issue: Politics

Election Watch: All Eyes on Supreme Court, Obama Pushes GOP on Immigration

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online

This week’s skirmishing in the presidential campaign revolved around the president’s immigration initiative and preparations for the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act, due to be handed down next week.

The executive order (technically issued by the Department of Homeland Security) offered the children of undocumented workers a two-year, renewable immunity from prosecution if they had entered the country prior to the age of 16 and are currently under 30; have a high-school diploma or GED or a record of military service; and have no serious criminal record. It’s basically a “Lite” version of the DREAM Act, which Obama also supports, in that it provides no path to citizenship. And most importantly, from a political point of view, the administration initiative is very close to what Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has reportedly been working on in the form of legislation that could free Republicans (and the Republican presidential candidate in particular) from the taint of being hostile to any remedial action to help children here illegally.

Continue reading “Election Watch: All Eyes on Supreme Court, Obama Pushes GOP on Immigration” →

End Seniority to Help Depolarize Congress

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Anne Kim explains how to de-polarize Congress over at Roll Call:

In the last several months, the Washington policy world has begun a necessary and constructive debate over how to “de-polarize” the nation’s politics. Scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, for example, have made a compelling case for a suite of structural improvements to the political system, including redistricting and campaign finance reform.

But while most proposals have looked to fix the political system in the big picture, another place to look to reform might be Congress’ internal workings as well. In particular, Congress should consider scrapping seniority as the basis for deciding committee chairmanships, especially in the House where individual members have much less power than in the Senate.

Aside from leadership, committee chairs are among the most powerful members of Congress. They decide the legislative agenda, broker deals over major bills and shepherd them through Congress. They wield enormous influence over their colleagues and command prodigious fundraising ability.

Read the entire article HERE.

End Seniority to Help Depolarize Congress

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Anne Kim explains how to de-polarize Congress over at Roll Call:

In the last several months, the Washington policy world has begun a necessary and constructive debate over how to “de-polarize” the nation’s politics. Scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, for example, have made a compelling case for a suite of structural improvements to the political system, including redistricting and campaign finance reform.

But while most proposals have looked to fix the political system in the big picture, another place to look to reform might be Congress’ internal workings as well. In particular, Congress should consider scrapping seniority as the basis for deciding committee chairmanships, especially in the House where individual members have much less power than in the Senate.

Aside from leadership, committee chairs are among the most powerful members of Congress. They decide the legislative agenda, broker deals over major bills and shepherd them through Congress. They wield enormous influence over their colleagues and command prodigious fundraising ability.

Read the entire article HERE.

Election Watch: Romney’s Referendum and Obama’s Future

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

June 5 represented the rare moment when a down-ballot contest almost completely eclipsed the presidential race, with the Wisconsin recall election blotting out the sun for several days. As you know by now, Scott Walker survived the recall effort by a solid 53-46 margin. Democrats did manage to recall a Republican state senator, and achieve control of the chamber—though that accomplishment was mainly symbolic, since the legislature is out of session until after the November elections.

The vast spin-a-thon over the results has focused on three main issues: money, meaning, and national implications.

Continue reading “Election Watch: Romney’s Referendum and Obama’s Future” →

The Forgotten Communitarian

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshal explains why Bill Clinton’s contributions to restoring the language of civic obligation are so frequently overlooked over at Democracy:

“In “Restoring the Language of Obligation,” [Issue #24] James Kloppenberg laments “the ignorance of most Americans about the centrality of the concept of obligation in American history.” Yet there’s a gaping hole in his own synopsis of that history—the 1990s, when civic themes re-entered the nation’s political discourse in a big way”

“Invocations of civic duty and the disinterested pursuit of the common good were touchstones of American politics from colonial days until around the 1970s, says Kloppenberg, when liberals “traded the language of duties for the language of rights.” He argues persuasively that the ensuing fixation with rights talk and identity politics sped the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, and, by eroding more expansive notions of social solidarity, abetted the rise of Ronald Reagan’s anti-government populism.”

