, new polling there shows Democrats as a whole soaring over Republicans by ten points — 42% approval to 32% approval. Again we find that, even with underwater approvals, Barack Obama is the most popular man in Washington.

That position can only improve.

[photo by Joe Crimmings]

The GOP's Obamacare Problem

It's being called the relaunch of Healthcare.gov. But the fact that 100,000 people signed up in October -- while the headlines were filled with stories about how the website wasn't working -- suggests that "relaunch" might not be the most accurate description. However, one aspect that's never actually gotten off the ground before was the effort to get Americans to sign up in large numbers. Since the website was hampered by capacity problems, an awareness campaign would've been counterproductive. In fact, until recently, the administration was discouraging organizations from running recruitment campaigns of their own.

That's about to change.

Politico: President Barack Obama will launch a coordinated campaign Tuesday by the White House, congressional Democrats and their outside allies to return attention to why the Affordable Care Act passed in the first place.

After two months of intense coverage of the botched HealthCare.gov rollout, the president will host a White House event kicking off a three-week drive to refocus the public on the law’s benefits, senior administration officials told POLITICO.

The White House will take the lead in emphasizing a different benefit each day until the Dec. 23 enrollment deadline for Jan. 1 coverage. The daily message will be amplified through press events and social media by Democratic members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee, congressional campaign committees and advocacy organizations, officials said.

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What Happens When GOP Economic Fairy Tales are Applied to the Real World

A piece in the New York Times this weekend compared the economic fates of Wisconsin and Minnesota, two states that were in roughly similar economic condition in 2012. Minnesota elected a Democratic government, while Wisconsin chose Republicans. And it was with this choice that the two neighboring states' fortunes began to diverge.

Three years into Mr. Walker’s term, Wisconsin lags behind Minnesota in job creation and economic growth. As a candidate, Mr. Walker promised to produce 250,000 private-sector jobs in his first term, but a year before the next election that number is less than 90,000. Wisconsin ranks 34th for job growth. Mr. Walker’s defenders blame the higher spending and taxes of his Democratic predecessor for these disappointments, but according to Forbes’s annual list of best states for business, Wisconsin continues to rank in the bottom half.

Along with California, Minnesota is the fifth fastest growing state economy, with private-sector job growth exceeding pre-recession levels. Forbes rates Minnesota as the eighth best state for business. Republicans deserve some of the credit, particularly for their commitment to education reform. They also argue that Minnesota’s new growth stems from the low taxes and reduced spending under Mr. Dayton’s Republican predecessor, Tim Pawlenty. But Minnesota’s job growth was subpar during Mr. Pawlenty’s eight-year tenure and recovered only under Mr. Dayton.

Trust me, it sucks when your state is used as an example of economic failure. While Walker complains that previous higher taxes and spending are dragging the state down (a tough argument to make -- the mechanics are so bad he doesn't even bother to explain them), Minnesota has raised taxes and spending to great success. And that spending has been distinctly Keynesian. NYT reports that the "lion’s share of Minnesota’s new tax revenue was sunk into human capital." Wisconsin, of course, has been anti-Keynesian, reaching into workers' pockets to take pay and benefits away.

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A 'Fix' for Obamacare -- Do Nothing

We can probably stop worrying about Republican Rep. Fred Upton's (R-Blue Cross) "Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013" now.

Buzzfeed: President Obama threatened Thursday to veto a House bill that would allow insurance companies to continue offering existing health plans after millions received cancelation notices due to the Affordable Care Act.

The threat came hours after the president asked health insurance companies to allow individuals to keep their existing, canceled plans for a year.

The “Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013,” sponsored by Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, would allow insurance companies to continue to offer plans that were available before the new Obamacare rules took effect. The House is scheduled to vote on the bill Friday and a handful of Democrats were expected to support it.

Obama’s fix allows only individuals whose policies were canceled in 2013 to re-enroll in their plans next year, while the Upton bill would allow insurers to sell the plans to new customers and would not be limited to just one year.

Overriding a presidential veto is an uphill battle in even the best of circumstances, but the idea that enough Democrats would defect to create a two-thirds majority in both houses here doesn't seem at all likely. You can pass a bill in a hurried panic, but the president can sit on it a while and wait for everyone to cool off before he vetoes it. Seriously, this may get a lot of press because of a House vote on the bill today, but it is most probably dead.

