This post first appeared on Open Left.

One of the main problems facing the Democratic Party on a national level is that it caters to the 20-30% of its elected officials who are primarily center-right when it comes to public policy. (For a list of the ways the party caters to this 20-30%, read my article “BREAKING: I am now a conservative Democrat.”).  In the upcoming 2010 elections, the net result of this catering is likely to be a a minimal electoral boost for that 20-30% of the party, and a massive electoral setback for the entire party, including that 20-30%.

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This post originally appeared on Open Left.

Last night the AP reported that an aide to Harry Reid said the jobs bill (which extends unemployment benefits, various tax cuts, aid to state to pay for Medicare and Medicaid, and more) would be dropped if it failed a cloture vote today.

Earlier this morning, I spoke to an aide in Harry Reid’s office who confirmed this story to me. Here is the state of play:

1. The bill is two votes short, as it faces united opposition from Republicans and assistance from Ben Nelson.
2. Republicans are offering a one-month extension, and Democrats are rejecting that offer.  While it is not impossible that a deal would be struck before the vote today, it is unlikely.
3. If the cloture vote fails, then the Senate will not take up the bill again.  Procedural delays have created a quagmire where many other pieces of legislation, including the Wall Street reform bill and others which can create jobs rather than just protecting them, need to be dealt with.  A 30-day extension would just back up the process even further, as it means there would be another fight before the august recess.
4. Here is what will happen as a result of this bill being defeated:
   

   Come Friday, 1.2 million people will lose access to the extended unemployment benefits, a number that will grow by several hundred thousand every week after that. Fifty million Medicare claims from June are currently in process at the reduced rate, which the AARP says has already caused some of its members to have trouble finding a doctor. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that dropping the $24 billion in aid to states will lead to cuts in services and thousands of layoffs, and that spending cuts to close states’ aggregate budget shortfall absent new federal funds in 2011 would lead to 900,000 public- and private-sector layoffs.

The aide stressed that while the outlook is grim for today’s cloture vote, and while you never know what will happen in the Senate, there is no path forward on the bill right now.  It’s just dead.

This is a monstrous defeat.  This is going to hurt a lot of people, and Republicans won’t pay any political price for it.  No one is writing about this, and with Democrats in charge, they will be blamed for it.  A huge, huge victory for Republicans.  Looks like they didn’t even need the 2010 elections.

This post originally appeared on Open Left.

One of the most disappointing outcomes in the Wall Street reform fight to date was the resounding defeat of the Brown-Kaufman amendment to strictly limit the size of large financial institutions.  To put it bluntly, the amendment would have broken up the big banks, thus reducing their almost unprecedented concentration of power and wealth (and the control over our democracy that comes with that concentration of power and wealth).

However, even though this sweeping amendment failed, a series of piecemeal efforts to break up the big banks continues.  Here are updates on three ongoing efforts that aim to reduce the size and power of our largest financial institutions:

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This post originally appeared on Open Left.

The media narrative around the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary is that labor and the netroots opposed Lincoln because she wasn’t progressive enough.  However, that is not exactly correct.  Labor and netroots groups are largely piling on against Lincoln because she broke public promises on key issues that had previously earned her the support of various progressive groups.  To put it more bluntly, she won the support of many groups by lying, and now it is payback time.

Unfortunately, Lincoln’s betrayal of progressive groups is largely absent from the media narrative on the campaign.  For example, take this write-up on today’s primaries from The Hill:

But the spotlight will shine brightest on Lincoln, who earned union scorn for opposing a public option in the healthcare bill and refusing to back card- check legislation championed by the labor movement.

The campaign dynamic present here is a simple left-right spectrum: Lincoln is being opposed because she is not sufficiently left-wing.  This is actually a narrative that Lincoln is pushing in her own ads.  In a recent TV spot, Lincoln says to the camera:

The labor unions are spending millions of dollars against me because I won’t vote with them 100% of the time.

