Senator Mary Landrieu’s defeat in the Louisiana runoff over the weekend has unleashed a barrage of headlines proclaiming that, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “the South is now almost a Democrat-free zone.” This has renewed a years-long debate among Democrats over whether it is time to give up on the South.
Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats….the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores…It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country…the Democratic Party shouldn’t bother trying. If they get no votes from the region, they will in turn owe it nothing, and in time the South, which is the biggest welfare moocher in the world in terms of the largesse it gets from the more advanced and innovative states, will be on its own, which is what Southerners always say they want anyway.
I don’t feel strongly about this debate either way, but I would add this: If there is one thing Democrats should be focused on winning back, it’s not necessarily the South; it’s control on the state level. Dem losses on that level, and the difficulties in reversing them, could have important long term consequences for future redistricting — and, by extension, Dem chances of taking back the House in the near future.
The Cook Political report has two articles crunching election numbers that should alarm Democrats. The first reports: “Today, about 55 percent of all state legislative seats in the country are held by Republicans. That’s the largest share of GOP state legislators since the 1920s.” What’s more, that piece notes, even in battleground states that Obama carried in 2012 — “Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida — Dems are “in the minority at the legislative and congressional level.”
The second Cook piece reports in a new way on the difficulties Democrats face in winning back the House. The 2014 election, notes Dave Wasserman, revealed what has been wrought by the combination of population distribution and redistricting, which has wasted untold numbers of Dem votes by packing them inefficiently into districts in ways that game the national House map to the GOP’s advantage. The result: While Dems won 47.1 percent of the popular vote, they only won 43.2 percent of seats, suggesting that “Democrats might expect to consistently receive about four percent fewer seats than votes.”
As Wasserman notes, that will make it harder, not easier, to win back the House, unless Democrats can develop “a long-term strategy for winning more gubernatorial races and legislative seats to put less GOP-friendly maps in place by 2022.” Wasserman concludes: “What Democrats really need is a long-term plan.”
Yet the incoming DCCC chair, Ben Ray Lujan, sounded a bit casual about the party’s long term prospects in an interview with Scott Bland. He suggested improved field operations and the presidential year demographics of 2016 will go a long way towards helping win back the 30 seats (!) Dems need to retake the House, even though it seems obvious some redistricting success will be necessary.
So here’s my (non-rhetorical) question: Are Democrats focused enough on this problem? Should they be doing more thinking about how to address it? After all, if Democrats can’t seriously improve the prospects of winning back the House, the current plan for holding power on the national level and preventing total GOP control of the White House and Congress, as Brian Beutler recently noted, is basically for Hillary Clinton to win the White House.
Again, non-rhetorically: Is there be a Plan B here?
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* HILLARY LEADS ALL GOP CHALLENGERS: It’s probably too early to start talking about 2016 polling. Still: A new Bloomberg poll finds Hillary Clinton leading a number of GOP challengers by anywhere from six to 13 points.
Clinton’s lead over GOP candidates who may be more mainstream (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney) is smaller (she leads all three by six points) than it is over Rand Paul (eight points) or Ted Cruz (13 points). So obviously, the GOP’s only hope of winning the White House is to nominate a real conservative like Ted Cruz.
* HILLARY’S WORK FOR OBAMA SEEN AS PLUS: More interesting findings from the Bloomberg poll: 59 percent say that Clinton’s work in the Obama administration is an “advantage,” versus 39 percent who see it as a “disadvantage.” Americans overwhelmingly see her tenure as Secretary of State as an advantage, 77-22.
GOP operatives have telegraphed that they will claim a Clinton presidency will equal an Obama “third term,” and they will likely use her service for him to make the case, turning her experience as Secretary of State into a liability. The question is whether voters will make the leap Republicans are instructing them to make.
* GOP NEEDS DEMS TO AVOID SHUTDOWN: This week, House Republicans will vote on a measure funding most of the government for a year, while funding Homeland Security (which funds immigration enforcement) only until February, to stage a confrontation to roll back Obama’s deportation relief. But do Republicans have the votes, once conservatives defecxt? David Drucker reports:
Senior GOP aides believe potential defections will reach no more than 40, with House Democrats providing the rest of the votes. The bipartisan mix is deemed politically acceptable to House Speaker John Boehner, who wants to avoid a poisonous intra-caucus clash only weeks before the new Congress is seated.
Okay, so Republicans do think they need at least some Democrats to keep the government open. That should mean House GOP leaders will not be able to attach anything to the funding bill that would undermine Obama’s action.
* GOP TO CAVE ON DEPORTATIONS (FOR NOW): As I suggest above, the Associated Press reports that Republicans will vote to fund the government “without additional immigration-related controversy” and “without tying it to any immediate change in immigration policy.”
But GOP leaders promise they will take the fight to Obama tyranny next year, by golly!
* GOP CLAIMS ABOUT OBAMA AND DEBT DEBUNKED: Glenn Kessler takes apart RNC chair Reince Priebus’ claim that Obama has “the worst record of any president when it comes to putting America deeper in debt.” As Kessler puts it: “when the numbers are placed in context, the national debt grew faster under Reagan than it has under Obama.”
Faster than under Saint Ronald Reagan? Nothing to see here. Such claims about debt under Obama will probably be key to Republican efforts to attack Hillary Clinton, so get ready to hear a lot of this stuff, debunked or not.
* RELEASE THE TORTURE REPORT: NBC News reports:
Senior intelligence officials briefed the White House and Congress that there was a “heightened potential” that releasing the so-called Senate “torture report” could provoke violence overseas, a senior intelligence official told NBC News.
Secretary of State John Kerry called Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein to raise concerns about the timing of the release of the report into Bush-era CIA torture and rendition. It is expected to be released this week, however. The alternative would be waiting until the GOP controls the Senate.
* AND GOP ‘REWARDED’ FOR HURTING ECONOMY: Paul Krugman looks at the good economic news and notes that the recovery would have been a lot more robust if it weren’t for scorched earth GOP opposition and deep cuts to government spending and employment:
At this point we have enough data points to compare the job recovery under President Obama with the job recovery under former President George W. Bush…by any measure you might choose — but especially if you compare rates of job creation in the private sector — the Obama recovery has been stronger and faster…we can now say with confidence that the recovery’s weakness had nothing to do with Mr. Obama’s (falsely) alleged anti-business slant. What it reflected, instead, was the damage done by government paralysis — paralysis that has, alas, richly rewarded the very politicians who caused it.