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Saving Obamacare from Democrats

For the most part, the insurance cancellation controversy is not firmly grounded in reality. Of course, there are the horror stories that don't stand up to scrutiny, but there is also the mostly unreported fact that those who are losing their insurance are doing so because the Affordable Care Act makes terrible insurance coverage illegal. It's not so much a story about Obamacare cancelling coverage, as it is one of insurance companies scrapping policies rather than fixing them to make them less of a rip off. This became apparent when the subject of one such ObamaScare story was presented with the sort of plan she would qualify for under the ACA; "I would jump at it," said Florida resident Dianne Barrette.

The problem isn't so much that people are finding their coverage plans canceled, the problem is that the website where they can shop for new insurance isn't working at the moment. For people like Barrette, the fact that better and more affordable insurance exists is cold comfort, since she can't actually apply for it. In other words, it's not the cancellations that is the problem demanding a fix, it's the website -- or, at least, the mechanism for shopping for insurance. Allowing people to continue to get insurance coverage that's highway robbery is no fix at all, since that was one of the big problems in the first place.

Still, that fact isn't keeping some panicky Democrats from threatening to buckle under the weight of the story.

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2014 and the Virginian Microcosm

The President is facing record low approvals -- which makes him the most popular man in Washington. Observe:

NBC News' First Read: How low can President Obama and Congress go? We’re watching both continue to sink in polls. A Quinnipiac survey released yesterday found that Obama’s approval rating had dropped to 39%, which is his lowest point in that poll (we’re in Bush territory, folks). More ominously, just 44% said the president was honest and trustworthy -- yet another all-time low -- compared with 52% who disagreed.  Meanwhile, Gallup showed that Congress’ job-approval rating had declined to a mere 9%, which is the lowest mark in the poll’s 39-year history of asking that question. This race to the bottom isn’t new, of course. Our NBC/WSJ poll released late last month -- after the government shutdown, after the standoff over the debt limit, and after a month’s worth of reported problems with the federal health-care website -- also found Obama (42% approval) and the Republican Party (22%-53% fav/unfav) reaching all-time lows. But what these new polls show is that the slides don’t appear to be stopping.

So free falling Republican of free falling Obama? I think most thinking people would rather be in the President's position right now.  There's usually a second term slump, when the president becomes emblematic of the status quo -- and this is probably one of the more extreme examples of that -- but congress doesn't have that excuse. First Read speculates on what this means for the midterms and largely ends with a shrug, but there's a really good small scale experiment out there that's just concluded and is nearly a perfect representation of what many 2014 voters will face; i.e., given a choice between two candidates who suck and who voters hate, which would they choose?

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No, the Libertarian Candidate Did Not Cost Cuccinelli Virginia

Last night was not a good night for the Republican base. Sure, Chris Christie won big, but the base hates Christie. He signed a gun control bill into law (yeah, it was extremely limited, but any regulation at all is considered sacrilegious treason to the 'baggers). He's open to the idea that global warming is real and that humans are driving it. And, the very worst sin, he basically betrayed Mitt Romney right before the election -- getting plenty of photo ops with Barack Obama after Hurricane Sandy. He even praised the President in a way that would be very easy to misunderstand as an endorsement. And he dissed Romney along the way, saying he "didn't give a damn" about getting a photo op with him. Tea Partiers will not celebrate Christie's win, because they don't consider him to be an actual conservative.

Another high-profile race was down in Virginia, where the media narrative has Democrat  Terry McAuliffe "barely" defeating Republican Ken Cuccinelli. It was closer than the polls had predicted, but with a nearly 3 point difference between the two candidates, the race is not remotely close enough for a recount under Virginia law. McAuliffe's win is solid and decisive. He put this thing to bed.

Immediately following Cuccinelli's loss, 'baggers took to Twitter to pile on Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis for stealing votes from Cuccinelli and costing him the race. But this particular bit of sore loserism is BS and is based on teabaggers' conception of Libertarianism. They think Libertarians are the Ron and Rand Paul types, who worry only about white, straight, evangelical male liberty and not so much about female, minority, and LGBT liberties. When actual, honest-to-goodness Libertarians got a look at Ken Cuccinelli -- who wants to make abortion illegal, ban certain sexual activities, and crack down on the Homosexual Menace -- they found they weren't exactly fans. Actual Libertarians vote against authoritarianism -- in fact, being against authoritarianism is what they're all about. According to CNN, "[I]f Sarvis had not been in the race, exit polls indicate McAuliffe would have beaten Cuccinelli by 7 points (50%-43%)." Those Libertarians, being the real deal and not just Republicans playing dress up, wouldn't have voted Cuccinelli in a million years.