However, Lincoln did not simply oppose card check and a public option.  She made public commitments of support for both policies, before flipping when it was crunch time.

On November 21st, 2009, Blanche Lincoln stood on the floor of the Senate and declared that she would filibuster any health reform bill that included a public option.  However, earlier in the year she signed a document stating that she supported the public option.  Further, even as she spoke, her Senate website said that she still supported a public option, she is still cool with the public option:

Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies.  Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans.  Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals of a public plan.

And here’s a screenshot:

She told progressive groups that she supported their priorities, but then she completely flipped her position when it came time to actually vote.

The same dynamic took place on card check.  She voted for an Employee Free Choice Act with card check in 2007, but cimply flipped her position in 2009 once it had a chance to pass:

In the Ozark Mountain town of Rogers, Ark., more than 250 business owners gathered for lunch at a construction company last month to focus on what they saw as a major threat — a proposal in Congress to make it easier to form labor unions.
At each place setting, attendees found pre-stamped postcards and pre-written letters to be sent to Arkansas’ U.S. senators, Democrats Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, who had supported the labor bill in the past. After lunch, the business owners were ushered to computers to send e-mail messages as well.

Five days later came the good news: Two Senate votes had been stripped from the pro-union bill. Lincoln said she would oppose it outright, while Pryor declared the current version “dead” and said he would look for compromises.

It isn’t just the public option and card check, either.  EMILY’s List had also previously supported Blanche Lincoln, but did not do so in 2010 because Lincoln lied to them.  From Ellen Malcolm, EMILY’s List chair

In 1998, EMILY’s List helped elect Lincoln to the U.S. Senate. We believed her when she told us that that, if and when the Senate took up right-wing Senator Rick Santorum’s bill to ban what he called “partial birth” abortion, she would insist on a health exception that protects women.
Our members gave generously to her campaign, believing that she would steadfastly stand by the pledge she made to us to protect women’s reproductive freedom.

She took our members’ hard-earned money to get elected. Unfortunately, when the Santorum bill came up for a vote, Lincoln voted for it even though it provided no exception to protect women’s health.(…)

Since she wasn’t there for us, we won’t be there for her.

Sure, there is an ideological element to this campaign.  Sure, there is an anti-incumbent mood.  Sure, it is unusual to get a primary challenger as strong as Bill Halter.  However, to ignore Blanche Lincoln’s repeated betrayals on key issues to progressive groups who had once supported her ignores a central dynamic of this campaign.

Blanche Lincoln brought this primary challenge on herself by going back on several important public commitments she had made in order to win organizational support for her previous campaigns.  She simply would not be in this sort of primary trouble if she hadn’t lied and if groups like EMILY’s List and labor unions were still supported her.

This post originally appeared on Open Left.

Congress returns to session this week.  In case you missed it, after passing Afghanistan war funding without battling an eyelash, last week Blue Dogs slashed an economic relief bill by nearly $100 billion.  It was a glorious “victory” for them:

The Blue Dogs won a significant victory by forcing House Democratic leaders to cut $79 billion in spending, including subsidies to help laid-off workers buy health insurance and ease state budget cutbacks.

This is only a victory if self-immolation is considered a victory.  Consider:

1. Blue Dogs slash aid to states;
2. In response, states will engage in massive layoffs of public sector workers;
3. These layoffs will exacerbate an already dismal employment picture;
4. Voters will likely turn against Democrats as a result;
5. More Democrats in vulnerable seats will lose re-election;
6. Blue Dogs are disproportionately from vulnerable seats.

So yes, truly a big victory for the blue Dogs.  They managed to reduce their own chances of re-election.  Awesome!

Of course, the Blue dogs don’t think they are doing this.  Instead, they think they are following the will of the voters:

“We are hearing from the public, ‘You’re adding to the deficit, you’re adding to the deficit,’” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, a member of the conservative Blue Dogs who have held together against many proposals that require even more borrowing by the Treasury to pay for them.