“But there his recap ends, skipping the striking period of civic ferment that followed. In politics, for example, Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats” consciously sought to reclaim the civic-republican tradition. Concepts like mutual obligation, community, and national service, and balancing citizens’ rights with their responsibilities, were central to the nation’s political conversation in the 1990s, and even migrated abroad via the “third way” dialogue between Clinton, Tony Blair, and other center-left political leaders.”

Read the entire article HERE.

The Forgotten Communitarian

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshal explains why Bill Clinton’s contributions to restoring the language of civic obligation are so frequently overlooked over at Democracy:

“In “Restoring the Language of Obligation,” [Issue #24] James Kloppenberg laments “the ignorance of most Americans about the centrality of the concept of obligation in American history.” Yet there’s a gaping hole in his own synopsis of that history—the 1990s, when civic themes re-entered the nation’s political discourse in a big way”

“Invocations of civic duty and the disinterested pursuit of the common good were touchstones of American politics from colonial days until around the 1970s, says Kloppenberg, when liberals “traded the language of duties for the language of rights.” He argues persuasively that the ensuing fixation with rights talk and identity politics sped the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, and, by eroding more expansive notions of social solidarity, abetted the rise of Ronald Reagan’s anti-government populism.”

“But there his recap ends, skipping the striking period of civic ferment that followed. In politics, for example, Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats” consciously sought to reclaim the civic-republican tradition. Concepts like mutual obligation, community, and national service, and balancing citizens’ rights with their responsibilities, were central to the nation’s political conversation in the 1990s, and even migrated abroad via the “third way” dialogue between Clinton, Tony Blair, and other center-left political leaders.”

Read the entire article HERE.

The Net Roots, the Super Rich, and the Ugly, Endless Election

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Executive Director Lindsay Lewis explains the outsized and damaging influence of both the super rich and net roots activists over at The Daily Beast:

“The Wisconsin brag-and-blame games have begun. Democrats wasted no time dismissing Gov. Scott Walker’s recall win as proof that the big out-of-state money trumped local sentiment, while Republicans are still fuming about labor’s national push to oust him. ”

“Both sides are right.”

“The people of Wisconsin have been merely pawns in the new era of nonstop nationalized campaigning. Election Day is now just the pause between quarters in a campaign game that never ends. The battle over Walker had very little to do with Oshkosh, Madison, or Milwaukee. The U-Hauls, vans, and flights leaving town now like the Ringling Brothers Circus packing up its tent poles en route to the next town—while Wisconsinites are left with the elephant dung to clean up.”

Read the entire op-ed HERE.

Election Watch: The Republicans Gain Momentum

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Mitt Romney crossed the 1,144 delegate threshold to officially claim the GOP presidential nomination via Texas’ May 29 primary. As planned, his campaign launched an attack on the president’s fiscal and economic policies, focusing initially on “failed stimulus projects” and then featuring a surprise visit by the candidate to the site of the bankrupt Solyndra facility, which received a $535 million “clean energy” loan guarantee from the DoE.

But the Romney “pivot” was overshadowed by bad publicity from his strangely timed, May 29 Las Vegas fundraiser, starring Donald Trump (at Trump’s Vegas hotel). The “Trump” made it vastly worse by releasing a barrage of statements reopening the Obama birth certificate “issue.” The big question today is whether the latest not-so-good news on the economic front—a BLS May “jobs report” showing a downward revision of the last two months’ jobs gains and an underwhelming 69,000 new jobs for May—will dominate the presidential campaign for the period just ahead.