The third party candidate didn't fracture the conservative vote as much as he divided the liberal vote. Instead of blaming Sarvis for their loss, wingnuts should be applauding him for coming within shouting distance of handing Cuccinelli an upset victory.

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Virginia, Democrats, the Tea Party, and Reality

Something's going on in Virginia that I think is worth taking note of. The gubernatorial race there is all over but the voting and Democrats make one final push for their candidate, Terry McAuliffe.

Reuters: President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats attempted on Sunday to tap into voter anger about a 16-day U.S. government shutdown and turn Virginia's upcoming governor's election into a referendum on Tea Party conservatives.

With Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe leading polls over Republican Ken Cuccinelli before Tuesday's vote, Obama and Democratic speakers at a rally in the Washington suburb of Arlington pressed party activists to focus on turning out the vote.

Northern Virginia's Washington suburbs, where many government employees and contractors live, was hit particularly hard by the government shutdown last month that resulted from a stalemate over the U.S. budget and debt ceiling that Americans for the most part blamed on Republicans.

Although Virginia's proximity to Washington DC made the government shutdown particularly painful there, the strategy of making it a referendum on the Tea Party would probably be as effective nationwide, if a Pew Poll on Tea Party favorability is any indication. Nationally, the Tea Party has taken a nose dive in polling, with favorables dropping 7-points during the shutdown to an all time low. At this particular moment in time, 'baggers are about as popular as a fart in an elevator.

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Poll: Obamacare Beats the GOP Alternative

There's a reason that Republicans took a beating from the public over the government shutdown. Yes, Obamacare remains unpopular, but the fact is that people don't see it as bad enough to scrap. The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll show us that, although the law is approved of by only 44% of respondents, 47% want to keep the law as is or expand it, opposed to 37% who want to repeal it.

And if Republicans vastly overestimated American's desire to scrap Obamacare, they're currently making a similar over calculation of outrage over a buggy website. Kaiser finds that while 75% of Americans fallowed the shutdown story closely, only 51% say the same of the online exchange's rollout. Those who say they've followed the stories very closely show the starkest difference -- 44% followed the shutdown very closely, compared to only 22% who are as interested in the website story.

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Dancing to Republicans' Tune on Security

Is it legal for a journalist to disclose classified information to the public? That's something of an open question, although legal opinion seems to lean heavily toward "no." After all, if you could prosecute reporters for detailing classified info, all the executive branch would need to do to censor any news story would be to direct the appropriate agency to smack that info with the "TOP SECRET" stamp. So the notion that journalists could be jailed for publishing leaked information is a very dangerous one and one that courts have not treated well.

From a historical standpoint,  publishing classified info as journalism is completely legal and any finding that said otherwise would upset years of legal opinion.

Which brings us to this:

The Guardian: The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

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How the NSA Controversy Could Make Partisanship Even Worse

At first, the story about the NSA's massive domestic surveillance program was actually working in President Obama's favor. A Pew poll showed that most Americans approved of the program, yet it continued to be the big Washington story -- meaning half-baked White House nontroversies like Benghazi or the IRS scandal had been knocked off the front page. The President was able make what would normally have been some controversial moves, mostly under the radar, as the media's attention was fixed on one shiny bauble. For the most part, Republicans -- who would normally have dived on any whiff of scandal -- took the administration's side on the issue. Despite the landmark nature of the revelations, it looked like it was going to be clear sailing.

But then a second poll came out -- this one showing Americans not supportive of PRISM. Then Gallup had similar findings. Now Reuters/Ipsos has a different take, nearly as problematic for the administration:

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Continuing the Surveillance State

A Pew poll out yesterday has some calling Democratic voters hypocrites on the subject of the surveillance state. In 2006, only 37% answered that NSA surveillance was "acceptable." Today, that number is 64%. The accusation is that Democrats were against it under Bush, but are now for it under Obama. And there's a measure of truth to the charge. When broken down as Democrat, Republican, and Independent, dem voters are the most accepting of NSA snooping under President Obama, by more than ten points. But Democrats can be excused for some of those numbers by the wording of the questions.