Yeah, sure they are.  That is why, when Americans are asked to list the biggest problem facing the country today, and are not prompted with a list of problems, only 5% cite the budget deficit:

CBS News/New York Times Poll. April 5-12, 2010. N=1,580 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
“What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” Open-ended

Economy/Jobs: 49%
Health care: 8%
Budget deficit / National debt: 5%
Poverty / homelessness: 4%
War / Iraq / Afghanistan: 4%
Big government / bureaucracy: 2%
Moral values: 2%
Other: 21%
Unsure: 5%

The country cares a a lot more about jobs than about the deficit. So, naturally, to fulfill the will of the voters, Blue Dogs slash aid to states that will result in huge layoffs, all in the name of reducing the deficit.

Genius. The name “Blue Dog” derives from supposedly being choked blue by the left-wing of the party, but it seems to me that Blue Dogs are engaged in a self-asphyxiation right now.

This post originally appeared on Open Left.

There is going to be a lot of news today about the latest Gallup generic congressional ballot poll showing Republicans with their largest lead ever in that poll, 49%–43%.  While that certainly is not good news for Democrats, it cannot be emphasized enough that this poll is still just one of twenty-four generic congressional ballot polls to be released this month.  In the overall average of those 24 polls, Democrats still hold a slight edge, 44.17%–44.04%:

Generic Congressional Ballot, June 2nd
Polls can be found at Pollster.com and Pollingreport.com

(Note: Zogby interactive also released generic congressional ballot polls during the past month, but they are not included in these averages due to their horrendous track record)

Some might object to this poll averaging methodology, arguing that including all of the polls over the past month, and also including multiple polls from individual polling firms, will miss developing trends. However, not including multiple polls from the same polling firm, and including only the most recent polls, has been shown to produce less accurate poll averaging results (I would know, since I used that type of less accurate methodology in 2008, and conducted research to find a more accurate method for 2010).  To put it a different way, removing older polls and multiple polls from individual pollsters produces results in a less accurate poll methodology that often finds trends which do not exist.

The methodology I am using in 2010 has found minimal movement–less than 2.3% on net–in the national generic ballot over the past fours months.  This is a lot more believable than the idea that the country is swinging 5-6% points in favor of one party in a single week, even if it isn’t uncommon for individual polls to show such a trend (Quinnipiac showed such a result for Democrats last week, for example).  The entire difference between the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections was less than a 10% net swing–how could one week of news early in the campaign season possibly result in half of the net swing from 2004 to 2008?  A swing like that requires a mega-story like a presidential convention or the financial metldown of September 2008, not run of the mill political tit for tat during the spring legislative and primary season.

Shorter version of all this: one generic congressional ballot poll means very little.  As always, look at the complete polling picture.

This post originally appeared on Open Left.

Concurrent with today’s primary action, Wall Street reform continues to move forward in the Senate. Here is the state of play:

Cloture filed, vote tomorrow
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has filed for cloture on the Wall Street reform bill. The vote will take place tomorrow.

If cloture does succeed, amendments and debate will continue for 30 hours
Even if cloture succeeds tomorrow, the final vote will take place on Thursday evening or Friday morning. Also, the debate and amendment process will continue. There will still be 30 hours of debate and amendments, possibly during an all-night session. The only difference is that the amendments must be ruled to be germane, which might cause problems for amendments such as the ones related to the oil spill, secret holds, and health insurance industry anti-trust exemption.

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This post originally appeared on Open Left.

The final Quinnipiac poll of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary shows Jose Sestak leading Arlen Specter by a single point.  While a one point lead is far from a blowout or a sure thing, what is significant about this poll is that there are now exactly zero polling firms showing Arlen Specter ahead.  Here are the final polls from the six pollsters to conducts surveys of this campaign in May:

Final polls, Pennsylvania Senate primary, May

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