Continue reading “Election Watch: The Republicans Gain Momentum” →

Election Watch: The Growing Impact of Super-PACS

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This week’s major down-ballot contest was in Nebraska’s Republican Senate primary, where State Senator Deb Fischer came from far behind to beat the long-time front-runner, Attorney General Jon Bruning, along with “movement conservative” favorite, State Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Despite some media treatment of the outcome as another “conservative insurgent” victory over an “establishment moderate,” it’s not at all clear that ideology had much to do with Fischer’s victory. A late PPP survey (which very accurately predicted the outcome) showed Fischer drawing support from all ideological elements of the GOP, and benefitting from a loud and expensive Bruning-Stenberg slugfest that mainly focused on Bruning’s ethics and possible vulnerability against Democrat Bob Kerrey.

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Election Watch: Obama Makes History

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s been a turbulent last few days on the campaign trail. On Tuesday, Indiana Republicans drove six-term Sen. Richard Lugar from office in favor of hard-core conservative state treasurer Richard Mourdock. While Lugar’s loss seemed inevitable well before primary day, the margin of his defeat—61-39—was shocking given his relatively conservative voting record over decades, and his staunch orthodoxy over the usual hot-button issues like abortion and taxes. Mourdock’s many out-of-state backers, including the Club for Growth, Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund, and virtually every right-wing blogger on the planet, made it abundantly clear that getting rid of Lugar was intended to teach the national Republican Party a lesson about the price involved in disrespecting the Tea Party Movement (Lugar had never even attempted to pander to them) and sticking to the outmoded traditions of Senate bipartisanship.

The day after the primary Mourdock reinforced the “lesson” by calmly telling Chuck Todd that he defined “bipartisanship” as “Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”

While Indiana’s current pro-GOP tilt makes Mourdock a slight favorite in a general election contest with Rep. Joe Donnelly, the unexpected vulnerability of the seat has scrambled many early assumptions about the 2012 Senate election landscape, particularly when combined with Olympia Snowe’s recent surprise retirement. Today the Washington Post’s Paul Kane published an overview of Senate races quoting several leading handicappers as giving Democrats a slight edge in their battle to hang onto control of the chamber; it all may come down to the vice president’s tie-breaking vote.

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Zuckmentum!: Why the Silicon Valley App Boom Could Sink Romney

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The AtlanticPPI Chief Economic Strategist Michael Mandel, explains in The Atlantic the surprising link between the future GOP presidential nominee and the upcoming Facebook initial public offering.

“Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans are gleefully pounding President Barack Obama for the weaker-than-expected employment report released on May 4. Growth seems to be weakening and Romney is positioning himself as the business-minded economy savior for the country.

“At the same time, the Facebook IPO, anticipated to value the company at more than $75 billion, is a tangible sign of the vast amounts of wealth and income being generated by the communications boom and the so-called App Economy. Smartphones, broadband wireless, social media, apps — all are combining to provide a potent force for economic growth.

“So the question is: Should Romney be worried about an “App Surprise” — a sudden acceleration of growth and job creation fueled by the smartphone/communications boom?

“That might seem unreasonable given the other drags on the economy. Yet Romney and his advisers would be wise to remember the events of the 1996 election campaign.”

Read the full article at The Atlantic

Will Marshall on the French Presidential Election

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall argues that the victory of Francois Hollande, a Socialist and the next president of France, will not likely have any significant impact on the American presidential election over at POLITICO’s Arena:

Americans look to France for many things – fine wine and food, romantic getaways, bullet trains – but rarely for political models. Some Republicans may try to draw parallels between President Obama and a real Socialist, Francoise Hollande, but swing voters don’t share the GOP’s Francophobia.

Besides, as Reds go, Hollande isn’t very menacing. For all his talk of putting growth before austerity, Hollande promised during the campaign to balance France’s budget just one year later than Sarkozy. And Hollande’s will be constrained from a massive public spending splurge by France’s need to borrow from capital markets to finance its enormous debt (90 percent of GDP).