In 2006, respondents were asked, "The NSA has been investigating people suspected of terrorism by secretly listening in on phone calls and reading emails without court approval..." The 2013 question is, "NSA has been getting secret court orders to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism..." The first asks if you approve of something that is a crime, while the second asks your opinion of something that's not a crime. Independents follow Democrats on this -- though not in the same numbers -- with 55% rejecting illegal wiretaps and 53% accepting the NSA's collection of metadata, where (we're assured) no one listened to the content of the calls. These are, in fact, two very different questions; it should come as no surprise that people gave two very different answers.

Unfortunately, that defense falls apart on another question: "Should the gov't be able to monitor emails if it might prevent future terrorist attacks?" In 2002, 51% of Democrats said no. Today, 53% say yes. Republicans also flip on support, so they're not getting off the hook. But the bright spot in this one is Independents. In 2002, indies were closely divided on email interception -- 45% pro, 49% anti. Today, they are overwhelmingly opposed -- 38% pro, 60% anti.

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Homophobia Wedge Turns Against the GOP

There's been a wave of Senate Democrats announcing retirement lately, with South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson being the last. That all these announcements are happening at once is not coincidental -- the party has asked people to make their intentions known now, in order to avoid surprises closer to 2014 the elections.

Another wave of announcements has come from the Senate lately -- and it could be the result of similar election strategizing.

Washington Post:

Then there were 10. No, wait. Nine.

In the past month, the rapid rise in public support for same-sex marriage has left Supreme Court justices perplexed and some political veterans, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, struggling to keep up.

But there may be no better measure of this historic change and its disorienting speed than what has happened among the Democrats of the U.S. Senate. They are often representatives of an urban party in rural places. That makes them the zebras of Washington’s little world: perpetually vulnerable, sniffing the wind.

As recently as the last election, 17 of those Democrats did not support same-sex marriage. By this week, however, the number was smaller.

And getting more so by the day.

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Voters Like Spending Cuts -- Until They Become Real

In looking at a poll in The Hill, Ezra Klein explains a seemingly strange political fact; that voters appear to want to have their cake and eat it too.

In 1967, the political scientists Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantrill wrote that Americans were “ideological conservatives” but “operational liberals.” What they meant was that when asked broad questions about how government should work and what it should do, voters responded like conservatives. But when asked operational questions about which programs should be cut and which services should be eliminated, they responded like liberals. Voters like big cuts and smaller government in theory, but they don’t want to actually cut anything in practice.

The poll in question finds that people like the idea of broad spending cuts, but that Republicans were unpopular on the issue -- despite being the party that's supposedly all about cutting spending. Voters' "ideological conservative/operational liberal" stance isn't as irrational as it would seem, if you consider the mixed messages most voters get about budget matters -- and especially considering the existence of a media more concerned with finding "balance" than in finding truth. The average person doesn't have the time it takes to ferret out what's really going on in Washington and the news media and punditry can't be bothered to tell them. So you wind up having to blindly choose among the true and the untrue to arrive at your positions.

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Putting Social Security and the Economy in Chains

It's one of those bad news/good news sorts of things. The bad news is that President Obama is definitely looking at some sort of benefit cut in entitlement spending. The good news is that congressional Democrats most definitely do not agree -- and if they say it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. After President Obama met with Republicans to iron out some sort of a deal on deficit reduction, he met with Senate Democrats to pitch ideas to them. It was not a sale.

The Hill:

...Though they are his most powerful congressional allies, there is tension in that relationship too given fears of liberal Democrats that Obama will make too many concessions with House and Senate Republicans on entitlement cuts, all in the hope of reaching a deficit deal.

Obama stood firm Tuesday when pressed to back away from benefit cuts during the meeting with the Senate Democratic Conference, according to lawmakers who attended.

[...]

[B]ehind closed doors, liberals in the Senate caucus raised concerns about Obama’s readiness to consider cuts to Social Security benefits and his support for a deficit-reduction package evenly split between spending cuts and tax increases.

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The NRA Way: If at First You Don't Succeed, Try Again. Fail Better

This ought to turn out well for them. Roll Call reports that the National Rifle Association plans to spend big to bring down Democratic senators up for reelection in 2014.

The National Rifle Association will launch a print advertising campaign targeting mostly Democratic senators up for re-election in 2014, according to sources close to the group.

On Thursday, full-page ads are scheduled to run in local newspapers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina and West Virginia. They will be supplemented by digital advertising in these states and 10 others, including Alaska, Colorado, Montana, New Hampshire and South Dakota.

Additionally, the group has scheduled full-page ads to run Feb. 25 in regional editions of USA Today, reaching parts of 15 states.

The NRA is planning to spend more than $375,000 on the campaign. But the NRA's clout with voters has eroded over the years. In fact, things have gotten so bad that if the NRA really wants to hurt Democrats' chances, they might do more damage by endorsing them.

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Defending Our Most Basic Freedom

It's one of the most sacred rights you have. They should make it as painless as possible.
-Miami-Dade resident Jonathan Piccolo.

It's not the "right" to own a military assault-style weapon that Piccolo is talking about here, but rather the right from which all our other rights spring. It's our most basic freedom and our most powerful form of liberty. It's the ability to bloodlessly change government and to influence the course of our nation's history. The right to vote is the great equalizer -- no one, no matter how rich or powerful -- has a vote any more powerful than yours. Since the Supreme Court determined that money is speech, they may be able to speak louder than you can, but your vote is still equal to theirs. If you're in line behind an ex-president or a Wall Street tycoon, they get one and you get one. Democracy is the freedom we should guard the most fiercely, because democracy is the way we keep all the other ones and even earn new freedoms. There is no free nation that doesn't allow its citizens to vote. There is no free nation that's a sham democracy with a rigged vote. People without democracy are -- by definition -- not free people. Which is why I always say that the enemies of democracy are the enemies of freedom. There aren't many facts I'm as sure of as that.

Which means there's a right side and a wrong side to a battle shaping up in this country -- and one party is staking out the "enemies of democracy" position. Which would make the other the good guys.

New York Times:

With studies suggesting that long lines at the polls cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes in November, party leaders are beginning a push to make voting and voter registration easier, setting up a likely new conflict with Republicans over a deeply polarizing issue.

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GOP Election-Rigging and Our Broken Government

In terms of votes cast for candidates to the House of Representatives this year, my home state of Wisconsin was close to evenly split. The edge went to Democrats, which is what you'd expect from a state that went for Obama. In the end, the total popular vote from all congressional races went Democrat -- 50.8%-49.2%. And here's where the math starts to get fishy: Wisconsin sent five Republicans to the House and three Democrats. This is a Republican controlled state and the congressional districts have been rigged through gerrymandering.

Wisconsin is a robbed electorate, but we aren't the worst off. That dubious award seems to go to Michigan. In that state, Democrats won the total house vote with a clear majority, 52.7%-47.3%. But they sent only five Democrats to Washington, while electing nine Republicans.

Republicans seem have Democracy bass-ackward and believe it should work the way the filibuster works in the Senate -- i.e., the side with the least votes wins. But I say "seem to" because it's pretty clear that Republicans believe democracy shouldn't work at all and that the most skillful cheater and vote-rigger deserves the office. That is, so long as they're a Republican.

Princeton University's Sam Wang, an election modeller who outperformed Nate Silver in the 2012 presidential election, has been investigating gerrymandering and finds that it's a largely Republican-caused problem.

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No Joe, Both Sides are Not Just as Bad

Filed under "Goodbye and good riddance." On his way out the door, retiring Senator Joe Lieberman, sole member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, is on his way out the door and we wish him a hearty "get the hell out and don't come back." But as he leaves, he takes the opportunity to catapult one more projectile of BS at the castle walls of reality.

New York Times:

...Even amid the current meltdown in Washington and the consistent Republican opposition to Mr. Obama, Mr. Lieberman insists on blaming both parties equally in a way that some Democrats say works for him but ignores reality.

"The Republicans will say not only in the fiscal negotiations, but in general, they were constantly bending and willing to compromise, and it's the Democrats' fault," he said. "But the truth is, they're both right. It's both their fault."

"I understand the reflexive establishment posture, which suggests partisan observations are necessarily wrong, but consider recent events," says Steve Benen, "the fiscal talks have broken down because Republicans won't compromise and accept meaningful concessions; the farm bill and the Violence Against Women Act are stuck because Republicans won't vote on them; efforts to reduce gun violence face extremely long odds because Republicans are beholden to the NRA; a U.N. treaty on disabilities was killed because Republicans believed extremist conspiracy theories; the process of filling President Obama's second term cabinet is stalled because of Republican smear campaigns; and another debt-ceiling crisis is underway because Republicans are threatening to hurt Americans on purpose unless Democrats pay a steep ransom."

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