Read the entire op-ed here

Election Watch: The Political Cycle Heats Up

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The presidential contest executed a rare turn into foreign policy this week, with a flurry of controversy around the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Having already made it clear that he would not be shy to claim this event as a personal and administration success story, the president and his team upped the ante with a web video (narrated by Bill Clinton, no less) that noted a 2007 remark by Mitt Romney dismissing any focus on the pursuit of bin Laden as a waste of time and money (Romney was at the time supporting the Bush administration’s “wider war on terror” policy and also responding to criticism from Democrats—including Obama—that the administration had diverted vital resources from Afghanistan in order to prosecute a failed war in Iraq). Romney and other Republicans reacted angrily to the ad, suggesting that Obama was “politicizing” the operation that killed Osama, and arguing that “even Jimmy Carter” would have given the order to proceed with it. After some shots back and forth, the president’s surprise trip to Afghanistan, and televised address on a new security pact with the Afghans, seem to have convinced Republicans they were simply drawing fresh attention to Obama’s top national security accomplishment, and so sought to change the subject.

Continue reading “Election Watch: The Political Cycle Heats Up” →

Will Marshall on the French Presidential Election

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall argues that the Socialist presidential candidate, Francois Holland, is unlikely to offer France what it really needs-a credible program of deep structural reforms-over at Real Clear World:

When Republicans call President Obama a ‘socialist,’ it says more about their lunge to the right than Obama’s policies. Besides, if they want to see what a real socialist looks like, they should turn to a country they love to hate: France.

Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party leader, has a substantial lead over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy heading toward their second round showdown on May 6, and stands a good chance of becoming France’s first Socialist President in 17 years.

As Reds go, Hollande is not especially menacing – ‘bland’ is how he’s usually described. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the gruff socialist from Vermont, is scarier.

But bland is what the French seem to want after Sarkozy, who is widely reviled as a vain and vulgar celebrity-president with a trophy wife – a Gallic Donald Trump. Hollande promises to be ‘Mr. Normal’ and restore dignity in the Elysée Palace.

Read the entire article here

Election Watch: Upcoming Political Obstacles

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It appeared that the 2012 Republican presidential nominating process would come to a formal close this week (given Ron Paul’s lack of interest in officially withdrawing until the Convention), and after Newt Gingrich broadly hinted he needed an upset win in Delaware to stay in the race. He subsequently lost by 29 points, and indicated he intended to withdraw quite soon. Instead, he decamped to North Carolina, and for all the world looked like he was continuing the campaign, albeit in a desultory manner. But now comes word that his Secret Service Protection has been withdrawn, making his continued campaigning look even more absurd, so he’ll probably pull the plug before running up even more debts.

Speaking of North Carolina, the president was in Chapel Hill this week in an appearance (subsequently attacked by Republican groups, in what was probably just a shot across the bow, that he was misusing official resources for a de facto campaign appearance) that illustrated the interaction of various issues in potentially close states this year. He spoke to a receptive campus crowd about his proposal to retain a freeze on student loan interest rates, currently the subject of complex partisan maneuvering in Congress. But he did not speak of an issue on the minds of many college students in the state: Amendment One, the draconian constitutional amendment banning not only same-sex marriage but legal recognition of all same-sex relationships, which will appear on the North Carolina primary ballot on May 8.

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Anne Kim on the Economics Behind the Mommy Wars

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Anne Kim, PPI Managing Director for Policy and Strategy, explains the economics behind the recent “Mommy Wars” at The Washington Monthly:

“By now, every mother in America has heard of Democrat Hilary Rosen’s recent charge that Ann Romney, the wife of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney and mother of five grown sons, has “never worked a day in her life.””

“Yes, the mommy wars are back.”

“Setting aside the question of whether raising children is “work” (it very much is, by the way), the mommy wars are so divisive because they’re framed in terms of values and choice. Where a woman chooses to work (at home or for a paycheck) is a proxy for her stance on career versus family and which she considers more “important.” Hence, First Lady Michelle Obama’s declaration this week that “families are off-limits” in politics.”

“But treating women’s work as an issue for culture and values misses the boat in a big way. Not only is it elitist, it denies the underlying economic realities of many women’s lives.”

Read the entire article here